Orange Park

 

If you can believe in what you do, you can overcome hard times.

Jeff & Justin Moore / Orange Park

 

“Indie Band who is making efforts in NY” was title of the program on NHK aired back in January. This became a turning point for Orange Park.

This 4 piece rock band who got a chance by an unusual opportunity is formed by brothers of Jeff and Justin Moore, cousin Jaye Moore and old time friend, Harv who grew up together in their home town of Jacksonville, Florida.

 

They moved to New York a few years ago and maintained their own style in the garage rock music scene. Their album “Songs From The Unknown” (On sale) has a pop punch with fresh smooth voices of the Moore brothers along with a big guitar sound.

 

--Who sponsored this “Songs From The Unknown”?

Jeff”: Many people sponsored this album. There was no back up from a label.

We raised the funds we needed by ourselves.

We decided to go back to Florida and record the album, thinking that someone would release it.

 

--After that you came to Japan back in September, was it because you had a meeting with King Records?

Jeff: No, basically touring was the main purpose. We played 13 shows in 15 days.

We had 2 shows in one day at the end. (Laughing)

Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima and Osaka…We managed to have time for little bit of sight seeing, so it turned out to be a very productive tour.

King Records came to some of our shows and watched us play.

 

--You had a tour even before your album was released, did you have any good connections?

Jeff: Originally it started from an article about us in the New York Times.

NHK producers read the article and decided to tape a documentary about us on a program called “New York Streets”. After that was aired, many people started checking out our band website and we met a fan named Yoshiko.

She took the lead of the details for the tour in Japan. She had some connections from some venues such as “Takanoya” in Tokyo or promoters, and helped us out from those sources.

I know it is very unique, coming to Japan before an album release.

But we made many Japanese fans when we were there, so it was very good.

Venues were filled up except for the first day and we met very cool people also.

 

Never thought about quitting.

 

--I heard that you still have jobs other than playing in the band as the documentary was showing and that you could not live by only music. Your strong will of success shows in your album such as the song “Wouldn’t Change A Thing” even if you have hard times.

Jeff: I guess so. There are so many choices you have in your life, but once you choose it, you can’t take it back or go back. Things happen for a reason.

I didn’t write this song consciously to be the way it is. In fact, I normally realize what the song is about after the song is completed.

This is our debut album, right? It just turned out that songs come from our experiences or occurrences in our lives.

 

--You have reached the point of releasing albums at 30. I’m sure there were times you wanted to quit or things didn’t go quite the way you wanted. What helped you to overcome those times?

Jeff: I never wanted to quit. Our final goal is to be the best rock band ever.

We all have believed that and we all know that this is a thing we can do.

We don’t think about quitting now, and we would never go back.

In fact since playing as Orange Park, things are always getting better and moving forward.

The times we’ve had keep us going, even if there are hard times, if you believe what you are doing is right, you can over come anything.

 

--I can get that your positive attitude from your sound. It gives me a power.

Jeff: Thank you

 

--What kind of music have you been influenced by?

Jeff: Me, personally? Lets see…Beatles, of course, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Radio Head, Oasis, Cheap Trick and many more.

 

Your looks and the fact that the band is from NY, you might be taken as a garage rock band, but after listening your sound, it is not so. Your catchy chorus and brotherly harmonies you create seem to be compared with Cheap Trick like sound. I heard you are a Foo Fighters fan and really agreed that you are.

Jeff: Yes. Foo Fighters rock hard and we love rocking and rolling. (Laughing)

 

--Thank you for joining today.

Jeff: Thank you. I will go get Justin now. (Justin comes to the phone)

 

--Comparing Jeff who’s influenced by rock, you seem to be a love, ballad, and sensitive songwriter.

Justin: It might be so. Ballads are more emotional, so it might attract me more than an aggressive rock sound.

But I also like Hard Rock. But it’s true that I can write ballads very naturally.

 

--There are so many ballads in this world, but if you really want to write some serious songs that remains in people’s hearts, wouldn’t that be even harder to write?  What is your memorable best ballad?

Justin: “Maybe I’m amazed” by Paul McCartney is a great ballad. Or “Woman” by John Lennon.

 

--How about for your songs?

Justin: “Miles Away” is a big ballad with rock sound.

Other than that, there is song called “Honesty” which I’ve been keeping for a long time.

It’s not in the album, but anyway you will hear some songs like that on our future albums. Because it is so natural to me.

 

--As for the song “Miles Away”, is it a song about you and Jeff? I heard you two have been apart for a while.

Justin: There are in fact some people who think the song is for us, brothers.

