Letter-Perfect Pop
Josh Chicoine has a dark secret in his past, and its name is Jamestown. It’s the Chicago band he fronted after graduating from the University of Dayton and moving here in 1995. Jamestown became an attraction on the local frat-boy circuit, playing strummy tunes a la Dave Matthews in rock clubs and sports bars, but after four years or so, Chicoine says, he felt trapped and musically estranged from the other players. “It was a process of figuring out that I wasn’t into what the rest of them were doing at all,” he says. “I would see bands play at Lounge Ax and I would think, ‘How come my band isn’t playing there? Who are those cool bands?’”
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Five years ago, when Chicoine was looking for a way out of the jam-band world, he worked next door to Lounge Ax, selling outdoor gear at Uncle Dan’s in Lincoln Park. He struck up a friendship with future M’s drummer Steve Versaw, who’d moved to town from Kalamazoo the year before, but when the conversation turned to playing music, Chicoine started sniffing for patchouli: “He was talking about his stuff, but I didn’t want to go over and jam some Phish. You know–we were working at a camping store.”
In both cases the concerns were unfounded: all of them, it turned out, were into a broad range of very melodic, highly detailed pop music. Hicks soon introduced his old bandmate Versaw to his new friend King.
In May 2002 they self-released an eponymous four-track EP, and within a few months things started happening. Schubas talent buyer Matt Rucins became a fan and began helping them land gigs; he’s now their de facto manager. They also impressed Joe Wigdahl of Brilliante Records, and last spring he and his partners agreed to reissue the EP with a pair of bonus tracks. Initially the band wanted to put out two more EPs of four songs each, but they were ultimately persuaded to combine all three batches of songs into the new album, which fulfills their handshake commitment to the label.
