Jackson Bramhall Interview
Dylan Wiggins: Watch’a been up to today?
Jackson Bramhall: Today was chill, I was off - I had to run a couple errands. I left a bag at a place I was at the other day so I had to go and get that. But other than that it’s been a relaxing day just catching up on some sleep.
Word! Let me pull up my notes real quick.
Thanks for wanting to do this by the way, this is cool.
Yeah man! I was visiting New York in October and I got to see y’all play at that house show - I was like this is fuckin sick! I kept asking Sebastian, like yo where can I find their stuff? And then he told me that he was recording your EP.
Yeah! We recorded it with Sebi, that was a lot of fun. But yeah this is the first time I’ve done something like this, so I’ll try to keep it together, haha.
Haha, I don’t keep it too formal! But I’ve got a couple questions laid out here - maybe we can start with your background - where you’re from and how you got into playing music?
Yeah for sure! I’m from Seattle, I was born and raised there. I got into music - I feel like it was a couple things. My dad had a guitar in the house and he played a little bit. My mom had a piano, and I really liked playing the piano. Neither of them really played that much but they just had one, so that was nice. I feel like having a piano in the house is a nice thing. In middle school, I started making electronic music with friends on a cracked version of Ableton. So I started out learning some things about production through that. But I basically taught myself to play guitar just listening to BB King records. I had some BB King and a couple Muddy Waters records, and those were the only things I could really play my guitar along to - just learning the little blues licks they were doing. I just liked them and they were simple enough that I could play along.
Okay sick. How long have you lived in New York?
I’ve been in New York for about 4 years now.
How did Ditch come to be? How’d you meet the other members, and is it kind of ~your project or more-so a collaborative effort?
So Ditch is definitely - I write the songs, and I come up with the songs/lyrics. But they change a lot when I bring them to Ellis and Lindsay. Because the way I write them is really just the guitar parts, you know? And that, a lot of times I’ll play on acoustic and then bring it to them. And they have a lot of ideas as far as composition and where different parts can go. The volume comes and goes, and I’ve gotta figure out at which points I need to sing louder to overcome the other instruments.
How long have y’all been playing as a group?
We’ve been playing just over a year, I believe. We had our first show with this current lineup last year, last May I think. I played with Ellis and a different bass player for a little bit, but this is the more official lineup ya know, this is who we are.
One thing I wonder about, being from Texas - I feel like a lot of people here have garages and spaces where noise isn’t too much of an issue. I guess I’m curious about - as far as living in the city goes, the limitations as far as making noise?
So far it’s been okay - well, when I play in my apartment just with my amp I’m pretty cautious with that. But nobody’s ever said anything. I’ve played pretty loud & pretty late at night, and nobody’s ever said anything, haha! I don’t know if that’s just cause we have thick walls in here or something, or people don’t care, I don’t know. As far as playing with the band, we just use a practice space. So the limitation there is we have to pay money to have that separate place where we go and play music. The thing that makes me most sad about that is it’s rare that people have room in their apartment. When I lived in Portland we would usually just practice in people’s basements and garages. And that’s always nice because you’d be at home. So I guess it feels less home-y. I miss playing in the cozy garages, it always felt nice ya know?
So you’ve experienced a few different cities at this point, what do you find to be unique about NYC or is there anything you like/don’t like in regard to playing music?
Ya know, New York is definitely where I’ve gotten into it more than anywhere else. I think it’s unique in terms of just, the amount of people that come here to try and play music. I love that there’s shows happening here every single night at tons of different places around the city. I feel a strong sense of community that we have here, which is true in other places - I just haven’t been a part of it elsewhere like I am here now. So it feels new to me. But I don’t know, to summarize it’s just ~more, ya know? I just love that I can have friends and people that I’m interested in seeing in one place and I can see them frequently, there’s just always something going on. So I’ve really enjoyed just getting to go to a lot of shows and participate. Another thing is people come here, and they know that they are going to have to work hard to try and play music so I feel like there’s a little extra drive behind people who have moved here for that purpose. And that can be a good or bad thing, but I think it’s mostly a good thing.
Word! So I saw y’all went on a tour recently, up the West Coast. Any favorite cities or memories from that?
It was a lot of fun. That was the first tour that I had ever been on. One of my favorite things was, we didn’t have any music out at the time and we’re not really very big. So I was just going into it blindly trying to book this tour. I didn’t know how accommodating and helpful people would be, just reaching out to people that you barely know - and other musicians being interested in helping you book a show in their city. Even if they couldn’t play the show they’d still get you in contact with someone who could set up a show or offer the band a place to stay even though we were just total strangers. All of that was super inspiring to me. Just seeing people so down to help out. And that’s what made it possible for us to do that.
I’d say my favorite show was in Portland. Just because I had lived in Portland for a while and saw a lot of old friends, we played with some good bands. We played with Guitar and How Strange It Is. That was just a really fun night. My favorite moment, or I guess it wasn’t really a moment - but we stayed in Arcata, CA or a little town outside of Arcata, which is already a pretty small town itself. Our drummer Ellis grew up in Arcata, and he had some friends that were living on a commune. It’s a self-sustaining, all hand-built commune. We stayed with them that night, and ate eggs from the chickens they have on the farm in the morning along with potatoes they grew. It was so delicious and wholesome - it made me wanna go and live at a place like that.
That’s awesome.
But yeah, the tour was awesome - like I said I hadn’t done it before and it was a lot of fun. It just made me wanna do it like, all the time. Like we came back and I immediately started trying to book the next one. It just felt so good to devote that much time to music for a week and meet so many people. It was a good feeling, and it went well! So hopefully the next one goes well too.
Hell yeah dude. It’s good to hear the DIY scene is still running. The underground pipeline still goin’.
Yeah dude, there’s so many people that I basically cold called who were interested in helping. It made me want to put in more effort when people hit me up about playing shows in New York. It makes me wanna be like: I’ll get you a show somewhere. ‘Cause that’s what people did for us and it was really cool.
Any tips for overcoming stage fright?
Yeah I don’t know, that’s probably different for each person. I tend to just play the whole set with my eyes closed, haha! It’s probably not the best for engagement, but that’s just what works for me. My eyes just stay closed damn near the whole time. It gets easier the more you do it for sure. But I think the thing that helps me the most is just - I think I’ll always be nervous, but I think the genuine excitement that comes with getting to play your songs in a situation that’s more vulnerable than playing them by yourself or in a practice space. The excitement of that really outweighs the fear of I guess, people not enjoying it or the general anxiety of performing stuff in front of people. I don’t think the fright really goes away, but I think I’m really stoked to be scared sometimes. I think that being scared is healthy and a good thing, so I guess I’m not really trying to lose the stage fright, I’m just trying to enjoy it.
That’s awesome, I fuck with that. So last thing, what are your future plans for Ditch?
Definitely gonna keep it going. It’s all I got, haha! We’re gonna do another tour in August - we’re gonna tour with a band, they’re from New York and they’re called Fraternal Twin.
Oh hell yeah!
You know them?
Yes they’re so sick.
They’re awesome - we’re gonna do a tour with them through the Midwest and the East Coast with them in August, which I’m really excited for. My goal is to have at least a single or two out before then. We put out the EP, and then I wrote a bunch of songs after that, so I’m planning on doing an album. I think an album should happen for us this year, but not before that tour. So we’re gonna record a few singles and try to put something out so we can have something new before we tour again.
Sounds good man.