Jeremy Jewell creates, looks for unique musical experiences
Jun. 13—ROCHESTER — Rochester native Jeremy Jewell has been active in the Rochester music scene for more than a decade. By active we mean playing multiple shows and venues both solo, with bands and various collaborations.
This year, Jewell started a new project, Jeremy Jewell and the Co-Dependents, is his most recent band in addition to Hair of the Dog and Calling Dinosaurs.
How did this new project get started?
I wanted to do just my songs, basically my songs with a full band. I just wanted accompaniment, I just wanted to be in charge of it I guess, at the risk of sounding like too much of an ego.
Your other groups aren't going by the wayside?
We're still going to do that, I just like to stay busy. Tracy (Sonnier), who I play with (in Calling Dinosaurs and Hair of the Dog), his availability tightened up a little bit too, which I think is part of it. We're still playing together, we're still doing every first Friday — Calling Dinosaurs is — at Thesis (Beer Project). Hair of the Dog is more like a group collaboration, that's more like a traditional band where everybody is part of it. Jeremy Jewell and the Co-Dependents, everybody contributes, but it's more based around my stuff, my songs.
With Hair of the Dog and Calling Dinosaurs, I'm the guitar player and I get locked into playing a lot of these lead guitar things, which is super fun and I really enjoy it, but with the Co-Dependents, I just want to be able to strum my acoustic guitar and somebody else do all the fancy stuff. I just want to sing and play my guitar.
What gigs or shows are you looking forward to this summer?
The forWARD stuff has been awesome. We've been getting really cool bands and I like pop-up shows like that, venues that aren't necessarily normally venues and bringing neighborhoods together, I think that's really cool.
I love underground shows like at Hidden World (Vinyl Records). Basically, I just look and see if it's a night I'm going out, I check Thesis, Hidden World or Treedome and also North Star (Bar) and kind of go from there. I like random stuff that doesn't happen all the time.
Like the Bob Dylan tribute show (at Thesis)?
Yeah, that was a great night and it was awesome to see so many good musicians in one place in one night.
You did some big ones from Dylan that night. How did you settle on the songs you did, especially "(The Lonesome Death of) Hattie Carroll" with so many lyrics?
I love that song. My dad actually played that with Bob Dylan once.
Really? How did that happen?
My dad lived in Dinky Town back in the 1960s. This would have been in like 1965-ish, right around when Dylan went electric. And Dylan was in town for a show at wherever, the convention center or auditorium somewhere. My dad, he kind of did what I do, he went around playing coffee shops or whatever. He was playing at this place called the 10 O'clock Scholar, the owner was a guy named Red. Bob stopped in because he used to run in that circle when he lived in Minneapolis. So he just stopped in, and Red was like, there's this kid playing in the back, Mike Jewell, he does a lot of your songs, I think you might like him. So Bob goes back there, introduces himself and said, let's do a couple. So my dad played guitar and sang and Bob sang and they sang "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" and "House of the Rising Sun" together.
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