Issue 81 / September 2017

JO
Merseyside’s premier sleaze ‘n’ roll merchants prepare to
double drop a pair of EPs that will make you think twice about
nudity’s role in live music.
JO MARY’s guitarist Sam has just been hauled out of
the murky water of the Birkenhead Docks. By the looks
of the scum on the dock wall and the rubbish floating
on the surface, it wasn’t a pleasant dip. Which makes
Sam’s decision to jump in in the first place all the more strange
(all in the name of art, they claim). In Jo Mary’s view of the world,
however, strange is the new normal. And you’re gonna love it.
Watching Sam wading in the detritus of the dock water was
oddly poetic, mirroring their emergence as a band over the past
two years. Something’s been brewing in Wirralian waters ever
since Sam and his sidekick Ash started taking the band seriously,
fermenting just under the surface. Now, the band are emerging,
Renton-like, from the depths, wading through the plastic bottles
and faded crisp packets and coming into their own, the noisy
garage jumble they make starting to infect ears on both sides of
the Mersey.
“It was my step dad who really got me into music as I know it
now,” Sam tells us after he’s dried off, pint in one hand and ciggie
in the other. “Him and me mum took me to see Faithless when
I was about seven. It was boss, but I was far more interested in
guitar music. He made me a CD of songs he thought I’d like and
Radiohead’s Idioteque was on it. It became a bit of a problem
really. I absolutely loved it, but it gave me horrendous nightmares.”
It’s easy to see why this track would incite fear in a sevenyear-old,
with its possessed drumbeat, Yorke’s manic vocals
and haunting screams which echo in the background. For chief
songwriter and core of the band Sam, music has been an everpresent
force. It’s something which has soundtracked his life in
more ways than even he can think of, given him drive and a focus,
and sat there at the forefront of his mind. “Without music I’d be
dead by now.” This may sound somewhat of a cliché but it’s far
more than that for him. “I’d still be doing something else, but I
think I’d be very lost.”
“Probably be doing a lot more drugs!” chimes in tambourine
man Ash, who joins us just as Sam declares that his ambitions
have led him to this point. “I’ve always wanted to be a rock star.”
Swapping school for a life of writing, playing and recording
music, Sam’s walls are adorned with artwork, a leaving letter
from school, and abusive noise complaint notes from angry
neighbours from his childhood. Showing us through his
record collection he singles out Dylan, Joy Division, The Velvet
Underground, Captain Beefheart and Radiohead as his major
influences. All artists who match pop melody with outsider
experimentalism and deeper lyrical substance. “If the band
weren’t around me I’d still be a solo artist. I’ve always made
music since I got my first easy-learn guitar, and I always will do.”
But the band is not exclusively Sam. After the dock exploits,
we’re now sat in the house where the majority of the band have
lived for the past year, along with a couple of close mates. It seems
nigh on impossible to get the whole lot of them together, with a full
turnout only really coming when in holy union onstage after dark,
or hiding away in a cramped practice room. Joining Sam is bassist
Mike (who’s actually called Dan, but with no reason offered up as
to why he’s called Mike, we just have to roll with it), all-round hype
man Ash on percussion, and drummer Luke. The latest addition
to the band, guitarist Ochan, is here in spirit if not in body. Around
us, bright pink spray paint adorns the walls, a collection of bongs
sits in the fireplace and everything from Simpsons art through to
signs taken from abandoned theme parks cover up the rest of the
space, leaving hints of yellowing magnolia just peeking through.
The frenzied splurge, everything in its right place, reminds us of
the band themselves: chaotic, verging on shambolic, almost to the
point of breaking at times, but knowing just the right moment to
pull it all back.
“The first incarnation of the band was when me and
the original guitarist managed to bridge our hatred for each
other after finding a mutual love of Radiohead,” explains Sam.
Creating moody, psychedelic blues-infused rock ‘n’ roll, the
first manifestation carried the influences of Neil Young and The
Velvet Underground on their sleeve. It was this initial promise
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