New Orleans band Jean-Eric — named by Flavorwire among the “10 New Orleans Bands You Need To Hear” — headlines the Alabama Music Box in downtown Mobile on June 14, 2011, with The Show Is The Rainbow and Twin Killers on the bill.
The quartet has built a Gulf Coast reputation less on conventional songcraft than on spectacle. Hype Machine praised its “clothing optional live show” as a must-see full of infectious dancing, while Gambit Weekly credited the band’s abrasive style and “increasingly infamous particle colliding parties” with putting the performance back in performance art. Popstache called them “bombastically fun” and “painfully catchy.”
Who’s In the Band
Jean-Eric is Frank Jones and Karen Wallace on vocals, Sheila Santamaria handling performance duties, and Brad Davis on drums. The group lives together in a castle-like mid-city house in New Orleans, sharing the space with their cat, Mr. Crab — an arrangement that feeds directly into the band’s theatrical, house-party aesthetic.
Word ahead of the Mobile date was that cameras would be rolling at the Alabama Music Box show, with the band promising things get wild when the cameras come out. For Mobile audiences weaned on straightforward bar-band fare, the stop promised something closer to performance art than a standard club set.