Jimmy's Comet, the Madison quintet of Karl Christenson, Kris Larson, Patrick Cassidy, Adam Strom and Brad Kolberg, proves it is not going to be a shooting star with its upcoming release, . The album resists easy classification as it jumps from country-twang in \About Girls"" to pop-rock in ""My Face is Clean"" to emo in bits and pieces throughout. But those genres only go so far. After a verse or two, the style fades away and each song emerges as a well-crafted accomplishment. Thankfully, Jimmy's Comet managed to put together 15 such songs on .
The Daily Cardinal recently spoke with drummer Brad Kolberg about the band's move away from UW-Eau Claire, touring with Clem Snide and their hopes for their new release.
First off, how did the band get together?
We were all students at the university in Eau Claire and we just knew each of us, some of us from being on the same dorm floor and some of us just knew each other from around town. We just hung out together at first and played music as an afterthought. It began really casually, actually.
Was there a decent student music scene over there?
No, not really. There were not really a great amount of places in town to play. I think as a result that's probably what helped our initial success. There wasn't a whole lot else going on. It wasn't like what your typical Madison band has to go through, trudging along and not getting shows for a long time.
What prompted you to go from Eau Claire to Madison?
The Eau Claire scene really didn't get any better. We had the success that we were going to have in Eau Claire and it wasn't waning at all.We had started travelling a lot, mainly to Minneapolis and we realized that we were really isolated. If we wanted to go anywhere beyond Minneapolis, it was several hours.
I'm from Madison originally and another guy is from Wisconsin also. The other three are from suburbs around Minneapolis.
Now, back in Madison, we have a lot of access to other venues, to Milwaukee and Chicago.
How did it work out to open for acts like Clem Snide and the Goo Goo Dolls?
We were big fans of Clem Snide and a few years ago we saw that they were touring and we just e-mailed their manager and said, 'If you need any help in the Midwest, we're here, just let us know.' They ended up handing us a show with them in Milwaukee. The next time they went on tour, they contacted us and gave us shows in Minneapolis, Eau Claire, Madison and Milwaukee. On a tour that they had last spring, we played with them in a show in Chicago.
What was your first album [] all about?
It was a lot lighter. We started out as a sort of jam band and our first album was on the tail end of that. It was kind of just an even-tempered pop-rock album. We don't really play much off of it as part of our live setting.
What venues in Madison do you frequent?
We have a regular monthly show at Luther's [1401 University Ave.] for about a year now. Now we have our CD release party at Caf?? Montmartre [127 E. Mifflin St.]. We really like it there; we played there on occasion. There's also the Crystal Corner, that we've played a few times. Those are our main stops.
Do you think Madison venues have been receptive to local musicians?
Our first show as a Madison band was actually opening for Clem Snide. We were really lucky with that. We've had a fair amount of luck getting shows and getting people to shows. We'd like our turnouts to be better, but we're pretty happy where we're at.
Do you feel like the band is on an upswing?
I think so, and hopefully this album will help things out. It gives us a new thing to promote us with.
You guys are having a radio show on October 24 on WORT.
On the Hootenany, on Friday afternoon, we'll probably be on the air there for a half-an-hour or so. We'll be playing some tracks off the album and doing an on-air interview with Dave Zero, the host.
Have you seen good reception with other radio outlets?
WORT has played our material quite a bit and we really appreciate it. We're also in the rotation on the student station [WSUM], at least on certain shows. They've been pretty receptive with us and we did an interview with them over the summer. I think they're putting together a local music compilation, so they've been good to us too.
Have you played with a lot of other local bands?
There's a lot of good stuff going on and it seems like sometimes some of the best bands are the bands that play the least around town. It's kind of hard to explain. Some of the bands that we enjoy playing with the most are the bands that don't get out of the basement a lot. It seems like a lot of the really active bands are cover bands and blues bands and stuff like that, so as far as pop and rock and the indie scene goes, we can do better.
Do you have any great expectations for your new release?
We're anxious to see where it gets us. We're trying to send it to as many people as we can to get as many opinions as we can get. When we got the opportunity to record our first album, that's more than I ever pictured us doing, so this is all fantasy to me. Every show and every new opportunity is something that I didn't expect to have happen. We'll take what we have and see how far we can go. We don't have any other goals besides just seeing how far we can take it.
