Jammin' With The Jellyhearts
By David Lewis |
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"Did you ask her if she was preggers? She bought a house in a nice neighborhood, with a good school district," asked Miz Lor'n, drum pounder for the band. (I had watched her walking up Main Street toward the office, wearing an enormous red sombrero, with fear in my heart.)
"Well, she said I could dress like a bear at her wedding, if that tells you anything," confirmed Reba Con Queso, who always introduces herself with a hearty handshake and a boisterous cry of, "Hi there! The name's Reba Con Queso! Cheesed to meetcha!"
"Who told you to wear ear plugs?" queried Miz Lor'n.
"You did! You told me it would keep me from going deaf during shows," replied Con Queso. "I think that we've improved our ears," she mused hopefully.
"I think I am deafer now," disagreed Miz Lor'n, "I don't know about you."
After this nonsense, they turned to me, smiling expectantly.
Reba Con Queso and Miz Lor'n of The Jellyhearts
Photo: Christopher Atwood
The Jelly Hearts, when pressed, describe their sound as something like the "delinquent little sisters of the Black Keys, but with no knowledge of scales...or guitars. But I am wearing a Jimi Hendrix shirt," asserted Con Queso. (She was not.)
Like Akron's Black Keys, the pair's sound is necessarily huge and bombastic, rendering moot any traditional need for a bass player. Their bared-teeth enthusiasm and raw, anxious tonal arsenal can't hide the gritty old-soulfulness of Con Queso's voice, simultaneously raspy and lilting. Their presence on stage is characterized by constant broad smiles for each other, as though they share a joke the rest of us aren't really in on.
"Reba has suggestive phobia disorder," said Miz Lo'rn conspiratorially. "So if you tell her she should be afraid of something, within five minutes she will be terrified of it."
"That's not true!" Con Queso protested. "I'm trying to get health insurance." She calmly drew a horrible picture, a face of some kind, on an empty brown paper bag, and placed it over her head. She bade Miz Lor'n apply mascara to her now-paper eyes, and offered a somewhat muffled treatise on the art of the Live Show.
"Ferocious!" she said, echoed immediately by the Lor'n. "We like ferocious people at our shows. Tremendous personalities, spitting beer and knockin' shit over, and getting into the music...We'd rather have five crazies getting into the music than five million guys who just stand around," she concluded.
The Jelly Hearts recently performed a seemingly improvised tour in France, playing five shows in six days.
"We borrowed some gear from England and drove it over in a van that wasn't supposed to leave the country. It might have been stealing," mused Con Queso.
It was in France that they acquired a kind of uniform.
"Our France pants, for prancing, were acquired in Bordeaux," said Miz Lor'n. "They're hot pink with Zebra stripes, kind of sheer, and..." They finished in unison, "Really, really tight."
"I thought it would be funny if we both wore these ridiculous pants," continued Con Queso. "But then I realized no one can see Miz Lor'n's pants, because she sits behind the drums. So I was the only one visibly wearing the damned things."
The girls alluded to the possibility of a new direction, and tried to explain their songwriting process.
"We almost have a new country song," said Con Queso enthusiastically. "It's not done yet."
"It just needs to be put together, by Cracky," confirmed Miz Lor'n.
"They're like little puzzles," she elaborated. "We have little pieces of them layin' all over the place, and we just have to put them together...by Cracky."
"Snake, jake, rake, crake, bake," piped in Con Queso.
"They're like mad libs," finished Miz Lorn. And there they sat, beaming and satisfied.
The Jelly Hearts will play the main stage at Comfest at 12:30 p.m. on June 26.
Originally Published: June 1, 2009
