Ahead of the release of their debut album – Breaking Point – we interview Jackson + Sellers about how the record came together, their musical connection and the story behind the lead-out tracks. Pre-save Breaking Point here.
Hey, how are you? Finally you’re getting closer to the album release – how are you both feeling?
Jade: We’re excited for people to hear it, it’s weird.
Obviously you have both released solo albums, but it must be kind of nice this time around knowing you’re not in this alone.
Aubrie: Totally. I’ve been talking about how that’s awesome for me because I’m super introverted. It’s fun to do solo stuff, but I really enjoy doing it with Jade because we get to play shows together. We get to experience it all together.
Obviously, Jade you reached out to Aubrie, and that’s kind of how this all happened. Can you talk a bit about thinking back to that moment to now what the finished product has looked like? Could you fathom that this would come out of it?
Jade: Yeah. Well, it all happened so fast. Everything kind of felt like it was set in place and meant to be – all the stars were lined up. The spark of the idea of working with her quickly evolved, I was responding to my team about a particular song that was really important to me and I was just randomly emailing them saying that I think it should have strong female harmonies – somebody like Aubrie Sellers. I had seen her at Americana Fest for the first time. I had just recently been getting familiar with her music, so it was kind of like in my brain. I just sent that out and then I think I was like 10 minutes late or something, I had to go to work. It was a last minute thing. I was on Instagram and I just sent her a DM and I was like, ‘hey, would you be interested in singing harmonies or working on the song.’ She immediately responded and then we talked for a bit and I was late for work and then, I don’t know that weekend we met up and I drove down. She was living in LA at the time so I was able to drive to her and we just hit it off and she showed me one of her songs. We were just very comfortable in a space together, having never met before, which was special for both of us because we’re kind of shy really in person.
It was probably a good that you didn’t kind of think about it too much, if you had visualised where you are now, and thought about sending that message, you probably would have thought about it way more than you did at the time.
It’s such a testament to how some of the best things happen by accident.
Listening to both of your solo stuff and then bringing it together, what I love is that you’ve both retained your vocal qualities – the emotion – but you’ve really amped up the sound of the production. Was that a very organic thing to happen or was that kind of a very conscious decision in terms of wanting it to be very different from your solo stuff?
Aubrie: It was a little natural. Ethan and I even played on the record guitar and other stuff in the byline. We co-produced the record together, but I’ve kind of felt like the things that Jade and I had in common were our rock edge and I had been wanting to push more in that direction. It just organically happened and Jade I think talks about how the process of making this was different than making other records, because we’re kind of open to whatever happens. It was experimental, it was fun. It was a very freeing experience,
We’ve only gotten to play a couple shows, our tour got cancelled this month, unfortunately, but we have gotten to play some shows for the first time in a million years, so that’s awesome and it’s super fun to play. We’ve been able to play with the band from the record, which is amazing and that’s been super fun. We’ve just been enjoying the process.
Looking down the tracklist and the ten songs, you’ve both brought in three different tracks each, how did you select those? Was it a case of ‘I’ve already written these songs?’ or did you have a particular kind of idea of what you wanted the record to represent and then picking the songs to fit that?
Aubrie: Yeah, we each brought songs that we’d already written and we just kind of played them for each other and then picked what resonated to us the most. ‘Hush’ was the first song that she was talking about and then the same day that she came down to visit me, we recorded a demo clash, I played her ‘Has Been’ which is the last song on the record – that’s not what I wrote, but it was one my friend wrote, and I really loved and wanted to record. There’s three songs that I wrote, three songs that she wrote, and then we picked a couple covers and that’s how we spread the writing.
Picking the covers must have been a moment of knowing you shared the same musical outlook, knowing you’re in sync.
Aubrie: Yeah, I think we’re both fans of Julie Miller, for sure. I had just become familiar with Susie Quatro and heard that song and was like, ‘Hey, you should check this out’. Both of us were newly familiar and excited about that song – ‘The Wild One.’
I wanted to talk about ‘The Devil Is An Angel’ because I love the sound of it. Again, it’s that toss-off between a heavier rock production, but your vocals are just incredible on it. Can you talk a bit about how that track particularly evolved?
