Humble In Success

Picture this: two half-pissed blokes making music with a “shit-tonne of reverb”, in a dimly lit basement that, “leaks every time it rains”, burning candles labelled “Suede and Smoke”, and on occasion playing YouTube videos over the music they were making. It doesn't sound entirely alluring, but this is the true story of creation for both band and the debut of two-piece Smoke & Jackal. Their backgrounds, however, are a little more glamorous.

Smoke & Jackal is Kings Of Leon (KOL) bass player Jared Followill and Mona's lead man Nick Brown. Both bands formed in Nashville, Tennessee and are named after senior relatives – grandpa Leon and grandma Mona Brown respectively. The only recurring theme between the pair for this collaboration however, appears to be, “drunk”.

“When you're drunk it sounds amazing! We'd listen to it the next day, and maybe it wouldn't sound as good as it had the night before, but we were just like 'hell, it's good enough',” says Brown of their debut release EP1's production.

Apparently, they “left a lot of mess-ups in there… I think musicians can pick out mess-ups more than a listener can, but it's definitely drunk playing on that record.”

So what did the pair sip as they crafted each of the six tracks on their debut? “I don't think we want to give away our secret. But it comes in a very, very nice red box.”

Followill has been quoted saying, “we didn't bring any egos” to the debut's construction, though one has to wonder what really happens to the sense-of-self following the obscene popularity of KOL songs such as Sex On Fire or Use Somebody. “I think it makes it a little bit easier coming from successful bands to not have an ego. It's usually bands that don't have that kind of success and are working super hard that create egos. They're like 'Fuck the world, we're working harder than anyone and we're not being recognised!' I think they're the ones that end up talking the most shit… It's hard to say, but I think it's easy to be humble when you are successful,” says Brown.

As for the name, well, Smoke & Jackal have wax and wicks to thank for that, and according to the supplier of “Suede and Smoke” candles, they're not only a, “smoldering vaporous mingling of tobacco leaves, moss, papaya, lapsangsouchong dark tea and green manda”, but also, “reminiscent of sitting in a worn leather chair”.

“We liked the name, but there was already a band called Smoke & Suede. Then we liked the imagery of the word 'smoke' in general… We went through a bunch of things and then I think I was watching something on TV about wolves. It got me thinking about wolves and jackals and coyotes and stuff… I said it to Jared and we just kinda went with it. It's not that one of us is 'Smoke' and the other is 'Jackal' or anything like that. It's just the imagery of the two different things is what I was drawn to,” Brown discloses.

Right now, however, he feels kind of “like an arsehole because I've been so busy that I've lost touch with newer music that I used to be really in touch with”. But at the time of the debut production – which took a mere week to complete – Brown recalls the following: “We were listening to a lot of Beach House and Washed Out and songs with the vibes of say, Desert Islands by Magnetic Fields. We drew a lot of influence from movies we watched too. We'd both just seen the movie Drive… The set was really beautiful and the soundtrack was incredible.”

Crammed with atmosphere and vibes, the making of EP1 in Brown's home studio, was ultimately “like kids in a candy store”, and “literally about having fun and creating noise… I'm proud the sound we made, almost more than the songs really,” he concludes.