Hanging Out With Jenn's Apartment
Story by LCC Staff Reporter Katie Gleason
If
you tuned in to LCC Radio's
Lansing Loud
& Local on Wednesday January 22nd, you may have heard a rather heated
debate between the members of Jenn’s Apartment over which brand of mac and
cheese was the best. That kind of ridiculous banter, backed by a kind of
existential questioning of life and emotion is expertly weaved throughout Jenn’s
Apartment’s music. What kind of genre might that be? Well, lead singer Roy Kirby
describes it as “profound yet relatable stoner pop trash” which, honestly,
really encapsulates what Jenn’s Apartment is all about.
Jenn’s Apartment has been around since 2004, with the original members
disbanding in 2007, leaving Roy Kirby with the metaphorical child that was the
band. Then Roy, bassist Chris Davis, and drummer Justin Pine reinvigorated the
band in 2015. Originally Roy’s pop punk project right out of high school, he was
heavily inspired by bands like Jimmy Eat World, the MC5 and other local Lansing
artists
The name Jenn’s Apartment came from a girlfriend Roy had in high school who was
significantly older than him. “I thought I was so cool,” reminisces Roy, “I
would get home from school and hang out at Jenn’s apartment! Of course we broke
up and that’s a long story, but the name stuck around.” Unfortunately, with a
name so wonderfully primed to be a middle-aged woman’s interior designing
company, that’s exactly what they have to compete with. Roy, Chris, and Justin
would like listeners to know that their instagram handle is @jennsappartmentband,
and if you’ve hit real estate, you’ve gone too far.
On
their instagram you can see promotion for their newest single, "Tall Bois",
released on January 17th. "Tall Bois" is just a prelude to a full album, set to
be released sometime in early April. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get too
many details about the new release, only that the theme of the album revolves
around loneliness, drugs, longing and philosophy: topics Roy hopes are “profound
yet relatable.”
The boys of Jenn’s Apartment are filling 2020 with a lot of ambition, and
rightfully so. Roy teases the idea of doing a Jenn’s Apartment cooking show “to
show everyone the right way to make mac and cheese.” While that may have been
more of a joke than fact, the boys in the band are actually planning on
releasing a podcast this year. With a few test episodes already in the bag,
they’re almost ready to release their first episode.
“The tagline we came up with for the podcast was-- 5% about the band, 95%
everything else. It’s mostly just us trying not to talk about farts too much. We
do however, want to bring other bands on, and we want to make it something where
we can feature other Michigan artists and just have fun. It’s called Hanging Out
With Jenn’s Apartment, so we really don’t want to restrict other bands too much.
We just want it to be fun for us and our friends.”
Jenn’s
Apartment are really proud of their Michigan roots, they’ve been a part of the
Lansing scene for a long time now and they feel like they know almost everyone.
When asked to name drop some of their friends they proudly said local names
like, Vincie D, Future Misters, Tubesocks, and Mr. Denton on Doomsday who
they’ve played with a good handful of times in the past. Even their latest
release was a collaboration with Almost Made The Mixtape, a band out of Detroit,
a folks they’ve been wanting to work with for a while.
The guys from Jenn’s Apartment might just be one of the nicest bands in Lansing.
This year they’re opening up their studio to help bands record who may not have
a studio to record in.
You can look forward to them announcing more tour dates soon along with their
next album in April. However, coming up they’re having their first out-of-state
show in Indiana this March! So if you’re headed out that way, go and support
Jenn’s Apartment.
Whatever you do, do not bring them Kraft Mac and Cheese.
