Want to go?
WHAT: Alive Festival (Jimbo Rocko performance Wed., June 20, 2:30 p.m. at Indie Art Stage) WHEN: 9 a.m. Wed., June 20 through 4 p.m. Sunday, June 24 WHERE: Atwood Lake Park and Amphitheater, 9298 Atwood Lake Road, Mineral City COST: Total Event Pass (9 a.m. Wed., June 20 through 4 p.m. Sun., June 24): $130 ages 12 and up, $75/ages 5-11; Weekend Pass (9 a.m. Fri., June 22 through 4 p.m. Sun. June 24): $100 ages 12 and up, $70 ages 5-11; One-Day Pass (9 a.m.-12 a.m. any day Wed., June 20-Sat., June 23): $45 ages 5 and up; all children under 5 free INFO: 330-966-0023 or alive.org For Sandusky musician Jimbo Rocko, this Wednesday, June 20 is a big day. It will be the release date for his second EP, “Real Life Stories,” which will be available on iTunes, Amazon and other major digital music outlets. A reissued 13-track version of his 2010 EP, “Future Sounds,” will be available as well, with remixes of past songs, unreleased demos and more. The releases coincide with his performance at the 25th annual Alive Festival in Mineral City, Ohio, a Christian music festival known to attract more than 60,000 concertgoers to its outdoor venue. The performance will be his first at the festival. “I’m very excited about performing there. I mean, you’ve got bands like Skillet, RED, Chris Tomlin, people who have gone on and won Grammy awards – they’ve achieved just about everything you can achieve as far as the music industry’s concerned,” Rocko said. “For me to be able to play on the same stage or even at the same festival as them is just a great honor.” Jimbo’s first album, “Future Sounds,” was a production heavily laden with dance beats, hip-hop influence and electronic mixing. On “Real Life Stories” Jimbo departs from this dance focus greatly, relaxing to more of an acoustic guitar and piano-driven pop rock record, though some presence of electronic elements and subtle use of autotune persists. “Each song I feel tells a little bit more of a deeper story. I’ve noticed that usually with songs that have a deeper meaning behind them, a club kind of beat doesn’t really fit,” Jimbo said. “With ‘Future Sounds’ I purposely tried to stick to that kind of club music. With ‘Real Life Stories’ I kind of just let the songs become themselves. I didn’t force a certain style upon them; it’s just kind of the way they turned out.” The album’s opening track, “Retro,” is a reggae track with dance elements befitting of the album’s early summer release date and sets the mood for backyard barbecues and memories made with good friends. Listen to “Retro” here:Jimbo Rocko: Retro (feat. Lazzara)
Funcoast readers (this means you!) can download the song for free HERE. (It's easy: just right-click the link and choose "Save Link As...")
The album’s lead single, the rock ballad “More Than Enough,” has seen more success than any of Jimbo’s previous work, garnering over 3,000 hits on YouTube in less than a month.
Jimbo wrote the song following the collapse of his relationship with the mother of his young daughter. At the relationship’s close, depression crept in — his strength faltered, and he nearly quit music, his job, everything.
“In that moment, I feel like God came to me and said, ‘Hey look, there’s a reason you’re going through this right now, there’s a reason I created you and everything else – you’re more than enough and your life has purpose, it has meaning,’” he said. “It’s kind of written as God talking to me, and I feel like it’s not just me, but that it applies to a lot of people. Whether they believe in God or not they have these feelings that they’re not good enough, and it’s kind of just his way of saying, ‘You’re more than enough to me.’”
Watch the music video for “More Than Enough” below.
For future albums, Jimbo said he wants to continue to let the music shape itself and lead him to whatever direction it will.
“It’s pretty much wherever the music takes me is where I’ll end up,” he said.
For more information on Jimbo Rocko, visit his website at www.jimborocko.com, check out his Facebook page and follow him on Twitter (@jimborocko).
