The Jubilee Year

Hope is a concept that is hard to grasp in a broken world—a world where it is a struggle to maintain relationships, where children spend there childhoods in an environment wrecked by poverty and disease, a world where it is easy to slip and fall and be comfortable with remaining down. But then you add hope to the equation. Hope provides the strength to get up when you fall.
The Jubilee Year’s debut EP release "And You Falter" addresses the concept of hope for a seemingly hopeless world, desperate to grasp the concept.
“Life is never perfect and never will be,” vocalist and keys player P.J. Johnson notes. “That is because it’s fallen. But that doesn’t mean that we are without hope. We [The Jubilee Year] really love the idea of grace and the realization that we don’t have to work to get somewhere – we can rely on grace. Resting in something other than ourselves, to us, is one of the keys to enjoying life, and that is a huge part of what we are singing about and what we are as a band.”
The band finds its foundation with members and key songwriters Jared Weatherholtz (guitar, vocals) and P.J. Johnson (keys, vocals). The two met in the fall of 2004 in their college cafeteria at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. From there, they found they both shared a love and talent for songwriting.
“I remember, I was like ‘Play me your song and I’ll play you my song,’ and they were both centered around memories, which has now become part of our album concept,” Weatherholtz reminisces.
Facing band member changes over the years, The Jubilee Year has had their fair share of members and fill-ins. In 2006, Blaine Reedy was added as permanent bass player. The most recent addition to the band is Casey Brown who brings to the table his experience playing jazz, rock, and metal.
The name “The Jubilee Year” draws its origin from a holiday for Israel. After every 50 years, they celebrated a year of rest and all slaves were returned from their owners.
“I think it [the name] carries these themes of redemption, if you understand it. But, I think we also like it because it sounds cool. But it’s really what we’re about.” Weatherholtz explains.
“When you look at And You Falter, it goes hand in hand with our band name. I love that our name depicts that.” Johnson said.
Backed by their emphasis on conceptual songwriting and melodic sound, The Jubilee Year describes the band as “indie, piano-driven rock.” Comparisons could be made to The Fray, Jack’s Mannequin and Copeland, all bands that The Jubilee Year draws inspiration from.
While The Jubilee Year’s lyrics are catchy, they remain very intellectual and intricately crafted. This could be attributed to Weatherholtz’s background as an English major in college and love for literature, and Johnson’s almost painstakingly ongoing writing process.
“The songwriting process usually starts with P.J.” Weatherholtz notes. “He’s kind of the mastermind. P.J. is the kind of guy that writes songs with all of his free time. He starts generally with a melody and music – some kind of piano part. Sometimes he’ll write the whole song, then we’ll just tweak it.”
“Jared is the editing master. The reason we can say we co-write is because, he’ll be straight up like, ‘I don’t like that line,’ and we’ll re-work it,” Johnson said. “I’ll have 50% of the lyrics done, and I don’t know how this works, but he is really good at hearing a line and knowing if it will work. And also, Blaine isn’t afraid to tell us he doesn’t like it, his input is huge.
In describing their live performance, The Jubilee Year draws from a dynamic group of influences: from Something Corporate to Yanni, and MXPX to Coldplay.
“I like to rock out on the piano and capture a simplistic melody, but also add non-typical chord progressions. I try to make the music sing-able, but not typical. A lot of my performance style is a lot like Chris Martin [Coldplay],” Johnson said. “Jared has this uncanny ability to rock-out with a smile on his face. There was this show we were playing and he broke two strings - and it was an acoustic show. Everytime I look over, I can’t help but smile too. It’s contagious.”
To sum up The Jubilee Year, Weatherholtz described the band best by saying: “If I could leave someone with one thought about The Jubilee Year, I want them to leave thinking they could connect with us – whether they experience The Jubilee Year live or recorded. I want them to really be able to engage in our record and experience it.”
[email protected]
MySpace Layouts @ Unique MySpace Layouts - Movie Layouts - Music Layouts - More MySpace Layouts! - MySpace Tools