{"id":39652,"date":"2020-12-15T06:03:45","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T19:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/?p=39652"},"modified":"2020-12-15T06:56:05","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T19:56:05","slug":"jess-harnell-of-rock-sugar-interview-kickstarter-reinventinator-2020-mashup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/2020\/12\/jess-harnell-of-rock-sugar-interview-kickstarter-reinventinator-2020-mashup\/","title":{"rendered":"Jess Harnell of Rock Sugar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cThe cool thing about it that\u2019s really great is that if you ever liked anything about metal or pop or the 80\u2019s this is your band because it takes the stuff that you already love and gives it to you in a new way combined with other stuff that you\u2019ll love even if sometimes you won\u2019t admit that you love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

From campaign: What is Rock Sugar?! Rock Sugar is tough to describe… It’s kind of a cover band, except they don’t play any traditional covers. It’s kind of a mashup band, except they don’t make any traditional mashups and NEVER use any samples of any kind. Rock Sugar takes the best and biggest pop hits of the 80’s (and with the new album, pop hits all the way up to today!) and mashes them up with hard rock and heavy metal classics! Throw in the fact that it’s fronted by Jess Harnell, the voice of your childhood (Animaniacs, Transformers, Crash Bandicoot, Rick and Morty), and Rock Sugar truly is a one of a kind experience!<\/p>\n

At home, we gave our mate Jess Harnell of Rock Sugar a call to talk about the amazing Rock Sugar, the band, their Kickstarter campaign<\/a> for the new Rock Sugar album \u2018ReInventinator\u2019, the process of making a mash-up, 2020, and so much more\u2026 we can tell you that Rock Sugar are by far one of the Best Things You’ve Never Heard! Trust us when we say check this band out…<\/p>\n

OK, Jess, for those that aren\u2019t aware of the amazingness of Rock Sugar, can you give us the abridged version of the Rock Sugar story\u2026<\/strong>
\nWell basically the Rock Sugar story came about, Troy, because my mind works in really weird ways and I\u2019m the first person to admit it, and years and years ago I\u2019ve always had this proclivity for singing Steve Perry stuff, Steve Perry was always my favourite singer and some guy happened to hear me and Chuck, Chuck is the guitar player singing a Journey tune at Karaoke or something and said \u201cHey I have this island resort and I can\u2019t pay you guys but if you\u2019ll fly out there we\u2019ll take care of flying you out, we\u2019ll get you a great place to stay, you can do all these activities for free and you sing four Journey songs every day at sunset for everybody.\u201d I thought well that sounds like the easiest gig ever, so we went and we kayaked, we trapezed, and ate grapes and did all these great things. We were sitting on the beach and I said dude, you know what would be a great idea for a band? I said imagine if like an 80\u2019s hair metal band, our favourites like Def Leppard or Guns N’ Roses, they got shipwrecked, it\u2019s the end of the 80\u2019s on a deserted island and had nothing to listen to but pop hits from the 80\u2019s, and it eventually brainwashed them into thinking that metal and pop were the same thing, that pop was metal and metal was pop. He said, well how would that work? I said I don\u2019t know man, like you could play \u2018Enter Sandman\u2019 and I could sing \u2018Don\u2019t Stop Believin\u2019\u2019 over it and we could call it \u2018Don\u2019t Stop The Sandman\u2019. So we tried it and sure enough it worked and yes we had to mess with a few things to make it fit but over all it worked. So we filmed a video, the video went viral, all of a sudden we had all these offers to play all these huge shows and had millions of hits on videos and we\u2019re opening up on bills for Aerosmith and AC\/DC and Linkin Park for crowds of 50,000 people looking at each other backstage going this was just a goof, it started as a goof! The cool thing about it that\u2019s really great is that if you ever liked anything about metal or pop or the 80\u2019s this is your band because it takes the stuff that you already love and gives it to you in a new way combined with other stuff that you\u2019ll love even if sometimes you won\u2019t admit that you love it. I\u2019ll never forget one of my favourite images of the whole Rock Sugar experience was playing at the Download festival the second time and I think there were like 70,000 people in front of us and we were doing this song called \u2018Shook Me Like A Prayer\u2019 which is a combination of AC\/DC\u2019s \u2018You Shook Me All Night Long\u2019 and Madonna\u2019s \u2018Like A Prayer\u2019 and I\u2019m looking out there and I\u2019m looking at all these biker guys in their cut off Slayer t-shirts and their huge moustaches singing along to Madonna and that is something that you don\u2019t see every day *laughs*. That was a very cool thing, Troy and that\u2019s still what we\u2019re trying to do, and we\u2019ll talk about the return of Rock Sugar, but from the beginning the intent of this was always for people to have fun to let yourself have a good time and that\u2019s what it\u2019s done and that\u2019s what it has been about.<\/p>\n

