Wildstreet Discusses New Album "III"
The band's new release drops June 25 and is a worthy purchase for melodic rock fans.
A while back I gave a new song recommendation here in Michael’s Record Collection for Wildstreet’s single “Set it Off.” It’s a great song and I still fully endorse it. I was fortunate to catch up with the band as they prepare to release their new album III next Friday, June 25. As luck would have it, I also got to see the band live last weekend. I hope you enjoy this preview/review of a great new 2021 album release.
It’s a Friday night and I’m at a small bar in Longwood, Florida. It’s a rock show and the first two bands were fine. The first was a band from nearby Sanford that played a few decent covers and sounded good. The second was a much more polished act from Tampa that could both play and perform but the sound mix was a bit muddy. And now, the headliners are on the stage and they’re melting my face.
Any trepidation I felt at the sound quality from the first two bands is gone. This is a loud band — mixed well — and it sounds great. In fact, they’re killing it. Where some bands have a dynamic singer or guitarist who command your attention, this band has five guys who are all showmen. There is a problem, but it’s nothing to do with the band.
There are only a couple dozen people in this bar and this band should be playing like this to a packed house in a large theater or an arena. The band is Wildstreet and the musicians — Eric Jayk (lead vocals, guitar), Jimmie Marlowe (guitar), Lachlan “Lock” Driver (drums), Dominick “Dom” Martes (guitar), and Jonny D (bass) — are terrific. They’re as good as I’d hoped when I started listening to songs from their upcoming album, III. I feel a little bad for them because this show didn’t receive proper promotion and the bar should be more crowded. But mostly what I feel is the joy of a band performing for two dozen people with the same ferocity and passion as if they were playing to a sold-out Madison Square Garden. And I feel them melting my face off with excellent, hard-driving, and catchy rock music.
Thankfully, other shows on Wildstreet’s tour were better attended than the one I went to last Friday, because this is a band that should be seen. Wildstreet is a great live band with five guys who can play, sing, and entertain. I caught up with them on their “Kings of World Tour” (shortened from Kings of the World without explanation or any real need for one). The band literally pulled off the road to do the interview and I was humbled by the experience. But it just shows Wildstreet’s professionalism and attention to detail. They’d made a promise to do an interview and by God they were going to do it. It’s the same attention to detail the band shows when engaging fans on social media or lovingly including extra free goodies to whoever orders their new album off the website.
Jayk jumped on the Zoom call with me to discuss the upcoming release of III on digital, CD, and vinyl on June 25 from Golden Robot Records. However, he wanted to include his mates in the discussion.
“Wildstreet is a band,” he explained.
The band ethos isn’t just lip service. It’s hard to even find mentions of individual band members’s names on their website or electronic press kit.
III is an album that’s been patiently waiting its time. The band had recorded the album prior to the pandemic, but due to the lockdowns and general state of the world, Wildstreet put off releasing it until a tour to support it was feasible. Individual songs were released as singles and videos, and nearly the whole album can already be heard on streaming services.
“We wanted to gain the maximum amount of momentum pushing towards the release of the full album and what would come next,” Jayk said.
Having heard seven of the eight songs on III, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to fans of melodic and anthemic hard rock. The band has an eclectic group of inspirational sources, but the overriding commonality is having a good time.
“For Wildstreet (influences are) always based on bands who have fun, so that was our goal,” Marlowe said. “Yes, all the 80s bands are part of it, but it’s not just that. It’s everything we had grown up with. There’s always newer influences too.”
“My first two albums on LP were (Michael Jackson’s) Thriller and (Prince’s) Purple Rain,” Jayk said. “But then I started getting into music when I saw Guns N’ Roses and Aerosmith on MTV and I was like ‘Oh my God, this is so cool.’ And then I got into Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, Motley Crue, Def Leppard — a bunch of other bands — Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and all these other bands that were popular and I learned to play guitar.”
“I listen to mostly Japanese rock from the 90s and 2000s,” Lock said. “I like a lot of prog. I like a lot of Krautrock, electronic music. And me and Dominick were in death metal and thrash metal bands before, so it’s a little eclectic.”
“I like all the classics, classic rock,” added Jonny D. “I come from Michigan, so a lot of Motown is influencing my playing. Guns, Crue…all the standard stuff.”
“I like everything. I’m kind of that guy,” Dom said. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as bad music. Everything’s got sounds, it’s got notes. I dig everything. There’s something to dance to in every song.”
