Jimmy Montague was not always the lounge singer and band leader that he effortlessly plays on his excellent new record Tomorrow’s Coffee. He started his musical journey humbly like many others before him, first in his elementary school orchestra before borrowing his old man’s guitar and eventually finding his way to his local Connecticut emo scene. He played with bands like The Most and Guesthouse navigating CT’s twinkle and surf rock phases, but after a decade of hacking it out in the emo scene Jimmy started to grow tired of hearing the same sounds come back in cycles. He still loved playing in emo bands, as he played with Perspective, a Lovely Hand to Hold till they called it quits with their excellent final album Phantasmagorialand in 2022 and has since started playing with the fantastic NYC based group Taking Meds, but these weren’t the kind of songs he really wanted to write anymore. He was listening to a lot of older music his parents loved, like Paul Simon, Earth, Wind and Fire, and the Doobie Brothers, and was imagining a different world for his music. Jimmy had enough of the basements and dive bars he’d been playing in emo bands, it was time to bring his musical act to the yachts and the lounges of the world.
Jimmy was keen on doing everything himself when he first established his solo project and in his eyes fumbled with his debut solo record as Jimmy Montague, Last Dog on Earth. While he does not look back on the record fondly to the point that he took it off streaming, it was a learning process where Jimmy was able to further cue in on what he wanted to sound like and how he went about creating those sounds. On 2018’s The Light of the Afternoon Jimmy started to poke towards the more ambitious tracks that’d populate his last two albums. The Light of the Afternoon saw the addition of a string section, horns, and an organ that we’re used sparsely and mostly played by Jimmy, who was still mostly bent on doing it all himself. The best tracks here like “Your Full Name In Correspondence” sound absolutely timeless, quiet and tender but yet so full and vivacious. Jimmy really found his stride on his excellent 2021 record Casual Use. After two records worth of trying to do almost everything himself, Jimmy realized he’d rather write everything and get the best people for the job to play the instruments he was less practiced in. He brought together a collection of friends, mostly people he’d been playing with since high school or college, who gave Casual Use a real heft. You can imagine Jimmy leading a parade as a band plays “Long Long Lonely” behind him like he’s Ferris Bueller.
For his newest record, Tomorrow’s Coffee, Jimmy wanted things to sound bigger than ever. He and his good friend from Perspective Jacob McCabe had been watching a lot of old film noirs and Jimmy hoped to create a visual and sonic universe for the album that felt like a nightclub where a lounge singer might be playing as the wily detective stumbles in. While much of the group that played on Casual Use has returned for Tomorrow’s Coffee the cast has expanded even further and the record sounds more ambitious and more expensive than ever; this is without a doubt the most fully realized version of Jimmy’s artistic vision to date. Hearing how prestinley executed a track like the slow building album opener “Tell Me That You’re Right” made me reflect on how far Jimmy has come since the Montague project first started. It doesn’t sound like a guy whose been fumbling around and figuring it out with friends, it sounds like George Harrison’s Dark Horse Records spent half a million dollars to put it together in 1977. Among the most impressive tracks on the record though is one with the least backing, the marimba powered “Smoke After the Kill”. It is quiet and smokey and the sexiest song that could possibly be made involving the singer fighting parking tickets. That track and every one on the record is bolstered by crucial backing vocals from Oldsoul’s Jess Hall. It is honestly hard to imagine this record at all without her stellar vocal work.
The record’s major stand out has to be Jimmy’s duet with fellow bad boy solo rock and roller Chris Farren. Chris and Jimmy always struck me as being on the same wavelength musically and it is a joy hearing the two play off one another here in their sky high falsettos, though ironically it is Jess’ “Ohh la lala” that I end up singing along with most. Jimmy compared it to their version of McCartney and Michael Jackson’s “The Girl is Mine” or like Mick Jagger and Bowie doing “Dancing in The Street” but honestly it felt more like a big up and coming rapper finally getting a feature from the veteran they always respected, like Earl Sweatshirt finally hoping on a MIKE track for “all star”.
