Local band sparks national interest with reggae-rock feel
Four guys, three years and one crazy band.
That's JoBu - just a bunch of 25-year-old Midwesterners with a touch of island fever.
Evan Ryan and Matt Hines - who grew up in Naperville - like to rock out with bandmates Andrew Neel and Aaron VanVooren, and they know how to throw a little reggae in the mix.
It may be hard for people to take them seriously, but this band is no joke. They're professional musicians running everything on their own - from promotions to booking.
"The band is our full-time job and it's how we pay the rent," Ryan said. "Literally. We all live together. We're all pretty much brothers, or as close to brothers as you can be without blood."
Back in high school, Ryan and Hines promised each other they'd be rock stars someday. By playing at the same festival as LeAnn Rimes and Sammy Hagar on Saturday afternoon at Naperville's Ribfest, they're getting a small taste of their future.
If not, there's always the ribs.
Q. JoBu is a pretty odd name for a band. How did you come up with it?
Ryan: It's an acronym for "Journey On a Beach Universe." We're like an island rock band. We are the house band at Hog's Breath Saloon in Key West, Fla. and our style is party music - rock, reggae, classic rock. We love to be on the beach and that's kind of where we wanted everything to stem from - like, you're listening to us, you're on a different universe of just beaches.
Hines: We love reggae music; we love party music. An island place would be just the place for JoBu. But we're in the Midwest so we kind of just brought it to the Midwest.
Neel: We really just wanted to get people shaking their butts back in the day. Reggae's just really fun, it has a really fun vibe and it's good to get everyone partying, We just wanted to be the fuel for the party and we do it in our own way.
Q. How did the band come together?
Ryan: Matt and I went to high school together and we've been playing in bands together since we were 14 years old. We always told each other that after college we'd get together and become rock stars, so I finished college at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University and Matt gave me a call and said, "we're looking for a drummer," and I was like, "Well, let's do it." And I moved from West Hollywood, Calif., to Carbondale and that's where we started the band.
Neel: The rest of us all studied music together at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. We all had the same classes we were all learning classical guitar together. We were into a lot of the same tunes so we just started playing and then we got Evan and it took off.
Q. Have you guys been successful so far?
Ryan: We're the house band at the Hog's Breath Saloon in Key West, Fla., and we play there about five weeks a year. It's a super weird feeling because we go down there and we're not tourists, were not on vacation. We're going there to work, so we get a different feel of it all - we're kind of like locals. We get more press and more movement in our business in the week that we're down there than in three months of being here in the Midwest. It's definitely a blessing.
The four of us built JoBu Music LLC - that's the company we own. We have our titles, but everybody does everything. It's a one for all, all for one kind of thing.
Neel: We also played the biggest stage in the state of Kansas in 2008, where our first track off of our first album became the anthem for Great American Barbecue Festival in 2009.
We've played shows all over the Midwest and we are the house band at the Canopy Club in Champaign this year, playing every Monday.
Q. How would you explain JoBu to people who have never heard you play?
Ryan: We play Bob Marley; we play Sublime and the 311 stuff, but we bring our own version of it. We're all professional musicians that have degrees in music and this is the only thing we ever do. The band is our full-time job and it's how we pay the rent, literally. And everything is our own.
The genre classing is hard because we're a fusion of everything - if we like it, we're going to play it and we're going to play it well. And that comes out with the covers that we play - we play a lot of covers that our fans and audience members say they don't see a lot of other bands playing. We try to look at ourselves as young, professional musicians that are looking to put a mark on the industry.
We have so much to offer and we have so much to give that we just need time and we need the opportunities - like Ribfest - that we're getting to play in front of a lot of people. It's like, "All right, we're going to do this for the full extent of our life and this is what we're going to be known for."
Q. How do people react when they first hear the band perform?
Neel: If I could count the number of times people have told me we were the best band they've seen at their venue or on their stage - we'd be famous if I could just quote them.
Ryan: Most people are surprised, they say we don't look like we can do what we do, so that throws people off a lot - surprising people is kind of our MO. We're four white guys shleppin' gear and coming into a venue playing reggae-rock music.
But then we finish playing and we've just played "Frankenstein," and we've played "Hotel California" and "Rosanna" by Toto like we're these 25-year old kids, and then everyone shuts up after we play.
So now we just have to be patient; the number one name of the game is patience - work hard and have patience and it will pay off.
Q. What's JoBu's journey been like so far and where do you hope it will go in the future?
Ryan: We did our first album "Stop Time," which is available on iTunes, in nine days. It's a good album for the first section of hearing JoBu and now we're working on our second album, which is really going to take us to that next level and help us get that management and representation that we need.
That's what we're looking for the most right now - the people who aren't 25 years old in the music business and have a good grasp on things that can talk for us so all we have to do is show up and play. Now, we're booking all the shows, we're trying to talk to everybody, we're doing everything under the sun. If we could do half of that and do the music and really work on writing new songs and getting great recordings out, that's definitely going to take us to the next level.
And that's something that Ribfest is going to hopefully help us out with. We're on the same stage as Sammy Hagar - for four 25-year-old kids from the Midwest, that's an amazing opportunity that we're so grateful for and we just can't wait to rock really hard for everybody.
Q. When can fans expect to see the release of your second album?
Ryan: When we know, you will. Putting an album together is hard - you have to do the initial recording, then you have to listen to it all. It's a long process and we're all kind of perfectionists.
We're going to have these two cuts done soon and hopefully that will feed the appetite for JoBu until we can get another couple done. That's what were going to do on this one - we're going to start releasing certain songs and then we're going to release the whole album together with those songs previously released, but done up some more and added to.
We have probably three songs on our first album that the majority of our fans and people that come to our shows know, so that shows we need to keep building on that and make the next album have six or eight songs that everybody knows. It's a constant process of reinventing yourself and making your music newer and fresher and what people want to hear.
Q. What kind of ribs are you looking forward to at Ribfest?
Ryan: We're a band that's on tour, so we want food - every single one of the ribs and elephant ears and freshly squeezed lemonades we can get. We just can't wait to be at Ribfest. Matt and I have been going to Ribfest our whole lives.
<p class="factboxheadblack">About JoBu </p>
<p class="News">Learn more about JoBu on the band's website, jobumusic.com, or on their Facebook page. Visit iTunes or myspace.com/jobujams to hear music samples. JoBu hits Naperville Ribfest's Miller Lite South Stage at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 3.</p>
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