Jive Mother Mary is a Very Young Rock Band Ready to Bloom

Hailing from Alamance County, North Carolina, Jive Mother Mary is a group of very young musicians - Mason Keck (guitar and lead vocals), Nathan Coe (bass and vocals), Seth "Fluff" Aldridge (drums) - that have the drive to dedicate their lives to rock music. The trio have just released their full-length debut, All Fall Down to its share of critical praise, and it seems like a promise for a greater musical future.

The sound of Jive Mother Mary can easily compared to many popular bluesy hard rock bands of the 70s because that sound is what Keck and the boys want to be known for. They are on a personal crusade, if you will, to bring that rock era back to life.

The following is an interview with guitarist/vocalist Mason Keck via phone:

Powerline A.D.: Are you calling from the road? You on tour right now?
Mason Keck: No. We're still all in high school. I'm actually getting ready to settle down and work on some homework here.(laughs)
Powerline A.D.: Sorry. I thought the band was on a tour.
Keck: We are doing a mini-tour. A local North Carolina, South Carolina mini-tour, so I guess you can say we kinda are.

Powerline A.D.: You started the band when you were around the age of fourteen, right?
Keck: Yeah, we've been playing for about three years now.

Powerline A.D.: I gotta tell you, man. Your guitar playing is fantastic for a seventeen year old. When did you start?
Keck: I started playing when I was about ten or eleven. My dad plays guitar and that was at the phase when he was starting a new band. That's what really got me into playing.

Powerline A.D.: He was a professional musician?
Keck: He's been in a band since the early 80s, doing local gigs. And that's really what got me going.

Powerline A.D.: And Jive Mother Mary has played about 150 shows already?
Keck: It's probably closer to 200-250, really. We try to play every weekend — sometimes two to three times a week. We play anywhere and everywhere we get the opportunity to, really.

Powerline A.D.: Playing so many live shows already, you obviously aren't intimidated.
Keck: I never actually been intimidated. I never got nervous about playing. Probably because I always looked at it from the standpoint that it's supposed to be fun and there's nothing to really be nervous about.

Powerline A.D.: Did it come natural for you to sing and play guitar at the same time? Not an easy task for a lead guitarist.
Keck: Well, I've been singing for as long as I can remember, you know. I can remember sitting around on the playground in kindergarten and screaming KISS songs. It's definitely easier to play guitar when not singing. And I never really tried (doing both) until we started the band. At first it was a little bit tricky at times — playing certain guitar parts and singing — but after awhile you kinda get used to it. Then you form your guitar playing and singing style around each other.

Powerline A.D.: Did you ever look for a singer in the beginning of the band?
Keck: When we first, first started my cousin, Elizabeth, she played guitar, too — we were a four-piece — but that didn't last very long at all. She was a really good singer. She was a couple years older than us and had scholarship stuff going on. So she couldn't really continue with us, so... and I started getting used to singing and playing guitar, so we never really thought about getting a lead singer.

Powerline A.D.: You haven't graduated high school yet. Do you find it hard keeping up with high school and doing this? Or is it like anything else, like when students have activities outside school, like sports, for instance.
Keck: It takes dedication. It's not so much hard as just finding the time to do both. I mean, like you were saying, it's like any kid playing a sport or anything like that. Except this is year round. It's just a balance. Sometimes it's hard being at a bar, getting home at four o'clock in the morning and waking up for school at eight ... can't say I haven't done that but... every now and then we do a Wednesday night show or Thursday night show but with school we try to stay away from that as much as possible.

Powerline A.D.: You must be pretty popular at school, I'll tell you that much.
Keck: Yeah, we get a pretty good reaction. It's kinda cool to see a lot of people listening to the older style of music we play. That's what I like, I think, about people listening to our music — especially the younger kids — it kind of opens up a door to them where it's 'Hey, this may not be what I normally listen to but this is amazing. I got to listen to more of this.' People listen to it, like it, and then realize there's a whole world of music they never really ventured into.

Powerline A.D.: One thing I like is that you are a young band bringing back the guitar solo. Your guitar solos are like the guitar players of the 70s, where the lead guitar solos are as important as the song itself. Like songs within a song. And melodic instead of merely shredding.
Keck: That's what I try to do when I go to lay down a solo, I always try to make sure it fits the song good and everything else. But to be blatantly honest, I love playing solos. We love that 70s classic rock sound. And you can't have that 70s sound without having guitar solos.

Powerline A.D.: When I first got the album All Fall Down, before even listening to it, I thought it might be spiritual because of the names in there. Mother Mary, All Fall Down, the cover artwork, song titles like Save Me... then I found out that that's really not the case.
Keck: You know, I've heard that before. Some things can be interpreted as spiritual. I guess, technically it is spiritually but not official in the sense of religion. I see spirituality as anything you are really devoted to. I didn't initially plan a spiritual thing to the album but there's definitely kind of spiritual sounding theme to it, you're right.

Powerline A.D.: And you seem devoted to a 70s sound.
Keck: Man, I love everything from Aerosmith to Zeppelin, and, of course, Hendrix. But I'm actually a huge Black Crowes fan. They are probably my favorite band I've seen. I've seen them four or five times. I am a huge Cry of Love fan, too. They were a band out of Raleigh, North Carolina which is about 45 minutes away from us. Early 90s. They only released two albums, but both of them are amazing. Their guitar player, Audley Freed, he's the one that made me really want to play guitar. When I heard him I was like 'Wow, that's what I want to do.' They were doing the classic rock thing, bluesy, good rock and roll thing, but I guess it wasn't the time or the place for it, really. The second album, Diamonds & Debris — which is actually where we got our name from — that album, as far as guitar composition, is amazing.

Powerline A.D.: So that's where you got your name from.
Keck: It's a song on Diamonds & Debris actually called "Diamonds & Debris." There's a line in that song where he (the singer, Robert Mason) slurs it and we always thought he said Jive Mother Mary. So we were singing and shouting it at band practice one day and we thought, 'That sticks!' It's catchy and it makes people ask 'What the hell is that?'

Powerline A.D.: I'm sure the former members of Cry of Love would be flattered if they ever heard that story.
Keck: Yeah. (laughs) I hope they would be, really. I'd like to meet some of those guys one day.
Actually, our producer, John Custer — the guy we recorded our album with — he did both of their albums. And that was a cool experience.

Powerline A.D.: Did you actually seek John Custer out, or was it just coincidence?
Keck: He lives in Raleigh, and our booking agent used to work a lot with him, and the opportunity got kinda thrown out there.

Powerline A.D.: And Jive Mother Mary put out an EP before this debut full-length?
Keck: Yeah, that was produced by John Custer as well. That was almost kind of a live deal. It wasn't necessarily 100% live but, you know, we did it all in two days. We went in and pretty much first take.

Powerline A.D.: So, where would you like to see yourself in the next few years?
Keck: You know, we're all gonna go to college and stuff. But we're all gonna go local, so we can continue to practice and keep going with the band. We're all thinking we want to do a career out of it.

Powerline A.D.: College is a good experience. It's good to have. But you may not need college.
Keck: I always joke around that it doesn't matter what I do in college, I'm gonna be playing music anyway.

Powerline A.D.: Well, thanks for the time, Macon. I won't keep you from your homework.
Keck: (laughs) Thank you. Good to talk to you.

www.jivemothermary.com
www.myspace.com/jivemothermary

Interview by Pat Prince