Jack O’ the Clock is now on Instagram! Follow us for highlights from our live shows, behind-the-scenes updates, and much more.
We’ve also added a new design to our merch store! Check out this linocut-inspired design by Shavonne Yu, based on the jacquemart of the Collegiate Church of Saint Pierre in Leuven, Belgium.
Suddenly, we’re playing several shows in quick succession! If you’ve been waiting, now’s your chance.
First, we’ll be playing a house show August 18 at 2:00PM in Manchester, Vermont. Please let us know directly if you’d like to attend.
Next, we are very excited to announce that we’ll be playing at the Sonic Circus Festival on August 24th. This is a fun, free, outdoor festival in Marlboro, VT. We’ll play at 3:15. Come share some Jamaican food with us!
And of course, we can’t wait to travel down to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to play at this year’s ProgDay Festival on August 31.
We’re excited to share that Jack O’ the Clock has joined the ProgDay 2024 lineup! It’s been 9 years since we played ProgDay 2015, and we’re so excited to return! ProgDay 2024 will be August 31st and September 1st at Storybrook Farm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Tickets will be available later in July.
Our next show will be at 118 Elliot in Brattleboro, VT on Friday, June 14 at 7:00 PM. Suggested $10 donation.
Join us for an evening of music with Benjamin Jayne and Flynn Cohen. Benjamin Jayne will be performing his melancholic folk troubadour set, while Flynn Cohen will be playing a solo mandolin+ performance. Don’t miss out on this amazing event!
Add the show to your calendar here!
The Warm, Dark Circus has made it into several lists for best albums of 2023!
#1 on Prog Archives across all genres and locations
An “Album of the Year” on Avant Music News
We’re excited to announce that we have new Jack O’ the Clock merch available.
Check out our shop on threadless. Thanks to Shavonne Yu for designing the artwork, a clever variation on Albrecht Dürer’s original engraving, containing the lyrics to the track “Dürer’s Rhinoceros”.
The Warm, Dark Circus is now available on Spotify and other streaming services, as well as Bandcamp and Wayside Music for physical CDs.
Check out an extensive interview with Damon in Pienemmät Purot about the new album, influences, latest news on the band, and much more!
“Picture a dark chest of drawers with no indication of what is stored inside each one of them…The Warm, Dark Circus continues the band’s journey through a carefully crafted musical landscape wherein the signposts can be deceptive but always point to something interesting and adventurous.” — Here Comes The Flood
“really rich and downright head-spinningly complex, yet seductively addictive” — Pienemmät Purot
“like a fiction anthology that picks at reality with poignancy and disturbing insight….Musically…The Warm, Dark Circus stands out as one of their best…It is as if they have captured the characteristics of the last 75 years of Western music and reprocessed them into a new genre.” — Avant Music News
“…beautiful acoustic instruments working together with a top-notch rhythm section to produce a wonderful kind of modern art music…I find myself enjoying listening to it so much that it gets to the end without me having written a word…” — Exposé
The Warm, Dark Circus available on Bandcamp and Wayside Music! The album will be available on streaming services November 17.
Jack O’ the Clock will be celebrating the release with a show in Vermont on October 27. Please inquire at jackotheclock17@gmail.com for the addresses.
A kaleidoscopic trip through the anxieties and possibilities of the present moment, the new album ranges through some of the weirdest, heaviest landscapes we’ve ever visited. Containing two epics that have been under construction as long as the band has been in existence alongside a handful of newer studio creations, it is the culmination of many years of experimentation and refinement lyrically and musically, a musical palimpsest.
Damon Waitkus – vocals, guitars, hammer dulcimers, piano, flutes, etc.
Emily Packard – violin, viola
Jason Hoopes – bass
Jordan Glenn – drums, accordion, synth
Kate McLoughlin – bassoon
Thea Kelley – vocals
Victor Reynolds – guitars, recorders, harmonica, vocals, etc.
Ivor Holloway – saxophones
Jon Russell – clarinets
Keith Waters – baritone saxophone
Karl Evangelista – electric guitar
Art Elliot – piano
Josh Packard – cello
Ben Spees – microtonal guitars
Myles Boisen – pedal steel
Damon Waitkus’ microtonal collaboration with Ben Spees of The Mercury Tree, VENTIFACTS, has just released an EP covering the entirety of R.E.M.’s release Chronic Town, as one continuous, barreling suite of songs.
Damon: The essential ghost of R.E.M. was never so upfront for me as in their earliest material…There’s always been something appealing and natural about going microtonal with this stuff–something in the pungency of the expanded pitch pallet seems to bring back the hauntedness that grabbed me when I first heard these songs.
LISTEN HERE on the bandcamp.
What’s new with Jack O’ The Clock? Damon (voice, instruments) and Emily (violin), with help from Kate (voice, bassoon), Thea (voice), and Victor Reynolds (instruments), are currently working on overdubs for a new album of material derived from the many recording sessions we did with Jason and Jordan before leaving California in 2019. Though these were the same sessions that produced our 2021 album
LEAVING CALIFORNIA, the mood and energy of the new album is a world apart. Look for updates on this process on this site in the coming months.
As for the live band, Damon and Emily have been rehearsing a slew of new composed material with founding member Kate McLoughlin, Victor Reynolds (bass/guitar) and Ben James (drums). We hope to start playing out locally before too long under a different name, but the material is complex and we are not quite ready yet!
