All photos credit to Jordaine Dinorog
All the way back in December of 2022 I joined the team with Keynote. My first ever show review and concert photography gig with a publication was on The Sonder Bombs, a local favorite in Cleveland (go check out that article here).
Last week, their guitarist Jimmy Wilkens, formerly Jimmy Lo-Fi, put our their first solo record under the name Crown Shy. I sat down with Jimmy to discuss Comfort Film, as well as their cat, life balancing multiple musical projects, as well as many other things.
Ethan: If you want to start off with your name or you can use your artist name, your pronouns, and then a little bit about yourself.
Jimmy: So my name is Jimmy Wilkens. My pronouns are they/he with a strong preference for they. And then a little bit about myself. Well, I guess I never know how to answer this, I guess I’ve been playing music since I was like 12 or 13. I play guitar in The Sonder Bombs and co founded it as well with Willow back in January 2016. I live in Cleveland, Ohio, and Crown Shy is a new project that I started where, right now it’s just me, like on the recordings and doing all the writing, but I do have a band that backs me, and I envision, like, long term this being like a full band, just for now. It’s kind of like I just started in my bedroom, and I just wanted to get stuff out there and see what happens. My band is basically Biitchseat, all three permanent members of Biitchseat are my backing band, and then also I’ve been going on tour with them lately. They really bring the songs to life. They’ve they got them down with pretty few practices. The only difference in the live show, besides the songs themselves, between Biitchseat and Crown Shy is that Taylor and I just switch places. So they take the bass and sing backups, and then I take guitar and do leads. But, when I play in Biitchseat, I’m playing bass, not singing, and then, of course, guitar and vocals.
E: So where did the name Crown Shy come from? Because for the longest time I knew you as Jimmy Lo-Fi.
J: I decided to move on from that mostly because I had already released two records under that name, and I didn’t really try that hard with the project, and I didn’t want to start trying with the third record. I feel like it’d be harder to get it off the ground than just starting fresh. And I also didn’t identify with the Lo-Fi moniker anymore. I kind of named myself that as almost like a shield for the recording quality, because I record everything myself. And it was almost like a way to be “like, yeah, it’s supposed to sound like that,” when something doesn’t sound the best. But long term, I’m going to get better. And I don’t want to have to stick to making lower fidelity sounding records, right? So Crown Shy, the it’s a shortened version of the term crown shyness, which is this phenomenon that occurs in certain species of trees, where these trees will grow, and they have leaves and branches, but none of the neighboring trees touch each other. The crowns of the trees, which is, like, the head part of it, yeah? They’re shy, they don’t touch. So if you’re in this forest with this particular type of tree around you, and you look up, it looks like there’s like veins, or like rivers or like paths in the sky, because the trees just stop short of touching each other. I got the idea of the name from this book by Becky Chambers. And the second book in that installment is called “A Prayer for the Crown Shy.” And in the book, they mentioned crown shyness. I was like, whoa, I really, like that phenomenon. I never heard of it before. It blew my mind. And then also, it just felt right, on multiple levels. So I was like that’s the band name.
E: Obviously the big thing is you just released the debut record under the new name, Comfort Film. Give us a little bit of a background on the record.
J: I wasn’t trying to make a record when I made the record. I had a couple songs I’d written, and I was going through a lot of writer’s block. Like, the first song on the record, “Evaporate,” I wrote in I want to say 2021 and then I just didn’t write another song for almost a year and a half after that one. I had no plans of making another record under Jimmy Lo-Fi or just period outside of The Sonder Bombs stuff. And then one day I wrote “Autopilot.” It just kind of fell out of me, and then next thing I knew, within a few months, like song after song after song that are coming out. And in the past few years, I entered my 30s, and I didn’t expect to be so nostalgic. I guess whenever I’m feeling down or sad or like whatever I tend to lean on things that I enjoyed as a teenager or a kid. Even like Spongebob or the movie Holes. Music I used to like, really connected to when I was young, like System of a Down or Nirvana, lI’ll just binge artists like those. And a lot of that influenced the writing, because I was kind of going through those periods while making the songs. And Gorillaz also is like my favorite band of all time, and I think that their influence will always find its way in whatever I’m doing, no matter what project I’m with. I wrote the music first, and then I wanted to do an EP, maybe, and pay for studio time to record live drums. But I didn’t have the money for it, and I had all these ideas, so I needed to get it out. So I was like, all right, I’ll just program the drums. And then going into it, I was like, well, if I’m gonna program the drums like I could program realistic sounding drums, and I don’t think anyone would care, and I don’t think I don’t feel bad about that either. But I was like, well, if I want to program drums, I’m gonna lean into it and make them really obvious that they’re programmed. I decided to marry my gorillas influence with whatever genre the song called for. And I just had themes and nostalgia throughout the record. And then something I do when I’m feeling down, just rewatch the same movies over and over again. So I called it Comfort Film, because a lot of people do that.
