Jocelyn & Chris

"I've got a firecracker feeling," sings Jocelyn Arndt, lead vocalist in the brother and sister duo, Jocelyn & Chris, headliners Saturday night at Jam at the Ridge, and she certainly does.

Jocelyn lit up the stage while Chris laid down some tight groves and slinky guitar riffs during a high-energy set on a clear summer evening.

The Arndts have been writing songs together since they were in middle school in their hometown of Fort Plain, about 30 minutes west of Albany.  Since then, they've built a solid career based on hook-laden pop-rock songs highlighting Jocelyn's high-energy dynamics and her Janice Joplin-like powerful, blues-inflected vocals.  They've appeared on Paste Studio, Jam in the Van, and The Today Show.

Jam at the Ridge co-owner David Luetticke-Archbell is certainly impressed with Jocelyn & Chris, and said he intends to bring them back in future concert seasons to help them build a local following.

Previously: Brother-sister duo from Upstate to headline Jam at the Ridge on Saturday

Photos by Howard Owens.

In a do-it-yourself career that goes back about a decade, Jocelyn and Chris Arndt, who front the band Jocelyn & Chris, have never been ones to sit idle for long.

“We’re always racing ahead and looking for the next thing to do,” Jocelyn said in a late-July phone interview.

But a pandemic can stop just about anything. And that’s what happened in March 2020, just as this brother and sister from Fort Plain in upstate New York were finishing a new album planned for release ahead of a summer tour.

The band had seen their career gain momentum in 2019 when Jocelyn & Chris made their national television debut, performing the song “Outta My Head” on the “Today Show,” while the song “Kill in the Cure” charted on AAA radio.  So it wasn’t great timing to see a major tour get canceled, and the new album put on hold.

But the album, “Favorite Ghosts,” benefited from the pause. 

The Arndts, who write all of their songs together, re-examined their new songs and realized some weren’t everything they could be. And now that “Favorite Ghosts” is out, they feel things worked out for the better. 

“Honestly, I’m thankful for the album being the way it is,” said Chris, who joined his sister for the interview. “I’m more proud of it than anything else that we’ve ever made. But it’s a little bit funny to think about the fact that the version that the world almost got (two years ago) is so different from the version that the world ended up getting.”

The Arndt siblings are justifiably proud of “Favorite Ghosts.” They have three impressive previous full-length studio albums to their credit, and the new album is a particularly rich and varied effort. It ranges from the taut and catchy blues-tinged rock of “Sugar and Spice,” “Skeleton Key” and “Break Me Down” to the pop-rock of “Run Away,” the folk-inflected “So Far To Fly” to the downright delicate title track, showcasing Jocelyn’s powerhouse vocals and Chris’ tasteful guitar work along the way.

“Favorite Ghosts” will figure prominently into their July 30 show at Jam at the Ridge. They’re looking forward to their introduction to the venue. 

“We’ve been all over Western New York, around Lake Ontario and stuff,” Chris said. “I don’t think we’ve ever done Jam at the Ridge, though.”

“It seems like a cool thing they’ve got going on,” Jocelyn concurred.

The same could be said for Jocelyn & Chris.

For more information about the concert, go to https://www.jatrny.com/

Photo by Tina Pelech.