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By Kayceman
With that Thanksgiving turkey already down the gullet, our attention officially turns to New Year's Eve. As always, there are a plethora of wonderful shows, eclectic lineups, great venues, and a ton of parties, but one event stands out as being "special."
Music fans tend to be travel junkies as well, and we often find ourselves being forced to choose between another "epic" show or a vacation to some land we've long wanted to experience. There are only so many days off in one year, so if you are one of the many who can't seem to decide between tropical getaway and raging New Year, well, Jerry Joseph has an answer.
As he did last year, Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons will be ringing in the New Year in Costa Rica. That way, you can have your cake and eat it too - or in this case, you can have your show and enjoy an exotic destination as well. Jerry tells us a bit of what we can expect and why Costa Rica is the place for such an event.
WHERE DOES THE NEW YEAR'S EVENT GO DOWN?
Osa Peninsula :: Costa Rica |
We do it in this place Puerto Jimenez, which is in the Osa Peninsula. It was always my favorite part of the country, and I've been pretty hesitant to do anything like this down there for years because I didn't want to bring a bunch of people there. But like any cool spot, the word sort of got out, and we're pretty low impact - maybe a couple hundred people a night. And at that, maybe 150 people who fly in from the States. The rest of the numbers all come from within the country. It's extraordinarily beautiful. There's an unlimited amount of things to do, compared to something like a Jam Cruise or going to some American city for three nights. This is like - making it to the show is your biggest problem because you did all these things all day: surfing or trekking, kayaking. It's a really great surf spot. It's kind of endless, it has the most wildlife, it borders up against one of the biggest national parks, so the music is sort of like an added bonus.
If you go to our website, it will connect you with a number of different travel people who can help you. You don't just fly directly there, you fly into San Jose and then you can take another flight, rent a car, or take a bus.
ARE THERE ANY SONGS THAT HAVE BEEN INSPIRED BY COSTA RICA?
Costa Rica |
The joke is that we could play a whole night of songs that were written in Costa Rica. From "Election Day," "Pure Life," "Jump," there's stuff coming up on the new record, there's a ton of songs.
DO YOU WRITE DIFFERENTLY WHEN YOU'RE DOWN THERE?
I think I write differently when I travel because I tend to travel alone or with one other person. That's what I've never understood about people who run out of things to write about, because there's so much of the world to go look at. If nothing else, if you were hitting a writer's block, why couldn't you just get on a plane to Cairo or something, and I'd be able to come up with something to think about. So for me it's kind of a cool setting for that. Costa Rica is good because there's not a lot of night stuff to do, so I tend to sit around more at night with a guitar than I ever would in the States. Mexico is like that for me too, plus I go to my brother's place in Mexico a lot to write.
THE SHOWS
Jerry Joseph by Susan J. Weiand |
Last year, the night before New Years was super-packed with local people, where on New Years I think people tend to have their own parties like anywhere, which is kinda cool in Puerto Jimenez because you can stick around and hit some of their parties as well. It was sort of a long-range idea that if we could do these kinds of things and the place is relatively easy like Costa Rica, it opens the door for us to do more stuff in places that aren't as easy, like Cusco Peru, Durban, South Africa, or Bali. And I think we're just trying to get a feel, and what we didn't want to do was oversee the whole experience like other bands do. We don't want to hold your hand from the airport through the transportation to the hotel and provide mixers and happy hours for you to go hang out with Americans. I've done something similar to this in Costa Rica with another band, and the impression that I got was that their fans went to a different country, hung out with other fans, saw a band they liked, and went home. So it's kind of like a dry-run to see if we can do it, to try to figure out how involved we want to get. Down there, it's still pretty much the Wild West. It's as west as you can get on a point and still getting things like sound systems and gear, plus we have another band playing with us from Salt Lake called Purdymouth, WV.
THE VENUE
It's a restaurant bar in [Puerto] Jimenez. You could show up there with a backpack and a big bottle of bug spray, and you'd be fine – there's a ton of camping. It's really easy to get surfboards and kayaks, there are a million treks, they can take you up Matapalo Trees a hundred feet and drop you down the middle. The wildlife is insane, the diving is good, people that fish will go wild. And then from there, depending on your time, you can check out the rest of Costa Rica or go down to Panama.
They do a real nice job [the venue in Costa Rica]; it's a real big sound system. It's certainly the equivalent of a big nightclub setup, with lights, and I think this time we'll be recording.
The place where we do the show is covered enough to hold 350 people if it's raining, which is really unusual, and then the whole grounds of the area could hold thousands. We do two electric shows, and then we do a third acoustic show. We pick some other weird place for the acoustic show, and we're never sure where we are gonna do it. We do that on the 2nd [1/2/06]. So we'll do that, and that's included in the ticket pricing. It's three shows, and I think it's 75 bucks if you buy it online through our website. So that's two electrics with two bands and a third acoustic show. [The third acoustic show] will be somewhere pretty close and somewhere that hopefully involves generators and trucks. Last time, we played out at my friend Martina's bar, but we're hanging out for a week down there and are thinking about doing something really wild, like out in Carate or somewhere super-remote. And we're tentatively holding the 9th and 10th up in a club in San Jose.
GOOD TIMES FOR ALL
Osa Peninsula :: Costa Rica |
I think that anybody who came last year certainly had one of their most amazing New Years ever. It's relatively intimate, with 200 people you're going to get to know them, and it's difficult for me because I make it sound like it's not very exotic, but if you just flew there from Minneapolis for the first time, by the time you get to Puerto Jimenez you'd be like, "Holy shit, where the fuck am I? This is the middle of nowhere!"
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