Life for an independent pop band can be tough – so much so that it nearly led to long-standing Bristol/London collective Bare Jams calling it a day in early 2023.
Instead, the various members decided to plough on and start work on a new album, which is due to be released in September.
Band member Seb Skelly takes up the story: “The way things are for independent artists, especially bands in the UK at the moment, the opportunities and the cashflow is often quite an issue.
“And at the start of the year last year, we’d had a fairly good year but things were still not easy, and it kind of got to a point where we weren’t sure if it was going to be possible to stay on the road and also continue to make money around the band and around everything else.
“Within the band there were a couple of more optimistic people and a couple of slightly more realistic people – and the optimistic people in the band kind of rallied the rest of the guys round and we pulled ourselves through it, and that whole experience very much funnelled into writing this album about persevering through the hard times.”
On what we can expect from the new album, which is titled No Rain. No Flowers, Seb says: “It’s 10 tunes, it’s the first new music we’ve released in a little while…
“And the overarching ‘theme’, I guess, of the album is going through the hard times but always trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel, that without the rain, there can be no flowers.
“So it’s just persevere, get through it, bring your mates round you, friends and family are very important, that sort of overlying theme.”
The five-strong band of musical brothers (a sixth member, keyboard player Josh Parmenter, left at the end of last year) have quite a long and complex history, which began in 2011 when schoolmates Ollie Coombes (vocals/guitar) and Sam James (drums) formed a busking duo, writing and performing their own original material around their home county of Dorset.
Dave Tyler joined on bass shortly afterwards, beginning their transition into a fully-fledged band. Several personnel changes followed although it wasn’t until 2018 that the genre-mashing collective really found their stride, with a settled line-up that remained in place until Josh’s recent departure.
Seb has been a member for around nine years. “I play the trumpet, and I also play a bit of keyboards,” he explains, “and do a lot of the production and that side of things.
“The EP before this album that’s coming out in September, and this album, were all recorded and produced in-house with help from friends and stuff, but the majority done by us, and I do all the mixing production as well as trumpet playing and horn arranging.”
Seb, who concludes that being in an independent band is “not easy but it’s definitely worth it”, notes that “there has been a nice progression last year and this year’s looking promising as well”, suggesting that he and the others made the right decision to continue making music.
They will be performing in Cambridge for the very first time this month and Seb says there are “very fun vibes” at their gigs, which includes “lots of dancing, lots of smiling, lots of laughing”.
The Cambridge audience will be able to hear a few songs off the new album, including first single Plasters and (hopefully) forthcoming release Orange Sunshine, which has a great laid-back, ‘summertime’ feel to it.
Bare Jams play The Portland Arms this Friday (3 May). Tickets, priced £15.40 in advance, are available from theportlandarms.co.uk/wp/. For more on Bare Jams, go to barejams.com.
