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Getting personal with Jade of Days - Part One
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Never let it be said that San Jose’s Jade of Days is a "standard" rock band. Blending powerful and soulful vocals – courtesy of the talented Dana Kelley – with intricate arrangements influenced by a plethora of genres, expertly brought together by musicians Nelson Medeiros (guitars), Sandro Costa (keyboards), Nelson Candido (bass), and Junior Medeiros (drums), Jade of Days is anything but “standard”. In 2005, they released their first album, In the Absence of Light, and set out to make their mark on the local music scene. A year later, their second release – Gracas a Deus – presented fans with a much more experimental collection of music that only served to enhance what they considered to be their signature sound. Jade of Days kept busy, playing every venue in the South Bay (and some beyond), building their base, sharing their unique musical vision with more and more people, becoming recognized as one of the premier talents working the scene. Then, after enduring line-up changes and striving to move onward and upward, health issues within the band necessitated them taking a hiatus from writing and performing, a hiatus which has lasted for a year and a half.
Saturday, April 25th, sees the triumphant return of Jade of Days to the South Bay music battleground as they take the stage at the Cupertino Britannia Arms, happy, healthy, and with a revitalized approach to their music that is a reflection of the talent flowing together in their current line-up. I recently sat down with the band at their rehearsal studio to discuss the past, present, and future of Jade of Days.
Part One of a two-part interview.
South Bay Rock Music Examiner: Tell me a bit about how Jade of Days came to be formed.
Dana Kelley: Jade of Days was formed in 2004 in our ex-guitarist’s basement. It was just me, with him on guitar; we didn’t have a drummer, we didn’t have a bassist. And then one day Paul (Paul Borges, also formerly of Divided) said, “I’ve got us a drummer and a bassist!” That was this kid (waves hand at Nelson Medeiros) – who has 17 at the time, like a little prodigy – he played bass for us, and then we got Pat Ruiz (for drums), who was in Salmon. So at first, it was just the two of us for awhile in the basement. We only had something like three songs at the time and by the time he (indicates Junior Medeiros) came along, we had written a lot more songs.
Nelson Medeiros: And then there was a huge fallout…
DK: …and then there was a huge fallout. Paul decided to change drummers and he claimed he knew exactly who was going to be the new drummer and it was his old friend Junior from years back. They had also been in a band with this Nelson (Candido) who used to play The Cactus all the time when he was, what, like 14?
Nelson Candido: I was 13 when I played The Cactus for the first time.
DK: So he (Junior Medeiros) came to practice one day – it was New Year’s Day – and I was nervous because I was thinking, “I don’t want a new drummer, I don’t want the songs to change!” and he just comes in and goes all crazy. Plays one song and all of these rolls come out, and that was enough, I was sold, it was great!
NM: That was actually when we decided not to keep Junior…(laughter)
DK: (laughing) After that there was no doubt we were going to keep Junior.
NM: And then…
DK: And then…
NM: Then there were some conflicts of interest and I ended up leaving the band because of, um…
DK: A clash of personalities.
NM: Yeah, let’s leave it at that, that’s a nice way of saying it.
NC: Ok, you’ve got two stubborn a******s in a one room together, it just doesn’t work. (laughter)
NM: So I left the band and was replaced by Nelson Candido…
DK: …who is, obviously, a very old friend of ours and was really the only one who could replace this Nelson (indicating Nelson Medeiros)…
NM: He thought I hated him for awhile because he did that, but I could never hate him. (laughter)
DK: Then our original guitarist left. He was ready to do other things, which left us very high and dry. So we were then, like, “Well…who is there?” F***ing Medeiros! So we bring Nelson back and he brings with him Sandro. In the whole grand scheme of things, I am very lucky to have the musicians I ended up with.
NC: Basically, in the end, it kind of had to happen the way it did because we were all fed up. Things happened the way they did because they needed to. We were all fed up with our situation. Now that have these key members this is kind of just what we wanted in the first place. It jammed with these guys.
NM: Actually, for a time, we were talking about me picking up guitar and calling Nelson Candido to play bass which ended up happening, in the long run. Everything happens for a reason and this is a clear case of that.
DK: Yeah. And the music that ended up coming out of it…
NM: …was ten times better.
DK: Not even that it was just better, but I think we were…
NM: Comfortable.
NC: It was a lot more conducive to writing great music.
NM: There is a lot better chemistry between us because the writing styles are so similar. I’m used to playing with Sandro in one of our projects, which is Zodiac, we play, well, what would be the category?
Sandro Costa: We play what would be like a Portuguese/Salsa/Brazilian-flavored music.
NM: We played for about a year and a half while I was on my “hiatus” from Jade of Days and we got really tight. When I was in the band (Jade of Days)…
Junior Medeiros: We got really close…
NM: …really close with Junior and we started meshing together musically. And so I was really able to connect with both Sandro and Junior. And Dana is just…writes like a f***ing god over anything I write. And then Candido actually had a lot of experience writing with Paul and I write similar to Paul so that’s…
JM: Different styles.
DK: Yeah, different styles.
