Windsor musicians Kris Marentette and Paul Richard of J# Major talked with me recently about their first album of original music which was recorded at the Riggi Media International Inc. and released last August.
Tell me about your album, Songs of Light and Shadow.
Kris: I had a bunch of ideas from before and I never had the right group of people together where we could flush them out into something decent and we just started to talk about the fact that we wanted to record some songs so, we floated this idea that we would try to crowdfund it. Everybody liked the songs and the feeling between us is so close now because we’ve been together for a while and there’s connectivity to it that you can feel.
How long has the band been together now?
Kris: We just celebrated five years together, but Paul and I are the only two original members left. Originally, we were a trio and it started kind of by accident. Someone was having a birthday party and they were looking for some musicians to play and we just happened to all be there and started jamming. That was Paul, myself and Colton. We had such a great time and it came so easily that we thought, hey, we should do this more often.
Paul: The neatest thing about the trio was how organic it was. We never rehearsed, it was always a fly by the seat of your pants type of thing just like the first jam we had.
Kris: It was cool because we never had a set list. We would just show up and someone would start playing a song and the rest would follow along. We learned a lot of styles and it put a lot of tools in the toolbox so to speak.
Colton is no longer in the band. We’re now a six-piece outfit that includes Lee Cochrane, Jim O’Neil, Byron Harrett and Frank Candido.
Who did the writing on the album?
Kris: They started as a bunch of songs I had written when I was 19 or 20 and it wasn’t like, “Here are some songs I wrote and I want you guys to play them.” It was more like here’s some ideas and if anyone else has some ideas let’s flesh them out.
I had some songs that were solid ideas, but the cool thing is Lee and I really connect on a creative level musically and we both have the same sensibility about harmony and melody. He’s a theory geek like I am but even more so. He really helped structure the songs into something better and then everybody brought their own thing to the table.
Did you bring in extra musicians for the recording? I hear sax and flute and some other instruments on the album.
Kris: That would be our sixth member, Byron Harrett. We put together a Pink Floyd tribute and we needed a sax player for that so we heard about Byron and asked him to be a part of that. At the time, I said to him if he’s going to be in the Floyd tribute he might as well be in J# Major as well. He plays flute, clarinet, sax, tin whistle and percussion. He’s a dynamo.
Paul: He lives out in Chatham and he came to jam with us one night and that was it, he was part of the band.
Kris: And then we added Matthew Brunke and Michael Stone for the recording. Michael played Trombone and Matt played trumpet and Byron wrote and arranged all the horn parts. Also, Frank Edgley, who is a Celtic fiddler was brought in to do a fiddle solo on one song.
You mentioned your Pink Floyd tribute. There are obviously some Floyd vibes on the album, but I heard more King Crimson and Jethro Tull to be honest.
Kris: Yeah, it has that anthemic classic 70’s rock vibe for sure.
Paul: I think that Lee’s influence would push it more heavily towards the prog rock. He’s a huge Rush fan and loves prog rock.
Kris: I was holding back on the prog because I didn’t want to make it super far out, but I think on the next one there will be some super freak out stuff.
I think it’s good that you’re influenced by so many bands and that the songs have a little of everything in them so as not to sound like you’re copying one band’s style.
Kris: We recorded at Walter Riggi’s studio, which was fantastic, it’s a super den of creativity, and that’s where we found the freedom to explore some more complex arrangements. A track like The Leaving has this big beautiful orchestrated part that came about because we had all these instruments available to us.
Paul: Almost every single track has something added to it that wasn’t in the original composition because Kris would say, “I have an idea, I want to throw something in here.”, and we would throw it in and see how it sounds and discuss whether to leave it in or not. It was really fun being there.
Is there a plan to put together some shows to showcase the album?
Kris: I hope so, but we’ll have to relearn the music because it’s been so long since we played it in the studio and we’d have to hire a couple extra musicians to play all the horns and strings. Our original plan was to hire out the Walkerville Theatre so hopefully we can make something happen.
I think it would be a great idea to do the Floyd tribute as one set and your album as the other.
Kris: Ironically, that’s exactly what we talked about. We’d open with the album release and do part of the Us and Them show as a second set. We were waiting for shows to be back on a steady basis without Covid restrictions before making a commitment and it seems to be better now. We’d like to do it sooner rather than later.
The album is called Songs of Light and Shadow and can be found on Spotify or if you’d like a physical CD, you can find it in Windsor at Dr. Disc, Karma Wine and Whisky Lounge or at Vintage & Vinyl in LaSalle.
