News

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New(ish) Single Out March 12th!

It all started back in 2004 when our housemate used a fork to pry seafood from dry ice. Who knew such crazy sounds would occur when dry ice meets stainless steel? We messed around with this minor miracle for as long as the ice lasted, recording our “improvisations” onto minidisc, and a little while later I assembled the samples into a beat. This matched the tempo of a kind of spikily melancholic song I’d been working on called “Half Life.”

I’m not sure I completely endorse the fundamental cynicism of this song two decades later, but the dread entombed in these images and melodies still haunts me such that I felt it deserved a second thrashing. A song about the impossibility of ever truly outrunning the past, to be listened to at dusk.  

Overdubbing woodwinds for the new album!

“The Studio” in Ireland is much simpler than our barn setup in Vermont, but it works. The winter farm on the wall is there to remind us of home, which also happens to be under two feet of snow at present.

The new album will feature all new music written for the Vermont band no earlier than 2020 (I have to say that, because it seems we’re always releasing stuff that’s been gestating for 10 or 20 years—well, not this time!)

We’re done a lot of woodshedding on this music as a group—Damon, Emily, Kate, Victor and Ben—and I think you’ll hear that lived-in, live emphasis in the recordings, which highlight the interplay of the core band instruments over excessive overdubs and production. Felt like coming home.

It’s too soon to say when this album will be ready (likely 2027), but we’ll have some other tidbits to share in the meantime. More on that shortly! 

–Damon

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Greetings! We are proud to announce the release of a new album today!

Purchase now on Bandcamp

Or listen on Spotify and other streaming services

PORTRAITS “draw[s] together conversational songs and pen portraits with novelistic insights on characters and events, real or imagined. There is a playfulness alongside a folksy lyricism and musical bounce and groove…From the beginning to the end I feel warm, immersed, hugged…” –Ross McGibbon, VANGUARD ONLINE

PORTRAITS is a re-imagining of a collection of songs founding band members Emily Packard and Damon Waitkus recorded with some friends back in the summer of 2003. The album features the original rhythm and violin tracks, bringing new lyrics, vocals, and an array of other overdubs by present band members Kate McLoughlin and Victor Reynolds. These are front porch songs: hooky, energetic, sunny-side-up, reflective, fun, a little casual. It’s a side of Jack O’ the Clock that has always been present but has never been so concentrated in a single album.

“PORTRAITS is a progressive folk record, a collection of short stories – some of them surreal, others pretty straightforward and sometimes even without words at all – that should be listened to without outside interference. It proves that Waitkus was an adventurous composer from the get-go. with a couple of decades worth of life experience his refurbished lyrics have caught up with his skills as a musician.” –Hans Werksman, HERE COMES THE FLOOD

PORTRAITS presents a collection of bite-sized, slice-of-life, portraits of individuals ranging from childhood to old age, bound up in the quietly desperate particulars of their lives. Each voice forges a unique alloy of characteristics, from resistance to resignation, earnestness to irony, but with a consistent undercurrent of humor. 

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Thanks to Lee Henderson of Big Beautiful Noise for a nice review of The Warm, Dark Circus.

Intricate interplay, injections of absurdity, refined framework, and a kitchen sink of brilliance surprise the willing opponent. As fragile parts dance around, often a cascade plunges down to wash the ideas further down stream. Oh there is much more.

…the unique sound of Jack O’ the Clock resonates as they always have on every single album and provided the audience the privilege to hear. It is a one of a kind project. A once in a lifetime experience.

We appreciate Big Beautiful Noise for all the coverage they’ve given over the years. See the site for more excellent reviews, recommendations, and more!

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Our new album, PORTRAITS, is mastered and ready to roll. The full album will be released on February 13th of 2025, but we’ll be releasing a few singles before that, starting right after the new year. 

PORTRAITS is a re-imagining of an album Emily Packard and Damon Waitkus recorded with some friends back in the summer of 2003. It uses the original rhythm and violin tracks, but brings new lyrics, vocals, and an array of other overdubs by present band members Kate McLoughlin and Victor Reynolds. 

PORTRAITS presents a collection of bite-sized, slice-of-life, mostly first-person portraits of individuals. You might think of them as front porch songs: hooky, energetic, sunny-side-up, reflective, fun, a little casual. Pure play and pleasure. It’s a side of Jack O’ the Clock that has always been present but has never been so concentrated in a single album, and because of the strange decade-spanning way this album came together, could never quite happen again. We look forward to sharing it with you soon!

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It’s ironic to be releasing this song now, when a fire ban is in effect in our area of the Northeast and ponds are drying up. When I wrote “Windigo Knocking,” it seemed it would never stop raining. The summer had been so wet that a lot of the sugar maples that are emblematic of the area didn’t display any fall colors, collapsing instead into a sickening green-black. Drought or flood, it comes to the same thing: the season is sick.

In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer evokes the Anishinaabe legend Windigo, a hunger-wracked monster that haunts the margins of winter encampments in lean times, frozen-hearted and insatiable. “Born of our fears and our failings,” Kimmerer writes, “Windigo is the name for that within us which cares more for its own survival than anything else.” Windigo represents a system out of balance—its hunger only begets more hunger; its isolation from the group only deepens as it tries to interact with it forcibly and destructively.

Listen now on Bandcamp or Spotify.

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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.