Jason Farrell, the singer/songwriter of Bluetip, could stop
now and have a pretty respectable spot in the underground music
scene, but he has no intention of slowing down. When he’s
not recording or touring relentlessly with Bluetip, he’s
busy designing innovative album covers for bands like Lungfish,
Ignition, Make-Up, Seven Gone, Damnation AD, Hoover, Fugazi,
Swiz, and his current band, Bluetip, just to name a few. Jason
explains how he started in graphic design and eventually made
it his career; “Well Swiz needed record covers, so I started
making them. Swiz broke up and I was like ‘Well fuck, I’m
already in school, so I might as well take up graphic design.’
I finished up school as a graphic designer and went to work
for Dischord.” Jason spent his pre-Bluetip/graphic design
years playing guitar in the now legendary mid-eighties band
Swiz. Unlike their DC contemporaries, Swiz mixed driving riffs
and dominating rhythms into a concoction all their own. Jason
credits the influences of his guitar playing in Swiz to The
Cult’s Love album, Master of Puppets-era Metallica, and
AC/DC, “That’s what I was into.” The other members
of Swiz went their separate ways in early 1992, while Jason,
and recent Swiz addition Dave Stern, went on to form Bluetip.
Eventually, around 1998, Jason, Dave, and the other members
of Swiz regrouped as Sweetbelly Freakdown, occasionally playing
live and recording. Bluetip still remains Jason’s priority
though “It’s a lot of fun playing with Sweetbelly,
but to me Bluetip is more serious and the songwriting is different.”
When asked to compare the difference between the songwriting
process in Bluetip as opposed to Sweetbelly Freakdown Farrell
says, “Bluetip is a lot more of a critical, painful, involved,
process of songwriting, where as in Sweetbelly we write in the
same room at the same time. Someone will go ‘What do you
think of this?’ and Shaun will sing something and it works
out fine. It’s more for fun. I love the songs, but it’s
definitely more serious in Bluetip.” When Bluetip released
their debut album, Dischord 101, many saw it as a resurgence
in what they believed was a stagnate period in the legendary
DC music scene. Regardless of the reasons, many people noticed
Dischord 101, which even placed well on Alternative Press’
“Top 90 Albums of the 90s” list earlier this year.
As critically and listener acclaimed as the album was/is, Farrell
attributes at least part of the album’s success to outside
variables. “I’m happy that people like the record,
but I think the 2nd album, Come Join Us, is a much better album.
I think a lot of people were excited about it [Dischord 101]
because a lot of the other stuff coming out on Dischord was
maybe not as, and this is a loose term but, ‘Aggressive’
or vaguely ‘old sounding’. Though we were certainly
by no means trumpeting the return of hardcore, it still had
enough elements of guitar driven DC music.” Part of Farrell’s
happiness with the results of Come Join Us can be attributed
to producer J. Robbins “With Ian (MacKaye), who produced
Dischord 101, he was like ‘People are gonna think you’re
a rock band so you’d better be careful. People might confuse
you as being a rock band. ‘We were like ‘Ohhhh.. That’s
bad isn’t it?’ So we played down the whole rock thing,
but we were like ‘Fuck, we are kind of a rock band.’
There’s definitely certain elements of that so why try
to hide that?’ J.(Robbins), who produced Come Join Us,
was like ‘Hey man! You’re a rock band, go with it!’
I think the combination of that and the fact that as a band
we were a tighter unit was a big factor.” As for what Jason
sees the band doing in the future, his only reply is “I
would hate to be stuck in one style of music. What’s the
fun in that? I have no desire to sound like some other band
that’s been broken up for 15 years. I only want to keep
moving forward.”
Jason Farrell, the singer/songwriter of Bluetip, could stop
now and have a pretty respectable spot in the underground music
scene, but he has no intention of slowing down. When he’s
not recording or touring relentlessly with Bluetip, he’s
busy designing innovative album covers for bands like Lungfish,
Ignition, Make-Up, Seven Gone, Damnation AD, Hoover, Fugazi,
Swiz, and his current band, Bluetip, just to name a few. Jason
explains how he started in graphic design and eventually made
it his career; “Well Swiz needed record covers, so I started
making them. Swiz broke up and I was like ‘Well fuck, I’m
already in school, so I might as well take up graphic design.’
I finished up school as a graphic designer and went to work
for Dischord.” Jason spent his pre-Bluetip/graphic design
years playing guitar in the now legendary mid-eighties band
Swiz. Unlike their DC contemporaries, Swiz mixed driving riffs
and dominating rhythms into a concoction all their own. Jason
credits the influences of his guitar playing in Swiz to The
Cult’s Love album, Master of Puppets-era Metallica, and
AC/DC, “That’s what I was into.” The other members
of Swiz went their separate ways in early 1992, while Jason,
and recent Swiz addition Dave Stern, went on to form Bluetip.
Eventually, around 1998, Jason, Dave, and the other members
of Swiz regrouped as Sweetbelly Freakdown, occasionally playing
live and recording. Bluetip still remains Jason’s priority
though “It’s a lot of fun playing with Sweetbelly,
but to me Bluetip is more serious and the songwriting is different.”
When asked to compare the difference between the songwriting
process in Bluetip as opposed to Sweetbelly Freakdown Farrell
says, “Bluetip is a lot more of a critical, painful, involved,
process of songwriting, where as in Sweetbelly we write in the
same room at the same time. Someone will go ‘What do you
think of this?’ and Shaun will sing something and it works
out fine. It’s more for fun. I love the songs, but it’s
definitely more serious in Bluetip.” When Bluetip released
their debut album, Dischord 101, many saw it as a resurgence
in what they believed was a stagnate period in the legendary
DC music scene. Regardless of the reasons, many people noticed
Dischord 101, which even placed well on Alternative Press’
“Top 90 Albums of the 90s” list earlier this year.
As critically and listener acclaimed as the album was/is, Farrell
attributes at least part of the album’s success to outside
variables. “I’m happy that people like the record,
but I think the 2nd album, Come Join Us, is a much better album.
I think a lot of people were excited about it [Dischord 101]
because a lot of the other stuff coming out on Dischord was
maybe not as, and this is a loose term but, ‘Aggressive’
or vaguely ‘old sounding’. Though we were certainly
by no means trumpeting the return of hardcore, it still had
enough elements of guitar driven DC music.” Part of Farrell’s
happiness with the results of Come Join Us can be attributed
to producer J. Robbins “With Ian (MacKaye), who produced
Dischord 101, he was like ‘People are gonna think you’re
a rock band so you’d better be careful. People might confuse
you as being a rock band. ‘We were like ‘Ohhhh.. That’s
bad isn’t it?’ So we played down the whole rock thing,
but we were like ‘Fuck, we are kind of a rock band.’
There’s definitely certain elements of that so why try
to hide that?’ J.(Robbins), who produced Come Join Us,
was like ‘Hey man! You’re a rock band, go with it!’
I think the combination of that and the fact that as a band
we were a tighter unit was a big factor.” As for what Jason
sees the band doing in the future, his only reply is “I
would hate to be stuck in one style of music. What’s the
fun in that? I have no desire to sound like some other band
that’s been broken up for 15 years. I only want to keep
moving forward.”