bhundt@observer-reporter.com

What is Thomas Jefferson's Aeroplane?

Is it a Jefferson Airplane tribute band? Or an off-kilter salute to the nation's third president?

Well, rest assured you won't hear "White Rabbit" or see someone dressed in powdered wigs or hippie togs. Thomas Jefferson's Aeroplane is, in fact, a new project pairing Pittsburgh singer-songwriter Bill Deasy with Rich Jacques, the former guitarist with the Pittsburgh band Brownie Mary.

The twosome have just released the album "The Invisible Ocean," and are launching it this week with concerts in Los Angeles and, tonight, at Club Cafe in Pittsburgh.

When Deasy and Jacques were both up-and-comers on the Pittsburgh music scene in the 1990s, they would see each other at clubs and on the road, but they never really became close.

"We weren't really great friends," Deasy said.

After Brownie Mary split, Jacques moved to Los Angeles to pursue work as a songwriter and producer, and Deasy would get in touch with him when he traveled out there. Deasy also noticed that the two of them shared many of the same friends on their My Space pages.

Deasy and Jacques wrote their first song together in January 2007, and kept the collaboration going, recording the songs as they wrote them. At a certain point, it became apparent that there was enough there for an album.

"It was great because there was no pressure," Jacques explained. "It was one of those things that came out of the ether, so it's kind of liberating."

All 11 songs on "The Invisible Ocean" were 50/50 collaborations and, according to Deasy, "We made a point of being inspired together. So we sat with a guitar and let it flow. That's part of the reason we did the record, because we find it so easy to create music together."

He continued, "There was no real preparation or ideas going in. As we realized we were going to make a record, it got more intense."

It was by no means a given that things would mesh so well between the two. Both as the leader of the Gathering Field and as a solo artist, Deasy has always leaned toward the weighty and the literary, while Jacques and Brownie Mary tended more in the direction of the poppy and catchy.

"It's not really what I would have done on my own and it's not what Bill would have done on his own," Jacques pointed out.

And how did they come up with the moniker Thomas Jefferson's Aeroplane? A conversation got going about "a crazy philosophy book" that contended that Thomas Jefferson once edited a version of the Bible that had pared it down to its essential truth and came close to what the authors of the Bible intended.

"So for two seconds, we said, 'Let's call the band Thomas Jefferson's Bible,'" Deasy explained. "And then, for some reason, one of us said Thomas Jefferson's Aeroplane. And we just started cracking up. I just liked the absurdity of it."

It's not clear yet if this is the sole flight of Thomas Jefferson's Aeroplane, or if it will be taking on passengers on a regular basis. Jacques has a busy agenda in Los Angeles, and Deasy is writing songs on his own and just finished off his third novel. No additional concerts are planned beyond tonight, but, Deasy believes, "It's almost like an exploration to see what we are, to see what we can be."

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