E: Going off that, at least compared to your work with The Sonder Bombs, it’s a very sonically different project. It goes a different direction than what people may know you for. You kind of touched on it, but how did that come about?
J: I think that the easiest way to explain that difference is mostly because of who the core songwriter is. So almost every Sonder Bombs song, Willow and I write the bulk of it together, but usually Willow writes the chord progression and the vocals and then brings it to me, and then I’ll write guitar leads, or we’ll work on structure together. But typically it’s Willow’s chord structure and then Willow does vocal melodies and their lyrics. For Crown Shy, it’s my chord structures and my vocal melodies and my lyrics. And I can’t sing the way Willow can. I don’t think anyone really can, they’re a monster. But I do things in my voice that works for me, like I like doing vocal stacks. So if you listen to Comfort Film, there’s rarely a moment where there’s one vocal going. There’s usually at least a two part harmony, and then for big moments, three or four parts layered in, which creates a sonic difference than what [The] Sonder Bombs does. If you listen to [The] Sonder Bombs a lot, and listen to Crown Shy a lot, you’ll pick up some similarities. I think the guitar lead in the third part of “Evaporate,” I think is like almost a classic Sonder Bombs lead. And then if you listen to The Sonder Bombs song “Scattered” off of Clothbound, yeah, that song is I think the only Sonder Bombs song to date where I brought the chord progression to the band. So for “Scattered” I wrote a huge chunk of the music, and Willow just focused on vocals for that one. I think if you listen to that song, you can hear there’s some Crown Shy like elements to it, but yeah, the biggest reason, though, why there’s differences is because the person bringing the core of the songSo what kind of like push you to kind of go off and do the solo project. Obviously, we touched on the Jimmy lophi project. But you know, especially, how do I put this? Like, yeah, well, how did like the idea of a solo project kind of come about, either in this form or, you know, the Jimmy lopai form originally is a different person.
E: So what pushed you to go off and do the solo project. Obviously, we touched on the Jimmy Lo-Fi project, but how did the idea of a solo project come about, either in this form or the Jimmy Lo-Fi form originally?
J: I think it just comes from the need to express myself. I love playing music. It’s like my favorite thing to do, and I love playing in The Sonder Bombs. It’s also like one of my favorite things that I get to do. It’s a huge privilege. But ultimately, though, I do write a lot of stuff for The Sonder Bombs, but those are Willow’s songs from their perspective, whereas solo work that I do are songs from my perspective. So when I have a complicated feeling or just an idea that I want to get out, I have the free rein to just do it on my own time. And there are some things I’ve pitched to The Sonder Bombs that they’ve taken and that we’ve done. I have a bedroom studio, and it’s nice to sit down, pick up a guitar, write a riff, and be like, oh, that’s cool, and then start demoing it immediately. And then at a certain point, after I’ve gone far enough with the song, I’m attached to it, and it’s like, okay, I can’t see myself giving this one up as easily. And then it ends up becoming a solo song. The Comfort Film record is 11 songs. I have four more in the pipeline right now. The Sonder Bombs has I think five songs that are in the works, plus a ton of fragments of songs. It wouldn’t be feasible to give all the songs to The Sonder Bombs with the amount of content that we have because you have to kind of like pick and choose how often you release. So there’s also that aspect of it too. It’s a good way to separate the projects so that more songs can come out.
E: Do you have a particularly favorite song off the record, either to perform or just to listen to?
