Page 19 - BiTS_11_NOVEMBER_2022

BiTS: Wow, that was daring.

JL: It was bold. It was a bold move [laughing] it really was, but I received a number of
scholarships to go there, which really helped, and they focus on contemporary music. It was
mainly known as a jazz university until the last ten years, but I went there to study music

business and voice was my primary instrument.
BiTS: There’s some fabulous music
around Boston to listen to as well.

JL: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I loved
living in Boston at the time as a
college kid. There were so many
concerts that were coming through
and the blues society that was there
in Boston was very welcoming and
even though I was just starting to
dabble musically in blues as a college
student, I would go to the jams. I
would watch the battles that would
happen – the international blues
challenge, so whoever they would
send for that and I became immersed
in both the blues scene as well as the
rockabilly music scene there and the
band that a lot of people knew me
for prior to The Boneshakers, which
is Moonshine Society, that kind of
came out of a group that I started
while I was in college in Boston. The band was called Black Betty and The Bad Habits, and

some of those guys and myself, we wound up moving to DC together after school and we just
kept making music and that morphed into Moonshine Society.

BiTS: Did you just come together? Did you have to advertise for people and that sort of thing,
or was it just a group of people who were friends who started performing?

JL: It was just a group of friends. It really was, in fact, the original guitarist and I went to high
school together and we both went to Berklee together. One of the first bands I was ever in
when I was 16, he was the guitarist and we were just very, very good friends and even at that
age I was calling bars and booking us, and over the phone, nobody knows how old you are
[laughs]. All these kids would show up to the gig and the owners would be quite alarmed and
they’d make us stand in the alleyways during our breaks because, legally, we weren't allowed
to be in there when we weren't working. So those were our first gigs together, but yes, when
we went to college, we made a bunch of friends our first semester and some of them were
really into blues music. There was a guitarist from Kansas City named Josh, so he was our
rhythm guitarist at the time, and over the years, as people graduated – we were kids at the
time, so sometimes they would dabble and then move on to something else. We replaced
people but the guitarist from Moonshine Society, original guitarist, Joe Poppen, who was on
our “Sweet Thing” album and the bass player, Christopher Brown, we were all really good
friends at college.