We interview Austin Jenckes about his latest album, how Lori McKenna got involved with ‘Fat Kid’ and what’s up next.
How are you doing?
I’m doing great thanks, just hanging out here at the house in Nashville. How are y’all doing?
Not too bad. You’ve been keeping busy in quarantine with you live shows, including your ‘Live In Your Living Room’ show with Destination Country.
Yeah we’ve been doing a handful of those. I think it’s a good way to just keep in touch with everybody. I’ve done a couple of them, just using the services to record actual shows and venues but I’ve never done live streaming shows from home so it’s kind of cool. No one’s ever going to leave their house again!
Going back to the beginning, I know you were raised in Duval, Washington. What was it like there in terms of the musical scene?
Yep it’s right outside of Seattle. It was a mixture, I grew up playing in church a lot. Then in middle school and high school, I started playing in rock bands and there was a lot of punk rock, and hardcore, and post-grunge and heavier type stuff. I was born in ’88, so my dad was a huge Stone Temple Pilots fan, so I grew up listening to that because he listened to it. Then when I got a little bit older and I was playing – a lot of the venues had a lot of heavy bands – I did the band thing for a while and then I guess in middle school or high school, I started opening up for a lot of heavier bands but just solo-acoustic. All of my buddies that played in bands were like ‘we don’t really like your music, because it’s soft and you sound like a wimp, but you’re good so you can play with us.’ (laughs)
That’s hilarious. Later on down the line you ended up on ‘The Voice.’ I know it’s a few years ago now, but have you carried through lessons from doing that into your music now?
Well I learned a lot about the entertainment industry in general, so like we had hair and makeup and wardrobe – all that crazy stuff that I had never thought I’d be doing – like, if you go to do a TV appearance it’s your responsibility to bring your own hair and makeup if you want it. They don’t usually have that set up for you, unless you communicate that ahead of time and that’s something I never would have known. Little things like that, and also tricks for being on camera. Musically, I really learned the most from watching the band and realising you can’t be perfect every time, but there’s a certain level of confidence you have to have going into situations and a calmness. I wouldn’t have known that before, just because growing up you play all different kinds of shows – your mom’s backyard party for your family – and you have a lot of time to get comfortable in a lot of situations.
Last year was a pretty big year with the release of your album. This one felt almost autobiographical, it was so personal – you had songs relating back to your childhood, right up to your marriage now.
Yeah, the writing of the record took four or five years to come up with a cohesive group of songs that I felt like told my story. The goal and what it’s really led to was definitely just connecting with people about some of the hardships and the things that I’ve learned along the way about who I am. I’ve always considered myself a singer-songwriter first and to me that’s what that record is. It’s all songs about my story. It’s crazy to look at all the songs I’ve written and thinking we picked nine. (laughs)
You’ve got such a huge back catalogue of songs that it’s kind of weird just picking nine…
Yeah and we just spent a lot of time figuring out how to do it. I’d never put out anything that personal before, so I learned a lot and it’s the most connection I’ve ever made with a fanbase directly. I think going forward, it was a really good lesson for me on how to connect.
One of the songs on the record – ‘If You’d Been Around’ – you wrote that about your dad and now you have a daughter. Do you feel like your songwriting has changed since becoming a father?
Big time (laughs). Even this morning, I wake up and my daughter is running around and she goes, ‘dad do you want to play?’ I have a writing session after this and I’ve been doing a lot of work from home. It’s a different thing right now because it’s right there in your face. In a way, it’s sometimes easier when I have a show to go to, but it’s nice to be here right now because in between we can go out and play. Yeah, it’s changed a lot, especially singing that song ‘If You’d Been Around.’ The first time it hit me was when I played, before the record came out – maybe November 2018 – I played a show in Nashville and an older gentleman came up to me and said that he’d had a really big career and he’d travelled a lot and been away from home. When he heard that song, it made him realise that he needed to go and call his daughters because he realised he had not been around enough for them. I had not thought about it that way, I’d always thought about it from being the kid’s perspective, but it’s crazy how songs change and morph.
I guess the way you view them changes over time, as much as the way other people view them. Another one of my favourite songs from the record is ‘Fat Kid,’ can you talk about how that song came to you and how Lori McKenna came to be a part of it?
Yeah so my roommate at the time, he went up to Boston to write with Lori. He was the one who showed me her stuff before that – I was already a fan, so I was really excited for him, it was a really great opportunity, she’s one of the best songwriters out there. So he went out there, and then on the Saturday he texted me a little voicenote from an iPhone that said ‘Fat Kid.’ I immediately pressed play and started listening to it. It just felt like my life story was being sung to me by Lori McKenna. (laughs) Right away, I started learning how to play it and sung it out at my shows. There was probably about a year and a half to two years, I was playing it every night, we recorded it in the studio two or three times till we landed on the record version that is on the album. Once we got it recorded, Neil reached out to Lori and said ‘hey, I know we wrote this song a while ago but Austin cut it and he loves it and he’d love to have you sing on it if you’re up for it.’ The first time that I actually met her was when she came into the studio to sing and we’ve hung out a couple of times after that but she’s just a very magical person and it was really an honour to be able to do that song.
I guess I would ask you what’s coming up in the next couple of months but it’s so up in the air – we just need to keep posted on social?
Yeah the plan is really to just work on new material and then gear up to get back over there sometime soon. We’re doing a lot of live streaming shows and there’s that balancing act of being present in the moment, making sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing but also looking towards the future. Another thing we’ve been thinking a lot about is as artists our responsibility to everybody to make sure we don’t come back too soon. It’s a really hard thing because financially you want to get back to work as soon as possible, but I think it’s really important that there’s a bigger picture there that we have to look at and just make sure we’re not putting anybody in danger by trying to make shows happen too soon.
Complete the sentence…
Music is… the universal language. Music is an escape for me to be able to express where I’ve been and where I want to go. It’s also the best way to pass time (laughs), it’s a lot better than watching TV or being caught up on your phone. Music is the glue of life, it keeps everything together.
Austin Jenckes is… a guy with a guitar (laughs) that really, really, really loves to play music. I don’t know, that’s a really tough question. I try to be the kind of person that knows who he is and that is always changing no matter where I am, because I want to make sure that everybody is comfortable. For me, my number one goal is to create music that makes people feel accepted and understood and also I want to be the kind of artist that makes people feel ok, even when it’s not ok. I want my music to be a crutch to lean on.
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The interview is also available as a podcast here.
