SPOTLIGHT: Jesus Christ Taxi Driver’s Unhinged New Album ‘Taxi The Rich’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY ALEAH ANOTONIO ☆
Jayce Hayley
“I THINK SOMETIMES YOU NEED THAT; TO LAUGH SO YOU DON’T CRY.” — The members of Jesus Christ Taxi Driver (JCTD) just touched down in Boise, Idaho before their set at Treefort. We meet on a video call where guitarist Colin Kelly holds his phone to reveal his other bandmates: brothers Ian and Will Ehrhart and bassist Miles Jenkins. They all have the same shaggy dirty blond haircut underneath their caps and mischievous grins on their faces.
The band has an unserious aura as our interview begins—After picking up Colin from the airport, they’ve already iced him twice before our call (“I’m a very gullible person,” he laughs). I ask them how they formed Jesus Christ Taxi Driver, where Ian responds, “It’s kind of the most boring story ever” with a smirk. Even their band name, as prophetic as it sounds, has an unhinged backstory.
Ian and Will go back and forth: “We were in Zihuatanejo, [Mexico], and had a taxi driver who was just our taxi driver. We had his phone number, so he just kept hanging out with us. We went to some guy’s house and he was just rolling cigars for us and [had] homemade mezcal. Got the cab driver drunk, and he was driving us through this burning landscape because there was a big fire.
“So we were just driving through the flames with this drunk guy named Jesus, who kept saying ‘Fast and Furious!’ And we needed a name on the double, so we just came up with Jesus Christ Taxi Driver.”
Their band name fits well with their new album, Taxi the Rich, that is on all streaming platforms today via Midtopia. Technically, their record has already been out for over a month. JCTD is a part of Midtopia’s “Buy Before You Stream” initiative, which gives listeners the opportunity to buy physical copies of the record before it is available to stream. They had vinyl available at their record release show in Denver, Colorado’s Bluebird Theater back in March, and dropped off copies at other record stores.
Hailey Jane
JCTD’s desert-tinged rock has been endlessly compared to The Cramps for their rockabilly surf rock songs. Each song on Taxi the Rich is electric and imbued by the greats; the band lists their inspirations—Tom Waits, The Replacements, Ted Hawkins, The Beatles.
“We weren’t aiming to have a name with religious connotations, but it just turned out that way. Some of the songs are about religion, some of the songs are about politics, and then the other ones are just more personal and whatever comes out,” Ian says.
Their political and religious fueled singles are perhaps their most memorable, though—Taxi The Rich’s first single was “Too Cold to Golf,” a cheeky reaction to billionaires and their ironic, opulent lives. Ian sings, “In Ukraine there is a war / In my bed there is much more.” He sings simply, akin to the way Donald Trump tweets, and speaks about the weather alongside serious topics like famines and war.
Will and Ian grew up going to Catholic school, which Ian says is “where everything stemmed from, I think, for the concept of the band.”
“As a kid, your brain is so soft, and adults are telling you things like, ‘Hate the gays, but love everybody.’ With this soft kid brain, you’re like wait, you just told me one thing, but you also told me another thing, and it doesn’t line up,” Ian says. “I think it gets confusing quick for any kid. But sometimes, kids are just locked into the cult for long enough that they end up being one of those conservative parents.”
However, kids outgrowing their religious upbringing is a tale as old as time. Ian, Will, Miles and Colin all act out of humor and intuition. They wrote Taxi The Rich quickly, coming up with 12 songs off the bat and immediately recording them in the studio. Besides their record release show, where they played the album in its entirety, they never perform with a set list.
“There are certain parts that are question marks and they’re always going to be. We don’t have a set list. We have little spots that we know are going to be open. It’s just exciting. We try to improvise to an extent… We leave room for something unpredictable to happen,” Colin says.
To the band, playing in front of an audience is the best thing about being Jesus Christ Taxi Driver.
Colin says, “That’s the best part, I think. Getting to play live is something that we all share and look forward to. It’s a very cathartic thing.”
