SPRINGFIELD – As you can imagine, anyone who grows up with Jenny Don’t as a stage name is going to play with a bit of an edge. Ready to push the limits. Music with an attitude.
“I was ornery growing up. People were always saying, ‘Jenny, don’t!’ Parents, teachers, bus drivers – any authoritative figure was usually getting sick of me,” Jenny said after her band, Jenny Don’t and the Spurs, played a rousing season finale for the 2024 Concert in the Park series at Island Park last Wednesday.
Hosted by Willamalane Park and Recreation District, the venue was a big hit with Jenny.
“This is our first time playing here,” she said. “We’ve played outdoor events in Willamina, Monmouth, Silverton, Sellwood, which is next to Portland – every summer we try to do that – but this is by far my favorite one – because this is the only one that’s on the (Willamette) river. The fact that you can turn around and watch the sun setting over the river is so awesome. It’s the epitome of summertime. Plus, the staff here has been great to us. … And they have beer. They don’t all have beer.
“It’s the perfect summer event. If you’re a band looking for something to do that’s outside of your regular venues, this is the perfect place to do it.”
The fusion of music that Jenny Don’t and the Spurs produce sometimes is referred to as Cowpunk – a genre that’s been around for nearly half a century. Jenny especially liked bands such as The Gun Club, The Johnnys, and Jason & the Scorchers.
“I like that style, they play punk rock, but they dress like cowboys,” Jenny said. “They have this attitude, these little touches, where it’s like, OK, that’s cool.”
Back in 2022, Jenny was in a punk band that was simply called Don’t, and Jenny Don’t and the Spurs was just a side project. Pretty soon, due to popular demand, the side project became the main event.
But 2022 was also a year of serious upheaval for the band.
“We were asked to do a tour with Charley Crockett, and it was great,” Jenny said. “But then our drummer, Sam Henry, got sick, and we had to cancel the last show of the tour. He had Stage 4 stomach cancer. He was in the hospital for a week, then three weeks later he passed away.
“I guess there were some blessings that it wasn’t a prolonged illness. We didn’t know if we would continue, but Sam dedicated the last 10 years of his life to the band, so it would have been a disservice to him if we disbanded. This is who we are.
“Buddy Weeks has been a really good fit as his replacement. On our latest album, Broken Hearted Blue – there’s dark, somber tones of mourning and going through grief, but at the same time there’s also a bright light of saying goodbye without forgetting. It’s a fun summertime album. We didn’t sit down and say this is an album for Sam, we just kind of let it organically evolve.”
Listen to Broken Hearted Blue and it’s clearly apparent that it was cooked up with a dash of this, a jigger of that, and a pinch of the other thing.
“Between the four of us, we all have different Influences that we like,” Jenny said. “Our latest album we have a lot of surf music, a lot of garage rock, there’s some rock’n’roll, there’s a hint of Credence. Everybody brings something to it, but it’s still cohesive. It’s not like a schizophrenic album of all these different sounds. We’re able to apply them to the Spurs sound.
“It’s hard to quantify what we sound like, depending on who we’re talking to, I’ll try to gauge what kind of music they like, we might say it’s Outlaw country, or surf western or garage country. Cowpunk works, too.
“We started this band because we didn’t want to be pigeonholed into one type of music – we like traditional country but we didn’t want to just be a traditional country band. Or swing bands, they just play swing music. If we play a surf song, it doesn’t sound out of place if we do something like that.”
