For the past year or so, JEFF The Brotherhood have been zigzagging the country in support of their latest album, Hypnotic Nights. The album was their highest charting to date and their first with Warner Bros. But being on a major hasn’t stopped the brothers Orrall from rocking and rocking hard. They maintain an independent mentality even though they have the luxury of being on a major, which is a rarity for musicians these days. With that, they still prefer playing smaller, intimate venues as opposed to larger rooms and even festivals. We caught up with Jamin Orrall, half of the Brotherhood, while stuck in notoriously fickle L.A. rush hour traffic where he explained how his Coachella went and why he isn’t a fan of festivals as a whole.

Were you on the grounds all weekend?

We were there Saturday and Sunday, but we were pretty much working the entire time we were there 

What does working entail? 

Interviews, photo shoots, autograph signings, stuff like that.

Did you have the chance to have fun or was it all work all the time?

Oh yeah, we had fun. I didn’t see any bands though… 

Was there a chance to partake in any of the activities of Coachella?

I don’t think I actually entered the actual festival grounds with the common people at all once. 

Did you like that aspect?

Yeah, I don’t think I had that much interest even if we didn’t have to work all weekend. I’m not really much of a festival guy.

So not being a festival guy, what is it like playing one? 

It’s actually really difficult and a challenge because if you really think about it, playing an outdoor music festival is pretty much the most impersonal performance you can be involved in besides maybe playing on national television. But even then, you have an audience that’s in the same room as you and you’re bound together by that. With an outdoor music festival, it’s sort of like people are just window shopping and if there are people who come up and become engaged with the performance, you’re still like 20 feet away from them because there’s a photo pit in front of the stage. It’s really difficult to have an experience that’s separate from your audience. We like to engage our audience and involve them somehow with the performance, but it’s a difficult challenge to do that in that setting. 

Was that challenge overcome once you hit the stage or was it a constant struggle from the jump?

I think we did pretty good. We had a lot of technical difficulties because we had only 20 minutes to get our show on stage. We couldn’t hear anything and I don’t know. It ended up being pretty good. I heard from a lot of people at the festival that it was one of the coolest things they saw all weekend and I read something online that said we fell flat on our faces. I guess everyone came away with something different. But I had fun.

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