my name is jen leigh...people call me dirty jenny
jen leigh & the dirty bunch is my band


Rock n roll from the mind of Danny Bravo. 

This is not a pedestrian band bio. And FireWalkWithMe is no ordinary band. Lazy
journalists seeking similes and metaphors to regurgitate should stop reading now. We’re obliterating the trad band bio, just as FireWalkWithMe is perpetually burning up and rising anew like the Phoenix...every 4-minute soul cleansing song building into a song cycle that is their debut LP, “The Eternal Black Rainbow.”
The embers burned bright between our toes. Orange ashy. Morphing into a cool pool blue. Then morpha gray ash. Then the embers were again ready to be walked upon. Their heartbeats synchronized. The heart rate rhythms of the performers of the fire walk - and non-performing spectators of the fire walk - zippered together in synchronicity.

And then in a flash of white and black light, akin to spontaneous combustion, 10 songs later, they were gone from the Earth…traveling the same circle of life and death that we all must shuffle round…and off. The difference here is that FireWalkWithMe isn’t afraid of exploring the darkness. In fact, the band seeks a good death mirrored through immortal songs.

FireWalkWithMe is:
Ricardo Mendez - guitars/vocals/songwriter
Christian Kyle - guitars/backing vocals
Jason Reece - drums 
Jason Westbrook - bass guitars

The rib-cracking polyrhythms recalled …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead he gasped between death rattles…That’s because that is indeed Trail of Dead drummer/guitarist Reece back behind the trap.

And yes, FireWalkWithMe earns their supergroup moniker honestly. Mendez and
Westbrook played together in one of the heaviest bands to emerge from the Austin music scene in the last decade, High Watt Crucifixers. And seemingly in another lifetime, Westbrook and Kyle met in high school shredding in glam metal bands in OKC before they found sure footing playing together in the noise-pop, math-y, CMJ Top 20 band, Schatzi.

FireWalkWithMe wouldn’t be among the best of the best without their own 5 th Beatle in recording engineer Charles Godfrey (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Swans, Beach House). Over the last year, Godfrey made time from his stacked schedule to play the George Martin role, shepherding the FireWalkWithMe debut LP…giving it that luster that allows for the notes to ring out, despite the crunch of the blistering speeds...

FireWalkWithMe is 4 souls burning up the stage before they pass from this mortal coil...
Vocalist/guitarist Mendez acts as Greek psychopomp, guiding the listener (who
becomes an avatar for newly deceased souls) to the afterlife. Mendez’s lyrics explore the darkest themes: mortality, afterlife, being swallowed by the ocean…

Reece transforms his drums into a chorus of banshees, keening and lamenting the circle of life and death that we all will walk. 

Simultaneously, Westbrook’s bass frequency is lean and crushing, tight and formidable. 

And Kyle’s guitars may just be the band’s secret sonic weapon. Voluminous melody.

Glorious volume. Melancholy wiped clean. A waved hand turned into a fist, clamping a pick while crunching unique chords, alternate turnings and all. Both Kyle and Mendez should be described as “a guitar player’s guitar player.”

While some psychonauts are traveling to Central and South America to die and be reborn via DMT and Ayahuasca inner soul travels, FireWalkWithMe explores the darkest recesses of the soul without the external chemical alteration.

Shea McCoy is following