My favorite aspect of Tomorrow’s Coffee is for how big and cinematic and ambitious the record sounds, Jimmy mostly put it together with friends from high school and college. Jimmy joked that he never saw the project as getting bigger than something his high school friends saw on social media and went “Oh jeez he’s got another one of those out huh?” However Tomorrow’s Coffee has done well so far, outpacing Casual Use’s streams in just a month, and he did it with many of the same people he’d been making music since he first started in high school. He’s not done here either, as he’s set his scopes even higher for the next record. Jimmy has had better luck getting yes’ from potential collaborators than he’d ever guess and was toying with the idea of recruiting a college orchestra to help soundtrack his next record, an ambition on the same wavelength as Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk. After all, as Jimmy put it, you never know who might say yes till you ask.
I met with Jimmy at Manhattan’s oldest coffee roaster, Cafe Reggio, to talk about NYC, his complicated relationship with emo music, and his excellent new record Tomorrow’s Coffee.
GSC: What is your name and what is your artistry of choice?
JM: My name is James Palko. I make music under the name Jimmy Montague. I guess I would classify myself as a recording artist.
GSC: In our last interview, you talked about how you started off playing viola before getting into guitar. What made you gravitate to the viola in particular?
JM: My older brother had done viola and I was doing all the things that he was doing. Our family we all did baseball and soccer, so if he was doing it I was doing it. Our school had this thing where you could do orchestra in the third grade or band in the fourth grade. I wanted to do snare drum, but I didn’t want to wait. So I was just like, fuck it, I’ll do viola too. I ended up sticking with it until midway through college. My high school’s orchestra conductor, Mr. Shaw, was super involved, he really made it fun. We would do movie scores where he would play the movie scene on a projector and we’d play to it. We did Handel’s Messiah with a choir in the winter, it was really cool. When I got to college it was a for fun orchestra because I wasn’t majoring in it, and it just wasn’t fun so I ended up petering out after two years. Had I majored in it I am sure it would have been a different story.
GSC: How did you pick up the guitar from the viola?
JM: Well, my dad would sometimes play. He had this friend from the Coast Guard Academy, my dad would play guitar and his friend would play piano. They would do covers and play at parties, so he had a guitar around the house. I didn’t really take much notice of it until around sixth grade. My older cousin Nate was playing guitar and I had this neighbor whose cousin would come over once in a while. He was super into Nirvana, one of those dudes. Between my cousin Nate and that kid, they showed me basic chords. I wish I remembered that dude’s name. Then I asked my Dad if I could learn on his guitar. He gave me a Beatles song book and taught me some more chords and then you just pick at it till you figure it out.
GSC: Wild how a random neighbor’s cousin can really impact your life like that.
JM: Shoutout my neighbor Trevor. He had one cousin who skateboarded and one who played guitar and they were the cool older kids to me. After that my friends started playing bass and drums and I would join bands and we’d play like Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine covers through middle and high school.
GSC: Is that when you would have started writing your own music?
JM: It was probably not until junior year that I was really trying to write my own stuff, though I guess I probably wrote something before then. Connecticut had a really weird stretch of surf rock for a weird stretch of time. Everyone was into the twinkle riff part of emo but doing it to like songs about going to the beach or living on the coast, even though Connecticut doesn’t really have many beaches.
GSC: You have Farfield though, I had a mighty rugby social on the Farfield beach after a tournament.
GSC: Yeah, but we were in Central Connecticut and besides all the best beaches we’d go to were in Rhode Island. The scene was weird for more than the surf component though. It was more about being a kid who doesn’t wear his shoes in high school, who wears beaded necklaces, tank tops and short shorts.
GSC: Big Montessori School vibes. You wouldn’t also happen to know my cousin Harrison who sometimes played in Bilge Rat and several other CT punk bands, would you?