But I didn’t write the song for that. I actually wrote the song about relationships between men and women.

“Give me that smile, give me that far away look~” is for a woman.

 

--You wrote some songs for parting such as “Once In my life” or Save me”, right?

It seems like you’ve experienced some serious love?

Justin: You are exactly right.

 

--So, I’d like to ask you this question. Do you think that love stories like “They lived happily ever after” exist in real life?

Justin: That’s a difficult question…Things happen with reasons and I think people grow more with experience.

I think there will be a wonderful life after that, but at the same time, there might be something very scary waiting for you.

Life is an endless learning process after all. Of course, we should all learn form experiences.

So eternal love is probably a very rushing thought.

I want to experience more and achieve greatness and there will be hard times I should face in future, but I want to be a person who can overcome all of that.

 

--What is the greatest thing you’ve learned from your past love?

Justin: Just being yourself. You can’t live your life just to amuse somebody else.

Of course there times you have to compromise things.

But you should keep your core and shouldn’t compromise by breaking your core.

I also learned the importance of showing your true face to other people.

And also it is important to see and understand that other people have to go through hard times as much as I’ve been through.

When you are in love, you are often overwhelmed with loving feeling and intend to forget that your partner might need the same thing. You have to be careful about that.

Overall I learned to treasure someone’s feelings.

 

When you feel like you have to prepare other plans just in case you don’t make it with music,

You are failing already.

 

--I see. By the way, I heard you’ve been longing to be a rock star since you were a little child.

Justin: That’s right. My dream was like making my favorite music and having many people listen to it as well being respected as a songwriter. Of course being a millionaire is not a bad idea, too (Laughing)

I’ve been thinking about being rock’n roll star that everybody loves and travelling all over the world ever since I was little.

But as I grew up, I had stronger thoughts to become a respected songwriter.

 

--I also heard that you didn’t have any other skills to become “Plan B”, next to a songwriter.

Justin: No I don’t. If I didn’t have music, I would be an alcoholic who lives on the streets. (Laughing)

 

--You probably want to avoid that. (Laughing)

Justin: Yes, so there is no Plan B. Also if you want to be successful in this business, you shouldn’t have other skills.

When you feel like you have to prepare other plans just in case you don’t make it with music,

You are failing already.

 

--When did you start writing songs?

Justin: I started writing by myself when I was 14 or so. I always liked singing and used sing in front of classmates when I was in elementary school. I used to say “I will be famous singer one day” and many people thought I was crazy.

I got a guitar when I was 14 and started composing songs then.

I always thought that I could make it with music from that time.

 

--Has your brother been your influence on your music life?

Justin: Yes. Jeff has been playing guitar long before me and taught me how to play songs from “The cult”.

I started getting interested in playing guitar by watching him play, so influence from my brother is big.

My brother was the one who got committed to music with attitude like  “all or nothing” before me.

I used think he was pretty cool.

 

--Attitude like “All or nothing” might have looked cool, but what did your parents think about it?

Justin: They didn’t seem to take it serious about my passion, but by the end of my teens, they finally started to believe my passion towards music. Of course every parent want their children to got colleges and hope that they will have stable job and life.

And I think that was pretty hard for them to give up.

But after they realized my seriousness, they supported me greatly.

 

--When other 3 members moved to NY, you remained in Florida, right? What kind of activities did you have?

Justin: I used to make demo tapes with other friends in Jacksonville.

We got some responses from major labels.

 

--And one of them was Interscope according to Jeff.

Were you a friend with Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit, VP of Interscope) or something?

Justin: Pete Thornton who is the producer of our current album, was making demos at that time.

He was a friend of Fred Durst and handed him the demo.

He immediately liked it and brought a contract with a major label.

But it never worked out for some reason.

Then I thought about the direction of my music very seriously.

I didn’t have a very strong commitment with the band members, so I though about possibilities of being a solo.

At the same time, Jeff also had a label contract in NY and called and asked me if I wanted to join them.

So I just put my amp in my van and drove to NY, and had jam session with them.

That went very good, so I sold my van and moved to NY to join them.

 

--Have you two always been very close when you were little?

Justin: We didn’t always play together. My brother had his own friends being busy with smoking and drinking, doing bad stuff.

I myself most of the time stayed home and watching pro-wrestling, eating Burritos.

We didn’t stay together much until we started playing in a band in high school. (Laughing)

Music might have brought my brother and I closer.

 

--Do you have other brothers other than Jeff?

Justin: No, just two of us. In fact it’s a good thing that I didn’t have any brothers other than Jeff. (Laughing)