“I remember one of our first shows,” said Sanja Jovanovic, guitarist and lead vocalist for Orlando band Anyone’s Guess. “We played with this rich ‘mom and dad bought us expensive equipment’ band and their guitarist came to introduce himself to the guys and when he got to me he said ‘Whose girlfriend are you?’ I told him I was a groupie. He got really embarrassed when I showed up on stage later that night.”
Of course it’s not always like that for Anyone’s Guess and Jovanovic. “[There are] not a lot of female guitarist-fronted bands in Orlando, so I think that scores us cool points rather than a hard time.”
Jovanovic writes most of the band’s lyrics. “Over the years my skin has thickened, so I don’t really let too many things affect me, but the ones that do are what inspires my lyrics. Emotions like despair, emptiness, anger, pain and sympathy are the food for my inspiration. All of the songs are based on my personal experience, or an experience of someone close to me. Our single ‘Finality’, for example, is about Clint’s (Chambers- Guitar Anyone’s Guess) divorce, it was such a difficult time for him [and] just seeing him go through all those confusing emotions made me feel them all. I don’t really get a musical kick out of happy things, so you won’t be hearing any bubbly songs from this band. Not to say that we’re not happy people. At practice we warm up to what could probably be major cheesy radio hits, but if our heart’s not in it - neither are we.”
With their music described as lyrical alternative, it seems safe to assume that the lyrics play a major role in the band’s sound. “The lyrics are definitely something that our fans and ourselves pay special attention to. Anyone can pile up chords and blab out words, but to translate the true emotion you have to be able to tell the story with all the instruments, not just the voice. When we are arranging the songs and writing different parts, we keep the lyrics in mind. For example, our song ‘I Call You is’ about someone’s heart stopping. The bass drum is a heartbeat for a good part of the song, and then one of Clint’s parts actually sounds like a heart-rate monitor. Or the song ‘War’, we have a marching beat to it. We let the instruments translate our metaphors and support the obvious lyrics. It’s like musical, rock ’n roll poetry.”
Jovanovic tends to spend her time off getting away from it all. “When I’m not playing music, or doing anything music-related I love to read and do outdoorsy stuff. I love animals and have lots of them. [I enjoy] wandering off into the woods with my dogs, canoeing, horseback riding, biking, camping. I feel fully alive when I’m away from people and civilization. Humans are fun, but animals are so simple, present and liberating. I learned so much from them. Listen to your dog; he lives in the now and that’s the way to go.”
Cost of Silence is the latest CD from Anyone's Guess and is available on their web site.
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