JM: I played shows with his bands, I am definitely Facebook friends with Harrison. Don’t know him too well but sure we’ve had some conversations.
GSC: Anytime I talk to someone from CT I like asking about him and about Queen Moo.
JM: I have known Jason from Queen Moo for a long time now. That new record they just dropped kicks ass, he sent it to me a couple of weeks before it came out and it is crazy how they continue to surprise me. Him and I have developed a relationship where we send each other what we’re working on which is very cool. I’ve always liked Jason. We were always familiar though not close but I always respected his music, and it’s been great getting to know him better as a dude and an artist. For the last three Queen Moo records where they started doing more avant garde loose time playing, it’s really organic and really cool. It kinda reminds me of Deerhoof in a weird way.
GSC: The Jimmy Montague project started as you’re moving to Jersey City in 2017. What was life like at that time? What were you hoping to build?
JM: I was playing in an emo band called Guesthouse and we used to practice at the house in West Hartford. They would throw shows, they called the venue Nicolas’ Cage. I was very into that DIY midwest emo kind of shit for a while. I love the kids that I was playing with but we moved so slow, we were hung up on a split for like two years. When I moved to Jersey City I finished up my time with that band. I had a bunch of songs that I had written that never got done. I was trying to do an Into It. Over It. or Weakerthans kind of thing. I was trying to stop doing the emo thing because after a decade of it, you start to hear the same things over and over. I also knew I wanted it to be a solo effort because I didn’t want to wait for anyone or anything. I got into the practice of writing the songs on guitar then recording the drums, and writing them as I go. Those habits made me more mindful about my arrangements. It also reopened my ears to music I loved before emo. My mom loved the Jackson Five, Earth, Wind and Fire and Paul Simon. It’s not like anything crazy. I wasn’t listening to the Mahavishnu Orchestra or anything, just listening to old songs with more open ears. I very quickly finished the first Jimmy Montague record Last Dog on Earth and was like, alright, I got that one out of the way… That sucks. I have since pulled it from streaming because I no longer think it reflects the project. But I did that and was like, okay, I get this now. I got really into that Andy Shauf record The Party. I started using strings and started writing with the piano. I bought myself a piano to learn, learning a little at a time and bringing it to the music I was writing. Each song was like a stepping stone.
GSC: How did you settle on Montague as the moniker? Did you ever entertain being a Capulet?
JM: No, that’s funny though. I didn’t think my birth name had much ring to it. James Palko, I mean I’m not ashamed of my Hungarian heritage and I love my family, but it doesn’t pop. You know? So I wanted to create a slightly new self for this project. Jimmy isn’t what people generally called me also, I grew up as James or Jay. There was a tech ed teacher and a soccer coach that called me Jimmy and that was about it. My buddy Ronnie started calling me Jimmy Montague because I was hanging with a group of friends for a while in Connecticut, and when we went out to the bars half our group’s attire was black jeans and leather jackets and half of us would dress a little bit more flamboyant-ly with sunglasses indoors and Hawiian shirts out to the bar. In the Romeo and Juliet that has Leonardo DiCaprio in it, the Montagues are all wearing Hawaiian shirts and run around with guns, and then the Capulets are all in leather jackets. So because of the split Ronnie started calling me Jimmy Mongatue.
GSC: I sneaky love that movie.
JM: I remember watching in high school and the teacher goes, alright, guys, this is gonna be really funny. You’re gonna laugh and it’s gonna be silly, because they’re speaking in Shakespearean language. I was just like, this rocks. That’s just a good movie.
GSC: So The Light of the Afternoon, in some ways your first solo album, came out in 2018. You recorded it mostly in Ridgewood, Queens as you moved from Jersey City to New York. How does that record sound listening back now?