Aubrie: Yeah, so if you listen to Julie’s version, it’s different – ours is more rock, which was super fun. Ethan just immediately started playing that riff that’s on there that you hear at the beginning, when we were just sitting me and him and an acoustic trying to figure out what we wanted it to sound like. We did a little work tape and sent it to Jade. I think it’s a rock leaning thing. The reason I think we picked it for the first single was because a lot of the song we sing harmony in unison, and so it’s a pretty equal representation of us. It was a good representation of the spirit of the record.
Obviously ‘Hush’ has also been released and you know that was the song that started it all. Jade, can you talk a little bit about creating that track and where that sort of came from?
Jade: Yeah, I had just recently talked to my sister, she was living in the dorms at college and having a really hard time. There’s toxic relationships and then there’s a next level and then there’s the next level and it was like the level after that. Being her older sister and having to hear about it was super hard and songwriting in a way let it out. I was just kind of sitting in the kitchen with my guitar, and I wrote it, I don’t know it came out in less than 20 minutes and my dad was in the living room and he walked in and sat down and when I was recording it for my voice memos, I wouldn’t forget it. He was the first person I played it for and he was like, ‘Oh, that’s really cool.’ Usually, I keep songs, so I kept it in my song batch and then the more I just sat with it and tweaked the lyrics, I felt like it was a very poetic way of expressing how I felt about the situation. I grew really fond of it over the days.
It’s so funny because obviously when you listen to it, it’s magic, but sometimes you need that external perspective.
If you give ten people this record, they’ll probably all have a different favourite, so there’s certain people I’ve known people in my life not to be rude but if they’re like, hey, that song is not as good as this song that I’d written Sandra ball I’m like, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Finally one the other tracks that jumped out to me was ‘The World Is Black,’ can you talk about that one as well?
Aubrie: That is one that I wrote a long time ago and was actually when I was doing pre-production for my first solo record, I’ve always loved it and I had so many songs – I think a lot of people do when they’re songwriters – it’s hard to narrow down because you’ve got so many. So I’d been holding on to it and then when we came up with this project, I thought it might fit. Originally it was called ‘City Light’ but Jade already had a song called that, so I changed the title. I love that song and I’m glad I finally got a chance to put it on a project.
Jade: It’s one of my favorites. I listen to music in the car mostly and when that song comes on, I’ll think ‘I’m gonna turn this one up’.
Overall, what do you hope that you that your fans kind of take away from this record? I can imagine it’s quite exciting because you’re combining two fan bases, but you’re also creating a whole new fan base.
Aubrie: Yeah, I think, we call the record Breaking Point because it was a breaking point for both of us in a positive way, even though the song isn’t about that. We took that as the title because we felt like coming together, we learned a lot together. It’s been such an amazing experience, we also became really good friends very quickly. I think, we’ve been talking about how especially Jade, how making this record was fun in terms of creativity. She talks about how we didn’t really have any expectations of what was going to happen with it. That was a cool thing, I’ve always been so hard on myself, I always wanted to meet a certain expectation I had of myself. When I decided that I wanted to do this as my career when I was 13, everything else fell short. I just started down this path down with tunnel vision towards this outcome that I didn’t even fully understand. I knew I wanted to get there and I put a lot of pressure on myself. With this record, it was like this breaking point for the world, but it was also this pause for the whole entire music industry. We were lucky enough to get in the studio and record the songs, because we had a small space and we’re able to do COVID testing and do a lot of things that some people weren’t able to do and that was wonderful. We were in there not knowing what was going to happen after, because is the world going to be shut down for two years – are we going to tour on this record? I felt like I’d always thought in the studio about translating the record to the stage, but we didn’t have to think about that because we didn’t know when we’d play live. It was so fun, because there was no expectation.
It’s almost like you got to really fall in love with the reason why you made the record in the first place. It’s kind of like a free creative space without putting a goal on everything. That’s the danger you can sometimes step into, where every record has to be more successful than the last one.
Yeah, actually, there was no business talk or thinking about any of that part of it, that’s what was so great and fun.
Congratulations on this project, honestly, if anything’s come out on COVID, it seems to be this record. So thank you for your time today.
Speak to you soon.
