Page 18 - Black Velvet Magazine Issue 107

BV107 pg 18-21 Jordan Red Interview.qxp_BV107 pg 18 30/11/2022 00:05 Page 1

BlackVelvetMagazine.Com - 18

The Final
The Final

Warning
Warning

ockdown sucked the life out of a lot of us.
LWhether it was not being able to do what we
wanted, what we loved or what we lived for, life
changed in an instant. Some of us discovered a com­
pletely new side to ourselves, while others grieved
their entire former way of living. But, post­Covid, we’ve
seen a rebirth, everyone getting back to normality
again – with new projects seeing the light of day. One
such project is Jordan Red, formed by guitarist Dan
Baker and vocalist Daniel Leigh. As a new band, they’re
one of the most exciting new UK rock bands we’ve
heard in a long time, and their debut album ‘Hands
That Built The World’ is one you definitely need.

he ‘Jordan’ in their name comes from
TJordan B. Peterson, a clinical psychol-
ogist. Guitarist Dan Baker begins by telling
Black Velvet, “The name ties together a few
things, but with him, I guess it’s that overall
message of personal responsibility, not being
a victim, taking charge of your own life, I think.
And then, we obviously combine that with the
Red, which ties in that Matrix red pill idea as
well. A big part of it is really trying to make
sure that whatever we write or say is true to
ourselves, because the music industry is a
strange thing. A lot of people say things they
don’t necessarily mean, so we don’t want our
music to be about that.
“It was weird, because when we started
the band; we first started back in 2017, we
didn’t have a name at that point or even any
songs, but we knew we wanted to do some-
thing. So, we booked the studio, got going.
We had to have something for that. We were
coming up with band names and, in the end,
we decided, if we come up with this character
we can create under, it gives us room to go in
a lot of directions. Some songs might be a bit
of a mirror. People can read into it what they
want, see the good or the bad in themselves
or others. I quite like it. It gives us a lot of free-
dom.”
Jordan B. Peterson has written a book en-
titled ’12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos’.
Black Velvet asks what rules the two Dan’s
have in their lives and the band.
“Show up, be prepared, handle your re-
sponsibilities,” says Dan Baker. “Do what you
need to do to look after yourself. There’s ob-
viously a lot of responsibilities within the band,
especially because it is me and Dan, so… We
write the songs quite self-contained. I guess
a lot of it comes back to just doing what we
need to do, because no one else is going to
do it for us. There’s not any hard or set rules.

JORDAN RED