Philadelphia Grand Jury

After frontman Simon ‘Berkfinger’ Berckelman produced an EP for drummer Dan Williams AKA Dan W Sweat’s other band Art vs Science, the band lost Williams and experimented with replacement drummers before pulling up stumps in 2011. Bassist Joel Beeson (MC Bad Genius) and Berckelman lost all contact for a few years, and the idea of seeing the group together again seemed unlikely, even less so with the original lineup.

“I thought it was actually pretty impossible to happen, because Berkfinger and I had no contact whatsoever,” says Beeson. “Over the course of a couple of years there’d be an email here and there that’d pop up saying, ‘How you doing?’ or ‘What’s going on?’ and it slowly built from there.”

Now, the original Philadelphia Grand Jury trio is back together with a new album, Summer Of Doom. Berckelman remains based in Berlin, where he’s built a rather impressive studio, keeping busy as a producer and mixer. Williams continues to ride the wave of success enjoyed by Art vs Science, while Beeson freely admits to lucking out with a nine-to-five job at the Red Cross.

“For the past four years I’ve been working there supporting asylum seekers living in the community,” he explains. “When the band broke up, I was really devastated and worried about how I would cope going back to doing what I consider a ‘real job’. I fell in love with this position within a few weeks, and I think that stopped me from spiralling into some sort of depression, because I was kind of on the edge of that.”

Bands get back together for many reasons. Sometimes it’s for the money; other times it’s due to a serious life event reminding the members that life is short. For the group affectionately known as the Philly Jays, it was another sort of epiphany that led to the reformation.

“There was a realisation that most bands have after they’ve broken up, and that is that they’re more than the sum of all their parts,” says Beeson. “There’s a unique situation with Berkfinger, Dan and myself when we get in a room and create music; a specific energy. Although we had some really great drummers, with creative ideas there’s just this chemistry [between the three of us] that no-one else seems to match.”

In 2013, the original Philly Jays lineup played together for the first time in almost four years, before a national tour under the banner of Berckelman’s side project, Feelings, in which the trio played one set of classic material and one of Feelings’. Not too long after that, the band officially announced it was back together, and in 2014 regrouped in Berlin to record new material.

“When we went across to Berlin it wasn’t, ‘Hey, let’s make an album that gets radio play and everyone’s gonna love and we’ll do a big tour,’” says Beeson. “The plan was, ‘Let’s go for two weeks, have a great time and just enjoy making music that we would want to listen to.’ “We were just trying to impress ourselves, and it was a very fruitful experience.”

After the recording sessions, both Williams and Beeson returned to Sydney and continued making music separately. Beeson fashioned a makeshift studio in his Toyota, Williams had his own space, and Berckelman continued to run his Golden Retriever recording studio in Berlin. Being in different places – indeed, different continents – brought its own set of challenges.

“The hardest part is waiting for a response,” says Beeson. “Berkfinger would send across creative stuff like overdubs or vocals and because of different time zones you don’t get that immediate response. You create something, send it off and wait by your computer for an email back, but they’re asleep, then you’ve got to sleep and you wake up almost 24 hours later and get an email back saying, ‘Oh yeah, that sounds cool,’ and you sit there thinking, ‘But what does cool mean?’”

Despite the creative obstacles, Summer Of Doom emerged as the fruits of a modern way of creating music, and Beeson doesn’t see it as the Philly Jays picking up where they left off back in 2009.

“It sounds a bit more polished and full. It’s certainly a step forward, has some different sounds and more mature lyrics. Our first album was quite minimalistic. This time we got quite excited with Berkfinger’s fancy synths, cool guitars and effects pedals.”

Lead single ‘Crashing & Burning Pt. II’ has been well received, as have potential future singles ‘Get Happy Again’ and the track Beeson says nearly didn’t make it onto the album, ‘Chris Is In A Jam’. “That only made it onto the album purely because of track timing for the vinyl,” he admits. “However, when we’ve played it for friends it’s gotten a great response.”