Throughout our lives, my brother and I have been creating music as if there was nothing else that could satisfy our passions. My brother, Jaime May, began his journey into music with the guitar. He loved Led Zeppelin, Cream and the Beatles. He learned to play Black Dog and eventually tried to teach me. This didn’t work out so well.
Besides Led Zeppelin, he got very into the modern bands of the time. I remember when we slept in bunk beds. Before going to bed he would put on Smashing Pumpkins and that’s what we would go to sleep to. These were but a few of his influences. I loved these same bands, but as I got older, my music tastes began to differ from his quite a bit. I was enveloped in the sounds of the 60s and 70s. My passion for The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and many other songwriters caused me to take a different approach to music.
I learned to play the drums before I could play much of anything on the guitar. But when I was 13 I finally decided that I didn’t want to be a drummer. I wanted to write songs that would affect people the way those artists’ songs affected me. So, I began learning more about the guitar and piano. After a while I was performing and writing my own original songs. Jaime was doing the same for many years before me due to having 6 years on me.
It never occurred to us then that we had totally decided our professions would be as musicians. It was almost a subconscious decision. The choice was a “no brainer’ to us. For a while, while I was in boarding school, Jaime and I had developed our music as separate entities. Being brothers, it was impossible for us not to hear each other’s music though.
Finally, at our cousin’s wedding in San Jose, California, we played Landslide by Fleetwood Mac together. We made harmonies to it and realized that both of our individual songs could be twice as good if we played them together. That’s how we became The Mays.
It has been three years since then and we have continued to work on our songwriting, harmonies, recording and live show together. Because we strengthened our abilities over that time, we figured we needed a different name that could identify us not just as brothers, but as songwriting teammates. This name became Jokers and Jacks.
I am 19 now and Jaime is 25 with a wife and child. We find ourselves in the midst of a distracted and confused world today, and have our own troubles as everyone does. But we have remained dedicated to our original purpose to be professional musicians. We wish to provide the world with new songs. Songs to be enjoyed, loved, laughed at or even hated. We just have a few things to say about life, and we’re doing it in the best way that we can.