You guys brought out one of the most amazing albums in 2010 with \u2018ReImaginator\u2019, and now you\u2019re back with a Kickstarter campaign<\/a> for awesomely named \u2018ReInventinator!\u2019 Give us a bit of an idea behind the campaign and why this was the best way for you to get your music to the world\u2026<\/strong>
\nDude great question and thank you for the compliment on the name that thing I don\u2019t even know where that came to me, but I thought well ReImaginator\u2026 ReInventinator\u2026 that works. Basically we are in a unique set of circumstances and I can\u2019t tell you publicly although we\u2019re buds so I can tell you sometime off the record but we actually got sued off the first album and the thing is I do a lot of voices, that\u2019s my primary occupation I always thought I was going to be a rock star but I became a studio singer before I became a voice actor but I became a voice actor and I\u2019ve worked on all these very popular movies and TV shows that you\u2019ll know like Anamaniacs, Rick & Morty, and Transformers and everything in between, I\u2019ve done voices for pretty much everything. So I\u2019m pretty good at changing my voice and mimicking people, and all over the Rock Sugar album as you know, Troy I\u2019m imitating singers, well one singer heard a track from the Rock Sugar album and I guess the impression was a little too close because he actually sued us for sampling his voice which we did not do, we\u2019ve never sampled anyone or anything, no vocals are sampled, no instruments are sampled it\u2019s all us but the impression was really good. So he sued us and said you can\u2019t use my voice without permission I\u2019m suing you, so we had to go to court with this guy who\u2019s one of my favourite singers of all time and prove that it wasn\u2019t him singing, but at the end of the day it was thing whole kind of legal mish mosh that they said \u201cwell when we granted rights for this stuff we didn\u2019t realise it was derivative works which is more complicated than standard covers\u201d because we don\u2019t really do covers we change things drastically and they said \u201cand therefore you can not sell your music online, you can\u2019t sell it on Amazon, you can\u2019t sell it on Spotify, you can\u2019t sell it on iTunes. You can play live but you can\u2019t sell your music online.\u201d OK, well shoot\u2026<\/p>\n

Then a couple of years ago, maybe four years ago we said ok, you know what man, we\u2019ve got all these great ideas, the first album was so well received we got to do all these great things and we\u2019ve had a few years off, let\u2019s make a new album and make sure it\u2019s better than the first and I\u2019ll tell you more about that in a minute. So we did, got the album all done and thought well we can\u2019t sell this thing so how are we going to get people to hear it? The problem is it\u2019s not even about making money it\u2019s about paying for stuff because when you make an album and as you know Troy, on the first album \u2018ReImaginator\u2019 the production was really high level, and on this album it\u2019s higher level, it\u2019s even higher, and so that doesn\u2019t come cheap, that\u2019s a lot of time in the studio, that\u2019s a lot of time getting things just right, obviously any royalties that have to get paid we\u2019re gonna make sure we pay those, we have to pay for videos, we have to pay for production costs, we have to pay for photographs and licensing and there\u2019s a lot of stuff and a lot of costs that go into it. So we said what\u2019s a creative way that we can cover these costs while at the same time sticking to rule number one which is again, how can people have fun with this? How can we make it fun? So I said you know what? We\u2019ll do a Kickstarter<\/a>, we\u2019ll give the music away and they can get all kinds of other cool shit that we\u2019ll throw in there whether it\u2019s the bottom level which is a Rock Sugar logo face mask, all the way to coming and hanging out with the band at a party, or whatever else is on that thing. There are so many things on there and they\u2019re all really fun and in addition to those things we\u2019re saying and here\u2019s the music for you to enjoy on top of that so it\u2019s creating fun. Plus there\u2019s going to be a scavenger hunt we\u2019re doing all kinds of giveaways, there\u2019s things where you can participate in a virtual record release party with the band where we listen to the record top to bottom and take comments and answer questions, then there\u2019s a live party and live performance, and all kinds of stuff. So we were just looking for a way seeing as Rock Sugar is a creatively driven project as it is we thought well what\u2019s the best way to market it and this seemed like the best way, and what I like is if you jump on the Kickstarter<\/a> page and whether or not you choose to back it go on there anyway and just watch some of the videos because we made a dag video about being locked up in a basement that\u2019s really funny, and there\u2019s all kinds of music videos and there\u2019s bonus clips you can listen to and all kinds of other really fun stuff. Again, its just about having a good time and I think the Kickstarter<\/a> page does that really well.<\/p>\n

