Sixteen Jackies Explore Metropolitan Country With "My Baby's On Drugs"
“My Baby’s On Drugs” art by Jimmy Scantron
By Emily Herbein
Philadelphia four-piece Sixteen Jackies sits somewhere in the realm of glam, camp, and garage rock. They’re a band whose sound and aesthetic go hand in hand, and it feels wrong to take one without the other. That’s partly why they’ve been so quiet over the last couple of months. The first time I saw them was during 2019 Philly Music Fest’s Milkboy show with Ceramic Animal and Secret American (and what a perfectly curated lineup that was). My first impression of a Jackies’ set was that they somehow manage to evoke this overwhelming feeling of edgy confidence, and it’s due to the intentionality behind their performances: avant-garde costuming (which usually includes fake blood and a hockey mask) from singer Joey DeMarco, ‘70s chic, glitter-infused grooves from bass player Tim Davis, heavy-hitting riffs by Jeremiah Bull, and the driving sense of both chaos and control thanks to drummer Ian Staley. They’re a band who refuse to be anything but their unapologetic selves, and for that, I promise no other Philly group is quite like them.
Their forthcoming release, “My Baby’s On Drugs,” peels back a layer of their typical glam psychedelia in favor for something more country-laden. My immediate impression is deeply rooted in the delicate and seemingly-careless vocal tones, intentionally patient timing, and a lightly filtered nostalgia. Lyrically, there’s a push and pull between knowing someone is bad for you and then justifying all the reasons why they’re not actually that bad. “My Baby’s On Drugs” is about an underlying challenge within a relationship told through a rose-colored soundscape which almost puts me on edge. Someone in this scenario is about to snap, but judging from the relatively sweet instrumentation and the detailed narrative of a relationship that’s on the brink, you don’t know who it’s going to be. Because of that, there’s still the same sense of underlying drama that makes a Sixteen Jackies song, a Sixteen Jackies song.
The band was kind enough to talk to me about this early release, what they’re doing to prepare for a full EP, and how they’re coping with quarantine after ending normalcy with a sold-out show at Union Transfer back in March.
What have you been doing since March?
Joey: We haven’t been playing. My boyfriend has asthma so I’ve been strict. I haven’t hung out hung out with anyone since March. All of my risk-taking is just working in a restaurant. We have some stuff that’s waiting — the ideal would be playing a release show rather than sending this out into the void of the Internet.
Tim: I think we’re better suited for live performances just with Joey and everything that he does on stage. I feel like something’s missing when you don’t get to see that.
Emily: Right, it’s the aesthetic. You have a very clearly defined image that I think enhances what you hear.
Joey: For the past month or so we’ve just been gearing up for this release. It’s just a stand-alone single. It was originally going to be a part of this kind of “rebel without a cause” themed EP. We were planning ahead and hoping for two EPs in the future, but this one was recorded during the sessions for our upcoming EP. So we’re just putting something out there so people know we’re still here.
Tim: We recorded this during the summer of 2019.
Joey: We started working on the Hostile Architecture EP last year, and just as it was about to be finished we had a tour with The Districts, and then right as that ended we were getting a single mastered. But now it’s just a lot of waiting for the right time to put things out. We’re also working on a song for the Philly Holiday Album.
Has quarantine forced any sort of creative push? Did you take time apart from writing with each other, did you feel burnt out? What’s the state of the band been like?
Joey: Jeremiah put out his country EP.
Jeremiah: I feel like I’ve hit the full spectrum of emotion. Trying to create so much, having creative burnout. We’re all able to record on our own, so we’ve all been working on our own things and experimenting and hopefully, that will lead to some ideas when we’re able to play together again. I set up a home studio, all the other boys have home studios.
Joey: I’m currently in a dungeon here.
Ian: I’m recording some of my own projects, and Tim and Jer have been helpful with that. Everyone else in the band knows how to record and use the interface and I’ve only ever watched, so it’s cool for me to get involved with that. I have some cool ideas that I want to materialize, but that’s been the thing I’m the most excited for, just having anything to record again.
Emily: People have been really creative with releases made in quarantine and become self-taught at the production side of the industry in order to keep themselves relevant and able to put out music for the sake of both listener content and self-care.
Joey: This Christmas song is our first real attempt at everyone working on their own pieces separately. We just started that.
