Riding along with Colin Healy and the Jetskis

By Andrew Cothern

Published: December 15, 2008

The members of power-pop rock group Colin Healy and the Jet Skis admit to hanging out with each other a little too much.

The group met when they were students at Trinity High School and now live together and make music. However, they feel that it’s helped turned the band into what it is today.

“We love it,” guitarist Harrison Weber says. “We fight over different parts of the music and things like that, but playing music with people who don’t always agree with you is actually a blessing. Without arguments and disagreements, we would have never grown as a band.”

The Jet Skis, consisting of Weber on guitar, frontman and piano player Colin Healy, guitarist Cullen MacDonald and bassist Jimmy Kelly, are influenced by several different artists including Sigur Rós, Imogen Heap, Jack’s Mannequin and Copeland. No matter what they listen to, though, the group keeps its feet rooted in pop and indie rock.

“I guess we’d describe ourselves as indie pop – although that’s not really correct.“ Healy says. “We’re too indie to be pop and we’re too pop to be indie. We’re in that awkward place in between.“

Full of energy and catchy melodic hooks, Colin and the Jet Skis offer nothing less than a good time. The heartbreaking lyrics mixed with power pop driven sounds grabs you by the collar, sends you on a tumultuous ride, spits you back out and leaves you wanting to take the ride again.

The Jet Skis are touring and promoting their recently released EP “Or Just Don’t Go,“ which they first released as a free download on MySpace. By offering the EP for free, the band has increased the number of people visiting their website and hopes to increase numbers of fans.

“We even found our EP on a Chinese torrent site.” MacDonald jokes. “I thought it was hilarious that someone out there took our songs, which were free and gave them out to a whole new audience. I even posted a comment on there.”

While recording the EP, the band learned that things take much longer than expected.

“We actually recorded over 12 songs, but we felt that they weren’t good enough to release.” MacDonald said. “Our fans have been waiting forever for some decent recordings and we felt we owed it to them to have something of quality to give them.”

The Jet Skis have a number of tour dates coming up including shows at The National (Jan. 9) and the Canal Club (Feb. 7), but it wasn’t always that easy to get people to come see them perform.

“When we first started out and up until recently, we almost had to drag people out to shows.” Kelly said. “There really weren’t a lot of places to play. Alley Katz was the standard, but everyone would play there. The quality has gotten better with new venues and more diverse bands popping up.”

And while the band is happy that there are now more venues in Richmond and more people are able to come to their shows, they feel that there’s more to being musicians.

“Making music is the best part of being in a band.” Healy said. “Although getting noticed, making friends and having people think we’re cool is also great.“

The final, and possibly most important question is then asked: “Who would you kill to open for?”

“That’s easy. I’d kill to play with Muse.” MacDonald said.

“But the real question is who would we kill to play with Muse?” Weber asked.

“Anybody. I’d even kill Colin to play with Muse. Sorry man.” MacDonald answered.

Healy laughs and shrugs it off. “Hey, I’d kill myself to play with Muse.”