Jail Weddings is a force to be reckoned with. Like that bad taste you have in your mouth after a full night of intoxication and things worth regretting but never forgotten, always staying fondly close at hand. Gabriel Hart’s voice perfectly encompasses feelings of love, lust and sorrow. Wonderfully accompanied by the uniquely different, yet harmonizing voices of Tornado Jane and Katya Nadia Hubiak. This band will have you dancing on your feet in no time and wanting to go home with the random stranger next to you for fear of feeling lonely yet another night. This is desperation at its finest, brought straight from the heart and right through the veins.

The Band is as follows:

Gabriel Hart: vocal/guitar
Ian Harrower: drums
Tornado Jane: vocals
Katya Nadia Hubiak: vocals
Hannah Blumenfeld: violin
Josh Puklavetz: bass
Brad Caulkins: sax
Matthew Eagleson: piano
Brian Waters: guitar
Eric Fisher: guitar

We spoke with mastermind Gabriel Hart about his latest creation.

I find it interesting that you list Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo as an influence on the Jail Weddings Myspace page, because the band really is quite the undertaking, Has it been an easy task to carry Jail Weddings up the hill, so to speak?

I think any undertaking can only be exciting if all the odds are against you. I feel like some people secretly laughed or rolled their eyes in a snide “good luck” pseudo-well wishing when I told them I was gonna make this 9-piece swamp-soul revue thing where I was going to get the strongest personalities I knew of – I knew they were all talented but honestly it was the last thing on my mind – I wanted a strong presence more than anything – these certain friends of mine who were natural misfits, larger than life types like T. Jane and Katya, you know? I mean EVERYONE in this band, there’s not a meek one in there and I think a lot of people saw this and thought “Oh we better go see these guys cause this band is obviously going to self-destruct like fucking yesterday” but the lid is so far off this thing that it really doesn’t have a way it COULD end – there’s just too many possibilities within the group, and I think this might intimidate a lesser person.

As a side note, are there any Kinskis in the band?

I mean, I’d obviously say me – this was my whole ridiculous tunnel vision but you probably haven’t seen T. Jane put her foot down. It’s pretty fucking scary. Me and Brad might orchestrate the snake pit but on the psychic-level it’s the girls who do all the “charming”.

Jail Weddings is a unique conception. It’s been dubbed “death doo wop” and “swamp pop”. How would you best describe the sound you guys create?

Romantic. Everyone seems so apprehensive about romance anymore. And I’m not talking about lovey-dovey cheeky-winky chivalrous shit necessarily – I for one have the worst-ever outlook on traditional relationships lately – but more importantly that feeling, almost that scared feeling where you feeling like anything is possible, cliches be damned. I will never forget when my ex girlfriend Carolyn bought me that girl-group box set and reading the liner notes that said something like, “When you hear some of the tracks on this collection, you’ll fell as if you could walk through walls”. I realized then and there that’s what I wanted to do…
But yeah, something about two or more voices coming together in a streamlined harmony does something immediately metaphysical to a person, at least to me. Total endorphin-inducing vibrations take place, which I think is what really attracts people to Church on a regular basis. God’s actually just busy taking advantage of us like any lover we might be fooling ourselves into worshipping…

You share vocal responsibilities with two vivacious women, Katya Nadia Hubiak, and Tornado Jane. What’s that like? Do you feel that some of the pressure is taken off of you?

It’s the best feeling in the world. I’ve been totally in love with both those women at one time or another so this is such a great resolution to all that, us being able to sing together, makes me feel like the luckiest man alive, honestly…Although there’s no pressure taken off, I would probably say there’s even more pressure as a result, as now there’s 3 of us that need to be perfect. All it takes is one of us with a bum note and it screws up the other two. So yes, it’s way more intense….the only part that is more leisurely on my part is having the liberty to leave the stage while one of the girls do their solo so I can get a drink or dance with the crowd or whatever…

You have been making music for a long time. The Starvations, the band that you began in 1995 and played with until 2005, has joined the annals of legendary and iconic LA acts. After The Starvations you had a brief stint with Fortune’s Flesh, where it seemed you were starting to experiment with that sort of garagey “doo wop” sound. Was it difficult to leave those bands behind? Was it something you felt that you had to do?

The Starvations was a hard thing to put to rest – it was something that had become my whole reality, my whole memory bank, and there was times when I couldn’t remember what my life was like before it because I think subconsciously I lent so much of it to my general identity, and maybe my youth altogether. But I also think it was the perfect time to pull the plug on the thing, cause it was such a specific concept that towards the end it seemed a bit stifling, that if we would continue any further we might end up being parodies of ourselves. There was too many ways I wanted it to branch out that the other’s weren’t really keen on either. I had been wanting to add female vocals to the thing forever, more dark harmonies…So we started Fortune’s Flesh as a sort of psychic reset to The Starvations, which I just honestly get an ulcer just thinking about how hard it was to keep that band afloat. Besides just getting some of us to show up with all their other bands and personal survival issues, it was clear to me that I was just constantly compromising my whole thing, not doing exactly what I wanted to do anyway. So after our totally disastrous trip to the East Coast where we had to kick Dave out mid-tour, I thought, “Okay this thing needs an expiration date quick…”. So we got home, threw Jorge on drums, played some of the most fun, drunken shows ever, recorded a record, and broke up last summer…all the while I had already formed Jail Weddings and had been fine tuning everything since that Jan. This is basically what I wanted Fortune’s Flesh to be had it been completely unfiltered. Not to paint a bad picture of that band, but I feel it wasn’t really a drastic enough change from the Starvations. I listen to those recordings, which who knows when they’ll even come out, and I just think it sounds like the next Starvations record, which isn’t really a bad thing but just not what I wanted to do…
Speaking of Los Angeles, what’s your take on the city of angels? Is it a good place to be a musician?

There’s nothing really to say about it that hasn’t been said before. I always say it’s a completely pliable place where you can mold your whole reality however you want to…I think more than anywhere people here are so fucking jaded, for better or worse, that they will call bullshit on something quicker than any other place…So I would say it’s a good place to be a musician, on the condition that you’re completely unwavering in your vision. The coyotes will tear you to pieces otherwise. Come to think of it, they’ll just tear you to pieces anyway one way or the other. It’s your resilience that matters I suppose…

It seems that your lyrics mesh romanticism and realism. Do you draw lyrical inspiration from your real life? What’s the writing process like for you?

There is no writing process with me. The song is always there. They write themselves. I don’t know where they come from. I don’t think anyone should even want to know where they come from. The magician is a pompous dick to people that want know his secrets for good reason…

What do you see in the future for Jail Weddings?

Laughter, sex, sweat, money, adoration, attendance, dancing, indulgence, knowing nods, syrupy singing, chimes, timpani drums, allies in strange places, mental radio, magic one is no longer surprised by, etc.

Preface: Christine Dunleavy
Interview: Ashlee Elfman