The only bands brought up more than once in our discussion are the ones with which the band probably shares the most musical DNA. But Wildstreet doesn’t exactly sound like Guns N’Roses or Motley Crue. Jayk’s voice can sound a little reminiscent of Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott from time to time on some songs, but it’s his natural timbre and tone, not a desire to emulate anyone. There are subtle influences throughout Wildstreet, and yet the band is its own thing, as if someone took all of the 80s Sunset Strip bands, a few British bands, and a little blues-influenced guitar and threw them all into a blender. The mix produced a completely new flavor that was fresh, yet familiar. Jayk simply called it “New York City rock and roll.”
The subject matter is mainly somewhat stereotypical rock lyrics — sex, drugs, and rock & roll. It’s music built for playing while having fun, not for having a sitdown to think about the complexities of life or philosophizing about one’s place in the universe. Yet, at the same time, they manage to remain interesting.
The III album kicks off with the energetic “Tennessee Cocaine,” a song with a catchy call-and-answer style chorus between Jayk and the other band members’ backing vocals, with great guitar work and an excellent foundation from the rhythm section of Lock and Jonny D. “Three Way Ride” is a song that would have been a smash hit if it had been released by Motley Crue in the late 80s. It’s a bit Crue-esque but the guitar riffs, lead lines, and Jayk’s vocals identify it as uniquely Wildstreet.
“Set it Off” is the album’s anthem and was one of the final songs written for III. The band is adept at writing great songs to sing along with during their live shows, much like “Poison Kiss” on the Wildstreet II…Faster…Louder! EP from 2017, and this one fits that mold.
“It is what we’re going for,” Jayk said of writing anthemic songs. “We’re writing stadium rock. It’s supposed to be instantly singable. Especially in the case of ‘Set it Off.’ We wrote the hook line and that was pretty much the whole song. We just do what we do. We have fun. We write songs that are catchy, and we think they sound good. I think other people do too.”
Wildstreet shows off its versatility by changing gears from the anthemic rock of “Set it Off” by transitioning into the ballad “Still Love You,” one of the first tracks written for the album. If you took the CD back to the mid-1980s and dropped it off at the right record station, this song would become a huge hit. It’s tailor made to slot in along the best of the 80s hair metal ballads.
“Born to Be,” a track Lock said was his favorite on the album, brings the tempo back up and it’s unsurprising the drummer favors this one because it’s got a good, steady, driving beat. It’s got another sing-song chorus with the backing vocals standing out again.
“Raise Hell” was another of the early tracks and another anthemic song designed to sing back to the band at live shows when the backing vocals kick in.
The album closes with a twist. “Mother” is a dark, seven-minute ride that stalks your senses. Tonally, but not instrumentally or sound-wise, it reminds me of “Captain Howdy,” the first section of Twisted Sister’s “Horror-Teria (The Beginning).” Eric, Dom, and Jonny all called it their favorite track from the album. It shows off Jayk’s vocal range, with high highs and low lows and it’s hypnotic as hell.
“Jimmie sent me a demo that he had done, and it had most of the instrumental figured out in a sense,” Jayk said of “Mother.” “And it was awesome, so I came up with a melody over it. I wrote the chorus and the verses, and then I went away on tour in Europe with a different band. Jimmie put the arrangement together right before we went into the studio in 2018. We sent it to Lock. Lock and Jimmie and all of us got together one time and rehearsed ‘Mother,’ and then we went to the studio and Lock killed it. He recorded like seven songs in seven hours or six hours or something crazy, and then the song kind of developed from there in the studio.”
This is a track the band killed live, so it’s easy to see the affection they have for it.
The album took a long time to coalesce. The band had been working on songs for about nine years. They recorded some demos, came back and revisited them, and kept writing.
“(Recording) the record was more about compiling things we already had and nailing them down to put it together,” Marlowe said. “In doing that, it created some sort of cohesive sounds by doing it all at once, even though the songs are all written in different periods.”
What does the band want the listener to take away from listening to III?
“That they want to listen to it again,” said Marlowe.
Given the quality of the album, that seems probable.
You can order III digitally through all the usual channels but for the best deal on the vinyl or CD you should visit the band’s website and check out all of their various bundle offers.
The full Wildstreet interview is below. I’ll admit that I lost my train of thought a couple of times with the phone being passed from one band member to the next, but I respect the band’s willingness to do the interview after enduring some off-day auto repairs and right in the middle of a long stretch of driving. And I respect their desire to all weigh in.
This is a band that deserves more attention.