Singled Out: The Room's My Friend Jack

The iconic band The Room released the single "My Friend Jack (Live)" from their DVD "Live at The Robin 2" and to celebrate we asked bassist Andy Rowe to tell us about it. Here is the story:

Welcome to The Room and please allow me to introduce our latest single and tell you about the band and our releases. It's very difficult to Pidgeon hole The Room. There is no cookie cutter that fits us. I guess if pushed we would be described as classic rock meets prog. In essence we write great songs with great hooks (someone once said we have more hooks than a pirate's wardrobe) and intriguing lyrics.

Our latest release "My Friend Jack (Live)" is all of that. Let me tell you the background to the piece. Our singer, Martin Wilson, who I have to say has a really unique voice and I love being on stage with the man, he is awesome, grew up in a town called Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire which is on the east coast of the UK. Martin told us a story about a guy (we shall call Jack) who used to frequent the same drinking establishment as him on a very regular basis. Now remember that this was the early 80s and of course at that time there were many new discoveries in shall we say personal pharmaceuticals.
"Jack" apparently liked to investigate all forms of these chemicals and was regularly away with the fairies as you might say and certainly on various other planets in various time zones. Anyway this guy "my friend Jack's a psycho with crazy thoughts running around his head" took a shine to Martin and tried to become his best buddy. Martin liked the craziness that surrounded "Jack" but was very warry of him. This became more pronounced when Jack tried to convince Martin that a wolf (we haven't had wolves in Lincolnshire for centuries) lived in a nearby wood and suggested that they go off and hunt for it.

Martin considered the implications of this request and decided that as much fun as a wolf hunt could be that he really shouldn't go. However the question he poses in the lyric "the eyes in the night, what a terrible sight, what could it be" , well we never concluded if that was a reference to the wolf or Jack!

We recorded the studio version of the song for our "Beyond The Gates of Bedlam" album that was released just over a year ago. This live version is taken from a film that captured one of our shows last year. We used 6 cameras and the Platform Studio mobile to capture the energy and dynamics of our performance at a classic UK rock venue The Robin 2 located just outside Birmingham. We are absolutely knocked out by the results and the DVD really does demonstrate what we, The Room, stand for.

Martin and I started the band about seven years ago, we have released two records, the first in 2012 called Open Fire and then as I said, the Bedlam album at the end of 2015. We all came from very different musical backgrounds; mixing hair metal, neo prog, classic rock and jazz fusion bonkers prog which could have developed the musical version of "beige" but thank goodness it hasn't and we have actually created our own very individual distinctive style. We are now starting to write album 3 which should be in stores by the end of next year, providing we don't get eaten by wolves!

Thanks so much for listening and please don't hesitate to check us out.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself here and learn more about the DVD right here!

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