The Jack Wharff Band are 4 lads from Virginia, their sound is really quite different. Listening to them while preparing for my interview I was intrigued, there really is something about them. I was talking to three members of the band – Jack Wharff, who is about 6ft 4 tall, so dwarfed lil ole me!! Drummer Garrett Howell and guitarist Evan Novoa.
I started the conversation by saying that I predicted that by the end of the weekend, they were going to be the name that is on everybody’s lips! (No pressure boys! Lol!!).
“That’s wild. Let’s go. That’s crazy. Thank you so much.”
Is this their first visit to the UK and Europe? They had come via Rotterdam and Berlin where they had played C2C there, but they had also played in Dublin.
“Yes, 1st time to UK and 1st time to Europe. It has been incredible. It was a whole lot of fun. The fans loved it and a lot of people came out to our headline Ireland show, which was so fun. C2C has been such a blessing. Crazy.”
Had they heard of C2C beforehand?
“Yeah. We had a couple of buddies play last year, so it was really cool. They got back home and we were all hanging out, and they were like, yeah, dude, London. And I’m like, man, it’s crazy. So it’s really cool that we’re here this year. Definitely a bucket list checked off and that is just a starter.”
They were playing three times over the London weekend, on three different stages. How were they feeling about it?
“I’m just excited. I’m like, all right, that’s good. Lets do it. Let’s do it right now. I am pumped. I think we’re also just so shocked that we are in the O2 Arena, like, we were just that one that stood out so much, there is no way, where? Like, there’s no way, that’s crazy.”
I pointed out that Mackenzie Carpenter, who was in the room next door, was on the Indigo stage last year – one of the stages that they were playing, and now she’s main stage this year.
“Yeah. Wow. So cool. She’s incredible. We played, as you know, last night on stage with her, and we were blown away, she’s just awesome. Such a good musician, artist, person.”
My research hadn’t shown up how the guys met and formed the band, so I asked that question. For some reason I was expecting them to say school friends. I couldn’t have been more wrong!!
“So, Ryan, our bass player, myself (Garrett) and Jack, all met at an open mic night at this little bar in Richmond, me and Ryan was in a rock band playing rock music. We get off stage, Jack and Ryan kind of sort of knew one another. Jack came up to us and was like, ‘Hey, you sounded pretty good. You wanna come play with me?’ We’re like, sure, why not? So we just turned right back around and got back on stage. We played and didn’t sound quarter bad! I knew from the 1st note I’d never want to play with everybody else!
We then started filming videos and playing, more shows, and eventually we found Evan about 2 years ago. We went on a little run with Sam Barber, and, normally Ryan says this part, I’m gonna say, in his honour, with tears in our eyes and open arms, we asked Evan to become a full member of the band. And from then, yeah, it’s just been, we’ve just been ripping shows.”
It then came up that Evan is younger than the others
“He’s only 19! 19 and playing shows in Europe (Evan then took over speaking) I know, it’s so wild. Well, when I started with these guys I was 17 actually, even then, that was crazy too. I mean, it’s just such a blessing to go, do this too, and be down here.” I didn’t know at this stage that this 19 year old can not only play his guitar, he can play it behind his back, but also with his teeth, although not when it is behind his back!!
I was curious as to when the guys decided that they wanted to take the band seriously?
“We wanted to take it seriously right from the word go. There was a moment when we were releasing original music online to TikTok and Instagram, we surpassed a million views or whatever, and I remember sitting in Garrett’s dining room with Ryan, we were saying Ok, there’s a decent chance now that this could be our shot and it’s not gonna happen if we’re trying to pursue something else on the side or anything. Do you guys want to go all in? Willing to quit jobs to do anything to make this work? But we were, we couldn’t believe, we were almost crying. We were like, we can do this, let’s do it, let’s just forget everything and try to make this work. All our chips in and, you know.”
Garrett picked up the conversation “Yeah, I remember, it was a Thursday night. I worked construction before this all took off, and we got a call from our managers, like, ‘Hey, y’all have a show offer for tomorrow in Kentucky with Ian Munzick. Can y’all do it?’ We were all like, Yeah, I’ll text my boss, it was late, I was about to go to bed. I’m like, yeah, I’ll text my boss right now. And, so Friday, we drive up, we play the show. An amazing show, it was a lot of fun. We all go to work on Monday. I got there extra early, so I probably got there, I don’t know, 4.30 in the morning, and I was like, I’m gonna get chewed out when I walk in here. I walk in, he goes, you can either tell me that that’s never gonna happen again? Or you can quit. And I go… I quit. I gave them all the tools they gave me. I said, Have a good one. Have a good time. Went home, went back to bed. It was great.”
This story reminded me of someone else, I had heard a similar story, then I remembered – didn’t Bailey Zimmerman start off in construction? Jack agreed, but Garrett didn’t know that!
We moved on to songwriting, I wanted to know if there was one of them who was the songwriter or if they all contributed and if so what happened if they disagreed?
