[RIYL My Morning Jacket] Introducing Midnite on Pearl Beach

New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Green Light Go) Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Justin Jahnke started Midnite On Pearl Beach in 2012 so he could continue his exploration of American music, shadowy rock and roll and rose-colored rhythm and blues. Louisiana born and bred and presently living in Chicago, Jahnke cut his teeth playing guitar in Southern rock bands as a teenager and that organic, roots oriented, soulful Southern vein still figures heavily in his songwriting and singing, but after thirteen years and sevens albums, the lens he views his musical world through is much wider and endlessly deeper.

Jahnke was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, a city in the northwest corner of that funky state, not far from the cowboy culture of East Texas and the mysterious, tall pine forests of Southern Arkansas. He first learned to sing in a traveling, Episcopalian boys choir, red robes and coffee filters around their necks, and grew his love of rock and roll and blues playing in bands throughout high school and college. After deciding his passion for creation was never going away, Jahnke dropped out of graduate school in 2004 to pursue music full time. Selling his furniture and knickknacks, he packed his car to the gills and drove north, from Baton Rouge to Madison, Wisconsin where he met and began playing with bassist Mike Meske and keyboardist Rusty "LaRue" Lee in a band that released three LPs and two EPs before amicably disbanding in 2010.

Finding himself without a band and living in Chicago, Jahnke did what comes natural to him and retreated to a studio, writing and recording songs, for the full-length album called Lamplighter under the moniker Midnite On Pearl Beach.

"Writing and recording Lamplighter sort of rekindled my love for making music. It was easy and fun to make. To my ears the songs are lush, gritty, dynamic, soulful, hazy, mysterious and deep, all the parts of my nature I express through music," says Jahnke.

The album was co-produced, engineered and mixed by Jake Westermann, whose engineering credits include work on albums by Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Iron and Wine, Gomez and Margot and the Nuclear So Sos.

"Jake and I had a certain rhythm in the studio, a lot of ideas flowing freely and quickly back and forth, a lot of experimenting with soundcraft and a lot of late night talks about life and freedom in life and whatnot. It was an incredibly productive time for both of us."

Three albums in a little over a year, Midnite On Pearl Beach sounds like a band a lover of music would stumble upon and find themselves thinking, why have I never heard of them before?! This band should be well-known. They sound both classic and fresh and completely unique to Jahnke's perspective as a songwriter and musician, sort of akin to a badass, country flea market, hocking stacks of dusty, sun bleached records, cheap knock-off Les Paul guitars and old cowboy boots that still have a lot of life left in them. The band can sound like conjurers of deep soul on one song and then deftly move into surprisingly elegant rock and roll on the next. Craftsmen, artists, scavengers, peddlers, wanderers, romantics, Midnite On Pearl Beach is alive, real and deep.

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Praise for Midnite on Pearl Beach:

"Arresting on first listen, I found myself turning up the volume and enjoying each nuance of the songs." - Ryan Spaulding - Ryan's Smashing Life

On "Modern Gods": "[T]he sounds hearkens back to '70s progressive rock -- including a nice synth break -- while still sounding very much in the melodic moment." - KDHX - Song of the Day