It's a pleasure to welcome Dan Jones to Local Music. A prolific songwriter and performer whose power-pop gems sport titles like "Tequila Grapefruit Soda", "Beach, Please" and "A Pickle and Two Pearl Onions", Jones's work is all kinds of entertaining and creative, alive with classic melodies, guitar punch and a childlike spirit. He and his band The Squids are gearing up for a brand-new album, We Live in a World That Is Out of This World. Fans of Guided By Voices and The Minutemen take note. Enjoy our interview with Dan Jones below.
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Please introduce yourself. Describe your music for new listeners.
We played with a touring band a couple weeks ago and one of them said our set sounded like "Guided By Voices meets The Minutemen." That works for me! Fairly aggressive, punk-influenced creative pop music. Live, we are a power trio and knock the songs out fast with minimum fuss.
I was born and raised in Liberty, Missouri; spent twenty-plus years in Eugene, Oregon; and moved back to KCMO in 2013. By day I work as an operations coordinator at Dimensional Innovations, an architectural signage and experiential graphics firm. I mostly went the DIY way with five album projects in the Northwest, and played along the I-5 corridor for about 15 years, first as an acoustic troubadour and later with Dan Jones and The Squids (lots of members, an indie rock collective more or less) and The Golden Motors (solid lineup for about 5 years). It felt right to revive Dan Jones and The Squids here in KC after I hit the ground running with old friends Steve Tulipana (bass), Alex Alexander (guitar), and Matt Ronan (drums). Steve and I go back to eighth grade and basically shared a record collection all through junior high and high school as we picked up influences and instruments and played them really badly in little bands that had more fliers than gigs. Corn Dog Jamboree is the most infamous. So many fliers! And like three gigs.
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