Interview with Grant Mackenzie of Jupiter Hollow.
Jupiter Hollow – Music genre Progressive Rock / Experimental Rock / Ambient
Location – Barrie, Ontario, Canada
Members – Grant MacKenzie (guitar, bass, synth) / Kenny Parry (drums, vocals, synth)
– What’s new in the world of Jupiter Hollow?
Right now we’re preparing for our EP release of Odyssey which is exciting. We will also be performing with the National Post sessions in the next couple of months as well as doing some radio interviews talking about the upcoming release. Pretty much just spreading the word as much as possible that we are a new Canadian Prog Duo who formed last year, we have our first EP, and we feel its pretty unique in the prog world! I will also be heading down to the NAMM show in LA at the end of January as an Ernie Ball Music Man and JH Audio artist, so I’m looking forward to that too. Its a very busy month.
– How is the upcoming EP doing Odyssey almost ready for release?
The EP is wrapped up and ready for the release on January 13, 2017! We’ve been getting a lot of great reviews back from outlets like Lords of Metal, Maximum Volume Music, and Sentinel Daily to name a few and its been great seeing the positive response! We’ve already released a few singles off of it such as Ascending, Hades Heart and Deep In Space, and people have been saying things like, “I’m looking forward to your EP, I think its going to be amazing. Jupiter Hollow is like a new style of Prog that combines the early style solidified by Rush and expanded by Tool and the later style with bands like Tesseract and The Contortionist. I’m glad that Prog is evolving once again and I feel like you are the first to take an extra step from this already beautiful era of Prog. Keep writing music because I will be listening”. Reading comments like that from fans really get us stoked about the release!
– How was it filming the promo music video for Deep In Space?
Filming the music video for Deep In Space was a lot of fun! There’s a bar in Barrie, ON (our hometown) called the Foxx Lounge which is a great little rock bar downtown. We had some people come out to rock with us as we gave it our all! Our good friends in Sudio 204 videography came out to film it, and I do all of the video editing for Jupiter Hollow’s videos… it took a lot of time but I think it turned out pretty cool! – Grant
– Do you consider album artwork as important now that music is mostly downloaded?
Definitely! You need the artwork to really grab peoples attention. I think if you have great artwork that represents the theme of the band and music, people will have an idea of what they’re getting themselves into! Plus, music is art to us, so the actual visual art must be just as great.
– How many shows do you play per year on average, and how crazy does the schedule get?
Right now we just have a couple of local shows lined up, our EP release party on January 14 in Toronto, and we’re opening for a band in Barrie called Beautiful Nothing in Barrie on March 3. We are in the talks of planning a tour across Ontario and hopefully Canada soon though!
– How important is merchandising? Could artists survive without?
Merchandising is definitely important, you want people walking away with something tangible to keep us on their minds after leaving a show. I feel most artists who are starting out are probably working other jobs on the side and not relying on music as their main income, but the bigger you get, the more expenses will need being covered, and merch definitely brings in a lot of money! So yes its important!
– Is the band fans of Spotify and similar streaming services? What are your thoughts on this?
Yes we will be on all online services like iTunes, spotify, googleplay, etc. I don’t have a problem with it. Obviously you can’t make a living off streams since you don’t get payed much, but a ton of people have these apps and will continuously listen to our music there. So, hopefully it motivates them to buy the actual CD and come out to our shows!
– What would we be surprised to find in your music collection at home?
Kenny’s collection you can expect Karnivool, Tesseract, Tool, and bands like that… mine you could expect to find all of that too.. but I secretly have a Nickelback CD and a few U2 albums! I don’t mind easy listening rock sometimes haha.
– Where do you see music in general going in 10 years from now?
As a progressive band… we have no clue! Its constantly changing. We’re already almost finished writing our second record and its going to be much different in ways than the EP and first record. We just produce what comes out of us! We just hope to find a perfect fitting label who shares the same views on us to help get the music out there in time. We look forward to what the future has to offer, but nothing will stop us from writing the music we want to write, and nothing will stop us from writing music in general… so expect much more from us!