JM: There are a couple songs on there that I think are good enough songs. I can still listen to it once in a while when I’m in a reflective moment, not really for fun. It sounds like I knew what kind of songs I wanted to write but I didn’t know how to make it sound that way. It still has a punchy kick drum and a snare that’s way too loud for that kind of music. I was recording my own bands at the time and there was a very specific sound that emo, surf rock, and indie rock bands wanted to sound like from 2010-2016 or so and I was still recording that way. That part of it I don’t like. Now I have more of an auditory catalog to draw from, where I want it to sound like this record or that record. Back then I didn’t. I wasn’t even thinking like that. I just recorded the way I normally record and I was like, why did it sound weird.
GSC: Casual Use came out after the pandemic in 2021. How does that record sound listening back now? How do you look at that time in your life? Does it feel like a while ago?
JM: I mean, the last four years have gone by in such a weird way. I wrote that record right when I moved. It’s hard to stamp by when the record was released because I finished The Light of the Afternoon and I had half of the songs already written Casual Use. I wrote it while I was living in Jersey City and when I moved to Ridgewood. I was in Ridgewood for about two years. I went up to Perspective’s place in Nasua to record. Then COVID happened, I lost my job and I had to move up there. I didn’t know how long COVID was gonna last so I figured I’d go up there for the time being and I’ll move back to the city when I can, and I ended up being up there for three years. I mean, it was good. It was quiet. It was cheap. Then it got as expensive in New Hampshire as it was for me to move back to NYC which is what brought us to Greenpoint. But recording that was a fun time. I wrote my record, Jacob wrote his record, we recorded another record for Perspective, we recorded an EP for Pretty Rude. We got like 40 songs written and recorded over the span of like three months.
GSC: “Long, Long, Lonely” off that record is one of my favorite songs in your discography. Just all the little touches like the xylophone, the organ, the clarinet, it all really comes together so nicely. How did that come together?
JM: That song was the last one to get lyrics. I took a train up to see my little brother at SUNY Purchase when he was still in college and I wrote it on the train, kind of at a deadline lyrically. The progression, like the verse’s riff on the guitar, I always had and was playing around with, and I couldn’t figure out what to do after that. I realized I was trying to overcomplicate it. I said you could just do a big chorus of e major, f sharp minor, and it fell together. As I was going, I was listening to a lot of Billy Preston. There’s that song off The Way God Planned It that starts with that big, smooth organ sound, it might even be the song of the same name. I was into him and a lot of gospel shit where the organ felt like a heavenly presence.
GSC: Do you also have an organ guy?
JM: On Casual Use I’m pretty sure that was just an electronic keyboard. But for Tomorrow’s Coffee, the studio I was working out of had a Hammond B Three. So my friend Andrew Dominello pulled up and played organ on that, which was a lot of fun. I think I snuck in a key or two on the organ myself there too.
GSC: So before we get into the new record proper, you’ve talked a little bit about your time in Perspective, a Lovely Hand to Hold, I loved your final record Phantasmagorialand. Now you’re playing with Taking Meds. You also toured with The Most and many of the members of that band play on this record. When you started the project you talked about wanting to get away from emo. How does it feel having a foot in the emo camp still? Is the solo project an outlet for the things you can’t get out in emo? Or are they totally separate entities?
JM: It operates pretty separately, but I won’t pretend like I don’t benefit from it. It’s very hard to organize shows for my solo stuff with how many moving pieces there are. It’s not two guitars, bass, drums and we hit the road. I’ve often thought of JM as a recording project. I of course still love playing in bands. With Perspective, when I joined it was definitely still very much in the emo camp but over the last few years of that band, it very much was not. So I was still able to get what I like out of it and not have to play twinkle emo stuff. With Meds I was a fan of Meds before I joined. That band was just sick, joining them was just great. I still get to tour, I still get to play. My fanbase for JM has also grown because I’m constantly on the road, constantly talking to people. You spend two weeks playing in Taking Meds with another band or two, we’re not only going to talk about the music we’re playing. Someone will be like oh, “I love Steely Dan and Paul Simon” and I’m like, well I got some great fucking news for you my friend, here’s my record, please listen to it. It’s honestly nice. I don’t love emo as much as I loved it when I was first playing it, but I really love the people I get to play with and the music we play together and I love the community around the bands I’ve played in. Plus I like to be in the know of the scene even if I don’t end up listening to every record anymore.
