Off the Record... with Si Short (The Jack Knives)
- Nick Davies
- 19 hours ago
- 7 min read
Si Short didn't set out to stand at the microphone. He just had songs that needed writing.
Si Short is not entirely sure how any of this happened. One minute he was writing songs alone in a studio apartment in Hawaii because he needed to, and the next he's routing a European tour, co-managing a record label, and trying to explain to people why The Jack Knives are important to him. He still finds that last part slightly absurd.
"I had no intention of ever having a full touring band again," he says. "I just needed to write some songs. It got a bit out of hand."
Born in England and shaped there until his early twenties, when he left for the States and never quite came back, Si is a particular kind of person, the kind that American romanticism got to before British cynicism could finish the job. He'll say something genuinely moving about music and what it means to people and then immediately undercut it with something dry enough to sand furniture. That tension, between the blunt, self-deprecating Englishman and the hopeful, wide-open songwriter who ended up in California is exactly what The Jack Knives sound like. His youth was English. His adulthood American. The music lives somewhere in the middle, which might explain why it travels so well.
He's been writing songs since he was eight years old. He had a difficult childhood, he doesn't elaborate, and you get the sense the songs have already said it more honestly than an interview ever could. What he'll say is that writing became the mechanism through which he processed things. Put it on the page, make it a song, let it go. The creative force, ignored, does damage. He's experienced that firsthand.
"It never really leaves you," he says. "If you ignore it, it finds other ways to make itself known. You just get a bit miserable and don't quite know why. I've had a fair share of tough times, but honestly they're a songwriter's best friend."
By 2019 the writing had gone quiet. He was living alone in Hawaii, somewhere in the middle of a significant life transition, a new relationship, new chapter, the particular disorientation of something good arriving when you're not entirely sure you deserve it. So he wrote a song. He called it "Are You Alright," and wrote it for the woman who would become his fiance. People heard it and told him to release it. He started an Instagram almost as an afterthought. Things moved quickly after that for what would become The Jack Knives.
Two years later, back in California, Thursday night sessions with guitarist Faris began, nothing organised, two friends with jobs and busy lives who liked playing guitar together. The kind of arrangement that is supposed to stay exactly that. But before long there were shows. Before long after that, a touring band, a record label built from scratch, and a fanbase that had spread to cities they'd never visited and countries they hadn't yet played.
"It's mad, honestly," he says. "Our music was playing in someone's house or car somewhere in the world. I still can't get my head around that."
"Real life doesn't even have to be particularly bad to need an escape. You just need somewhere to put things. Playing guitar with a mate on a Thursday night does that."
What grew from those Thursday evenings was a band Si speaks about with a specific, unperformed warmth. Faris, Bryan, Drew, he's clear that none of it would be what it is without all of them. Faris hears things in a song nobody else would, knows exactly when something tips from good idea to finished thing. Drew transforms sketches into actual songs by finding what they want to be rather than what you thought they were when you brought them in. Bryan is, without qualification, his favorite bass player he's ever worked with.
"Understated, precise, serves the song completely," he says. "We've been co-writing together a little lately, which is new for me but genuinely rewarding." A pause. "Those tend to be the darker songs. Make of that what you will."
The band's last two records were made at Little Eden, Pete Steinkopf's studio in Asbury Park a place Si speaks about with a reverence he doesn't extend to much in the music industry. Ten days of recording, twelve away from home. Long focused sessions, the productive quiet of people in a room trying to make something that matters, and Pete insisting every afternoon that they put the instruments down and walk to the boardwalk, Asbury Park absorbed into the work whether they intend it or not.
"You walk in and feel almost obligated to create something worthy of the place," he says. "Pete is a mentor, a friend, he's family. We are genuinely lucky that he invited us in."
Geography has always mattered to the songs. Orange County sits at the foundation, Social Distortion and The Adolescents running through the bloodstream like something ancestral. New York City matters to Si personally and to the band collectively. New Jersey runs through the DNA of their sound in ways that are hard to articulate but easy to feel. And London, and the country that made him before America got hold of him runs through the new record in ways both obvious and quietly embedded, which feels entirely right for a man who has spent his whole adult life carrying both places simultaneously.
