If you want a new alternative rock band to listen to, Jet Lag Gemini is your answer. Their debut release, Fire The Canons, will provide you with your daily dose of catchy beats, lyrics, and plenty of guitar solos to air guitar along to. But as their live show proves, this quartet from New Jersey is more than just another act. With past tours that include an opening slot for The All American Rejects, Jet Lag Gemini is currently on the road with Rookie of The Year and School Boy Humor. During the Chicago date, we sat with guitarist Vlad, vocalists, Misha, and drummer Dan.

Cristina: First of all, introduce yourself.
Misha: Hi I’m Misha, I sing and play guitar for Jet Lag Gemini.

CC: How would you characterize Jet Lag Gemini?
MS: I would say we’re a rock band. We have a lot of fun guitar solos… and songs. We write our own songs, which is important to us. I know there’s a lot of band in our scene that don’t and that blows my mind. Why would you be in a band and not write your own songs? Kind of defeats the purpose.

CC: What is your songwriting generally about? What do you want people to get away from them?
MS: It’s generally about things people can relate to. Fire The Cannons is mostly about dealing with things that could occur in your everyday life and your friends – and everything like that. Since we’re almost done with it, our new record is going to be centered around the theme of hope. I know this sounds cheesy, but we’re trying to make the new record something people can listen to that will make them feel better. It has a lot of substance to it.
Vlad: Yes
Dan: Yes,  I agree with whatever he just said.
MS: Vlad (Guitar) is here now.
VG: Hello. And Dan (Drums)

CC: So what do you two want people to take away from your music?
VG: We definitely want them to relate to it. We want them to come to a show and have a great time.
MS: And make memories. You know when you listen to a song and it reminds you of something. From Fire The Cannons, we want people to feel that way.
DD: It’s like you’re there to have fun and have an experience.

CC: Your five-year anniversary show was in NYC the other day?
VG: It was awesome. It was exactly five years after our first show.
MS: To the day.
DD: It was the first show we played in a while too so we were stoked to play it.
VG: It was awesome. The bands there were great and the fans were awesome. Good way to celebrate your five years.

CC: Where did you see yourself when you started at your five year anniversary?
VG: Well, when we stated we had extremely high hopes. Not that we don’t any more but I guess we didn’t realize how long it would take.
MS: It’s not that we’re upset at where we are now, we’re more than happy. And that’s why we’re still together. You have to enjoy every second of it even if you’re not an arena band.
DD: You have to make the best out of it.
VG: If you really appreciate it, playing a show to five people and making enough to get by is all you need. Not to say that we still don’t strive to become that. We have high hopes for our band.
MS: In five years, we went from playing shows to five people to opening for the All American Rejects, which was our last tour.

CC: How was that experience?
VG: That was just surreal. Just awesome.
MS: It was honestly one of the experiences of our lives.  I mean, hopefully it’s not the last time we say that.
DD: Our goal is to make every tour the best tour of our lives.

CC: Who are some of the bands you guys would like to tour with?
VG: We would like to tour with a lot of bands…
MS: We could name a whole bunch. Muse, Green Day, Bayside, The Matches, Blink 182. It doesn’t matter if it’s big or small.
CC: So you guys don’t mind playing to the small club type of crowd?
VG: Well for us big tours aren’t about the money. There are more people and the energy is crazy. Plus you get your music exposed to a lot of people which is the ultimate goal – to have people listen to your music and decide themselves if it will change their life or if it just sucks. But that is our goal.
MS: We don’t hide the fact that we want to be a big band. But we don’t want to be a big band in the wrong way. We’re fine with taking forever to get there.

CC: So Warped this summer?
MS: Yes! We’re playing two weeks on Warped.
VG: We’re stoked about it. It’s our third time – 2006, 2008 and know 2009. We love the Warped Tour. It’s really really tough but it’s a great experience every time. We always go home happy it’s over but it takes a couple of days to realize how much fun it was.
MS: It is really exhausting and you get a sweet farmer’s tan.
VG: We’re the type of people who know that if we take a 10 minute break from selling CDs and promoting our band we feel that we’re not doing it right. We take full advantage of the Warped Tour, which is why by the end of the day we feel like we ran a thousand miles.
DD: We literally talk to about a thousand people everyday.
MS: What’s cool about the Warped Tour is that all bands, big and small, are in the same boat – so you get to meet a lot of people that way.
VG: We’re definitely not too cool to be out there promoting. 

CC: Apart from Warped what are some other future plans?
VG: We’re going to record our CD soon. We’re stoked about that. We’ve been writing for it for a while now so we’re excited to see how it comes out.
MS: That’s definitely our main focus for now. And hopefully put out a lot of cool stuff with it to get people excited like we did for our first CD.

CC: How was the reaction to Fire The Cannons?
VG: It’s been awesome. We definitely got a lot of people that thought it was really good.
MS: The like to dislike ratio has been mainly in our favor.
CC: How important is that for you? Well apart from the obvious reasons to you write music to please or for yourselves?
VG: We do it for fun but we do it for other people and see them enjoy themselves and make an experience, like Dan said. That makes our day.

CC: Any random thing you would like to add to finish this up?
DD: I’m waiting for the day when someone will bring me a homemade cheesecake to one of our shows.
MS: We have a new music video for “Fit To Be Tied.” Check us out on Myspace, Facebook, and twitter.





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