Ghost:Hello – Interview
Interview with William Jennings of Ghost:Hello and Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (http://petesrocknewsandviews.com)
PD: What type of artist are you?
WJ: We’re a 3 piece fuzzy rock and roll group, comprised of drums, Bass, and a wonky collection of synthesizers, samplers and theremins. We make big fuzzy heavy and often times spacey music.
PD: Tell us the brief history of yourself.
WJ: So Ghost:Hello was formed a hand full of years ago as a means to cover some tour dates for a previous band I was in, who had split up just before a tour.
We just threw this band together and filled in the dates, but people seemed to love it.
The drummer at the time took his leave at the end of summer after a slew of shows and local festivals and I contacted Joe in 2014 who was soon returning for a few weeks from Germany. We worked on ideas but ultimately left the band on the table until his move back to the US a few years later.
PD: Who are your musical and non-musical influences?
WJ: Man, right now we’ve really been into Fatso Jetson, Queens of the Stone Age, recently been digging through a lot of the Melvins records, Portishead, loads of different electronic groups from the 90’s. Morcheeba, Thievery Cooperation. We’re kind of all over the place at the moment.
Non musical, I guess would be the Tibetan book of the Dead. We’ve been reading and discussing this thing over the past hand full of months, and a lot of it has showed up in our writing.
PD: What are your dreams and goals?
WJ: I guess the biggest goal right now is to get this record done and into everybody’s hands. We’ve been grinding on this, getting all the preproduction work out of the way for a while now and we’re just super stoked to get in there and make a killer record. What comes after, we’ll take in stride. We’ve been working on some regional dates for this summer, so getting out on the road is something we’re looking forward to as well.
PD: Who writes your songs, what are they about?
WJ: We all take a solid part in writing our music both instrumentally and lyrically. One of us will just 
say “hey, this song here is about a village of people plagued by sand worms”. And they’ll sing their bit or whatever and that’s that. Monsters, space, celestial adventures, that’s us.
PD: How do you promote your band and shows?
WJ: We do a LOT of online promoting, Instagram and Facebook mostly. And we seem to have dialed in on what works for us as far as spreading awareness of our music in the digital world.
Still for shows, the best way to promote in our opinion is human interaction. Word of mouth, in real life. And also being active in your scene. You’re only going to get so far with Facebook event invites.
PD: What do you think about downloading music online?
WJ: I’ve never really been against downloading music, it’s just the nature of the beast I guess. It doesn’t hurt my feelings thinking folks downloaded this stuff, or streamed it on YouTube. You can’t download a T-shirt or a triple gatefold LP. And if their downloading your stuff, they’re listening to your stuff. That’s all I ever really cared about.
PD: What’s your outlook on the record industry today?
WJ: I’m sure there are a thousand pros and cons about where the music industry is sitting. I know I’ve heard loads of gripes about streaming services and how bands are getting the shakedown. Which is true.
But at the same time, without streaming services, SO MANY bands would go completely unfound by loads of tentative fans.
I would say about 90% of new things I find( not particularly new releases, just new to me) are through streaming services.
PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?
WJ: That’s easy, A History of bad men by (the)Melvins. That just has to be the heaviest song of all time. It hits so hard, like getting a good one on the dome with a 2×4.
King of the Road by Fu Manchu is a close second.
PD: What are some of your pet peeves?
WJ: We’re getting older and turning into crotchety old people so there’s probably a bunch, ha!
I think probably flakey people are on my nerves most though. When you’re in a band people are always trying to play a part. Everybody has a service you can’t live without, and wants to do this or that for you. Photos, shows, whatever.
But then when the time comes they’re ghost. Like why put the pot on the table if you have no intention of 
filling it. That’s always frustrating and it does really show ya who means business and who doesn’t.
PD: What is your proudest moment in music?
WJ: I’m not sure if it’s my proudest moment or not, but one of my favorite things is seeing folks sing along with us. That our music has touched people enough to cause them to memorize what we’re doing, so they can do it with us, that’s just magical.
PD: Tell us about your next shows and why we should be there.
WJ: It’s been a hot minute since we’ve been on stage, never with this lineup actually. We’re super stoked for it. We’ve been buzzing around like crazy working on this record. When it’s finished and we finally get to bring this stuff to the stage, it’s going to sound monstrous!
Ghost:Hello links:
Band location: Akron Ohio
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