MIXING IT UP
John 5 combines various musical genres ‘until it all fits together’
John 5 is excited to be back on the road.
“Everything will be new stuff, and new things are going to happen, and I just want to keep the crowd entertained,” he said. “And I understand now of what to do to keep them entertained, because it is an instrumental show and it’s a hard sell, but I think people are really, really going to love it. It’s a lot of fun.”
John 5 will be performing some songs off his new album, “Invasion,” which will be released this summer.
“How I planned it out, because people want to hear old songs, which I’m so excited about they want to hear any songs, and I’m trying to play songs everybody knows, obviously, so I’ve been releasing these videos and I’m going to play those songs,” he said. “The songs that people know, and I’ve released two new songs, and the third will come March 1. Just so people aren’t like, ‘I have no idea what’s going on,’ so I want to play what people know, and I think it’s important.”
The recently released song “Crank It” was inspired by electronic dance music.
“I wanted to expand a little bit and push myself, just like any artist does, and try a couple new things with the song ‘Crank It’ that’s out right now,” he said. “It’s EDM; it’s like EDM music, like DJ music, but played live because the music is good. Those riffs are good that I hear coming from my son’s room. I’m, like, oh, those are cool riffs, and I was, like, what if I did it but I performed it live and did all this crazy guitar work? So I was, like, why not try it? In music, there’s no rules.”
John 5 is so pleased with how “Crank It” turned out that it also influenced some other songs on the new album.
“It sounds so good when we play it live,” he said. “I mean we just knock it out, and I’m, like, damn, this sounds really, really good. So we have a couple other songs like that, one called ‘I Am John 5’ and another one called ‘I Want It All.’ And it’s that kind of same vein, but I do put a vocal hook in there, but obviously, I don’t sing, and I don’t want to sing, but I’m using this talk box through the guitar and it reproduces my voice through the guitar, and that’s where I’m coming up with the hooks.”
John 5 is well-versed in various of genres of music. He combines the genres into cohesive pieces of music.
“It takes a lot of practice,” he said. “It’s just practice. Practice to see what works, what doesn’t work. It’s like a puzzle. You just keep on undoing the puzzle, putting it back together, and eventually everything is going to fit, and that’s exactly what I do with music and any other situation. I just keep on trying to figure it out until it all fits together and makes sense.”
JOHN 5 With Jared James Nichols WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 28 WHERE: Launchpad, 618 W. Central HOW MUCH: $20, plus fees at holdmyticket.com