NC: It was better for me. I feel much more comfortable writing this guy (Nelson Medeiros).
SBRME: The name is rather unique. How did that come about?
DK: “Jade of Days” was selected off a list of book titles that we took off of barnesandnoble.com, or something like that. But the cool thing is that I went back later because I wanted to try and read this book and find out what the hell does “Jade of Days” mean. And it was gone. This book has disappeared. If you search for “Jade of Days” now, you find us. This book that once was, is not locatable anymore, so…
NC: Locatable…that’s a good word…
DK: Hey, that’s a word, look it up.
NM: At one point it was just me and Pat just running around trying to find band names. Originally what happened was, I think we had three band names to choose from. One was Breezy…
DK: Ew! That was horrible!
NM: Everybody liked it except for you, I didn’t like it either, but you know you and I never really had much of a say. And then the other one was Pale October…
DK: Yeah, but that was like Blue October.
NM: Right, it was like Blue October and I remember once coming into practice and saying, “Guys, I really like Jade of Days, if you want my vote that’s what I think we should name us” and then everyone was, like, alright, Nelson…
DK: But it kind of sucks because when you tell people, and everyone asks you what the name of your band is, they can’t…get it. They scramble it together, jadadays!
SBRME: The band took some time off this past year or so. Can you tell me what the reasons for that were?
JM: Yeah. Basically, I got sick for about a week or so. I didn’t know what was going on and I came to practice – at the time it was the “old” Jade of Days – and everyone just looked at me and said, “You look terrible.” And Nelson said, “You don’t look good, you’re yellow. Just go home.”
NC: This man lost 80lbs in just two weeks.
JM: Yeah, so, they were all saying, “I don’t think you should be here, I think you better go home.” So, I went home, I started feeling good and I went to work the next day. All of a sudden water started building up in my legs and knees and I started breaking out. I went to the hospital and they me, “Your tests came back, your liver’s failing, you better sit right here.” They put me on a bed and they transferred me to a room upstairs, and about five hours later I was gone, for like seven days.
DK: They told him for a month that he had pneumonia.
JM: They misdiagnosed me. They didn’t initially know, so they gave me some pills saying, “Take these pills and you’ll be ok.” I then went into respiratory failure and was just out. Then I just woke up. That when they diagnosed me. They checked my lymph nodes said that I had Hodgkin’s, which is cancer.”
NC: At first they told us you had t-cell lymphoma…
JM: Well, t-cell lymphoma is Hodgkin’s, it’s just that there are different stages Hodgkin’s. So when they said I had t-cell Hodgkin’s, which is like stage four, which is the last stage, you’re not going to make it…
NM: You’re on your way out…
JM: I was just, like, freaked out. And as I was there taking all the chemo - toward the end after being there almost a whole month, just tearing away – they told me, “You know what? You have non-Hodgkin’s, but you still have stage 4, so you’re going to have do a really, really bad, aggressive chemo.” For the better half of that year it was just every two weeks going in, 8 hours a day, just sitting on the bed, getting chemo and getting sick.
SBRME: How are you feeling now?
JM: Rock and roll, feeling great.
SBRME: Awesome.
JM: Yeah.
NC: The part he did leave out was that for that month he was in the hospital, they told us he was on his death bed twice.
DK: No, it was like, honestly, that first day, I get a phone call from him (Nelson Medeiros) saying, “Get the f*** to [major HMO which shall remain nameless], Junior’s f***ing dying,!” and it was “What the f***?”
NM: Keep in mind that this was on my 21st birthday. I had plans to go to a bar and all of a sudden I get a phone call that my best friend’s in the hospital dying.
DK: So, we’re standing outside the ICU and his sister comes out, or a doctor comes out, and somebody says the word “lymphoma”. It was horrible. And that week – and there was not a day where we were not there – we were on the biggest rollercoaster ever because every night was, “This is going to be it.” And then the next day, “He’s breathing a little bit better”…he was on 100% oxygen…
NC: We got all stoked when he started breathing again on his own.
DK: They gave him Last Rites and everything. And we were all asking, “How is this happening? Can we give him bone marrow? What do we do?”
JM: The problem resolved pretty quick, though.
DK: It was fast. One day, everything changed. He woke up, and…it was like the f***ing sun came out.
JM: I was just, like, passed out and waking up to say hi to everybody. It was seven days later and I was like, “7 days?” And afterward I couldn’t move my body, I had to learn how to walk, build up again…
NC: His legs looked like a bruised banana…
DK: We saw him in there, the night they gave him Last Rites and was it was just like the most incredible roller coaster, most horrible thing you can watch a friend or anyone you love go through or see their family go through it and be completely and utterly helpless. At that point, he had no chance. He had maybe a 1% chance of surviving this. And then – I swear to God – it was just one day, bam, everything changed and he was awake and he was like, “I ain’t going anywhere…”
JM: Yeah…it was definitely a trying time. It was pretty crazy.
SBRME: Did any of you – while he was going through his chemo and treatment - pursue any solo projects to kind of stay busy or were you focused on his recovery?
NM: No. No. We were just completely focused on what we had already. There was no thought.
