Interview: Dohny Jep

If you haven’t heard of UK’s Dohny Jep yet, do yourself a favour and discover who these gents are right f’n now. Back in in August, this dynamic trio released “Wine and Dine” with its B-Side “You Know It” and they have been on regular rotation here at Pretty Vacant One since then.

Vocalist and bassist, Pete Herbet says this of their latest release:

‘Wine and Dine’ in its purest form is about love. It’s about those first moments of meeting someone new and the adventures that you are about to go on together, but also those first moments of conflict and how you pull together to get through those harder moments.

While the pandemic thwarted everyone, Dohny Jep didn’t let it halt them in their tracks, the band put out four EPs and combined them to release their self titled album in January of 2022.

Pretty Vacant One was thrilled to sit down with Dohny Jep to discuss all things music.

PVO: For new fans, where did the brilliant band name come from?

DJ: The band name was created by Stuart back in his university days. He was mucking around with spoonerisms of celebrities and Donny Jepp really stuck with him, but he hadn’t found the right project to use the name for at the time. When Stuart and Pete met and eventually started writing together, he felt that this project was perfect for it. We changed the spelling to be a bit quirkier and here we are with Dohny Jep!

PVO: With a fun band name like Dohny Jep and often deeper meaning lyrics, have you found the music industry accepting of the yin and yang of the name to the lyrics?

DJ: Absolutely! We’ve had a great response from new listeners and from the media. We think it’s important to not be a one trick pony and not be too predictable.

PVO: What did the band learn, if anything, from building the studio together?

DJ: We have all been around music for the best part of 20 years each, so we have picked up lots of tips and tricks along the way when visiting studios in previous bands!

PVO: With dual vocalists, how do you guys decide who sings what?

DJ: More often than not it’s a kind of natural thing decided as the song is written. When we come up with whatever melodies we have done, we know when it is better suited to Pete’s or Stuart’s vocal.

PVO: What was it like working with Rhys May (Bring Me The Horizon, While She Sleeps, Enter Shikari, Don Broco)?

DJ: Rhys is an absolute breeze to work with, he is VERY experienced in his field of work and knows exactly what sound we want/need for the specific tracks. Pete and Rhys also grew up together, so they go way back, being in other bands together, so Rhys is very familiar with how Pete ticks! (haha)

PVO: Putting out 4 EPs in one year is no easy feat, did you guys write each EP on its own, or write as you would an album, or something different all together?

DJ: Being in the situation that we were in during the Pandemic we thought “what would be the best way to stay on people’s radars”? So we gave ourselves the monumental challenge of releasing 16 singles throughout 2021. Which we decided to form into 4 EP’s with the artwork that we had in mind for it. The album was pretty much birthed from the artwork idea for the EP’s, as each EP is a different type of flower, we thought it would be cool to release all tracks as a massive 16 track album and the artwork being all 4 EP flowers in the same vase. Visuals are just as important as the songs themselves. I think a lot of bands can forget that sometimes.