After 7 years and 4 albums...

With four CDs under their belts, the guys of X-Ray Roger Jimmy have managed to stay together for more than seven years, despite changes in members, the challenges of marketing their original CDs and earning their college degrees. Together, front man Jason Michael Thomas, bassist Andrew Wincek, drummer Brent England and lead guitarist Jeffrey Libey have enabled X-Ray Roger Jimmy to evolve into the competitive regional band it is today.\nThomas and Wincek, founding members of the band, met in 1994 through a high school friend when the band's original guitarist asked Wincek to sit in for their bass player during a show that night. \n"I did not know at the time that they never had a bass player and that's how I met Jason," Wincek says. "I actually had fun playing with the guys and they asked me to stay and that's the beginning of Jason and me playing together."\nAs time went on, members of the band came and went, which, as the guys explain, is not uncommon with a band that has endured the test of time like X-Ray has. England joined the group after the previous drummer could not make it to some of the shows. Then, after about two years, X-Ray began looking to pick up another guitar player to fill in its sound. Enter Libey. \nA few months later, the group's original guitarist left, creating the current lineup. With an original band comes an original title. Thomas is not positive what the name of the band means, but he postulates it originated from an answering machine message left for one of the band member's father. \nSince the beginning, the band has played originals, using covers only to fill the set. \n"I don't know how the other bands see us. I know in Indy a lot of the bands saw us as a big money-making cover band, and they kind of didn't like us for that," Thomas says. "It is very easy for people to stand back and say, 'Well those guys are making money we're not. They've sold out to play covers.'"\nThomas explains that venues want bands to play for three to four hours. He says that when a band plays the same style of music for that long, it loses the audience's attention. X-Ray plays 50 percent original material, and the rest is covers.\n"We've sold a lot of CDs because we're exposing ourselves to people," Thomas says. \nWhatever their plan, the guys have been widely successful in the regional circuit, drawing interest from Vertical Horizon drummer Ed Toth, who is working with X-Ray members to help them land a record label. According to Matthew Hall, artist relations for X-Ray, the band has come a long way since its 1994 self-titled album. \n"Right now X-Ray is at that plateau where they have done all they could in the underground, and now they need to go forward," Hall says. "It helps that our producer is on a major label. He is able to work his angles. It is just a matter of time. This next one will be very good. If you have seen the way things started with the first disc with the grunge scene, which was '94, they have evolved with what is going on now commercially."\nToth produced the band's upcoming album, Everything, at Bloomington's Farm Fresh Studios. It features previous X-Ray hits such as "Gatsby," "Wish I Knew Everything," and band favorite "I Fell Down." Thematically, X-Ray's songs are about relationships and life experiences. \n"Isn't everything about relationships?" Thomas asks. "Every work of poetry or song is always about yourself and the other. It's always about someone, and it's always about something, and it's usually about love."\nThomas says the band's idea on songwriting is to write good catchy songs.\n"It's always about the crushed heart or how great I feel about you," Thomas says, "and usually we find the real love songs are just boring anyway because we don't want to hear about everyone else having a good relationship, do we?"\nThe band describes its style as ever-changing, classifying its current sound as college rock. \n"I think we've grown a lot since the earlier stuff," Wincek says. "Although this is still solid material, it is representative musically of the time it was written. Contextually, we were influenced by the bands that were big then. Now I think we have grown more into our own style. I think our music now represents the new direction we're taking as a band." \nEverything will be distributed primarily online and at shows. According to Thomas, the success of an album depends on press coverage, marketing and radio play. \n"It's just like any thing else," Thomas says. "If you want to sell your record you have to advertise and most local bands don't do that. (We're) combining all aspects of the media to push this album. It's a big deal." \nNow 30, Thomas is happy with the direction X-Ray has taken. \n"Yeah, I'm hungry for more but I am not going to beat myself up," Thomas says. "I am not making millions of dollars, and I don't know that I ever will. Actually, I find people treat you a lot differently when they know you are not a kid anymore. One terrible thing about being in a rock band is people tend to assume a lot about you."\nPlaying everywhere from Chicago to Bloomington, where the band got its start, X-Ray Roger Jimmy is just enjoying the process of making original music it can be proud of.