Washington, DC’s The Grey Area are on one of those career highs at the moment. Jason and TJ, guitarist and drummer respectively, debuted their new video with us in June and headline Vienna, VA’s Jammin Java next Tuesday night, July 19.
Jason’s rummages through his folks’ records today…
Records were a big part of my childhood. My parents have a huge record collection, and they always worked late. After school, me and my sisters would come home, set up our homework in the living room, and put on album after album.
The Grey Area | Hurricane
My family loves wordplay and imaginative rhyme scheme, and maybe that’s why we love British music. Donovan’s Sunshine Superman, The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society and Lola vs. The Powerman, and Steeleye Span’s All Around My Hat were some of our favorite albums, along with The Beatles. The songs tell stories and paint scenes—often idiosyncratic ones—that capture the imagination, as well as being catchy melodies.
Swing and American musicals are another major influence. That’s from my grandma. She was raised in a Brownsville, Brooklyn, tenement filled with the music of Tin Pan Alley. She knows the words to every Gershwin song. The Gershwins are Gods in our household—“Our Love Is Here To Stay” may be the greatest love song ever written. Berlin, Kern, and Sondheim, too. The stories, the playful rhyme, the clever harmonies, and the swing rhythm—it’s kept my grandma young for 90 years.
American rock music is the most formative in my guitar playing. Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever, is my desert island disc, as is Billy Joel’s Glass Houses. They also tell stories, but with attitude and genuine, unapologetic emotions. Can’t forget the Allman Brothers Band, too. If you hear a guitar solo of mine in the key of E, such as in “Ourselves,” chances are I’m channeling a Dicky Betts or Duane Allman solo I listened to a thousand times.
