Author: Emma Loggins
Date: 2009-04-23


Interview:
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Josh Jenkins from the band Green River Ordinance. Here's what he had to say:

I know that you guys met in Texas but can you elaborate a little bit about how you came together?

Josh Jenkins: I met Jamie and Geoff in high school through a friend. They were a blues rock band, and I had just started playing and writing some songs when I found out they needed a singer. So I kind of met up with them when we were 15/16, and we just started jamming in their garage. I had never played in a band. So that's how I kind of got into the band. Then Joshua Wilkerson, the guitar player, and he joined about senior year. We lost the other guitar player, and Josh was a friend of mine... I knew he loved music, and we had talked about playing together. So he came to sit in and jam with us, and that kind of formed that. Then we met Tim in college.

Cool. So how long have you guys been together now?

Josh Jenkins: It's been about 6 years with this line-up. I've been in the band since I was 16, so it's been a few years. I'm 23 now, but Jamie and Geoff have been in the band since they were 14 or 15, so they had been in it for a long time. As far as the line-up we have now, it's been about 5 or 6 years.

Now how would you describe the band's musical evolvement since the beginning of the band?

Josh Jenkins: I think it started as a definite blues rock band and I had never really ever... I was never really into blues/rock. When I joined the band I always drew from a different well. I liked old school country, pop, and pop rock so that kind of fused into what they were doing and kind of took the direction that it is now... which I think is melodic pop/rock.

Can you elaborate a little bit about the song writing process and why it's so important to you to keep it in house?

Josh Jenkins: That's the cool part about being in a band. Making your own stuff and being proud of it that way. To mess around with something so long, and you're so invested in it. Over the years we always tried to challenge what we were doing and look up to bands... To see what we can learn from bands. We've always really loved to write our own stuff. However, it starts with me or Joshua, then we bring it to the band, and work it out that way. It's just such a cool process to call your own. To have your own stuff and to be invested in it... and be far beyond playing it. In the creation of it and over the last couple of years, we just sort of tried to challenge our writing and take the songs we have and keep challenging them.

What would you say is the most personal or meaningful song to you that you guys have either written on this album or your previous work?

Josh Jenkins: On this album there are a few. The one that hits close to home... I think you could probably ask us all and we'll have a different answer for it. But a song "Out of My Hands" is something that feels close to home in the sense where you feel kind of autobiographical in some sense. And then a song called "On Your Own" where a song is written about a friend and stuff like that where you feel there is personal investment, because not every song you write is a song that is personal. So some of these songs become or start out very personal.