The band consists of MSU alumni John Nowak, Isaac Berkowitz, Chris Bota and John Loria, and Brandeis University alumnus George Falk.

They describe their sound as a bunch of voices that are interesting and go together well with elements of rock, funk, jazz and glam jam.

The State News sat down with the band to get some background history on the band and to see how their tour was going.

The State News: How is the tour going so far?

Isaac: It’s been going really well, we’ve got a lot of stuff booked. 

John Nowak: The tour is going well so far — we’ve played almost 10 songs now since the end of August. It’s been really fun. Isaac is injured right now so he hasn’t been able to play in the last couple shows. So we’re adjusting right now to playing with four instruments instead of five. We were just in Toledo, Ohio for the first time and we made it down to West Virginia two weekends ago. So we’ve been traveling which is really fun and it’s good to come back to East Lansing where we have spent the last three years as a band. We've got almost 15 or 16 shows coming up in October, we have a fun Halloween show planned and we’ll be going to Chicago in a week or so. We have a lot of stuff plan and it’s been a lot of fun getting back to the grind of stuff planned. 

SN: How was the name Desmond Jones decided? 

John Loria: Well there’s a Desmond Jones in England that runs a mime school. 

John Nowak: My uncle studied under a mime named Desmond Jones in the School of Mimes in London. 

Chris: And that’s not how we got the name. 

John Nowak: We got the name from a Beetles reference, it’s from Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. The lyrics say "Desmond and Molly Jones" so that’s how we got the name. But the mime does have ownership rights to the website desmondjones.com. I’ll have to get my uncle to talk to him about that. 

SN: How did the band get started and how long have you been together?

Isaac: John and I played together in high school, so we played for a while and then came to MSU together and after a while we were looking for more people to play with. So I put up some flyers around town saying I’m looking for a bass player and horn player. I found Chris who played bass for a day and then was like, “I actually play guitar,” so he switched to that and we kept looking for bass players. I ended up finding John Loria, our bass player because he was just playing in his dorm really loud so I kind of busted in and said, “hey we have practice, you should come with me.” And we met George on Craigslist — we’re still a little worried. 

Chris: That was all in the fall of 2012, so we’re coming up on our third year of all being together. 

SN: Is there an album in the near future?

John Nowak: You know it. 

Isaac: We’ve been talking about an album of short and sweet things, but we might be gearing up for some sort of full LP in the not so distant future. 

Chris: We’ve been talking about track listing and having a good handful of songs that we want to record. Now it’s just of matter of making money to pay for it and finding a place to record and then doing it. So we’re still in the planning stages. I’ll say (it should be ready) in the next 10-20 years (said jokingly).