This week DeBraun profiles Jordan Hall of the group, the Jivehounds.
Jordan Hall is a Lexington native who first picked up the guitar at 14. He spent time jamming with friends and experimenting musically. Hall says while he started teaching himself, he found it was easier to learn by watching and listening.
“I started kind of learning some blues riffs and stuff and that’s kind of how my, still is [laughs] how I do things, I never really got too technical into it, I should have, I always just kind of better with sound and like watching videos of people and then started playing with my buddy Dan, we had the two piece, we played Chuck Berry covers and stuff like that [laughs] when we were like, 14, 15.”
Hall’s relationship with his friend Daniel Kerwin continued as they began learning more and more music together.
In 2012 Hall and Kerwin began writing under Kerwin’s moniker Jive Hounds. A year later Kerwin passed away just as the band was taking off. As Hall explains, it was a difficult situation for many different reasons.
“We had some recordings and we were about to get that out, we had some tour dates set up and we were going go try to do it, we were playing pretty tight and then of course the bad news came so that was really hard and we didn’t really know what to do with it, we still had these tour dates and we still wanted to do it because Dan would have been like, ‘get it done’ and it was rocky at first, we jammed pretty much our first two or three shows, after that we took a break, I didn’t know if I still wanted to keep doing the Jive Hounds cause it wasn’t the same or like, we just stuck with it.”
Hall has kept the name and the band to honor his friend. While the Jive Hounds have dealt with many trials and tribulations, Hall sees a bright future. The band is releasing its first record BIG Dog, named in honor of Kerwin, and Hall says while it has taken three years for the album to be finished, there’s a lot more music coming from the band.
“Since it took so long, my goal is to really just get this get this one out there, we’re already working on the new CD already so, my goal this year is to just put music out and actually get it recorded cause I feel like that’s what, we’ve, we’ve had so many stumbles getting along to this day, so I wanna take advantage of it.”
Jordan Hall performs with the Jive Hounds and Tony and the Tonies. The Jive Hounds will be performing at their CD release party on December 12th at the Green Lantern. More information about Hall and the Jive Hounds can be found here.
