The American Pirates | Aaron Jones Interview
Rea: I listened to the record this morning before our interview. I'd been listening to it, actually. It was one of my travel, airport, airplane albums this summer during tour season. It's a kaleidoscope of sound and storytelling. I mean, essentially, I guess, folk music, but I hear classical in there, old-time, some swing and jazz. This is really just a musical buffet, if you will.
So where did The American Pirates start? And then we'll dig more into this actual album here. Where did you guys start playing together and decide you wanted to make a record?
Jones: Well, the band started in Bloomington, Indiana. You asking that question triggered the memory of a young lady who was studying violin at MSU, Melissa. I'll just say her first name. And she knew the guys at Big Smith, and I probably went to a few Big Smith concerts.
And now that I think about it, Mark Bilyeu, before I went there, did help me record some. And with a group of friends and me, including Sean Spyres. I never did the real deal shape-note, but there's shape-note hymn singing on the album too.
So the roots, really, I can't just say they're in Indiana because I was born in the Springfield area, Fair Grove.
And then transferred to Rogersville. So really, it was just people down in Arkansas and in Springfield who do folk music.
It took me a while to fall in love with roots music, but that seed was planted from Melissa and the Harry Smith "Anthology of American Folk Music." If you know anything about that, that influenced Bob Dylan, that influenced everybody. And it's still influencing people today, like me.
Even though I was studying Baroque music, I started piano and composition and voice, too many things at Missouri. And then I transferred because I just fell in love with the harpsichord. And there's an institute at Indiana University where you can study period instruments.
So that is that kaleidoscope, slowly falling in love with folklore and storytelling. I've made some live recordings, but this is the first professional album, and it really does express a compendium of my influences and the friends around me.
Rea: Well, as I flip through your website here at ampirates.com, you can obviously hear it on the record, a lot going on here. So maybe give us a rundown of who all you had playing on this record.
Jones: Oh, it's just overwhelming. There is an older gentleman, I guess I'm allowed to say that, Ray Major. We're honored to have him. He apparently plays a little of everything, but he has retired mostly to the harmonica, and he's in Bloomington, Indiana. He's just a virtuoso on the harmonica, but he plays many other things as well.
There's Josh Joy on sackbut, but I think only a hardcore NPR listener would know what a sackbut is.
Rea: We're going to have to go further into that. What is a sackbut?
Jones: That is a period Renaissance trombone. Josh does some sackbut, which is pretty awesome. So he plays trombone, but he plays early trombone, and it just has this earthy... And you'll notice that if you see us live, or hopefully it's in the recording too. There's an earthiness that we want, spontaneity.
We recorded most of the tracks in a skeletal nature, live. And then we may have added some things to make it an album, but the core of it is the live, spontaneous performance.
There's Justus Morgan on fiddle, Alex Kumar on guitar. Eli Sparks is a real core of it, playing tuba and bass, a really great tuba player. And how fun is it to have tuba as your bass?
Seriously, there's so many other people. I mean, just shout out their names. Max Riggle was kind of our recording engineer-producer, really got creative with me in the way we put it all together, and you can hear that on the album, how it's kind of a concept album.
There's Mike Hale on saxophone and an extraordinary pianist, Albert Newberry. He plays the title track, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," which was recorded in one take, and I was there to watch it. No edits. And that's improvised at the piano.
I really want people to start there if they're willing to hear some great surreal ragtime, improvisation and other styles. It's all packed in that "What a Friend We Have in Jesus."
Rea: A beautiful, beautiful track. So you guys play around now up in Indiana, but your roots are kind of here. When did you actually personally start getting going in music? Is this something from a young, young age, piano type?
Jones: Well, I got to shout out my mom and dad, Steve and Donna Jones. A lot of people there will know them. Steve Jones started Firefall, and that's probably an influence. Music with the symphony orchestra there. Firefall probably doesn't exist anymore, does it?
Rea: No, I don't think it does anymore.
Jones: But many people there will know Firefall was around for over 20 years, probably.
So as a baby, I was listening to my dad listen to orchestral music. But a real shout-out to my mom and dad, who may not be classically trained, but they saw probably from babyhood that I was going to be into music.
I was down there on the basketball floor more interested in the band and the cheerleaders than the game, but I was waving my hands around like I was the conductor, my body movement jumping around like a fool.
