Heave Media

This week, The Jaguar Club will be playing a Heave Showcase with Raise High The Roofbeam and Tin Tin Can at Quenchers Saloon.  Here, we offer some insight into the band and their entrance into the music scene. 

Click here for all the details on the show. 

There’s not much that annoys me more than a band that doesn’t have a sense of humor.  All too often I’ll have a chance to talk to a group that has impressed me with a debut album, has been hyped by their PR firm, and cites all the mirthful airs of social joviality that one comes to expect from a twenty-something indie-pop band, yet they end up acting like a bunch of snobbish, British-caricature-as-imagined-by-Woody-Allen-esque dicks. 

Imagine my surprise when I met up with The Jaguar Club inside of an empty bar on a Tuesday night, only to have the trio immediately offer to buy me whiskey shots and sit down with them as lead-singer, Will Popadic, DJ’d the evening.  Their album release show one week prior had me prepared for a decidedly serious interview, but bassist, Yoichiro Fujita, and drummer, Jeremiah Joyce, took things in a whole new direction from start to finish.  Without giving away too much about the recording of the album and all of the quarrels and trials that went along with it, let me say this: these guys have a good time. 

With a handful of songs and a lucky contact with producer Kevin McMahon (French Kicks, The Walkmen, Titus Andronicus, DieDieDie, Frightened Rabbit), based in a barn outside of New Pauls, New York (the sticks, for those unaware), The Jaguar Club has spent the last months reaping the benefits of truly taking their time with such an experienced producer.  Mind you, they haven’t lived a lush life.  Struggling in the first place like most kids hacking it in Brooklyn, recording And We Wake Up Slowly involved the barn having no heat, food situations that rivaled a tour of duty in Vietnam, and a songwriting/recording process that involved the whole band at all times (do I need to highlight how hard it is to get three hungry dudes to concentrate at the same time?).   

Nonetheless, The Jaguar Club seems to have pulled it off.  McMahon offered any and all instruments and recording equipment they needed and Will certainly took his time in crafting just-disparate-enough lyrics to back up the serene riffs and hooks that riddle the album.  It’s an effort that has required them to snag up Gavin Dunaway on guitar for touring purposes, so as to give Will plenty more room to let his vocals take center stage on a platform already crowded with talent. 

The Jaguar Club seem to have pulled it off, but it’s not for lack of fun that they did.  With stories of grilling-out at the barn, primitive showering in a river down the road, and a recovered hard-drive via a multi-jam-band hand-off in New York City, it seems The Jaguar Club are having plenty of fun along the way.   

Check out our review of And We Wake Up Slowly here, and be sure to check out the show at Quenchers on Friday, September 25th.