Jake Ryan of Queens Club (Ex-The Chariot)

Here is another interview from my archives I did with Jake Ryan of Queen's Club. Jake also used to be the drummer of The Chariot. He was on The Unsung EP & The Fiance album. This interview turned out great.


Check Out Queens Club:
Here















You used to be in The Chariot but you have a new band now called Queens Club. Can you tell me a little about the new band how you guys started it?

JR: the band kinda was spawned in many ways. one most significant and probably the first thoughts of maybe having a project like this came in January of 2007 on tour in Europe with The Chariot in fact. Dan (Eaton) and I had skipped hanging out on the bus to go back into the venue (we just played at) because it had turned into a dance club and i mean what the heck!? you are in Germany and you can go to a dance club for free... sounds like it would make for an interesting night. So there we were dancing away, others from the tour came in and out having a good time in this crowded room of German "clubbers" ... thats when the dj turned on the newest single (at the time, "The Prayer") that hadn't even come out yet... Dan and I looked at each other like, "We need to make songs like this that people can dance to." that must have been a sort of long gaze into each other's eyes.... weird... sike, we're best friends so we were just sorta automatically on the same wavelength. Soon as we got back stateside I started riffing the idea of starting some sort of new musical endeavor with another best friend of mine, Andy (Nichols). he was into it, but between touring with the chariot and never being back at home (in Kansas City) we barely ever had anytime to work on anything till the following October... after that writing started, we hanged out a lot, my best friend Tyler (Bottles) joined and we had our official line up and ultimately this because full time for us all.

The Chariot seems to be notorious for only Josh being the only permanent member, but you were in the band for a pretty good while. Why did you decide to leave The Chariot?

JR: Yeah! I was with the chariot from August of 2005 till February of 2008, in that time I recorded and released an EP, Unsung and LP, The Fiancee with the band. Unfortunately, If you are waiting to hear some really juicy details as to my departure from the band there really aren't any... I might just sound a little crazy to some folks for believing what I believe. Just like seasons change on Earth, i felt like the Lord was changing a season in my life, and I just knew it was time to move on to what was coming next for me.
Everything ended on good terms as far as me being in the band, and our friendships still remain. Queens Club has even taken road trips to go see The Chariot play, post Dan and I's departure from the band.

The Chariot is notorious for the crazy live shows are you bringing that intensity to Queens Club?

JR: Oh man, well I don't think you'll see me throwing a drum kit around... but hey who knows?! It's all about how the music moves you, and our music tends to hopefully make people wanna move their bodies. We really feel like at a Queens Club show, that it's more "everybody's" show. We invite everyone to come on stage and dance with us... I dunno man we just really like to have fun. It's not abnormal for us to be swallowed up by dancing bodies while we are playing. the more people on stage the more fun it is for us!

Queens Club is working on their debut album now. Can you tell me a little about the recording process? What can fans expect from the album?

JR: Actually it's pretty crazy this being our first record we've done together, everything has been going super smooth…it's been more of a fun/laid back environment to work in then any other records I’ve been apart of recording on. We also have this webcam that we put up while we are in the studio that captures everything we are playing/eating/doing it's pretty fun... and funny for us. Pretty much at the formation of this band we have been making our selves accessible via webcam during rehearsal or the countless hours of footage that we shoot on Andy's digital camera. We also have gone as far as to have a screen name that we post for everyone to have so that we can chat. I think the coolest thing about this record is going to be simply the sound of 4 best friends getting together to write music that reflects a moment in our lives. I think our music is a conglomeration of what we believe, what we see, what we hear and who we are as individuals and then you stir it all up into some melody and lyrics and beats and you have a pretty interesting mixture of sounds. it's like we get together to write and someone has some punk sounding riff we work with that and each personally adapt to make it sound like Queens Club. The same thing happens if it's mainly a club sounding drum & bass sort of idea someone has. This record is just a mixture of sounds and ideas. I think that if you are a super picky music person that you will find at least one track that you can relate to on this record. It sounds silly to say that, but really I think once you hear the record you will understand what I’m trying to get across.

Do you plan to release the album yourself or are you shopping it to labels?
JR: We are sitting on a couple of offers right now by some indies... we have definitely thought about releasing it ourselves... who knows the options are endless. I think we would love to shop the record and just choose what best suits us and will help us get our music in front of as many people as possible.

For people who haven’t heard of Queens Club what song of yours do you think would best represent your sound and why?
JR: Oh gosh, that's like asking you to pick which child is your favorite! Our current single, Nightmarer is up on our myspace (www.myspace.com/queensclubUS) right now and I feel like that is a really good representation of how an idea comes to the table and a song is generated right on the spot. That song literally wrote it's self for us. But when you pick up our record there will be a song on it called Danger Kids and that was one that was wrote kind of early on and it is like the perfect blend of who we are as a band. It rocks!