FROM the Ledger Inquirer

Fri, Nov. 07, 2003

Band goes back to its roots with 'Collards'

When Justin Timberlake hits the town wearing a $45 designer trucker cap, tall and foamy, you know something's wrong with the world.

And I'm not talking about the fact that they make $45 designer trucker caps. I mean that redneck has become chic.

You see it in the kids wearing overalls as a fashion statement. You see it in morning radio show hosts who call themselves Bubba. You see it in the only half-kidding bumper stickers with slogans invariably involving gunplay ("Fight Crime: Shoot Back").

A bunch of bands have taken advantage of this redneck chic to pump up record sales.
Chapel Hill, N.C.'s Jennyanykind isn't one of them.

I say that, despite the fact that their new record is called "Peas and Collards."
And despite the fact that on the cover, three of the band members, dressed like Coen brothers extras, pose in a shack crammed with -- alongside an upright piano, some recording equipment and a Scrabble board -- a bundle of uncooked collard greens and raw peas.

And despite the fact that when the band first surfaced in the early 1990s, they sounded like an almost psychedelic alternative rock band instead of the churning, almost bluesy swamp rockers they are now.

Only don't peg them as a blues band.
"I definitely think that the blues are there. That is our main thing. But it isn't forced or contrived. It's what we feel," says Mark Holland , who plays guitar and keyboard, and sings alongside twin brother Michael . "We're not trying to do it the same old way. There's a horrible blues clique around the country."
He finally settles on the term "roots music," schtick be damned. And to their credit, they evolved into the deep South sound years before it became cool.

"As our music matured, I guess we started to look for something in music that's more lasting than pop can be," Holland says. "Being an American band, that's just where it's at. The blues, the jazz. It's all around you in the musical tradition, especially in the South.

"When we were doing the pop music -- I think we were more contrived then."
So yeah, they're toting firearms on the pictures of the new record. Yeah, one of them's wearing overalls and carrying a gas can. Should they be punished just because the rest of the world now thinks their style is cool?

Holland has some theories as to how redneck has become hip in the first place.
"I think maybe when the New South started to emerge, for one thing, the Internet and cable media took hold in the 90s and the nation became one," he says. "Now people are looking for a more regional sense of identity. I mean, maybe it's always been around, in 'Hee Haw' or something like that. I'm sure it's cyclical in popularity. Sometimes you see it more prevalent in art or on CDs or magazines.
"We're just staying true to our Southern roots," he says.
The band stops tonight at the SoHo Bar & Grill.

"We are extremely excited about playing in Columbus," says Holland. His grandparents lived here for years, and he spent time at Fort Benning as a trainee in the Army.
"I bought my first acoustic at a guitar shop behind the mall. I don't know if it's still there," he says. "I really loved the town. It always had such a great historic feel."
The band formed in 1991 as a partnership between the twins. Their first two independent albums built the band a cult following on the Southeast's underground concert scene. Major labels took note, and Elektra signed them for 1996's "Revelator."
Two more independent records followed, but the band disassembled in 2000.

At the time they called it a breakup, but history has been revisionist for the Hollands.
"That's what it sure felt like -- a breakup," Mark says. "Now it's just another phase in our long history."

