HOLY ROLLER Brother JT
Oct 31, 2008
Spreading the rock gospel and squeezin' that sweet ol' jelly roll.
BY A.D. AMOROSI
John Terlesky, the Philadelphia singer, lyricist and guitarist they call Brother JT, makes holy rolling garage rock touched as much by the divinity of the Trinity as it is the odd gods of spindly psychedelia.
Hallelujah.
From 2002's Spirituals through to more recent fare such as Doomsday Rock, Holy Ghost Stories and the newly-released Jelly Roll Gospel, Terlesky's openly flaunted his continuing fascination with God's music - or at least his idea of His idea. "Firstly, I was raised Catholic, and that tends to stick with you, so things are still going through that old filter," says JT.
Part of it - Terlesky's big IT - like the album titles, and even the name Brother JT, is just kind of a motif or hook. "Somewhere along the way I started taking the tongue-in-cheek approach of the whole Brother JT thing being a 'ministry' and the shows would be like tent meeting sermons, etcetera, except with acid rock instead of genuine gospel music. Kinda jokey; but not completely."
Because Terlesky's songs were and are generally sincere about what they're trying to say (á la Jelly Roll Gospel's "Ribbon Driver"), when the conditions are right you can feel a sort of whirling dervish-like communion that JT has with his audience while in the throes of playing this kind of music., both live and on-record.
"That's the spiritual part that keeps me interested," he says, of the sincerity-based connectivity factors found in his music. (A further explanation of this subject can be found, via a lengthy rant titled "Jesus Guitar" at www.brotherjt.com.)
Though a religious man, Terlesky may not always be a church-goer. Though I dare - and he dares - to say that there's an unexplainable joy that he feels at the oddest times that come with little or no explanation. "Certain pieces of music, the way light looks on things at sundown, noises the cat makes - these are things I would interpret as some kind of connection to a Big Other Thing. I don't even want to try and figure it out; [I] just keep it way on the back burner and try to enjoy things."
Some of his newest songs, like "Accident Was Waiting," sound exasperated, almost futile and empty, in regards to their futures found in Heaven or on Earth. "You kinda just get plopped here, like an empty hard drive, and stuff starts programming you. I really don't feel like we have a whole lot of say in how we turn out, because even our reactions to things are determined by earlier programming. So if you have any self-awareness you know on some level the way things are going to go, and you feel helpless to do anything about it because you're hard-wired to be that way."
Hopefully it's something good that you're supposed to do beyond that
hard-wiring. That's Terlesky's prayer. Beyond making extended versions of God's
good Word courtesy Jelly Roll Gospel,
there's something less divine on his agenda. "I was thinking about throwing my
hat into the ring, though I guess it's getting late. And I don't own a hat. But
I think I might have some unusual options for America. My slogan would be ‘I'm
For Sweatpants - It's Where We're Going'. Oh well, maybe in 2012... Then again,
that's when the Mayan thing happens. OK, never mind."
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