Tongue Twisting With Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong

Some bands slog their guts out for years before getting their big break, some bands slog their guts out for years and never get anywhere and then some bands get signed before they’ve even played a gig. So goes the story of Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong - the band whose front man used to be a drummer and who currently graces our screens in the Beeb’s latest period drama. The band with a tongue twister for a name, who in the same year as playing their first show are now preparing to taking the UK’s biggest arenas in support of Pete Doherty’s Babyshambles, Kaiser Chiefs and CSS.

All this seems even more impressive when you take in account the fact that the band were meant to be just a bit of fun, an outlet for some of Joe‘s songs. You see Joe Lean used to spend his time at the back of the action drumming for the Pipettes. We’ll let him take up the story: “It wasn’t ever supposed to be my main priority, it was just formed between my mates (Joe (Vocals), Tommy D (Guitar), Dom O'Dare (Guitar), Panda (Bass), Bummer Jong (Drums)) to have some fun in between Pipettes stuff. I never thought I’d have to leave the Pipettes to do this band. I literally thought that we‘d spend our whole life playing in pubs which didn‘t usually have music on with one monitor.” However, this all changed pretty quickly says Joe, “We got a single deal after our first sound check, a publishing deal after our third gig and a record deal after our fifth gig!” Simple as.

The aforementioned single deal was with the ever-so-cool Young & Lost who JL&TJJJ released their debut ‘Lucio Starts Fire’ this October. The album deal on the other hand is with Vertigo, signing for whom the band all took very seriously. Says Joe, “I wanted to do everything differently to how the Pipettes did it this time round because when I was kind of justifying it to myself it was as a new experience. In my mind I said if we ever did sign a deal I wanted to sign to a major.” And despite the tag of a “fun side project” for the band the early days still saw them taking their genesis very seriously. “The Pipettes did gigs and kind of improved in the public eye,” explains Joe. “We rehearsed for nine months before doing our first gigs because I really wanted us to come out all guns blazing.”

One thing the band have also worked on from an early time is the accessibility of their music, Joe has often spoke about how inclusive he wants it to be, from the ages of “8 to 80” he says. He tells Gigwise, “This is imperative to us. It’s really important to us that this isn’t a clique or a fad, I just think that something that is inherent in Pop music today is that you have to be part of a scene. You have to be emo or nu-rave.” One thing that helps the band achieve this inclusiveness is that Joe isn’t afraid to admit to a few skeletons in his musical closet, in fact they are as much as part as his outlook on music as are the more acclaimed acts from his record collection.