They really encouraged that and tried to get me piano lessons, which I refused to really discipline myself to do until sixth grade because I would just whine and moan about it. You all know how that is if you've taken lessons or had to try to get your kid to take them.
But yeah, shout-out to Mom and Dad for encouraging me in music and so many music teachers all over, but definitely in Springfield.
Mark Lawley, I had him. His very first teaching job was band at Rogersville and not choir. He treated us, rightly or wrongly, as colleagues, like sixth grade. And I felt like I was in college with him. It was incredible. And I think that's a big part of how I became the musician I am.
Rea: Yeah, he's incredible. He taught at Willard when I went there and just a shining star, such a great educator and collaborator.
And you mentioned somewhat of a concept record here. Some people may realize what that is, some may not. So give us the angle on what a concept record is and why you wanted this album to be it, and what is kind of the flowing concept that you wanted to go for here.
Jones: It's the thing that they'll tell you not to do because the algorithm will not like you. But you know what? We had this vision, and we do it in our live shows.
And I got to really thank an anonymous donor and the sound engineer, Max Riggle, for stepping up. He was an intern at a studio, and he wanted to make an album with us and brought us to his boss eventually. So we stayed local.
And then we did have a fairly famous guy do the mastering, Robert Hadley, who's worked with many, many people, I think even Dolly Parton. But just people all over. Robert Hadley, who sadly passed away. We were one of the last albums that he mixed, which is kind of haunting.
If you look up Robert Hadley, he's pretty incredible.
A concept album is something where you're drawn through a story. Now, the story is very abstract. If you ask me what my favorite film is, it's "Eraserhead" by David Lynch. David Lynch is a hero of mine, but there's even a track that's dedicated to David Lynch on here.
The arrangement of Bach's "Siciliano" with two pianos recorded at once. And then we added, through an artist named Aaron Marshall, who does electronic effects and sound design.
As you can tell, there's so many people involved in this album, so there's a dedication there.
But what we do in our live shows, because I like to create a story that may be abstract, but it takes you into a psychological space, kind of makes you dream a little bit.
And if you know David Lynch, that's his goal, to take you into a dream state. And I love doing that through the music I love.
Although I do like electronic music, I like to do that through folk music and neoclassical or old-time gospel, to create this atmosphere that kind of takes you into the past and maybe makes you feel like you were there in some sort of psychological way.
So there are Easter eggs along the way. There are repeated motifs. One song does bleed into the next. So that's the idea.
Rea: Wow. Very cool. A lot of folks not doing it anymore, but it is very artful, and it's very well done here on The American Pirates' new record.
And if you want to find it, it's out on all streaming platforms. It's entitled "What a Friend." And you can look up The American Pirates on their website. Give them the website one more time.
Jones: It is ampirates.com. AM for American, ampirates.com. You can learn a lot about us, how to contact us if you'd like us to perform in your area. You can find all of our social media, and you can reach out to us through direct messages on Facebook or Instagram, as well as find our email address.
Rea: Excellent. You've got a lot of American Songbook reflections here, a poem set to an arrangement and a funkier number here, an original tune of yours, "Sweet Joy." Tell us about that one.
Jones: Okay, so let me tell you about "Sweet Joy." Just talking to you, I'm triggering a memory. "Sweet Joy" was written in a garage of a guy named Greg in Springfield, Missouri.
Rea: Oh, wow.
Jones: I was hired, who knows how? Probably through Cina Canada, if anyone knows who that is.
But there's a giant eel in Bass Pro Shops, and I don't know if they moved it, but it was basically the polyurethane casting, and my job was to chip that seal off. So not actually sculpture, but literally doing this kind of hard labor thing, hammering and chiseling.
I had been listening to work songs, and that rhythm was one of the ways I wrote "Sweet Joy."
And that was done before I moved back to Bloomington, when I had come back after undergrad, just working and being back home in Springfield. So I just remembered that. So something was written in Springfield.
Rea: I love that, man. Great connection there. And yeah, Cina was in here just the other day with Wild Arts Learning.
It's cool, kind of the web of how everything, you know, I call it the Springfield connection. Even a cat up in Bloomington for so many years still has all those kinds of old-school connections. It's awesome.
Aaron Jones from The American Pirates, thank you so much for joining me here today. And again, you can find "What a Friend," their new record, on all streaming platforms.
Jones: Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Jimmy.
