Catch up with The Get Right Band's Jesse Gentry (bass) and listen to title track, "Who's In Charge?", off the band's upcoming album set to be released August 5th and catch them on tour now.
What brought you all together?
Jesse Gentry: At the current present time, I would say what brought us together is the city of Asheville but, originally, what brought us together was childhood friendship. We grew up together in Maryland and I played bass, he played guitar, and we had our first bands together, had a long history and then, you know, went our separate ways when we became adults. He had been living in Asheville for six or seven years and I'd been living down in the Caribbean and he basically coerced me to quit my job and move to Asheville because he had this awesome band and it was a great scene, so my girlfriend and I quit our jobs and moved to Asheville. That was a different band of course, but when that band broke up, Silas and I and the drummer from that band formed The Get Right Band and eventually picked up JC who had moved to Asheville for similar reasons. He had heard it was a great music scene and, thankfully, our drummer at the time, when he had left the band - on good terms - JC had pretty much just moved to town and he was incredible and once we started playing with him, we knew it was right. That's the whole story, I guess.
Where does your name, The Get Right Band, come from?
It's just, we like to get right and we like our audience members to get right. It's whatever you're feeling, whatever makes you feel good or makes your feel happy in this world. It's living a good life; for some people, getting right is going and getting high, for some people it's going to church, for some people it's going to a show and seeing a great band, and we just thought it was kind of cool and so we adopted it.
Which musicians have you been influenced by?
Well, we all love music and we're all about the same age - early 30s - so most of us had somewhat hippie parents from that era, so our collective parentry gave us a lot of the psychedelic world of the 60s - Pink Floyd, Beatles, Zeppelin, yadi yadi yada - and I know JC and I definitely got really into the jazz fusion and prog scenes, so that definitely plays a lot of influence into some of our current jams: actually we're getting a little heavier because of some of that influence. But, pretty good childhood influences growing up and then, as we became adults, we got a lot more into hip hop - Silas and I really, really love hip hop and listen to it a lot in the van. We just love everything. We like good music and we try to bring every influence to our shows and our songs, where it's appropriate.
What words would you use to describe your sound?
We call ourselves funk rock reggae, but I've been slowly adopting that we're a little bit of a jam band. People that know me know that I don't really like jam bands, but we jam so hard and a lot of times we play shows with other jam bands and we dig them and we're getting a little bit into that scene nowadays. We're a rock band and we incorporate a lot of funk and reggae and we definitely jam and improvise a lot, some shows more than others, but we like to dig in. We like to make all of our shows different and we find that getting into some deep jams in songs that we've never jammed in before or we do a different jam every time in the same song, we like that sound; keeps it interesting.
Do you have a favorite track to perform live?
I don't know.. We cover a Radiohead song, "Idioteque", and we do it a little reggae, like a dub reggae, and we do this dub breakdown in the end and it always gets so intense; Silas will bust out his delay pedal and his loop station and JC does all this crazy stuff and we've been really digging a lot on that. Another one I love to jam on is, "We Work All Day" that's from the last album and we get super funky on that one and from the current album, "Somebody Help Me", the one that's about to come out, has a great blues breakdown that's always super tasty.
What were your inspirations behind "Somebody Help Me"?
Silas wrote that tune and I think it's about overcoming and reaching out; getting help, getting support. I don't really know [laughs]. He writes it, I feel it, I get it right.
Could you tell us more about Who's In Charge??
Yeah, that's just super applicable to what's going on right now, it's just like, what's going on? Silas wrote that tune maybe a little more than a year ago and when he wrote it we really liked it and then, with everything that's been happening over the last year, it just resonated more and more as, if you can use music to help in any way for what's going on, we felt that this song and this message really, to our best abilities as songwriters, was what we needed to say and so we pretty much knew that it had to be the name of the album and the first track. That's the story with that and a lot of the tunes and the lyrics, like "Motivation", "Somebody Help Me", and all that stuff, there's a lot of continuity throughout the album, as far as the lyrical message and what's going on right now.
One of the things that made the album we just made, Who's In Charge?, so special was recording at Echo Mountain Studios with Julian Dreyer. That was huge and it's the premier studio in this whole region and we happen to live, I mean, I can walk to the studio from my house - it's about a fifteen minute walk. So, it felt really great to work at that studio, with Julian, who's worked with tons of artists and engineers and produced a lot of albums so we were just incredibly happy to be able to work at Echo Mountain with Julian Dreyer.
How would you sum up that album in one sentence?
It's just a culmination of everything we've been working towards and everything we've been trying to say as a band and we're really proud of it and we hope you love it.
What do you hope that listeners are able to take away from your music?
Just positivity and enjoyment and introspection and having fun. Having a good time and trying to be happy in this world.
The Get Right Band Tour Dates:
8/05/2016 - Asheville, NC -Isis Music Hall *Album Release Show
8/06/2016 - Roswell, GA - Roswell Riverside Sounds
8/10/2016 - Roanoke,VA - Martin’s Downtown
8/12/2016 - New Hope, PA - Triumph Brewing Company
8/13/2016 - Philadelphia, PA - The Grape Room
8/14/2016 - Harlem, NY - Shrine
8/15/2016 - New York, NY - The Manderley Bar
8/17/2016 - Boston, MA - Extended Play Sessions
9/01/2016 - Boone, NC - The Boone Saloon w/ Roots of a Rebellion
9/02/2016 - Stuart, VA - Front Porch Festival
9/09/2016 - Boone, NC - Musicfest at Blue Bear Mountain
9/15/2016 - Frederick, MD - Alive @ Five
9/17/2016 - Floyd, VA - Dogtown Roadhouse
9/29/2016 - Knoxville, TN - Preservation Pub
9/30/2016 - Nashville, TN - The End w/ Aquaducks
10/01/2016 - Chattanooga, TN - Clyde's on Main
10/7/2016 - Asheville, NC - RiverLink RiverMusic w/ Blitzen Trapper and The Broadcast