Tim: We’re excited. It sounds okay so far. Joey did a bunch of different vocal tracks — which he also did on the single.
Emily: Excellent segway.
Joey: “My Baby’s On Drugs” — I did some 3-part harmonies and callback vocals tracks. Ian used a radiator in his drum kit. But backup vocals can really make or break something.
Tim: I think we definitely tried to cover an aesthetic that we haven’t touched before. The slap guitar, the ‘50s callback style. We definitely like trying different things. A lot of our practices are just a lot of playing around with genres. The next thing we’re going to do is * reggae only. * [not really]
Emily: Do you think this single is reflective of the next wave of your sound or is this just a one-off?
Joey: The next EP is completely done, and that one kind of goes all over the place. It’s definitely not reflective of a ‘50s vibe. There is an old-school country throwback, and I think “My Baby’s On Drugs” hits a kind of middle ground as far as country goes. It’s like a Patsy Cline feel.
Jeremiah: It’s metropolitan.
Joey: Metropolitan Country.
Emily: I couldn’t have said it better.
Joey: That was part of an attempt at an EP. We recorded it at Sun Studios, and we still have to tinker with those ideas. There’s a set of six songs that go with that vibe.
Tim: When we were on the tour with Sun Seeker and Duncan Fellows, Joey’s dad bought some time at Sun Studios where Elvis Costello, Jerry Lee Lewis, all of these incredible artists have played. We had a day off and recorded a bunch of stuff and we were really feeling the vibe. So we have all of those songs from the Sun session. We just have to figure out what we want to do with it.
Emily: I love how it’s going to be reflective of such an ultra-specific time period during your lives that isn’t the pandemic. Like a once in a lifetime opportunity to record at Sun Studios and curate this iconic feeling based on the precise time and place where you got to bring those tracks to life. That’s going to come through when people get to hear it.
Joey: That was probably the best run of Sixteen Jackies, those six months leading up to quarantine. We played Union Transfer and sold out with The Districts two days before the lockdown.
Tim: That was the weirdest night.
Emily: That was my last show before quarantine and I was like, half-on edge the whole time.
Tim: It felt weird and irresponsible, but also sort of like people really needed this. Nobody knew what was going to happen next. It felt like the end of the world.
Joey: And it was.
Tim: “My Baby’s On Drugs” was also — to circle back — recorded with Hunter Davidsohn who’s worked with Sheer Mag. He’s awesome. He’s really fun to work with. The cool thing about Hunter is that we always get to record onto analog tape, and he’s got old drum kits. He’s one of those guys who’s always on eBay or Craig’s List looking for music equipment to flip.
Ian: I got to use one of the first models of Slingerland drum sets, and they still had the original calfskin heads on it. He found these kits at an estate sale and he stitched the calfskin back together and fixed them up. I’d never played on anything that old so it had a really unique sound. He’s a master at mixing drums and pulling out specific tones.
Joey: You left out the most important part!
Ian: The drum set was in the corner of his studio next to a radiator, and for “My Baby’s On Drugs,” I didn’t have a ton of percussion ideas. So on the spot, I just started looking around the room and decided to hit the radiator with my hand and a woodblock. We put some microphones on it and it sounds great.
Jeremiah: He’s good at what he does so it definitely attributed to the sound of the single.
Sixteen Jackies, photo by Bob Sweeney
Lyrically, what’s the story behind the song?
Joey: I know that I wrote most of it on a drunk bike ride in Richmond, Virginia, probably six or seven years ago. My bike ride home at the time was thirty-five minutes, across a bridge, and I just got very comfortable belting out these songs while I was alone. At the time I was really into Willie Nelson and Patsy Cline, so at the time I thought I was making a funny take on the country songwriting formula. And obviously, I know people who * do a lot of drugs. * But I think the song solidified into something a little more than a joke song. That’s how I originally thought of it. It’s about the idea of dependency. The narrator of the song needs this boy, this boy is tripping all the time and needs stimulus all the time, and it talks about “who needs who more.” You can dig into it.
Emily: The message is surface-level relatable for sure. That feeling of wanting to be wanted, and then realizing that thought kind of consumes you is scary. I think so many people can relate to that gut-punch of realizing that there’s an imbalance of codependency with a partner.
