The Jack Cades are a band that I found out about through random Spotify browsing. I was listening to some modern psychedelic rock and I saw them as a suggested band I thought I’d give their music a try. I like the font they used on the cover of their latest release, the Something New EP (I use that font all the time, it’s called Doctor Fibes) and I love that 60s pop art Peter Blake inspired look, just goes to show you the importance of branding and first impressions right there. As soon as I listened to them, I was like these guys are the real deal. They sound really authentically 60s. If you’re into bands like The Byrds, The Who, The Kinks, The Pretty Things, The Remains, The Chocolate Watchband, and The Sonics, you’ll absolutely love The Jack Cades. A couple of members of The Jack Cades are in The Baron Four, and I also love that band. Check out their music too! Besides The Jack Cades, Elsa, Mike, and the drummer Mole are also in The Capellas. The bassist Alexandra is a DJ involved with Hipsville à Go Go.
It’s very rare that I find a band like that. Don’t get me wrong, I love mixing different styles and modern takes on psychedelia that are metal and electronica fusions, but there’s really nothing like a straight 60s garage rock/psychedelic sound. I’ve said this a lot, but there’s really something magical and special about the 60s and while that time period is long gone, the spirit still lives on a bit in music, style, and activist movements to this day. Every few years or so, there’s this brief 60s revival and there’s enough love of the decade that you can find 60s club nights and events going on, especially here in England, people love a good throwback.
Gig Review
Ever since finding out about The Jack Cades, I really wanted to see them live, but when I saw they were going to be playing just a short train journey away from me, I was like yeah I have to go to this! To keep costs down, I didn’t make a day of it and go look at some shops and get dinner somewhere like I did before. Thankfully I didn’t because the weather was touch and go, with it pouring and then the rain stops and then it starts again. That didn’t stop me from having a great time on Saturday.
Stratford-upon-Avon based The Jack Cades performed at The Night Owl’s Live It Up club night, which is a 60s themed night where they have DJs and a live band play from 8 PM until the wee hours. I’m not much of a nightclub person, but if you’re playing 60s music and there’s gonna be a band playing live, I’m sold.
Before The Jack Cades went on a DJ was playing a lot of R&B and some Latin music as well with the video screens playing old video clips of Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Bettie Page dancing, German 60s music show Beat-Club, British 60s music show Ready Steady Go, old Batman episodes, Morticia from The Addams Family dancing, Wacky Races, and a bunch more that I can’t remember! Really fitting and such a great vibe. Afterwards a DJ played some 60s garage rock, great stuff! Also I learnt that Bob Seger made garage rock music in the 60s, I had no idea! Don’t mind me Shazaming during the DJ sets, just trying to get an education and listen to some new to me music.
The gig itself was amazing from start to finish with every song being enjoyable jangly 60s inspired bliss. If you love guitar solos, there’s a lot of them and they all sound great! If I had to pick my favourite songs from the gig I’d pick “Free Advice”, “Tommy”, “Where To Go”, “Chasing You”, the Velvet Underground cover “Temptation Inside Your Heart”, and “Who Will I See”. Every song was a banger. Overall, a 10/10 gig.
What really made this gig special was the guest appearance of Joe Huxta, former member of Lancaster, Pennsylvania 60s garage rock band The Shaynes who joined them on stage performing their song “From My Window” (it’s a really rare 45 with copies of it going for anywhere from £150-300). A dream come true for The Jack Cades to play with a musician from the 60s and a dream come true for Joe, whose wife has always wanted to visit England, and I have to imagine for many young Americans in the 60s with the British Invasion, their dream was to visit England. Joe brought his wife and daughters with him to England and it was so cool seeing them cheering for their dad and having a great time. Thanks to the internet, a young generation of classic rock fans found out about obscure 60s releases and some of them were in bands and covered those songs and this no doubt makes these rock musicians from the 60s happy because that means their music is still remembered to this day. It reminds me of the Northern Soul scene and how these obscure/rare R&B and soul songs got popular in working class towns and cities in England and then sooner or later these R&B and soul musicians in America found out about their newfound popularity in England and they came over to tour and it was a great opportunity to perform for audiences and cash in.
After the gig I got a personalised signed vinyl of The Jack Cades’ EP Something New and I got to interview the band, awesome! So let’s get to that!
Interview with Elsa and Mike Whittaker from The Jack Cades
Angie: How would you describe your music to a new listener?
Elsa: Obviously our sound has changed throughout the years because we started in 2017. At first it was really very like 1960s garage punk almost, very heavy, with those influences. But our latest album is much more pop and mixes some more recent influences, bands like The Stone Roses for example, late 80s bands and stuff like that. So yeah I guess, very heavily inspired by the 60s, that’s what to expect, but also with more modern sounds. We love 90s bands as well and even some 80s bands. Very heavy on the harmonies and melodical, that’s how I’d describe it. A bit of a long answer, but yeah.
Angie: How did you get started in music?
Elsa: I started piano at the age of five and I did a lot of classical piano and then I was sick of it when I was a teenager. I wanted to be in a band so I started playing bass and I was self taught and I had my first band when I was 16 years old and I taught myself guitar after that and I had loads of different bands that didn’t last very long.
Angie: How did the band form?
Elsa: So band formed basically it was Mike and me. Mike’s my husband and Mike had his own band and I had my own band at the time and we decided that we really wanted to have a band together so we just started writing songs. He would write a song, I would write a song and then we thought, “Why don’t we start a band?” At the time we lived on Jack Cade Way, so that’s the whole story of how the band name came together. Because literally we lived on Jack Cade Way. We didn’t know who Jack Cade was at the time so we looked him up and we thought, “Wow! He’s awesome, like 15th century revolutionary dude, great! Yeah we’re The Jack Cades! So we’re gonna start a revolution!” So that’s how it came together. And then so Mole was playing, the drummer, was playing in another band with Mike before, The Baron Four. So we asked Mole to play drums in The Jack Cades when we recorded our first album and then Alexandra joined later, we asked her to join the band. That’s the story.
Angie: What are your biggest influences in music?
Elsa: Me personally, it really varies. I’m very open minded, I guess to some people I’m probably narrow minded. I’m a big lover of 1960s garage bands, very passionate about that obviously, which you can hear in The Jack Cades and in my songs. But I’m also a big fan of The Smiths, 80s bands, and also The Stone Roses and bands like Blur and Nirvana even. I grew up with Nirvana, I was born in ’86, so you know I’m a 90s baby, I grew up with grunge. So all of those influences mixed together, but also not only, I really love soul music and rhythm and blues, so 60s music, early soul, early rhythm and blues. So all those influences.
Angie: What makes the 60s special to you?
Elsa: The quality of the sound and recording. At the time it was all analogue, so there’s no, you can’t compare. Analogue is really important to us. We’ve always recorded all of our albums analogue because the sound is just nothing to do with digital. I think you can get close to an analogue sound these days if you’re recording digital in a recording studio, but really it doesn’t compare. The 60s also there was a real musical revolution at the time. The 60s must have been in a way great and awesome to live in the 60s, but it must have been really hard as well because of all of the racism and all of the you know, it wasn’t perfect, right? But musically, there was a real thing going on, right? I don’t think that’s gonna happen again, unfortunately.
Angie: How did you find out about The Shaynes’ song “From My Window”?
Elsa: So it was actually, personally I found out through this guy who posted videos on YouTube and I listened to all of the stuff that he posts regularly for like, I’ve listened to all of the stuff that he’s posted for the last 10 years because he’s a big 60s garage fan. And I remember him putting that video up ages ago of that record and I instantly thought, “Oh my god, I need this record in my life!” But then I realised it’s super rare and I’m never gonna get a copy of it. Thankfully I have a friend, Alex Walsh, who got us a copy and yeah we finally got a copy, but it’s a very very rare record to find.
Angie: How did you feel playing on stage with Joe?
Elsa: It meant the absolute world. Songs like “From My Window”, it’s like The Dovers, The Dovers are a big love of mine as well. There’s this fragility and this almost haunting element to the song, the sound is so beautiful. Impossible to replicate these days. So it meant the absolute world when Joe connected with us and said, “Actually my wife really wants to visit England, visit The Cotswolds, we’re gonna come down, do you have a gig?” And we were like, “Yeah! Would you like to play?” “Yeah!” “Yeah, lets do this!” And I didn’t think it would happen, you know? To have someone from like the 1960s actually play with you means the absolute world to me and it’s a moment that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
Angie: Sounds like a dream come true for the both of you!
Elsa: Absolutely. 100%
Angie: Your music is really guitar based, who are your favourite guitarists?
Elsa: I’ll let Mike answer that question because he’s the lead guitarist of the band and he’s the true talented guitarist because I only play rhythm guitar. Who are your favourite guitarists?
Mike: You, you are! It’s a very difficult question. Probably like, it’s very obvious, I love Ray Davies and his guitar style and Dave Davies. Yeah it depends what genre of music. I like a lot of different styles. John Lee Hooker probably.
Elsa: Personally I love The Dutchess. Completely different. Big Mama Thornton. All those women that people like suddenly discovered like “oh wow, women can play guitar! wow!”
Angie: What are your favourite songs to play live?
Elsa: Me personally, “Tommy” is one of my favourites because I think it works now live, we’ve got it to a good level. I love to play “Free Advice”, Mike’s song because the lyrics are hilarious so I love that song.
Mike: I like playing that because it’s simple. You can rock out to it, so it’s good fun! It’s easy and fun and you can rock out. Those are the funnest ones.
Angie: What have you been listening to lately?
Elsa: Always the same old stuff (laughs). No, actually, well it’s the same old stuff. I’m just really glad because I got a copy of a record that I was looking for for years that’s by a band called The Enfields [“I’m For Things You Do”]. A copy came on Discogs for a very reasonable price. Apart from that I listen to loads of stuff like Motown and some days I’ll listen to The Stone Roses again. I don’t really, I guess I’m guilty of not listening to new bands enough. Mike’s actually quite good at discovering new bands. What do you listen to?
Mike: It’s hard to bands that you like, like the recent bands, there’s a band called Ultimate Painting that I discovered recently, they’re really really great. I only discovered them the other day but there’s a great groove to their stuff and it’s like they’re really shy and awkward so I can relate to that. They’re really great, you should check them out.
Angie: What are your future plans for the year?
Elsa: Okay, so that’s a question where we’re gonna have to reveal some news, right? The Jack Cades are evolving. We’re at a turning point with this band so we’re kinda changing lately our sound. I believe that bands need to change and evolve and not stay stuck in the same point and do the same old thing. So we’re gonna take a little bit of time, we’ve got a gig in August in Brighton as part of the Brighton Mod Weekender, but after that we’re gonna take a little bit of time to write new songs and potentially a new album and we want to go back in the studio and record a new album basically. We’re gonna concentrate on that.
You can follow The Jack Cades on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Bandcamp.
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