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You don't know Jack Swift — yet. And they're OK with that. The jam band, currently comprised of Ben Sharon (bassist), Jeremiah "JC" Mothersell (vocals, guitars and harmonica), Chris Daniels (drums), Darryle Brown (alto saxophone), Pat McDermott (keyboard) and Tom Ward (trumpet), is finishing up their "You Don't Know Jack Tour Spectacular," the band's first full-fledged tour, which is coming full circle with a July 2 show at Lovin' Cup, the same place the tour kicked off May 28.
Jack Swift has made stops at cities around the Northeast, including Cleveland, Quakertown, Pa. and Buffalo. "We're basically just going to everybody's hometown," Mothersell says.
Comprised of current and former Rochester Institute of Technology students, Jack Swift's sound is a cross between Dave Matthews Band and Blues Traveler, with some jazz and bluegrass influences mixed in.
"I think we're only compared to Dave Matthews Band because we have horns and we improvise, but really we're inspired by pretty much everything," Mothersell says. "We want to find our niche — we want to sound different from what's going on right now in popular music."
In fact, they're trying to stay away from pop music so much the band hasn't even heard of Lady GaGa. "Never heard of it," says Sharon. The band met three years ago when Brown and Mothersell lived on the same floor in the college dorms. The rest of the band met during a jam session at RIT.
In 2007, and again this year, Jack Swift won RIT's version of American Idol, Tiger Idol. "I think the first year was the toughest because it was one of our first big gigs, and a lot of the other competition was already known at RIT," Brown says. "The fact that we won was a surprise."
Jack Swift is currently working on a full-length album to be released by the end of the year. "It's probably going to be at least a double album," Mothersell says. "We have lots of original material."
Even though Daniels is set to begin his post-college life as a software engineer just four days after the end of the tour, he says the band has every intention of continuing to make music and play local and national shows.
"We want to get our music out there as much as possible and continue just to have fun with it — that's the most important part," Brown says. "If we make it big and get famous, I like that spotlight, but if we don't and we just continue to just have fun on a nightly basis like we've been doing, I'll do this for the rest of my life."