JM: Getting into the new record, you’ve long been a java head. You talked about it in our previous interview, you were talking about coffee a lot in the run up to the record. What does the title mean to you? You know, what is Tomorrow’s Coffee?
JM: I was tweeting about the idea of tomorrow’s coffee a lot while writing the record as a bit. I was comparing myself to successful people all the time, thinking my stuff with JM wasn’t stacking up. I was using tomorrow’s coffee as something to look forward to if I was thinking about blowing my fuckin brains out, which is not the most pleasant thing to joke about, though that didn’t stop me from joking. Eventually I was like, that’s a pretty decent album name.
GSC: When you announced that as the album title, I assumed you had that name the whole time and thought the tweets were all just a long game with promo, it’s funny that the tweets game first.
JM: Oh, no, that was not planned. Oh my gosh, no nothing planned about that. However, I am so tapped. I love coffee, but I’m so tapped on having that as my gimmick with my music.
GSC: Do you make your own or do you go to a place?
JM: I’ll drink whatever. I just drink a lot of it and I can drink it most anytime. For the show in Scranton James Barrett did a special blend from the place that he works at, which was really cool. But we sold it all so ironically I didn’t even get to taste it. Heard it was a really good blend though from those who did, so thank you James.
GSC: The cover art for the record is absolutely beautiful. The framing, the font, the colors.
JM: Thank you! That one I did myself for the first time ever, with a little help from some friends. Jacob McCabe from Perspective took the photo in Boston. I forget where exactly, maybe the North End.
GSC: The tight streets with all the Italians?
JM: Yes exactly. There are a couple of outtakes at a different cafe that my friend Mike Betancourt shot that will be in the inside art in the back art on the vinyl, he did a great job. The cover shot was Jacob however. We were looking for other cafes that had the right look. We stumbled upon this restaurant, Ristorante Saraceno, that had this big bay window. It was closed, we went at seven in the morning to try and get there before tons of people. Something that Jacob and I learned over the last few years is it never hurts to ask anyone anything, you’d be amazed at what people say yes to. He went up to the restaurant and this older guy was cleaning it. Jacob asked if he would mind opening the bay window, so we could take a quick picture for an album and the guy was so pumped. He brought out props from the basement, fezzes and scarves and whatnot. He was such a sweet man. He poured me some limoncello and brought me a coffee. We got the shot as a box truck was moving away. Jacob had accidentally left his mug on the box truck, but he got the shot.
GSC: How did the cafe idea for the cover come about?
JM: Him and I had been watching a lot of film noirs over the course of the last year or two. We started sending each other old movie posters. There was one for The Long Goodbye, I think… no it was The Third Man. I loved it and used it as a bit of inspiration. I did the formatting and then I gave it to my friend Ben Walker who tidied it up and did all the actual formatting. It was the first time I designed the front, back and middle covers for a record, so shouts to them for helping bring the vision to life.
GSC: You have over a dozen collaborators on this album who all kill it. I would love to hear about the getting the band together process.
JM: Like I mentioned, I stopped being interested in doing everything myself and just wanted to get the best people I knew for the parts I wrote. The logistics are always the hairiest part though, coordinating calendars. With Tomorrow’s Coffee the record was done for almost a whole calendar year before I could get the horn players in the summer. I love them, they’re phenomenal musicians, and half of them are teachers. So the week is shot, then we gotta find a weekend where they don’t have something else. It’s their time, I’m not trying to say they should be prioritizing my record obviously, it’s just hard to get them in the same room. I brought in a drummer, who I’ve known for … wow almost 15 years. My guy Adam Szulczewski is an amazing drummer with an amazing ear. I knew if I gave him this record he’d know exactly how to play the tracks right. They’re quieter and more nuanced tracks and he absolutely nailed it.
