If you've seen a Vampire Weekend, Paramore, or Hayley Williams show in recent years, Brian Robert Jones was the guitarist onstage with the big afro. When not playing sideman for some of the best alt-leaning pop-rockers in the biz, Jones has been working on a behemoth project of his own.
Today Jones has released Weezyana: The Louisiana Purchase Musical, a nearly two-hour audio adventure through the life of Thomas Jefferson. It spans 42 tracks, including very Broadway-esque songs and narrative passages that remind me of Veggie Tales stylistically. It's filed under "comedy" on DSPs, and given the subject matter, it's easy to interpret it as a non-rapping sendup of Hamilton. But Jones is deadpan throughout, even when reciting a prologue about alien civilizations the Garlaokans and Vulbarians or introducing Napoleon Bonaparte "pooping and farting loudly atop a gaudy golden toilet." He definitely didn't half-ass the music, either. This thing really sounds like musical theater. Also: Hayley Williams makes an appearance.
Here's what Jones wrote about Weezyana on Instagram:
This is a concept album. It will tell you the whole story of the musical with songs and plot summaries in between each track.
I sing all the lead vocals (lol) and I got an amazing cast of friends to help me fill out the sound of the ensemble.
It will be available on all streaming platforms but the suggested method of listening is the long form lyric video on YouTube which will have captions you can read along with and clocks in at about 2 hours (lol) so get all your friends together for a watch party this weekend and let ‘er rip.
You may be wondering, given the name of this project, whether Louisiana's own Lil Wayne factors into this story. You'll just have to listen for yourself and find out. (Translation: I haven't gotten that far into it yet, so I don't know.) Check out that lyric video below.
Weezyana is out now on LXIX Records.
