Jeff Kummer - Interview

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For those who aren’t familiar with your work, you are a solo artist now, but previously you played drums in The Early November & Your Sweet Uncertainty. After playing in bands for such a long portion of your career what made you decide to go solo?
No one wants to be in a band with me anymore because I can’t kick my meth addiction.

You announced you had finished the solo album up in September. What can fans expect from the solo album? Also what was the recording experience like (who’d you record with, did you play all the instruments, etc.)?
They can expect to hear a mediocre construction of songs that teeter between pop punk and rock. I recorded with Chris Badami of Early November fame. The recording process was extremely relaxed. There was no pressure other than my own. Other than a few guest appearances, I tracked every instrument on the album.

While recording the album you did a series of webisodes called My Life. What made you decide to do these and will you continue to do more of these in the future?
What many people don’t know is that the webisodes are just an excuse to tape myself.

Can you give me some information on the possible release date of the album? After the album is released do you plan to tour in support of it?
I do plan on playing a lot of shows because I really do miss it, but I don’t plan on touring at the moment.
The breaking news is that the album will be mastered next Tuesday. The artwork is already done so I plan on pressing the album immediately afterwards. I’m on the fence whether I should release it in late December or January. At this point, I feel like it would make more sense to release it in January. My five fans reading this are probably so pissed off at me right now.

Do you have an official first single from the album decided and if so do you plan on shooting a music video in support of it? If you are, do you have any ideas for a concept?
There are two songs that I plan on releasing before the album is out called “Write Me Off” and “Safe To Say”. Since they’re both in the same vein, I want to see what kind of reaction they get before I really start pushing one. I don’t plan on doing a low budget video unless we come up with an idea that’s worth watching.

You’d talked about recently that you were going to include a cover of Absolutely (Story of A Girl) on your album, but it was never finished. The acoustic version sounded really good any chance you’d ever jump in the studio and record a studio quality acoustic cover for the fans?
I don’t know if I would re-record that song in particular. If anything, I would most likely do a different song that people haven’t heard. Maybe next time something that’s not that well known.

I frequent Absolutepunk like most music fans and you are always talking to fans and leaving comments. More recently it was brought up about the last TEN concert live CD/DVD and you talked about how you guys didn’t have much control over when it came out. Some people took this as another lost in the vault Drive Thru project and started a Free TEN Facebook group. What do you think of the group?
I think it’s really flattering that people still care. Every so often I find myself listening to those old albums like a fan would. I feel like I can relate to them in that sense.

I also have to ask and I know we talked about it a little, but Sound In The Signals post a lot of hip-hop stuff. Is there ever a chance we’ll here you rapping again?
I really don’t have as much time on my hands as I did when I was making rap songs about boobs and wieners. Don’t get me wrong… I would love to continue making songs about boobs and wieners; I just can’t at the moment.

What is the one thing that people don’t understand about Jeff Kummer?
I’m dumber than I look.

I guess that wraps it up man. Any closing comments you’d like to make?
I’m gay.