J: “Clueless” is probably my favorite song to perform and also off the record. I don’t know how I came up with that song. It’s like, a pop song, like a pop butt rock song. It’s got three choruses, it’s got the bridge, it’s got a guitar solo. I can hear it on the radio in my head after a Nickelback song. But, like, it’s not as butt rock, but it could be a butt rock song, but positive. I’m really proud of that song. And that song also is about how it feels like I can’t remember anything anymore, especially because I read a lot of books, especially nonfiction, and I’ll finish a book, and I’ll be like, that was great. I can’t remember anything. And so it’s just about the frustration with that. And I think I nailed that feeling down perfectly in the song, too. So that song, to me, is just like I expressed the feeling I was trying to express perfectly. It sounds cool when I play it live. The chorus is so huge when we all kick in with our distortion. So yeah, that’s my favorite off the record.
E: A lot of the, I don’t wanna say writing process, but a lot of the stuff with the project has been documented through your TikTok and your Instagram as well. Correct me. If I’m wrong, I do remember you talking at one point about being burnt out, especially during that right after the pandemic era. How much of that did that influence the writing process?
J: I don’t know if any of the songs are necessarily about burnout itself, but being burned out did influence, not just the project, but like all creative endeavors. I think feeling burned out and not wanting to push through anymore forced me to take a step back and just be a fan again. I think that’s something that I lost sight of, like pre COVID, was that I’m a fan of stuff too. I’m not just a creator. And so like 2020, 2021, and I think I still continue this now, is that I just re-engage with the community and the art form, as if I was just a fan. So if I’m feeling burned out or not inspired, I just say, okay, I’m not gonna gonna try. I’m just gonna listen to music, read books or watch movies, whatever I’m in the mood for and then eventually, after time passes, I start to feel like an inkling of something again. And then all of a sudden, the flood gates open, and then I have ideas. And I think that’s also why nostalgia is a theme throughout the record. [It] was because I went through these periods of just being a fan and reconnecting with old stuff and new stuff, but just like, just consuming instead of creating.
E: Kind of going off that, some of the songs, and I think you know which one I’m talking about in particular, are not super serious. Tell us about your cat, Jimmy.
J: Yeah, “Baby Cat.” Actually, there’s a version of that that I released under Jimmy Lo-Fi on band camp as part of this two song, like hardcore thing that I dropped. The original song title for “Baby Cat” was, “I don’t have a kid, but here’s my son.” And when I decided to do a record for Crown Shy, I was going through like Jimmy Lo-Fi songs, and I was like, are there songs that I want to bring back, that I would want to play live? And there were two that I wanted to bring back. And that one was one of them, but, I wrote that song because of my cat Boz. I got him as a kitten and this was during COVID, so I didn’t have a job or anything. So this was actually great timing to have a kitten, but he was terrible. He would keep me up all night. I lived with Willow at the time, and we had separate bedrooms, and he would go into Willow’s room and cuddle and be all sweet and gentle. And then when he was all rested up and done with that, he’d come to my room and just fuck with me, running all around the room. I had these soundproof panels on the walls and he’d start chewing on them. I’m like, stop doing that. And then there was a time where, when we first got him, he was a street cat, born in a garage. He was dewormed. But sometimes you have to deworm them twice, right? They don’t fully clear out. He needed to get dewormed a second time, so he had to be quarantined away from like the other cats. So we kept him in my room with the door shut. And so for two weeks during this quarantine process, he was locked in my room with me. I remember vividly one time he woke me up at like three or four in the morning, and I was crying, begging him to stop, and I thought maybe he would understand these tears. But no, he’s a cat, and he don’t understand that. He kept going. So I wrote a song about it just to express that frustration, but also it’s funny and cute. I love him so much. I was never actually mad at him either. Like, it’s just part of having a kitten. But I wanted to balance out the record too with like, a fun song about my cat. And I think I’m going to always do that, because I do sing about some pretty heavy topics sometimes. So I want to balance it out with a little bit of silliness.
E: We touched on it a little bit earlier on, but who are some of the artists, musicians, or even just people that really bring you the most inspiration, either creatively in music or another form?
J: I think I could go on forever listing every single artist because there’s so many, but a few do come to mind, like Gorillaz is the big one. Of course, Tigers Jaws is up there. I really like Citizen, particularly the way Matt Kerekes uses his voice. At almost all times he has a low voice and a high voice going and that’s something I kind of do. So I kind of like look to that for like ideas. This band, Total Downer from Cleveland, I really like not just them musically, but also as people. Honestly, this is going to be a cliche answer, but Chappell Roan.
E: Following off that, who are some artists that you would love to collaborate with, work with, even just do a jam session with? Either within the Crown Shy project, The Sonder Bombs, or just something completely different.
