Jefl and Hyde

Jefl & Hyde was a glint in everyone’s eye in the summer of 2005. John, Finn and anybody else who would jam with them that season would spend weekends playing maybe half of really dodgy covers of The Frames, Damien Rice and The Beatles. They could never finish one without thinking of a new one to try and play – very DaVinci-esque weren’t they?!…............................................................................................................After a while, John came up with a riff that resulted in The Fat Controller, the first step that we took down the road of the original music scene. It always had to happen..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Recruitment of a drummer and a bass player was next on the agenda. Liam Hayes was the first to step forward with a pair of sticks in his hand and a metronome ticking overtime in his head. His unique rhythmic ideas help form the Jeflers’ sound. He refuses to do anything too commonly................................................................................................................................................................................................................. The search for a bass player was not as easy a task. In the end, Eoghan Slattery was the man for the job. Eoghan had little or no experience with a string instrument before Jefl & Hyde, but over the next few months he redefined the words “commitment” and “dedication” through his constant practising of his new found love. He raised the standard of practice and work rate in Jefl & Hyde to a new level, this an undeniable fact......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... John, Eoghan, Finn and Liam; the acronym of their names formed “Jefl”, and Hyde was adopted to suggest maybe a different personality when their “other half” or musical sides took over, in relation to the famous Robert Louis Stephenson novella “Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde”. The line-up was complete..................................................................................................................................................................................................................To put Jimi Hendrix’s question to the band, “Are you experienced?”, the answer is definitely yes. Every one of us have been engrossed in music since we were knee-high. John has been playing clarinet for nearly 7 years now. Both he and Eoghan play tenor saxophone. All four of us are well familiar with a guitar. Liam is very experienced with a clarinet too, and his drumming improves greatly with every passing day. Finn could nearly be described as virtuosic at this stage when it comes to his guitar and piano, born from the uterus of sheer musicalness! He’s been known to play a violin every now and then as well... Eoghan plays piano and flute in his spare time as well as everything else. Three members of the band are also involved in the Nenagh CBS Concert Band. John plays clarinet with the Tipperary Millennium Orchestra. Finn travels to Limerick twice a week to take all his various music lessons. It’s never been one genre of music for Jefl & Hyde. Music grades, broken strings, chipped reeds, sore fingers and jaws, blisters, fatigue from playing too much, pen and staves, angry music teachers, scratched jazz records, frustrated minds at composition, and empty cups of tea and Mars bar wrappers have all been passed, seen too often, heard and had. Music has, and hopefully will always be our lives......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... In terms of what Jefl & Hyde have achieved as a band so far, the slate has yet to be chiselled to dust. We play regularly enough with the other local bands in our home town of Nenagh and have recently recorded our very first demo with the mythically experienced Dave and Alan Spain and Martin “Twisty” O’Brien of The Irish Pink Floyd and Royal Flush fame, and that’s about it so far. But what one has to take into account, is that we were a group of 18/19 year olds when I wrote this and we had only been together for roughly a year. For the moment the future looks bright, with our ability to play together improving all the time and our sound ever-growing more fresh and unique. We are enjoying our music, and we hope you will too!
***There's very little that we don't listen to really! From Mozart, Bernstein, Lloyd Webber, Howard Shore, Gershwin, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, John Coltrane right up to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Kinks, and as far as The Frames, Fra