“We all are involved in the songwriting, we really don’t ever argue about it. We are all in favour of the song, and these boys are super amazing at being mindful that I’m the one that has to sing it at the end of the day, so if there’s ever a call, it’s like, you know, well, I like this. They usually are really nice about leaving it up to me, since I’m the one that’s gonna be singing it, so… Yeah. That’s usually how it gets solved. I think at the end of the day, we all want the best product possible, so none of us are gonna be like, well, this has to be like this. I don’t think we’ve ever had a time where I’ve left a right mad at these guys, which is really nice. We’re all in favour of the song, and we don’t stop until everybody’s, like, this could be the next one. I am cool with singing this for the rest of my life.”
So you’re in London when your EP ‘Strange’ comes out (it came out on 13th March) it is following hot on the heels of your 1st EP, ‘Richmond Most Wanted’. How did it all come together?
“Yeah, it’s so crazy because it came together quite quickly. We are sitting on hundreds and hundreds of songs that we’ve written, one of my favourite things to do is play live and also write music. And so, it came with just knowing what we want, which direction we want to go in, and just executing. We got one of the best teams in the world who are just believing us a ton, and they want to get our music out, too. We knew what we wanted to do from the moment that we released the first EP moving in the direction of this EP, so, it was a no brainer. These songs, and kind of painting what we want to look like as a band in our story. Just made sense. I’m really, really so excited for Strange to come out, and for everybody to see it, and relate to it, and hear it. Yeah, I think Strange is… the first step of what’s to come later this year. It’s also unapologetically us as well. It’s just very real. It’s very authentic, and we’ve always been that way too, but it’s just so nice to have this as kind of like our own baby, I guess, in a sense where it’s like, it’s growing up with us too and it’s just a part of our lives.
Where do your influences come from? Because I’m gonna say, to me, you sound very much like The Dead South a Canadian band? Do you object when people say you sound like so and so?
They were undecided on if they had heard of the Dead South before.
“Oh, wow, okay. That’s awesome. No, I think we have a bunch of influences too. And one thing, we say a lot is our sound is American music. We all grew up on things that, you know, they’re just so popular. Our bass player likes punk and rock and Midwest Evo and classic rock, classic rock for me too and bluegrass. So it’s just all a mix of different influences that we have all grown up with, but primarily our sound, we call American music. Yeah, in fact, it makes sense when people say that we sound like something, and then in the next breath, someone says, we sound like the opposite of that, because I’m like, come on, we kind of got a lot of things going on in our music that people can pull from. So it makes sense to me.
I asked about them touring, they have toured quite extensively, and have written a song about missing their families while on the road. Does that get any easier?
“I’m hoping it gets easier. You know, family’s a big part of all of our lives, and it’s our roots and writing music, and it’s all stemming from our roots, and about our roots, is it’s hard when you don’t have your family there, and, you know, we’re on the road all the time away from… I now have a wife in Nashville, so, you know, we’ve never written music that’s fake or doesn’t apply to us or for somebody else. Like, we always write music, that’s from the heart, and it just so happens that that’s one of the biggest things that we were all facing that we could all relate to together, and music is kind of our therapy, our outlet. So, before we write music, we just talk about what’s going on in our lives, what’s our struggle, what’s a win for us, and what’s been coming up on these last few months, but we’re really getting better at adjusting and figuring out life. I see family here, and just the structure of things, and it’s getting easier. There’s not going to be a million songs about it, you know, for sure, but, yeah, I think it was very necessary for the time.”
I continued with the touring aspect and made quite a big assumption. I visioned them on a tour bus and asked if they could write on the tour bus, or are you just sleeping?
“Well, it depends sometimes. It is one thing that we love to do, we all write together too, but at least for me too, I’ll just randomly think of a title or something, put in the Notes app. I think the Notes app is one of the best apps to exist too, it is definitely just an inventory of ideas. I don’t think we’ve written a full song on tour yet, but we mostly try to perfect what we currently have in the vault. So we listen to our songs and think, well, what can we do about this? What can we do about that if it’s a mix or something like that too? So, I would say probably a good like 25% of the ideas from our songs that are out came from us being on the road listening to it being like, how should we go about this song? I would say we get inspired on the road and we write when we’re home. Yeah, it’s how it feels. And it would be really hard as we’re not at a bus yet. We’re still in a van. Oh, yeah, we’re all crammed in the van, with all our equipment and everything.so…
(Oh my bad!!) gosh, that must be uncomfortable. We have a trailer now. We’ve upgraded to a trailer. That fell off once, but it was all ok!
Any plans to do any co writes or any duets? Well, obviously not duets as such as you’re a band!
“Oh, for sure, yeah. That’s a big part of, sharing the love of music that we believe in, and so, you actually have some duets, in fact, or whatever you want to call it, collabs coming up on this next EP, and we’ve done, we released music with a good buddy of ours, Solon Holt, (who was also playing at C2C!) and there are gonna be many more to come in the future for our music, ’cause we love people, and we have a lot of friends in Nashville. They are incredible musicians that we’d be honoured to write with.”
I knew the guys were playing some extra dates after C2C, they were playing Manchester and Glasgow.
“That should be exciting, it’ll be fun. Yeah. Well, we’ll be back for sure, whenever you will have us!”
We finished with me wishing them fun this weekend and to enjoy their performances.
“Thank you so much. Will you be there? Yep. I’m gonna play an extra hard” (said Evan!)