Veteran Newcastle rockers The Screaming Jets are back with a new album after reuniting with long-lost guitarist Jimi Hocking.
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Hocking, self-described musical nerd of the band, thought recording Chrome was more enjoyable than their 2008 effort, Do Ya, which he sat out.
“We worked our way out of our problems,” he told The Border Mail.
“We don’t have any toxic relationships in the band now. We’re adults, different to what we were 20 years ago.”
Heading into the studio, the 53-year-old lamented many recordings nowadays involved musicians in different cities, copying and pasting tracks online.
But The Screaming Jets decided to go back to their roots and record in an intimate setting, which Hocking said was cathartic.
“The entire album was recorded in a very old-fashioned way when it comes to making records by today’s standards,” he said.
“We built up the songs from sitting around with acoustic guitars in a room together to singing them through, rehearsing them up, then getting the drum kit and bashing them out.”
New single Cash In Your Ticket, which will be released on Monday, was written almost 20 years ago by the band’s bassist and principle songwriter, Paul Woseen. It follows the story of a friend of Paul’s who’d taken his own life.
“When these topics are so real and so heavy, as a songwriter you want them to come together and be how you want them to be,” Hocking said.
“That’s why the song had floated in and out of our consciousness.”
Hocking’s influences shine through – Australian blues rock guitarist Kevin Borich and even B.B. King, who he was lucky enough to meet and hear jam in a hotel room in the late 1980s.
“Yes, we wanted to make a rock ‘n’ roll record, but we didn’t just want to it be some boofhead experience,” Hocking said.
“We wanted it to have musicality and texture.”