Garage rocker (he was a member of the criminally ignored Original Sins) turned psychedelic visionary Brother JT (aka John Terlesky) has taken a whole lot of LSD. More LSD, I suspect, than the Summer of Love. And it’s, er, altered his brain chemistry a bit. Take, for instance, this snippet from his self-penned bio: “At one point convinced that John Lennon’s soul entered body in 1981 as punishment for being mean to his first wife. Later disproved, though there are definitely some odd folks kickin’ around in there.” I also love this one: “Must have come into a batch of LSD somewhere along the way. Wanted to do a slower version of Metal Machine Music filtered through Coltrane’s Ascension for some reason. This became first Brother JT record, [1991’s] Descent.” I’ve listened to said record, and I think he pulls it off.
Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania’s Brother JT is probably the world’s least likely looking rock star (he’s an adorably doughy guy, and I’ll never be able to unsee him very unselfconsciously taking his clothes off in a club in Philadelphia) but great he is, even if commercial success went and built a very pricy bypass around him.
Such way-out albums as 1995’s Music for the Other Head, 1997’s Dosed and Confused (which he released under the name Brother JT and Vibrolux) and 2001’s Maybe We Should Take Some More alone merit his inclusion amongst the best psychedelic artists working today, and it’s a crying shame that the only gig listed on his website was scheduled for last March at the Kutztown Fire Company in unlovely Kutztown, Pennsylvania. Hardly New York City, Kutztown. Hardly Harrisburg even.
Brother JT has also released some far more conventional, fuzz-guitar-fueled psychedelic rock LPs, particularly 1999’s peak experience Way to Go, which he released under the name The Brother JT3). And over the years he’s released LPs that fall under the rubric “hallucinogenic domestic”—Brother JT likes to write skewered psychedelic-flavored pop songs about having rainy day fun around the house, or (a big night out!) going bowling. He also likes to eat, as you can tell from his third (or perhaps fourth in his case) person description of his latest release, 2023’s excellent Shaky Jet Loner:”’I like it,’ says JT, opening another bag of kettle chips.”
Written and recorded during the pandemic, Shaky Jet Loner is pretty much a one-man effort, although drummer Jamie Knerr chips in on some tracks. Opener “Yeehaw” is a neighborly and laid-back pop gem, with reverb guitar and a very Archies organ riff. A call for unity at a time when no unity is possible, Brother JT sings, “Ain’t it time that we get together/Open our mouths and let the truth come out.” Which he follows by singing “Hey ya, Hey ya, hey ya… yeehaw.” Yeehaw indeed.
“California” is spacy California dreaming (“Sunny Monday, sunny Tuesday, sunny every goddamn day”) complete with lots of guitar warp and Brother JT singing, “I….I don’t want to die in Pennsylvania/With the snowstorms/And the rednecks/And the waxy yellow build-up.” No,“Calieuphoria” is where he wants to be, because it’s where “the rainbow people go.” And the Good Brother wants you to join him±”Sell the wife, and sell the kids, and sell the house and go.” Don’t forget to wear flowers in your hair!
“Kismet Factory” is a hazy rainy day dream of a song with a high and lonesome guitar and a lovely chorus that has Brother JT singing, “Oh, kiss me like you like me/Ooooh, kismet is a factory.” “Sorry I’ve been a lousy uncle,” he sings, “and a bungle in the jungle,” but after putting himself down he “feels a flower of joy sprouting deep inside me.” And you’ll feel it too, listening to this low-key ode to the joy of being alive, snowstorms, rednecks and waxy yellow build-up notwithstanding.
“Pour It On” is a slow psychedelic blues about being “a long way from okay” that features one very high-on-LSD guitar, a heavy-duty organ riff and a take-out that has JT getting all twisted up and overwrought because all his friends are gone and mom and dad have left him alone and what’s a guy to do except sing “pour it on” before bequeathing the world one far-freaking-out guitar solo?
“Share Your Love” is an up-tempo salute to The Beatles with a kicking guitar riff that evokes George Harrison at his meanest—and everybody knows George was the mean Beatle. It’s a bouncy thing, with backing vocalists going “do do” while Brother JT sings about “everlasting Krishna sunshine” like he’s been hanging around with hairy George and A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada doing his Japamala. Then he starts shouting “Share your love!” over and over to the accompaniment of a very lysergic guitar solo that takes the song out.
“We are the Instruments” is a funky number with a neato organ riff and an even cooler distorted guitar figure. “Throw out the bunny/That’s just a dust bunny/Get that thing out of my house” sings JT, an obvious clean freak, but other than that I can hardly make out a word he’s saying, although on second thought who needs words when you’ve got a Timothy Leary-endorsed guitar that comes in and wraps itself around your medulla oblongata producing instant Day-Glo satori?
“Esther Williams” is a “Norwegian Wood”-school acoustic guitar meditation that evolves into a lovely thing complete with synthesized strings. Brother JT sings about Esther and underwater follies and easy livin’ and comfy kitchens and “the smoking gun of nature,” all of which is to say I have no clue what he’s going on about, although he throws a “Hallelujah/Hare Krishna” in there so maybe he really has gone full Hare Krishna and is sitting around in saffron robes. Although I doubt it, even if he does go on to sing about the halls of heaven and how “something loves you, someone needs you, you are most essential,” which is a wonderful thing to sing, He’s got a huge beating heart, the good brother.
“Summersaults” is a delicate ballad with a vaguely 1920s vibe and has Brother JT celebrating cartwheels and fireworks and carnival lights, and it’s all very sweet, the kind of song you’ll want to listen to while lying on your back in the dewy cool grass beside your lover beneath the clear summer nighttime sky with its impossible tangle of stars as fireworks burst and whistle and flash divinely in the distance.
Closer “Ringo” is a slow mover and all dreamy psychedelic guitar; Brother JT starts out singing about being in the studio (“It’s the knobs/Like to twist the knobs”) while gobs of something or other slide down the walls. “Cross the disco fever with the boogie-woogie flu,” he sings, adding “Little birdies singing in his beard/Peace and love/Peace and love.” In short it’s hard to know if the guy’s spouting gibberish or imparting divine wisdom or both as the guitar gets louder and more insistent. As for Ringo Starr, he’s nowhere to be found.
Brother JT knows he’s never going to be a big rock God. “Wish there was a nice ending here,” he says in his bio, “like, ‘obscure, passive songwriter championed by Taylor Swift and becomes her houseboy.’” But he gives and he gives and he keeps on giving and we’re all the better for it. I’m not convinced Brother JT is of this world but he loves this world, and sees the strange in the quotidian and the quotidian in the strange which is to say he could just be the second coming of William Blake. He believes in love and wishes he lived in sunny California and likes to take his clothes off. And what can you say of such an exotic creature but hey ya, hey ya, hey ya, yeehaw?
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
