We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jerry Sible a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jerry, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
My Dad instilled a work ethic in me, a never quit what you committed to mentality. My Mom was a hippie free spirited woman that always encouraged me to think outside the box and to remember that the sun is going to coming up tomorrow regardless of the challenges I’ll face today.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I started playing and performing music music when I 13 years old. There was always music playing in our house, whether it was playing albums from Kiss, Molly Hatchet, Foreigner or country music from Alabama, Randy Travis or Charlie Daniels there was always music that acted like a soundtrack. I picked up guitar and Bass when I was really young and didn’t really start being a front man vocalist until my 30s. I was performing in covers bands around Jacksonville during the 2008 recession to help make ends meet and that’s when an established band here in town seen perform and asked me to replace their singer.
I then hooked up with Chuck James and Zakk in DIVIDED TRUTH in 2019. We immediately started writing and recording our first EP with Stan Martell. The writing became a like therapy sessions for me and gave me an outlet to be more honest in my creativity than I’ve ever been. We recorded all through the pandemic and played a couple of shows. We signed to Curtain Call records in 2020 and things really took off from there. Our songs were being played all over the world, mostly on internet radio and thanks to Curtain Call records we performed at Metal In the Mountains festival in 2021. We also vintners into live streaming via Twitch on DWP’s Twitch channel Space Zebra which led to us performing at WELCOME TO ROCKVILLE on the same bill and literally at the same time (on a different stage) as Metallica. It was a pretty surreal experience. It was surreal to be warming up on one stage and look across the grounds and see one of my biggest influences performing on another stage.
Fast forward to now we have been writing and recording with Producer Damien Starkey. (Formally of Puddle of Mudd, Burn Season) and I feel
Like we are putting out the best batch of songs I’ve been a part of. We just released our latest single “Pain” a couple of weeks ago. Damien was able to bring out the best of us as musicians and songwriters for this one.
This weekend we will be back hitting up the festival scene here in Florida at the Central Florida Metal Fest that features some of our real good friends in bands from the area (F.I.L.T.H) and is being headlined by Drowning Pool. Afterwards we have shows throughout the region scheduled with FLAW, Smile Empty Soul before we get back into the studio with Damien.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
I think always driving to be as good at what I do as I can be and trying to work with other like minded bands and people to lift them up. We always try to treat bands and people how we want to be treated and don’t get all upset and take it personal when bad things try to happen.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I had to unlearn people in general. Lol. I had to accept that everyone’s idea of the right thing to do isn’t always going to fall in line with my own values. And that that is ok. In fact, it has showed me to be open minded because other people may have developed their values based on experiences I haven’t been through yet.
Contact Info:
- Website: dividedtruthofficial.com
- Instagram: @dividedtruthofficial
- Facebook: @dividedtruth
Image Credits
Death Panther Media Nic Carmichael Diana Hillyard