The JGT
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The JGT

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"Just Good Times with JGT in Rochester"

John Galt Theory is one of the region’s busiest bands.
They’re fine songwriters, too.
Hear for yourself Saturday when John Galt Theory debuts its six-song CD at Hollywood Gardens in Rochester.
That’s a nice, intimate setting for an acoustic-based duo whose members admit they don’t quite know how to categorize their music. Some clubs advertise them as rock; others say they’re jazz.
“We used to say it’s singer-songwriter alternative-country-soul-rock,” said Dean Kostlich, who composes John Galt Theory with fellow Hopewell High School grad John Wiatrak.
Musical partners since age 13, lately, they’ve used a variation of the band’s initials to tout their live shows as “Just Good Times.”
JGT’s groove- and melody-laden album, “August of Some Year,” centers on lyrical themes of love, loyalty, faith, sex and time.
The post-breakup leadoff track “The Incident,” begins ”All that you have given me/Is a temporary insanity/That burns me and harms me to my soul. A lesson learned from every scar/ I wish it hadn’t gone so far/Never want to feel like this again.”
After a pause for a low-key acoustic guitar passage, Wiatrak’s voice, weighted by hard-earned wisdom, cuts to the core: ”Chemistry/was all you ever meant to me/I’ve got to free myself from fantasy.” Then he starts scat singing, as Kostlich kicks in on the second verse with jazzy guitar riffs.
Another of their songs, “Poppa John’s Mountain,” is inspired by the hilly Golf Course Road neighborhood in Hopewell Township where Wiatrak grew up.
In the late 1990s, Wiatrak and Kostlich were part of a rock and jam-band that took a stab at the musical dream by moving to New York. In a nod to its hometown, the band called itself Aliquippa, a word that didn’t exactly flow off the tongues of native New Yorkers.
Many New Yorkers wanted to give it an Arabic-sounding pronunciation, “like ‘ALL-le-quip-a,’” Wiatrak said.
“But there’d always be some guy in a suit in the back who’d shout, ‘Hey, Mike Ditka!’” Kostlich said.
After a few years in New York, the band moved back to Beaver County, renaming itself McFuzz, plugging away a while longer before breaking up.
“We weren’t in our wheel house, playing the music that spoke to us,” Kostlich said. “So we recalibrated and reformed to play the music that works best for us.”
Kostlich and Wiatrak became a duo that took its name from a character in Ayn Rand’s acclaimed 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged.” The John Galt Theory discovered plenty of bars in Beaver and Allegheny counties were willing to hire a multi-genre duo with shared lead vocals.
“We played 120 shows last year,” Kostlich said.
Those venues included Clark’s in Moon Township, 1810 Tavern in Bridgewater, Penn Brewery in Pittsburgh and the former Lockhouse 6 in Industry. - Timesonline


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