GSC: Jess from Oldsoul killed it throughout the record.
JM: That was another one where with Casual Use, I did all of my own backing vocals, so you’re just hearing a wall of me. I wanted to have her voice be able to play off mine and she killed it. She knocked out the whole record in like four hours amazingly. Maybe my favorite part of the whole record is our voices.
GSC: Are these all people you’ve known for a while or some new faces too?
JM: Most of them are kids I went to high school or college with which was cool. People that I grew up playing in bands with or really looking up to. They’re all so good too, they make me want to be a better musician. We brought in Andrew Dominelo who among other things busts that mean solo on the Wurlitzer on “Here Today”. Ben Barnett, a friend from SUNY Purchase, did the arrangements. I drove through his place on Long Island, and we just sat and hemmed up all the arrangements. Katie Jackie played cello, she’s another friend from high school. Michela Christiansen played Viola, a friend from SUNY Purchase, she killed it. Then because Ben had scheduling conflicts, I put out just a blast for a trombone player and Eric Stillwell who played on some of The World Is records, he’s Boston based and he killed it. My friend Alex Pickert recommended him. So a couple new friends but mostly old ones.
GSC: “Tell You That You’re Right” is Such a phenomenal intro. How did you know that was the right track to lead off the record?
JM: “Tell You That You’re Right” was one of the earlier songs I wrote for the record and always led off the playlist. I liked how that song built as an intro, where the horns don’t come in until two thirds of the way through. The arrangements start to stack, the backing vocals, then from there on, they’re a constant on the record, but it starts with just piano bass and drums.
GSC: You said “No New Starts (For Broken Hearts)” was allegedly the only good song on the record in another interview. Is it safe to say it is a favorite?
JM: That and “Smoke After The Kill” are the two songs where I heard it in my head and it came out on the recording almost exactly how I heard it. When that happens, I can’t complain. With any of the shuffles that I do, I’m always trying to match “Keep the Customer Satisfied” the horns in that song sounds so fucking big.
GSC: “The Smoke After The Kill” is my favorite track on the record at the moment. It feels like something that’d be playing in the lounge at a White Lotus hotel. How did that song come together and what is it about?
JM: It’s definitely lounge-esque. The lyrics are pretty blunt. It’s about learning to live with how slow life goes, when you’re not creating a million problems for yourself. I was drinking and doing shit I probably shouldn’t have been doing and I was creating a lot of problems for myself. When you’re doing that shit, you’re constantly on edge thinking who’s mad at me? Who did I piss off last night? When you stop doing shit like that, you just end up sitting in silence. I was doing a lot of really bad meditation.
GSC: I loved “All The Same” with Chris Farren, he seems to be a real kindred spirit of yours. What was your relationship with him like before this record and what did he bring to the table?
JM: Our relationship was mostly online. Chris is really, really funny. Him and I just started shooting the shit back and forth very nonchalantly. Then he asked me to play piano on his James Bond inspired soundtrack. I play on the title track “Death Don’t Wait” with him and Laura Stevenson and a bunch of other talented people. I was honored to be asked, and after doing that I was like, he seems pretty approachable about these kinds of things.
GSC: You guys seem to be similarly minded with how you work.
