A Convsersation with SomeKindaWonderful’s Jordy Towers – HuffPost 6.23.14
Mike Ragogna: You all must be feeling “SomeKindaWonderful” with hit your “Reverse.”
Jordy Towers: [laughs] Oh it’s amazing, man. I was doing music for twenty years, and last night at the show, I was like, “I don’t even have to sing, I’m performing the song and the crowd is singing the chorus!” I’ve never had that feeling before. It’s pretty surreal at this point.
MR: So far, it looks like you’ve got best new song of the year this week from Los Angeles 98.7 and you’re the third most Shazam-ed track in Los Angeles.
JT: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. I’m excited. We have a whole album full of songs and each one is a different story. I can’t wait to write the next album about all this stuff, you know?
MR: Here’s a question you’ve probably been asked a lot. What’s the band’s creative process like and what’s the recording process?
JT: It usually starts with either an idea or a guitar riff. Matthew [Koma] will play a riff and we’ll love it, we’ll take it home and then I write the song. I’m pretty quick with lyrics, about twenty minutes, thirty minutes. I pretty much have a lyrical idea down and then Ben puts the finishing touches on it with Sara on the vocals. It’s a collective thing; we have a process.
MR: Have you been inspired to create even more because of your recent success?
JT: That’s a really great question. That is what’s happening right now. We’re doing a lot of covers. Actually, we did the “California Love” cover, we did the Biggie one, the Juicy one. We’re coming up with ideas of other stuff to cover, so it’s inspiring us in a different way. We’re in live show mode now so we want to create on the fly. We’re like on freestyle missions. It’s a really great time. We feel super-free to do whatever we want and we’re going to start writing the next album soon.
MR: Taking a cue from one of your song titles, who’s the “Caveman” of the group?
JT: I think I’m probably the caveman. Every man has a caveman in him. At the core of us, we’re just human. We’re just apes, beyond what society thinks we should be. We’re all just gorillas.
MR: Jordy, what inspired the name “SomeKindaWonderful”?
JT: I guess the name SomeKindaWonderful came from the feeling that we felt after we made our first couple of songs. That’s the only word that came to mind for me. We looked it up, we were like, “There has to be a band called SomeKindaWonderful” and then there wasn’t so we were like, “Psht, that’s perfect. We’ll be the first band called SomeKindaWonderful.” I just love that expression, anyway. SomeKindaWonderful’s not really a word, it’s an expression, and that’s what our music is. Just expression.
MR: You know what else is wonderful? The concept of recording a song three hours after that Ohio bar incident. You want to go into that?
JT: Oh man, so I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times. I basically went out to Cleveland on a soul-searching mission, went to visit some family and I stumbled into this bar and I meet the guys. We had a couple beers, Matt had his guitar on him, and we just had chemistry as people first. The music was just simple, it was pretty easy. We wrote the melody to a verse right there, went to the studio and about three and a half hours, four hours later, it was done. We had a song.
MR: What’s the band’s camaraderie like?
JT: I think there’s just a certain level of humility with each one of us and I never really experienced that with a group of people before. I’ve been in bands before but I think this was just perfect timing for us as people, we’re all just in a certain time of our lives where we’re secure enough with ourselves and each other to be in a group of other people and be considerate and express ourselves and feel free.
MR: What advice do you have for new artists?
JT: Oh, man. Do it yourself. I always tell everybody. Do it yourself. There are amazing sites out there and blogs and people who want new music. That’s their lifeblood. There are fan bases out there of people who just want new music. A lot of bands get caught up in needing radio play and needing all this stuff. You don’t need anything. You just need really good music. Just make some killer-ass music that you fully believe in and f**king put it out there. And send it to the right blogs. Send it to people. There are places like Hype Machine…people need to know about Hype Machine. There are ears ready to listen to new music. Don’t be afraid. And my main thing is make sure the music’s good. It’s got to be magic. You put out magic and the world will take notice.
MR: What are you expecting for the tour? How far is this catapult going to be slinging SomeKindaWonderful?
JT: Well, that’s a good question. We’re just kind of preparing for the album release. We’re going to our radio market. We’ve had a lot of love on radio, a lot of love online. We’re going to go hit them up, we’re going to go perform for them, we’re going to go show them that we’re worth their fandom. We’re going to support these records and we’re going to take it all the way, man. We’re going to take it as far as we can. We’re going to work hard for our fans and we’re going to work hard for our friends and our families and each other and we’re going to take this as far as it will go.
MR: So the future looks kinda wonderful.
JT: The future will be wonderful. We’re manifesting our futures to be incredible. We are SomeKindaWonderful.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne