North Texas Daily

Erica Wieting | Features Editor
@ericawootang

It’s blissfully sunny in the mountains of New Mexico, as soft indie rock band Jack Kerowax is on the road to Texas.

“We’ve seen a lot of animals on this trip,” bassist Nash Griggs said. “When we were coming back from Steamboat, [Co.] going to Evergreen, we ran into a cattle drive, which was crazy.”

Harvest House will be the band’s fifth stop this tour. They will go onstage at 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 4.

Johnny Beauford, singer and guitarist, met lead guitarist and keyboardist Garret Padgett in 2012. The two decided to form the band.

“I met Johnny and we started… writing some tunes, and then the record was born,” Padgett said. “We had a residency at a place called Freeman in Deep Ellum in Dallas and we were there for a year, and started out with just he and I playing.”

A new addition would soon come in the form of a drummer: Nathan Adamson.

“I knew that… Garret and him were doing this residency at the Freeman, and I said, ‘Well, it seems like you need a drummer,’” Adamson said. “So I kind of invited myself to play with them.”

They spent several months writing songs and playing music together to figure out what their direction would be, but they were still missing the deep undertones of a bass guitar.

“I think we might have rehearsed one time, but we really, we would just play stuff,” Adamson said. “I would play along with them at the Freeman before we had a bass player. We’d just play songs I didn’t even know. I think that residency gave us the space to just kind of learn stuff, because nobody really cared if we were screwing the songs up.”

At only 16 years old, Griggs is the youngest and newest member of the band.

“It’s been a great experience. It’s all very new to me… This the first band that I’ve ever played shows with,” he said. “Since they’re so much more experienced than me, it’s kind of a head start for me.”

Beauford said this album, which is their first, took them about 10 months to put together. Although they’ll miss the all-too-perfect weather of Colorado and New Mexico, where the tour sent them at the end of last month, he said the band is excited to come back through Texas.

They are especially thrilled about the city they’ll be visiting.

“When you play [Dallas] as regularly as we do, it becomes kind of just another local show,” Beauford said. “So Denton and Harvest House specifically is a cool place to play. It gives us a chance to get out of Dallas, to make some friends in Denton.”

With one album, Jack Kerowax has established a name in the music scene. And they don’t plan to stop there.

“It took a little while, but we pieced [the album] together, and I’m happy with how it came out,” Adamson said. “We continue to write now. We’ve got several new songs that are ready to be laid down as well, so overall, everything’s been moving along at a pretty good pace.”

Featured Image: Courtesy | St. Cait Record Company