JM: I met him for the first time out in LA, I definitely felt like we were on similar wavelengths. We talked about a lot of things that go with being a solo musician, like putting it all in your name, the organizational work. Chris, I just thought was so funny, and such a good musician, and I thought it’d be so much fun to have a track together. I definitely wanted to exploit his big name for some downstream fame too of course. I wrote my verse and I sent it to him. I told him I was doing a falsetto, he said he loved falsettos, so I said cool, get silly with it. He put an attitude and a personality into the song that made me feel like it was our version of McCartney and Michael Jackson’s “The Girl is Mine” or like Mick Jagger and Bowie doing “Dancing in The Street”. The craziest part though was that he sent his verse and instrumentation and everything back in two days. To get something that good done that fast, I could not ask for a better collaborative experience. Chris is a legend, I just feel lucky to have this track with him.
GSC: “Only One For Me” is a ripper. How did that come together? What is that track about, and how did you know it was a single?
JM: I wrote that song when I first moved up to Nashua. I was living in my friend Jacob’s room with him at his parents house. We both didn’t know how long COVID was gonna last which led to him and I sharing a bed for like a year. It was very close living. I wrote that song down in the basement, just kind of putzing around. Sometimes if I get stuck, I’ll reach out to Connor Waage, who plays the guitar solo on that song, because he’s a very very accomplished guitar player and a very heavy music theory person. If I get stuck in a corner, he’ll give me the chord turnarounds I can get out of this with. He gave me a couple of suggestions and I pieced it together. As for what the song is about, I feel like I’ve kind of become a more mindful person. However, I routinely used to have problems with Foot in Mouth Disease, just saying the wrong thing to someone. I was always saying something that pissed off someone’s friend’s girlfriend’s friends that I’d have to apologize about.
GSC: I have been there brother.
JM: Sonically I borrowed heavily from Steely Dan on this one, “Change of the Guard” and “My Old School” in particular, Connor really killed the arrangement on this one, he just completely locked it into place. The horn arrangements I had help from Ben Barnett who made those steps sound as big as possible. When I write for horns, I’m just plunking it out on piano, I don’t play a horn instrument. With stringed instruments you’re writing with a piano in mind. You’re doing bass, third, fifth, maybe some moving parts and it’s spread in harmony. With horns, if you want to get those big orchestra horns you hear in Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz music, it’s all spreading it out across the octave. It’s a really different instrument of arranging the technique that I’m used to, and Ben helped immensely with making that song sound as big as it does. As soon as that song was finished I was ready for people to hear that one.
GSC: “Halfway Out the Door” has a gospel-tinged swing to it. How did that track come together and what were your inspirations?
JM: That was another early one. It came from practicing piano listening to a lot of gospel, and again more Billy Preston. It definitely has to do with dating, but it also is about in general feeling like you want something and the minute you get it, it just wasn’t anything fulfilling. Thinking you want all these things when the reality is like, you don’t need them. You have to be content with yourself and you have to hold out for things that actually matter. I parsed it that way. I definitely was getting a little Sinatra big-bandy with it. I still feel I’m not the most competent vocal deliverer, I listen to that track and want to work on it. That track wouldn’t be anything without Jess on the backing vocals, that is for damn sure.
GSC: It’s funny to end the album with a song called “No Exit” as you’re literally exiting out. We talked about how you always heard that as a closer, how did that track come together?
JM: The form of that song, there’s no real chorus, it’s just one big verse. I put that song together when I was still living in Queens. The verse came to me and I was like, if I try to push up against this, it’s gonna overstay its welcome, it’s not going to accomplish what I’m trying to accomplish. It’s a Phil Collins-y kind of song. It just felt like a closer right from the minute I tracked it. I was piecing a couple things together with it, where the guitar lick that I’m doing in perpetuity is just a Doobie Brothers lick from a song called “Keep This Train a-Rolling” that I lifted. I took that and put it over the progression that I was writing. Then I tried out a couple horn lines before I landed on that one. My roommate ended up suggesting the final one because the final note was so hard to hit on trombone but would be a fun challenge, and what’s funny about that is the solo that it’s like my favorite solo on the record. When I was demoing the track, I texted Matt Knoedel, another friend from high school who lives here in the city, I was like, hey man, can you come over and lay something down? So he gave the demo a listen and he laid that bad boy down. I couldn’t get him up for the proper session in the end, so I just took his take from the demo. To think it had been sitting in a ProTools session from like 2020 collecting dust, and he killed it hard enough where you’d never know any different. I originally wanted to have everyone who played on the record do a little solo to close things out but it quickly became untenable. Still a regret that I couldn’t pull it off.
