Good News + Free Music: Jody Seabody & The Whirls Continue On, Put Free Stuff on Bandcamp

The past year was a pretty rough one for the Jody Seabody & The Whirls guys; right as they finished up their forthcoming full-length, Summer Us, when they should’ve been psyched and looking forward to its release, bassist and friend Matt Johnston succumbed to a congenital heart defect.

Obviously, his loss hit the rest of the band hard, and they’ve been taking some time to mourn and figure out what to do next. Per guitarist Bryce Perkins, they weren’t even sure Jody Seabody would continue in its current form, or if they’d move on to something else entirely.

With that in mind, I’m glad to get a little bit of good news from the Seabody camp, namely that they’ve decided to soldier on as Jody Seabody & The Whirls and actually do a real release of Summer Us. Which, at least to me, is pretty great to hear — these guys are a heck of a promising, interesting band, and I really would’ve hated to see them break up.

They’re currently working on getting a release show set up and finding a bassist who can fill Johnston’s shoes, but in the meantime, they’ve made everything up on their Bandcamp page available to download for free-free-free, including two new songs from Summer Us, “Open Book” and “Lone Tree.” I’ve listened to both, and I’m liking ’em quite a bit, which kind of surprises me, actually, because I’ve been way, way off of this sort of straight-ahead rock stuff lately — the Seabody guys pull it off nicely.

On top of that, they’ve recently dumped a big pile of old recordings from 2005-2006 up there, entitled Jody Seabody and the Whirls Sing Songs. It’s all stuff that hasn’t seen the light of day ’til now; I haven’t listened to all of it yet, mind you, but it’s neat to hear the louder, rawer, “proto”-Jody Seabody back when it was in its relative infancy.

We’ll post info on the release show once we get some, so keep an eye out.