DK: You could leave it to the music side and say, “Where the hell are we going to find a better drummer?” Nowhere. You cannot beat him. If you put that aside, we were not going to leave Junior in this position. He didn’t want to get sick, so I think we all felt no matter how long it takes, just get better, when you come back someday we’ll be here waiting, we’re not going to replace you.
NC: We didn’t care how long it took. We were more worried about his health than we were about anything with the band. The band was definitely on the back burner at that point. But, slowly but surely, with his (Nelson Medeiros) we got back into our little scheme of things and started writing some more music and that’s how we ended up.
NM: Junior and I were staying in very close contact and we always had a plan to start a side project together – even during the Jade of Days timeframe where I was the bass player – and the line-up was actually going to be me, him (Junior Medeiros), Nelson Candido, and Sandro Costa. It was going to be an instrumental project. After Junior got sick I told him, “I know you have your band still but I want you to know that I’m not going to play with any other drummers other than you.” Eventually, we ended up talking, and Junior and I agree we were going to start that project as soon as he got better. Then, next thing I know, I’m getting a phone call, “Hey, do you want to play for Jade of Days?” And I thought, “Hmmm. I have the line-up with the side project plus the most incredible singer in San Jose…why do I need to start another side project?”
SBRME: “I’m already playing for Jade of Days…”
NM: So all the music I had been writing for this side project, I just dumped it all. The thing is that it was just much more progressive than before and I didn’t, y’know, want to go over people’s heads. So I lowered the technicality of it a little bit so Dana could have a lot more room for vocals and that’s essentially what Junior and I ended up doing in the end.
SBRME: So, moving from that, tell me about the new songs. Do you feel they are more representative of your past writing and sound or have things changed in the time the band was on hiatus?
JM: They’ve definitely changed…
NC: That’s a good question…
DK: To me, they still sound like Jade of Days, still in the same little niche that we do, but…
NM: There are many nuances that are still very Jade of Days. We do the tapping, we have a crazy drummer, we have a phenomenal singer, female vocalist – not many of those around anymore…
DK: Thick keyboards to fill up that space…
NM: …we have awesome keyboards. While we were writing, we wanted to take the pop element of our first album In the Absence of Light and mix it with the progressive element of our second album, which was Gracas a Deus.
DK: In a way people could understand.
NM: In a way people could understand. The thing that killed me the most was after every show people would approach Dana and ask, “Dana…how do you sing over that noise?”
DK: And, “Dana…I can’t hear you…”
SC: The music obviously has progressed into something that is a lot more melodic to the average listener. You don’t have to be a musician to understand music and to follow it, that there’s a verse, or a chorus, or a pre-chorus. That there’s in intro and outro or a bridge. It all meshes together in a way where it’s a lot more presentable to any kind of crowd. People can actually relate to it.
NM: And I think the cool thing about it is that its got the groove for people to nod their heads, yet its also got the edge to it that makes you ask, “Where’s this coming from, where’s this going, where’s one in the beat, where is it?” The thing we pride ourselves the most on is our versatility. Everyone in this band is extremely versatile and you hear that in our music. We go everywhere. From alternative rock to salsa to metal to soap opera music…I mean, really (laughs)…you will hear it on the CD, I guarantee you.
DK: And its only five songs!
NM: Its only five songs…
NC: And yet still keeping within the confines of actual good music.
NM: The bottom line is that there is one song on the CD for everyone. It doesn’t matter what you like or what you listen to, there will be something there.
DK: And certainly, as being as involved in this as I have been, I’ve never been happier or more proud with these songs or this recording and we have at least 30 recorded songs. And these five are better, if not on par, than the three that stand out on those original albums. This is really us at the top of our game, finally.
NC: Basically, to sum up your question: This is a much, much better representation of what we can do – with this music – than it was before.
NM: And in this line-up, we were very, very comfortable working with each other. That comfort is really reflected in our music. There are no egos here. We all respect each other far too much to think that we know better than anyone else. So when there is an opinion presented, everyone always takes it into consideration.
DK: Which is quite a feat, for a band.
NC: I think our advantage is that we’ve known each for so damn long that we know each other like the back of our hands. Knowing that they’ve got my back and I’ve got theirs…it just makes it a hell of a lot better.
SC: It’s a democracy, everyone has an equal say.
NM: Well, it could be a monarchy, with Dana…(laughter)
DK: (laughing) When have I ever been the “queen”?
NC: What I like, too, about this band: Usually – and not to poke fun of any other bands out there – when you go to see a band, there’s one guy that’s good and you just focus on that one guy, and that’s all you focus on. The rest of the band sucks ass. Not to blow our heads up and say we’re the greatest band in the world, but you can actually focus on any one of us and its fun.
NM: And when you mix that comfort level with the fact that we all have a similar taste in music and a very similar writing style, the writing process just becomes this very fun, very energetic ordeal, and it results in what we’ve produced with this new CD.
NC: Yeah, before it was like a job…
NM: Right. Now it’s something we want to do, it’s a job we love.
End of Part One. Part Two coming soon!
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