- Music
- 14 Jun 10
Run as you are
Jogging was born when Dublin indie-pop outfit Coldspoon Conspiracy finally called it a day. "We looked for new musicians for the bones of three years," Ronan Jackson remembers. "We auditioned about 14 people and nothing was clicking. It got to the stage where it was ridiculous. We either had to split up altogether or do something, do some gigs. Myself and Darren (Craig, guitarist) decided we'd start singing to get things back on the road again. It was a last resort at that stage. Neither of us can sing a melody. We had to kind of change things around to suit our barking! We wouldn't be 'Do Re Me' kind of singers and be able to hit a lot of notes. We're fairly rough and ready."
While the sound Jackson conjures is something along the lines of a painful screech, what you hear on debut album Minutes is more akin to a breathless, agitated howl.
"I never wanted to sing but Darren thought it would add a bit more variety if we had a call and response. I'd never even practiced a lot of the vocals. One gig we were doing in Cork early last year, I thought, ‘Right, I'm gonna go for it, I have a few ideas, let's see what happens'... I'd never written lyrics before, I tend to try and do one song in a night and stay up all night – vent and see what comes out and then edit it back from there."
The result of this midnight venting is a lot of unfussy, almost retro American post-punk.
"That's what everyone keeps saying," he laughs, "and we totally agree. Not many influences from the last ten years have crept in at all, it's more old Dischord stuff (American straight-edge label founded by Ian MacKaye of Fugazi)."
Since then, Jackson and Co. have proved they're not ones to mess about. Still balancing the band with roles in other acts (Jackson performs with Crayonsmith, Darren Craig plays bass in Cap Pas Cap and Peter Lee plays drums in Guilty Optics), Jogging signed a publishing deal with DIY Dublin label the Richter Collective at five months old. This led to support gigs with The Redneck Manifesto and Adebisi Shank.
"They're both so intense they make you raise your game. Even watching the soundcheck, you're like ‘OK, we get this. We've got to raise the bar.' It definitely inspires you."
Streaming Minutes for free on music publishing site Bandcamp has generated masses of hype for the 40-minute debut, which is gritty, and sporadic.
"It was insane. Social networking really made people catch on to it," Jackson says. "In a few days we had 1,500 plays and it went up to 5,000 last time I checked with Mick (Roe, co-founder of the Richter Collective), which is crazy. We sold a lot of CDs at the launch too, which was a concern after so many had heard it for free. It was nice to see that show of faith in people, that they liked it enough that they wanted to buy it."