J: I feel like the obvious answer is Gorillaz. But honestly, I’m terrified of that. I never want to meet them or do anything with them. I want to keep them on that imaginary cloud that I’ve put them on. I think it’d be cool to do something with Momma. That band’s really cool. I’ve always wanted to do a more hardcore project, either under the Crown Shy umbrella or start another thing entirely, because I really like the genre, but I don’t know where to get started or find time to make it happen. I also like recording a lot, and I would like to get more into it, even if I’m not featured on a project, recording bands would be pretty cool.
E: What is the best advice, either musically or personally, that you’ve ever been given?
J: I don’t know if anyone’s ever said this to me verbatim, but it’s to trust the process. It’s a marathon, not a race, or whatever that expression is. You might not have a viral song or a viral record, you might not blow up overnight, but if you keep going and just like, believe in yourself and believe in the vision, it’s eventually going to happen. And I think clear examples of that are artists like that I look up to, like Tigers Jaw, Turnstile, Knocked Loose. Even Chappell Roan, they all seem like overnight success. They’ve all been around like 10 plus years, like Tigers Jaw, since, like 2005, Turnstiles has been touring since I was in high school and I graduated 2011. Trusting the process and not getting discouraged if it’s not happening fast enough, or not happening the way you planned, right? And then something else too. This is also advice, I can point this to someone directly. There was a tweet once I saw that Heart Attack Man tweeted right around the time they released Fake Blood, where Eric was talking about, and I’m paraphrasing this, because this is a really old tweet. I remember he was talking or commenting about criticism that he really he got for Fake Blood versus The Manson Family, how people didn’t like it. They thought it was too polished, or whatever the reason was. Basically said in this tweet was that’s okay, because at the end of the day, The Manson Family still exists, and people always have that record, even if they don’t like what we do next. And I thought that’s kind of cool because I never thought of it that way before. I never thought because there’s pressure if you release a record and people like it and you want to go a different direction there are going to be people out there that are not going to like it. They’re not going to like it, but they still have that record that they do like, and so that was a good perception shift for me. I’ve never been shy about trying new things and like pushing in different directions. I honestly don’t let what they might feel dictate what kind of content I’m going to create, but I am anxious about them not liking it. I think two things at once, but having that perspective kind of almost gave me permission to be like it’s okay that you don’t like it because you like the other thing, and that’s fine.
E: Since this whole thing is kind of about the solo project, what advice would you give to people looking to start their own, especially since you’ve seen both sides?
J: I started a solo project as coming from someone who’s the guitarist of another band, who doesn’t really sing that much in that band. So I am aware that a good chunk of, if not the majority of people that are fans of The Sonder Bombs, for example, might not even give me the time or day or care of what I’m doing because I’m not the singer of The Sonder Bombs. It’s just that I’m aware that that’s just kind of how it works. So my advice is that if you are starting a solo project and you’re not the front person of the band you’re already a part of, view it as like you’re starting completely from zero. Like, yeah, you could probably make a few posts from the main band account. I’ve done that. I did that today about the show. I will do that because it’s good marketing, but I don’t expect people to come flocking over and be excited about what I’m doing, because ultimately, they are fans of that band and that combination of people, and some of them might just be fans of, like, Willow and their voice, and that is okay. So the advice I would give is view your solo project as this whole new thing, and be expected to basically have to start over, and that way you can have realistic expectations. You won’t get lost in the whole comparison game, because comparison the thief of joy. It’s that cliche expression, but it’s true, and it should be its own thing too. You don’t want, like, your success, to be tied to the success of another thing. You want it to be your own.
E: Any final thoughts or comments or anything you’d like to add?
J: Go to shows. Not even just my shows, but I feel like music right now in particular is struggling. People are just aren’t going to shows. There’s all this discourse about concert etiquette and stuff like that. But I feel like people aren’t going to shows as much. And we all know streaming is not paying and merch is more expensive and things are it’s just everything’s so much more expensive. The best thing you can do is just go to a show and yet again, not even just mine, just any show of any size. Even regional. Go to your local bars where there’s all local bands playing. Go to your local bars where there’s mid sized bands playing. And still go to like your Taylor Swifts and 21 pilots, whatever. That’s fine, but make sure you also go to your Grog Shops and etc.
Crown Shy can be found on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and all streaming platforms. They have an album release show on December 6th at the Grog Shop in Cleveland.