GSC: How was it playing the Scranton show with James Barrett and The Tisburys? I love both those bands so much.
JM: I only knew James Barrett online till then, I never met him until the show. We’ve been talking for years at this point, sending demos and stuff. The Tisburys, I am in a group chat with them where we talked about bands and stuff. I also met them for the first time at the show, and they also rocked on stage and as people. James threw the whole show, promoted it, did everything for it. Him and I had talked about doing a run of solo acoustic shows, but like it’s so hard to get organized to do dates. So he said what if we did a one off in Scranton? He was like, yeah, we’ll do a little low key one-off. Then as it got closer, he was like, what if I got you a band? I was like okay. He was like what if I booked it at this theater? And I was like if you wanna! God bless. I was nervous, because I didn’t know the musicians, but he was like, these guys are great, you are all going to do a great job, and they did indeed.
GSC: Looked like you had a good crowd too.
JM: Oh yea, the show went great. James is the mayor of Scranton, PA. We showed up like two days before the show, we were walking around and he couldn’t get more than two feet without running into someone he knew. The whole show could not have gone better. It was such a positive experience it encouraged me to try and find a full band way to perform these songs a few more times, it really rekindled a love of playing the Jimmy Montague songs live for me. So much love to James Barrett and The Tisburys, that was a special show for me.
GSC: So impressed with what James does with Good Things are Happening Fest in Scranton too. Less on topic, there’s a British writer James Montague. He writes about the intersection of soccer, money and politics. Do we have beef? We fuck with them? Where do we stand?
JM: It’s funny, as a working musician you have to name search sometimes to see if you missed a write up or something, but I’ll name search and I will get like the funniest headlines. James Montague is like the Florida man for British blokes. I google the name and a James Montague is always getting arrested or thrown out of pubs or causing car accidents. No beef with any James Montagues living their lives out there but I hope they stay safe.
GSC: That’s so funny. Who have you been listening to lately?
GSC: I’m such a slow music listener, I am not nearly up on new stuff. I’m really obsessed with those Christian Lee Hudson records. He is a really captivating writer. I really like Chase Ceglie. He lives in Rhode Island, a saxophone player and a solo musician. I would love to work with him in some capacity in the future and may even be actively trying to recruit him for another project I don’t want to say too much about yet. His single “i can’t stop loving you” from last year is an absolute favorite. There is also this dude Brad Goodall not sure exactly where he’s from but he writes with a very LA style. He has a record called Made in America. It’s very schticky in a good way, he’s very funny. I like to think we have a similar vibe, I always listen to that record and try to find shit I can steal from it. Outside of that I’ve just been listening to Jawbox and Burning Airlines.
GSC: What is something out of music that brings you joy that people may not know?
JM: I love playing soccer. But my brother may take issue with that because he’s a soccer coach. I just like kicking around.
GSC: What level does he coach?
JM: He coaches high school, varsity, the high school we graduated from.
GSC: Are they good?
JM: He’s a great coach, they always field a well coached team. Our school fluctuates between being really good and not as good because we get constantly redistricted. Sometimes we get put in a district where we’re playing like the richest towns in Connecticut. They’ve been in farm leagues since birth and whatnot.
GSC: We played Darien High School in rugby when I was in high school in Jersey and they had Brooks Brothers jerseys.
JM: Yea, that’s a whole lot. Anyway I like kicking it at McCarren Park with my buddy Paul mostly. I like to keep it lowkey mostly. I love movies and photography, and playing tennis with my friends, but again nothing too competitive.
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