By Adrian Gregory Glover

Ours catalyst Jimmy Gnecco has a lot on his mind and even more on his agenda. The local kid done good has just ushered his debut, Distorted Lullabies, out into the world, and he has extremely high hopes for its potential.

His story is one that has been plagued by numerous peaks and valleys, which have seen him snag the fat record deal with Dreamworks only to spend four years assembling all of the pieces.

This is all after six years of cutting at the bone trying to get the deal to begin with. The word “struggle” comes to mind, but, as you’re about to see in our discussion, it may be a lot more to it than just that.

His songs play out like modern-day tragedies, which at times are laced with irony. The surroundings set-up his voice, which has a tendency to fall an ozone-touching falsetto to a goth-inhabited snarl reminiscent of Peter Murphy.

An obvious comparison is the late Jeff Buckley, although Buckley was a master at restraint where Jimmy attacks his thing in the spirit of an emotional rhino hellbent on displaying whatever emotion is resting on his sleeve.

Here’s how he put it.
After everything went down the way it did, did you find yourself coming up with music that spoke of specific incidents, and if so, did you make the lyrics vague enough so that listeners don’t feel as if they are getting only your view?

Are you saying incidents?
However you want to take it. Are there moments in your history that specifically came out on the record that are interesting, or did you leave it open for people to decide for themselves?

It’s open. What songs mean even change for me within a day or two. This started 10 years ago and hasn’t stopped since then. I like it better that way when your own take comes out in the process.

It took a really, really long time to make this record. The big thing was that there was a handful of 10-15 records that I really wanted to measure up to. We weren’t trying to copy these records, but I have really high standards when it comes to quality, and I wanted to make sure that came out.

Records [like] Radiohead’s The Bends and OK Computer, U2’s Atchung Baby, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On?, Stevie :Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life, [Jeff Buckley’s] Grace…you know these are records that pull something out of you. They will be around forever. So I was fighting for that same quality when I did this record.

I make music to make the hair on my arm stand up when I listen to it. I need it to make me feel like a feeling. You know most people feel better when they feel bad because of certain songs. It makes whatever the pain is almost enjoyable. You mentioned Jeff Buckley. Are you ready for the comparisons? Plus, you did have an association with him.

Yeah, I talk about that a lot. (Sighs) I will say this. We started this thing so long ago. You know, this is the way that I sing. I can play you tapes from that time, and you’ll see.

Jeff and I as singers had the same influences. I think what I liked the most about Jeff were the things that he brought out that were basically the same things as my original influences.

He did his own thing, but you can’t fake what that is. That’s why I fell in love with Jeff. He became a close friend. I was influenced by him as well to an extent. But we were also influenced by K.D. Lang, Freddie Mercury, Elvis, Roy Orbison, it just goes on.

Part of the problem is that unfortunately right now nobody wants to step up and sing anymore. So when an in-depth singer comes along who really likes to put it all on the line, it’s easy to compare him to someone else because there are so few of us.

You’ve got Thom Yorke (Radiohead), Bono (U2), PJ Harvey, and Chris Cornell (Rage Against The Machine?). There’s a few others, but like no one really wants to write great songs and sing in key anymore.

The times are gone, sometimes I think, where you can do something really pretty and then really explosive. Jeff was really good at that.

I’m going to clear something up that’s turned into this big old rumor that follows me around. Like I said, Jeff and I became friends, and one night he was running late to a show. He asked me to take his guitar in a cab to a show for him. Somewhere it started getting around that I was his roadie. How ridiculous is that? I took a guitar to one show one time for the guy. I don’t know…I guess I just try and write good songs.

I’m not gig on hyping things and building things up. We’re just going to do our best and hope. To be honest with you, I’m absolutely terrified of the idea that this record could be huge and make a lot of money right off the bat. That scares me so much. I want to take it slow and build the right way.

For the past year-and-a-half—except for the past couple of months because we’ve been on tour—we’ve been playing a regular Friday night set at the same coffeehouse.

We’d set-up and play acoustic from 9-12 and not skip a beat. We always do our best to make an impression, but we need to stay out in front of what makes us what we are. And what are you?

We’re a band. We want to stack and build and make sure that in 20 years that we are still around. I still plan on singing for that long. I love it that much. Oh you know another band is The Beatles. Everyone says how they are so amazing, yet none of them know why. They forget about how they wrote these amazing, well-crafted pop songs. That was what made them.

I never plan on being so self-indulgent that I write 12-mintue long songs. That would bore even me. I love amazing pop songs. They end [up] being immortal. I love ‘Light My Fire,’ ‘Paranoid Android’, ‘The End’…there is nothing better than that.

What’s crazy is that I push myself too hard sometimes to live up to what I’m telling you. I t may have taken me four years to do this CD, but I’ve got two or three other records ready to go.

I have such a workload that I place on myself that I understand that every moment and everything has got to be appreciated to the fullest. It’s so overwhelming what I do to myself. There is still a lot left to do.