Joey: It’s that need to feel needed
Emily: It’s such a toxic feeling.
Joey: It all kind of just came out at once. I had reservations about using it for Sixteen Jackies at first because I take the lyrics to our songs pretty seriously. The world needs more goofy gay love songs, though.
Emily: I think for most of last November through January, “Power” was my ultimate like, “get ready to fuck around Fishtown” kind of amp up song that I’d loop while I got ready. It made my Wrapped, so.
Joey: And that song is kind of goofy and dramatic too. Like the, “WhY CaN’t YoU cOmE oVeR tOnIgHt” is campy. You’re supposed to be laughing at the intensity.
(Listen for reference. This is the only song that mattered to me for weeks. What a bassline, too.)
Emily: It’s just such a relatable phrase and feeling where you have to step back and check yourself about why you’re so frustrated with someone. But — when I was talking with Mike and Chris at Born Losers, they said that when they sign a band, they have to have an artist with a clear vision and a specific sort of vibe that they can latch onto, and immediately I was like, “of course, Sixteen Jackies belong here.” You have one of the most unique aesthetics of any Philly band and you keep your branding consistent and authentic to your sound and your beliefs. So I understand needing to share something visually.
Tim: Thank you, that was very nice.
Joey: Thank you — hopefully by the spring we can get things moving again.
As soon as we’re able to, what’s the first thing you’re doing when shows are back on?
Joey: Releasing “Hostile Architecture” and playing a ridiculous release show.
Tim: I set up a tape recorder and I want to set that up in Ian’s basement and write.
Joey: Being able to play music with other people is definitely what I miss most next to drinking in public.
What’s the story with the cover art?
Joey: Jimmy Scantron designed it. He came through. He’s so talented. He’s really good at capturing specific textures that give you the ‘50s, ‘60s vibe. I found a bunch of old photos of gay couples from that time period and I knew I wanted to make one of them loo kind of scary and we went through a couple different versions to figure out how to show that he’s kind of messed up. Ultimately we landed on scratching out his eyes. That doesn’t really have much to do with drugs, but the feeling is there.
Emily: That’s like the thing you do after a breakup when you don’t want to look at those pictures anymore, so it kind of still plays on the codependency thing. Is he doing any more cover art?
Joey: He did the art for Hostile Architecture, and bless him. I wrote him the most epic, eight-paragraph writeup email with the story and the song narrative and the vibe. He pulled something out that was gorgeous.
Emily: The thing about him is that you can always tell when he works on something, no matter who the client is. He seems like a perfect collaboration for you guys, and that’s another thing that I think quarantine has inadvertently given us. A lot of artists across mediums and genres have been working together who maybe otherwise wouldn’t have.
Joey: Yeah, I’ve been feeling great about every step of this process. There was nothing that I questioned. We also have a lyric video for the track. That was a whole thing. I really like the director Herschell Gordon Lewis who made the movie Blood Feast that our song is named after. He has this really obscure movie called Gruesome Twosome about a mother and son who own a wig shop and lure in girls to scalp for their wigs. In the middle of the movie, there’s like a 3-minute scene of these girls in a bedroom listening to the radio and eating KFC. Specifically KFC. They just dance, waving chicken legs, and no one talks. It’s perfect. I saw it at this film screening in Philly right before Herschell Gordon Lewis died. We spliced it up and submitted it to Born Losers to put on YouTube and it got flagged immediately. Jeremiah saved it and ended it up cutting it up and finding cool footage from archives.org.
Jeremiah: I found a couple of movies and shorts, like educational films from the ‘60s. There’s one with a bunch of kids in clown makeup and the whole thing is saying, “take a good look at yourself.” There’s another one, an internal training video for Sears’ employees, and there’s a segment of a couple from a British TV show dancing, there’s stuff from Gruesome Twosome. I cut it all up and tried to match it to the beat so nothing gets flagged.
Emily: I love how DIY that is.
Tim: We’re also coming out with custom Croc gems that you can put in your shoes, specific to this release. Kidding, but I think that’s a good idea. Maybe you can make a poll to see if there’s an audience for that. It’s kind of expensive to make custom Croc charms but if we have enough orders...
“My Baby’s On Drugs” is out Friday Dec. 11th via Born Losers Records. Click below to pre-save to streaming platforms.