Jones Street Station

Biography

This group of Brooklynites from Minnesota, Princeton, Chicago, St. Louis and Springfield, Ohio are indeed a quintet of fully-formed characters. Jonathon Hull, for one, carries his harmonica in a gun belt for a reason—a note-nailing delivery that’s as jittery and disjointed as his personality. Then there’s Sam Rockwell, a steam roller who can punish the drum set and play with lightness and touch; keyboardist/singer Jonathan Benedict (better known as JB), a skilled remixer/producer who’s twisted knobs on tracks for Rihanna, Yoko Ono and The Killers; bassist/singer Walt Wells, a “musician’s musician” and part-time ethnomusicologist with the chops to carry his own in everything from a soul revue to a Japanese string band; and Danny Erker, a “craftsman” with a modified mandolin, plug-and-play banjo approach and honed singer-songwriter skills.

“We don’t really do genre-specific music,” says Erker. “In ‘Neville,’ for instance, we’ve got detailed four-part harmonies alongside flat-out screaming, Scruggs-style banjo and a harmonica, for God’s sake—all of which co-exist within a three-minute song that starts off as a sleepy ballad and mutates into a rock anthem free-for-all.”