The worldwide web is rife with examples of ‘musicians’ trying their hand at cover versions of their favourite songs, so it can be hard to find truly great, and I do mean truly great, content. You know what I mean? The type of content you want to show everybody you’ve ever met. Even 87-year-old Mrs Smith from three doors down MUST SEE THIS type of content. It’s rare.
Well, enter Mr Jaron Mulholland. A talent unlike anything you’re likely to see this virus season. An in-demand multi-instrumentalist and producer, Jaron Jay as he is known, has started creating content online that is getting love all around the world. With a great mix of super impressive, note-perfect tribute videos to rock n roll classics royalty like Queen and Pink Floyd, to his more tongue in cheek renditions of songs like the Tenacious D classic, ‘Dude, I totally miss you’ – you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll start feeling itchy… and you won’t know why.
We sat down for a quick little chin wag with the man himself.
The production quality of both your music and videos are supreme! Tell us a little about what you do and how you acquired these magnificent skills.
Thanks! I always have a super enjoyable time taking songs that I really like, recreating and recording them and making fun and sometimes ridiculous videos to go along with them. Sometimes I feel like I want to keep the arrangement of the songs I re-record more true to the original artist’s recordings as a way of honouring them, but other times I’ll make things pretty gnarly and add all of the elements I either wanted to hear in the original recordings or think would be awesome to include.
Before I really got into music around age 16, I used to shoot videos on an old miniDV camera of me and my friends skateboarding and I remember being really into editing the footage. I guess the editing side of things came into play after making music for a long time and wanting to learn how to mix and master music. I’ve been playing music for close to 15 years, so learning how to work in a studio came a little easier than re-learning how to edit videos, but I seemed to pick it up again reasonably quickly, and it feels good to have my old friend back. In short, I acquired the skills through years of mucking around and having fun, which I now realise was practice.
How did your music/tribute videos take off? What got you started?
I was never an online content kind of guy, but my girlfriend Libby gave me a pretty confident push into creating stuff to put online. I made the first video which got a pretty cool response, so I figured I’d keep making them since they’re fun to create and share, as well as being a great musical outlet.
In your videos, you sing, drum, play guitar, bass, piano and dance like a demon. Is there anything you can’t play? Or dance you won’t dance?
I can’t play the gamelan. Turns out they’re hard to source around Geelong.
Word on the street, is that quite a famous band not only liked one of your videos, but shared it on their instagram too. Spill the beans, who was it?!
Who told you that? Who do you work for?! Queen shared my Bohemian Rhapsody video which was pretty damn cool, to say the least, as well as having a few of my “Beatsketch” videos shared by Jacob Collier, who of which I’m really into.
Who is your biggest influence and any clues as to what we may see next?
I often listen to Theo Katzman, Jacob Collier, Steely Dan, Yellowjackets, Vulfpeck, Rufus Wainright, Victor Wooten, The Beatles… heaps more. I’ve grown up listening to a lot RnB/rap/hip-hop as well as a fair bit of metal in my youth, so I guess my influence comes from a whole melting-pot of stuff.
Thanks for chatting JJ
Thanks!
Do yourself a favour and check out Jaron’s Instagram @jaron.jay, you won’t regret it! While you are here though, check out that famous Queen video below.