That new record is ten songs, and Si talks about them with the measured pride of someone who has learned not to oversell things but who clearly can't help himself this time.
"We are extremely proud of this record," he says, and leaves it there. From Si Short, that lands about as emphatically as a speech.
"We recorded ten songs and genuinely couldn't decide which to put out as singles. We're proud of all of them. So we thought we're just going to release a bunch of them."
The result is a double A-side. "La Sirena" and "Late Nights in London" arriving together as the record's opening statement, a deliberate throwback to a format that predates the algorithm and the carefully choreographed streaming rollout. Si talks about it with the quiet enthusiasm of someone who finds the whole thing slightly delightful.
"Double A-sides are a cool nod to how things used to be," he says. "Two songs, equal billing, both saying something about where you are. It felt right like a new chapter."
"La Sirena" is the one he's been living with longest, a song about two people on parallel tracks who hadn't found each other yet. A man in ruins while his siren was already out there, living, waiting without knowing she was waiting. Based on his own story, told through fictional characters, because sometimes that's the only honest way in.
"It's a song of hope," he says simply.
"Late Nights in London" sits alongside it as something close to a counterpart, more upbeat, a little looser, London running through it the way London runs through Si himself.
"Both songs together are setting the tone for where we're headed. Two different sides of the same thing. That's why the double A-side felt right."
"They're just people who love the same music we do. We happen to be on the stage and they happen to be in front of it. That's the only difference. We got lucky."
The process of building toward this moment has been deliberate and unhurried. No TikTok. No bought streams or inflated play counts. No viral moment. The Jack Knives have been built the way good things tend to get built, slowly, with intention, one real person at a time. Si talks about success in terms that have nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with connection.
"If there's one person who genuinely connects with what we do, there's probably another one somewhere," he says. "Our job is to find them. That's always been the philosophy."
The first time that philosophy produced something he couldn't quite rationalize was New York City, 2023. First sold-out headline show. A hundred and twenty strangers, three thousand miles from home, who knew every word. He looked out from the stage and didn't recognize a single face. "I still can't believe it," he says. "Even now."
The bands organic growth has been something truly remarkable. Within three years The Jack Knives have gone from local bars to major tours and festival spots. All with no help from any labels, management or booking agents. The Jack Knives story is one of true independence.
Si is candid about those bigger stages too, the blank stares from crowds who came for the headliner, the imposter syndrome he's learned to move through rather than around. "You stand there thinking every single person in this room hates me," he says. "Which is probably not true. Probably." He shrugs. "I just find the one person nodding their head and I focus on them. One person is enough. And honestly once you get past it the band always sounds incredible through those big sound systems so we end up having a blast."
Through the hustle of their smaller headline shows and those bigger support opportunities, the band has built a real community of fans worldwide. He doesn't call them fans though, the word implies a distance he doesn't feel is real. "I just see us as one group of music lovers singing our hearts out together," he says. "That they'd give my words that much, I find that genuinely humbling. Every time."
The album, Negative Spaces, arrives November 6th via the label he started Fumie Records. The European run of The Shipwrecked Tour follows through London, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Prague and Vienna before a major US and Canada run alongside Dave Hause and The Mermaid, The Bouncing Souls, The Flatliners, and Suicide Machines. For a band that started as two friends with guitars on a Thursday night, with no plan beyond finding somewhere to put the week, it is quietly extraordinary.
"We've built something small and real," he says. "A community of people all over the world who actually care about the music. Every time I leave my family and go on the road it has to mean something. When it connects, when you can feel it connecting, that's the whole point. That's all the success I need, big or small.
"
He picks up his phone. There are emails. There are always emails.
"I didn't think we could top 2025," he says. Then, almost as an afterthought:
"But apparently we are. Which is nice, isn't it."
The Jack Knives' double A-side "La Sirena / Late Nights in London" is out now. The new album Negative Spaces arrives November 6, 2026 on Fumie Records. (Main photo by John Gilhooly)
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