‘Jookabox’ gives music a touch of the undead

Jookabox

Thunderbird Café

4023 Butler St.

Nov. 4

A zombie musical, a love story, white… Jookabox

Thunderbird Café

4023 Butler St.

Nov. 4

A zombie musical, a love story, white flight and urban blight. Can these disparate themes create a single album? Moreover, why would you combine them?

Jookabox front man David “Moose” Adamson has the answers behind his band’s new album, Dead Zone Boys.

“I was thinking a lot about what is good and what is bad, what is evil,” Adamson said. “I thought zombies would be a good way to think about it. It just struck a chord with me for some reason — the idea of a zombie apocalypse.”

Adamson said he doesn’t like to do heavily conceptual albums, but he does like to have a main theme that ties an album together.

“The whole thing is completely zombie influenced,” he said. “It’s all about darkness and light, and there are zombie themes throughout.”

Jookabox, previously known as Grampall Jookabox, will tour as a four-person band for the first time. Previously, recordings and performances featured Adamson as a one-man act.

Of the transition from soloist to member of a full band, Adamson said, “I think it sounds better and clearer and louder. Before, I was using a loop pedal to play a lot of different instruments. It was fun, but I think a lot of times the sound would suffer just because so many things were happening at once all through the PA.”

Adamson’s performance retains remnants of his days performing solo.

In addition to singing and playing electric guitar, he uses a sampler and plays the drums at various points throughout the set.

Dead Zone Boys is Adamson’s third Jookabox album and first full-band effort. The album, which hits stores today, took more than a year to make.

Adamson grew up on the east side of Indianapolis, which he said was “not a terrible place to live.”

Adamson said he got the idea for the album’s title from an article that mentioned an area on the near east side of Indianapolis that the police referred to as the dead zone, where most of the city’s murders happened.

“I thought of that as a funny way to think of the place where you live,” Adamson said. “It kind of said something about the way police think, too.”

Adamson described his musical style as being a product of his location in the middle of the country.

“We get a lot of different influences — hip-hop beats, distorted garage guitars, folk harmonies. It’s a little bit of a mishmash,” he said.

Adamson uses the undead as a deeper metaphor for troubling issues.

“I think about race relations a lot and my place in the world, why things are the way they are. All that seeps through into the record,” he said.

Adamson said his band name came from his girlfriend, who will probably rejoin the band for it’s European tour next year once she finishes school.

“There are words that she says in strange ways, and one of them is ‘jukebox.’ It was sort of a drunken conversation that ended up sticking for some reason. The name chose us,” he said.Another full-band Jookabox record is in the works. Perhaps it will dip into the vampire craze?

“We’re writing and figuring it out right now,” Adamson said, “but it’s definitely kooky and paranoid, like always.”

When asked what audience members should expect attending a zombie-influenced concert, Adamson offered this piece of advice: “Be ready to dance and be thrilled.”

Check out Jookabox’s Myspace page here.