So can you take us on a journey of creating a Rock Sugar mashup?<\/strong>
\nYes, it\u2019s kind of interesting *laughs* each one is different and I\u2019ll sidebar with this Troy just to get your mind working and this I\u2019m not gonna tell you, you can hear it and then tell me what you thought of it, we are very ambitious in some of these tunes, I think on \u2018Reimaginator\u2019 the first album I think the highest number of songs we had represented in one tune was five, right? Well on this new album that\u2019s like child\u2019s play because a lot of them have five, one of them has twelve, ok, twelve songs in one song, and all twelve of those songs are by two bands that have nothing in common, they have no common ground except they\u2019re both awesome and you can\u2019t even imagine and if I told you these two bands which I won\u2019t you\u2019d say there\u2019s no way that those two things go together, but they totally do and it\u2019s basically this thing is like our magnum opus, it\u2019s our \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019 I don\u2019t know how we\u2019re gonna top it, so if we do a third album we\u2019re gonna have a hard time doing that. So in putting the mashups together, my favourite anecdote to simplify it for you is to tell you this\u2026 when \u2018Don\u2019t Stop The Sandman\u2019 came about which was the Journey and Metallica thing which is still online, you can go onto YouTube and watch that it\u2019s really fun. We were sitting on the beach and I said \u201cwhat if we combined Metallica and Journey\u201d and it was just the first thing I thought of, and Chucky goes \u201cYeah how would that work?\u201d and I go *starts singing it* \u201cwe could do that\u201d and he went \u201chang on a minute\u201d and he starts playing it \u201cyeah yeah that would be great\u201d and I\u2019m just like \u201cwoo hoo\u201d. Then it was Chucky\u2019s turn to come up with a song, we\u2019re really good partners and we work very well together, we come back off the island and he goes into a studio and four days later he calls me up and says \u201cDude, you\u2019ve gotta hear this\u201d and sends me this thing and it\u2019s a skeleton track and what a skeleton track is you where you take part of the original album and you assemble them in Pro Tools and it\u2019s a train wreck because all the keys are different and they don\u2019t sound smooth and the transitions are terrible but it\u2019 a way to get the ideas for the arrangement for the song. He goes \u201cLook man, I\u2019ve combined Queen\u2019s \u2018We Will Rock You\u2019 and \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019 with Motley Crue\u2019s \u2018Kickstart My Heart\u2019 check it out, \u2018We Will Kickstart Your Rhapsody.\u201d And I go \u201cOh my god\u201d and he played it for me and said \u201cI\u2019ve worked on it for four days it\u2019s really good\u201d and I said \u201cDude it\u2019s fantastic you did such a great job\u201d and I had gone over to his studio to hear it and he played it for me and I said \u201cWow that\u2019s great I\u2019ve gotta go do a cartoon\u201d and he goes \u201cWhoa, dude, nope it\u2019s your turn you\u2019ve gotta come up with a song\u201d and I go \u201cBut I\u2019ve gotta go, I\u2019m running late\u201d and he goes \u201cNo you\u2019ve gotta come up with a song\u201d and I said \u201cshoot shoot\u2026 ok hang on let\u2019s do it right now let\u2019s get it out of the way\u201d and I go \u201cwhat\u2019s a great riff?\u201d he goes \u201cCrazy Train\u201d Ozzy Osbourne, so I go *sings riff* and the verse goes \u201cJessie is a friend\u2026.\u201d I go \u201cDude you could sing \u2018Jessie\u2019s Girl\u2019\u201d and he goes \u201cWait a minute, no you couldn\u2019t\u201d and I go \u201cyeah, yeah try it\u201d and he goes \u201cYou son of a bitch.\u201d That took me like fifteen seconds *laughs* and that\u2019s not to say that they all did that and they were all that easy but I just think it\u2019s funny because you\u2019ve got Chuck over there like Beethoven\u2019s laboratory and I would throw things out in thirty seconds.<\/p>\n