ESP

In the garden with Jennyanykind
By Grant Britt
Jennyanykind

You’ve got to let this stuff creep up on ya. It won’t soak in if it just bounces off the sides of your ear canals. Jennyanykind’s music takes a little getting used to. Call it mood music, if you need a label. What you have here is a bastard child of blues, rock and the swamp thing. On their latest release, Peas and Collards, Jennyanykind sounds like the Rolling Stones in a drunken brawl with the North Mississippi Allstars, a whiskey-soaked mud wrestling match with blurry, slurred guitar licks, a swampy backbeat and rumbly bass that sounds like it’s up to its neck in mud.
There’s a lot of Keith Richards in Michael Holland’s guitar work. At times it’s so far out of tune you want to scream for a tuner — or at least another drink to tune yourself up. But then the thing turns the corner and whacks you upside the head so hard you forget about everything except just stomping along.
The music is basic stuff — just twisted out of shape a bit. When you think you’ve got it figured out as this swamp muck monster, they come around with a serving of the more commercial “Listen to my Wave.” It doesn’t last long and the band gets back down to business soon enough.
Some of the music sounds like kids playing around with a roomful of instruments, but it gradually falls together, more or less. “Hot Soup” is a prime example, reinforcing one of the basic rules of good rock and roll, being laidback to the point of falling down in the best Keith tradition. Just play a guitar lick when you get your fingers near a fret and bang on the piano whenever when you get an appendage free.
Jennyanykind is the braintrust of the brothers Holland (Michael and Mark), who write, produce and play most of the instruments, at least in the studio. The Chapel Hill-based band aren’t newcomers to the scene, having developed their sound over the course of seven other albums since their 1993 debut, Etc.
For their current effort, the band assembled a gaggle of cohorts who go by the name of the First Take Collective and the name means just what is says. Drummer Justin Ansley, percussionist Cameron Weeks and bassist Tom Royal helped the Hollands record six of the record’s 13 tracks live, with no overdubs on instruments or vocals. Ansley will work with the band when they play live, assisted by bassist Matt Summaro.
The stripped-down, live concept is nothing new to the brothers. The band got signed to Elektra records in 1996, then dropped after their album Revelator didn’t sell. They were still trying to be big time when Yep Rock picked them up two years later, but things just weren’t working out.
“We had all these different people coming in and out of the band, like contractors, trying to make gigs, just to keep playing,” Mark Holland said in a ’99 interview. “We weren’t a band anymore, the lifestyle is just too hard for most people, and there was no money ... but we still had our little studio, so we decided to do it ourselves, on the fly, extemporaneously.”
Since that time, the band has experimented more and more with their sound, until they’ve come to this. One critic said of an earlier album that it was “Phish meets Mudhoney meets the Doors,” but even if that was true once, there’s no trace of it now. The group disbanded for a time just before Money Can’t Buy Mojo was released in 2000, with some members going on to play with the Jule Brown band. Jennyanykind resurfaced this year with their release on Charlotte’s MoRisen Records, Peas and Collards.
Recorded in the band’s own studio and in Southern Culture on the Skids’ Rick Miller’s Kudzu Ranch in Mebane, the record sounds like just what it us — local laidback boys playing around in their garage. That’s a sound a lot of bands strain to get — and the strain shows.
With Jennyanykind, it just sounds natural.

 

ORLANDO SENTINEL

Jenny gets the blues
The last time Jennyanykind played Orlando, at the now defunct Go
Lounge, the Chapel Hill, N.C., band was an indie-rock outfit.
The approach is much more rootsy on the new Peas and Collards album,
which twin brothers Mark and Michael Holland will showcase tonight on a
bill with Black Star Morning at Lost & Found.
All the Stonesy guitar riffs, harmonica and unvarnished first-take
vocals make you wonder what happened to a band once compared with My
Bloody Valentine.
Turns out that after the band's 1996 major-label debut, Revelater, "we
really burned out on the psychedelic heavy pop we were doing," explains
Mark Holland. "We were getting older and our tastes evolved, which is
what happens through being a musician. We're an American band, so we're
looking for those influences more."
The brothers didn't enjoy their brief time on Elektra, then bounced
to Yep Roc for an unsatisfying stint that yielded Big Johns (1998) and
I Need You (1999), a pair of albums that began the band's stylistic
shift.
Peas and Collards is on MoRisen Records, an indie label that Mark
Holland says offers more tour and publicity support than Jennyanykind
has ever received.
He's not worried about album sales, as long as the band stays on the
road.
"You can put an album up on the Internet and continue to gain exposure
without anybody's involvement. In that sense improvement in technology
is a tremendous asset to the artist. A good musician or a good band can
always make money on the road.
"More than anything it's about survival. Who can withstand the ups and
downs the longest?
"Stay around long enough, and you'll find an audience."