When I was fifteen, sixteen, when I started really to play the guitar, I definitely wanted to become a musician. It was almost impossible, because the dream was so big. I didn’t see any change because I was living in a little town, I was studying. And when I finally broke away from school and became a musician, I thought, “well, now I may have a little bit of a chance,” because all I really wanted to do was music. And not only play music, but compose music. At that time, in Athens, in ‘97, they had already Jittery Joe’s. So I would take my car, would go to Jittery Joe’s, and sing maybe 40, 50 minutes. I think I had about 11-12 songs. I would partially sleep in the car because I didn’t want to drive home, and that helped me for about almost one year to survive. In the beginning, I wanted to do an album with the sound of the fuzz bass, the sound of the Indonesian instruments, and then have a sound of Anne Frank. And I said, “Wait a second. I know the horns, why don’t I use the horns, which are the sound of Anne Frank.” And I didn’t have any idea what to do but I knew we needed Scott so we put Scott in the studio, who then was synced to Rob’s soundboard. I knew that could be a sound of Anne Frank, but I didn’t realize how much impact it would be.
My name is Jeff Mangum, but everybody calls me Jeff.