2008 Woodie Awards
Music 'project' rocks
Jenny Wallace
Issue date: 6/13/07 Section: Features
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One of these local venues is The Warehouse Bar & Grill Night Club, which is located at 20 McClure St. - only minutes from the Austin Peay State University campus. The Warehouse has live music several nights a week and they often feature a favorite local band known as "P. Jones." The band performs a range of songs, including popular covers as well as some impressive original material.
The group, which was awarded "Best Alternative Band" in 2005 by 102.9 The Buzz, has been featured at Buzzfest in Nashville, as well as made two appearances at SXSW (a music and film festival held in Austin, Texas). Drummer Ney Gore describes the SXSW festival as "an amazing experience; 180 clubs stretched out over six miles, and all of them packed solid for a week."
So exactly who is P. Jones and where did the unique name come from? The All State was granted the privilege of sitting down with the guys for a little Q&A session at The Warehouse, where it was discovered that people everywhere love their carefree partying attitude, while ladies, beware: These guys have some serious charming potential and are actually real sweethearts.
Meet the Band
Original founder of the band, Wes Newborn, 33, hails from Booneville, Miss., which is near Tupelo. Newborn is the front man for the group, providing lead vocals and rhythm guitar. His accompanying guitarist is a 27-year-old native of Canada, who has a "flare" for making his own customized blue jeans.
Jerry Allen, also acclaimed for his wonderful hugging abilities, provides loads of character as well as unmistakable guitar talent to the sound of the group. Providing the rhythm is Ney Gore, the 31-year-old drummer from Ecru, Miss., who also does most of the public relations and booking for P. Jones. Finally, contributing the musical backbone to the band's alternative rock sound is the quiet bassist from Worcester, Mass., Jason Yates, 30. Yates plays his beat lines with a serious deliberation that shows through in the final quality of the musical product he produces.
Brought together, this eclectic group of young men - one wearing homemade bell-bottom jeans, another wearing a work shirt bearing a name badge pronouncing himself "Elvis," plus a drummer who sings along to every word (even when he isn't "miked" up) and a bassist in a black bowler hat - provide the musical genius that is affectionately known in the Clarksville-area music scene as P. Jones.
Singer Wes Newborn explained that the name P. Jones has been shortened from the band's original christening as "Paraphernalia Jones." However, as the band's musical success continued to grow, the guys became worried about the perception that name might provide to musical fans, but since they were already known as "P. Jones" for short, the group decided to simply be formally known as "Project Jones."
A band in the making
The band members give credit to a wide range of musical influences, including Metallica, The Beatles, Oasis, Pink Floyd, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Johnny Cash, Matchbox 20 and Cowboy Mouth. Particularly fond of Cowboy Mouth, P. Jones was asked to open for the band when The Warehouse hosted the band about a year ago.
Several of the band members described this musical alliance as the biggest highlight of their musical career, although Gore has a particularly striking memory of the two bands working together. While helping Cowboy Mouth load their stage equipment, Gore was hit in the jaw with a heavy piece of gear, resulting in a broken jaw, which required having his mouth wired shut for several weeks.
Besides meeting the members of Cowboy Mouth, the boys of P. Jones also confessed an interest in meeting legendary Guns'N'Roses guitarist 'Slash,' as well as other artists including Roger Waters, singer for Pink Floyd, and former Nirvana drummer/current Foo Fighters vocalist, Dave Grohl.
Guitarist Jerry Allen began playing at 13, while the other members all picked up their instruments somewhere around the age of 18. Although he is the youngest member of the band, Allen perhaps has the most unique "embarrassing moment," confessing to literally blowing up an amp at a recent Warehouse performance, claiming he had barely made it through through the second song of the evening when the amp began smoking and burst into flames.
However, Gore's confession to spending all the band's gas money on some questionable entertainment, then having to bum the money from his father, who just so happens to be a colonel in the Army, does earn two thumbs up on the embarrassment meter.
Not to be outdone, singer Wes Newborn admitted to having an almost gravity-defying performance one night at another local club, The Spot, when he leaned backwards during a guitar solo to adjust something and ended up crashing flat on his back in the middle of the stage.
Rockers have hearts, too
Although the guys can obviously find themselves in some unusual situations, don't let the whole "rock'n'roll band" persona fool you. These band members are some genuine sweethearts underneath, all agreeing that their number one goal is to be able to give back to those who have supported them. All the guys agreed that they simply want to be successful enough to make a living playing music, and all the rest, they would want to use to help those they love.
Gore even went so far as to say that the first thing he would do with a spare $5 million is to "buy my mom a house, and then put my four siblings through college," after which he would finally enjoy the indulgence of buying "a big boat."
In their free time, the guys admit to doing typical guy stuff. Allen enjoys riding his Ninja ZX7 motorcycle with Newborn, who in between solo acoustic shows, has a fond relationship with his ZX7 as well. Gore admits to being an avid sports fan true to Ole Miss football and the Yankees, while devoted boyfriend Yates likes to hang out with his girlfriend and play games on his Playstation 2.
Allen also works as a server at The Olive Garden, where he said he developed a fond admiration for the chicken parmesan while Yates serves up some wicked cocktails working as a bartender for Applebee's and on an as-needed basis for The Warehouse.
Ship out and sound off
Newborn's vocals are faintly similar to those of Green Day lead Billy Joe, yet the band's sound can range from the Brit-rock punk sound to the lonesome highway riffs of Audioslave. The band has two previously released CDs, and while no new album plans are in the works as of yet, band fans can check the group's Web site for the two new tracks they plan to lay down in the very near future.
The songs "Misunderstood" and "Sometimes" will be uploaded to the band's MySpace.com page as well as their personal Web site http://www.pjonesmusic.com.
Adoring fans can also look for the music video for "Misunderstood" on major television networks such as MTV2 and Fuse by September. "Misunderstood" deals with the confusion of the whole love and dating scene, and the complicated emotions which arise, sometimes causing one member to feel that perhaps he's just "better off alone." As well as the two new tracks, the band is also signed up to do an Armed Forces Entertainment tour for the Army once they receive confirmed dates from the Pentagon, they said.
Anyone interested in experiencing the musical talents of P. Jones can find them frequently performing at the aforementioned Warehouse as well as other local clubs. They sometimes venture into the Nashville, Louisville and Knoxville arenas.
A cool group of guys who have a fond admiration for 'Jagerbombs,' P. Jones has some serious musical talent. Guaranteed to amuse, not only with their musical ambitions, but also with their humorous stage antics, Clarksville locals should consider themselves fortunate to have access to such promising musicians.
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