#mouse trap interview

Jackson Eudy is a lo-fi music maker from Arlington, Texas. His music is intentionally hard to penetrate both sonically and lyrically, but when you put the effort in you’ll find some beautifully crafted bursts of indie-pop music.

Q: What was your process for recording your new album?

A: I entered into the recording process with the songs just partially written and only a vague concept of the album structure. The acoustic tracks were recorded to a Sony TCM-200DV 1-track tape recorder. The rest were made on a Tascam Portastudio 488 8-track. I tracked the drums first, bass and guitar next, then keyboard, and finally vocals. 

Q: How did you get into playing music? Have you been involved in making music since you were young?

A: To give you an indication of how prominent of a role music played in my childhood, my middle name is Neil, after Neil Young. In my adolescence, I formed a band with friends of mine who lived in my neighborhood. I seem to recall us failing miserably at trying to be The Strokes. We simply used a boombox for all of the recordings that we made, and our sole public performance was at a school talent show. By the time that high school began, we had become disillusioned with the concept of becoming rock stars and disbanded.    

Q: Who are some bands that you look up to and have inspired your own music-making?

A: I did not entertain the notion of making my own music until I moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas from Arlington, Texas for college. It was there that I became acquainted with the band Swimming, who were instrumental in my choosing to start making music of my own. Brian Kupillas, a member of the band, encouraged me to record and develop my songwriting. It is inspiring to have someone who you look up to care about your music. Swimming is not currently active, but Brian performs as Wandering Lake and plays in a band called Wished Bone with his partner.

Q: Your songs are extremely lo-fi in their recording quality. Was this intentional on your part to add a more intimate feel to the songs?

A: I would welcome it if the low fidelity of my recording allowed someone to have an intimate experience, but that was not intended. There is a pressure in society to have the current technology, and I made a conscious decision to counteract that force by using as obsolete of equipment as attainable. I tried to make the noise difficult to discern, because I wanted the listeners to have to fill in the blanks. When sounds are difficult to distinguish from one another, an effort is required in order to connect the dots. I appreciate the warped and weathered quality that is inherent to recording on cassette, and I think that there is a certain chaos to tape hiss that cannot be replicated digitally. I am not the first person to choose to record on cassette in lieu of higher fidelity equipment. Following the success of Bee Thousand, Guided By Voices were given an advance to record Alien Lanes in a studio. Robert Pollard instead opted to let Tobin Sprout record the album to tape, as he had with the previous release, and he used the advance to financially support himself after quitting his job as a teacher. I do not presume to be a pioneer of the recording technique, but my intention is to take the concept to a new extreme. 

(above photo by Todd Hanson)

Q: Do you have an aspiration to play any of these songs live, or is it solely going to be a recorded project?

A: I am not capable of recreating the songs in a solo performance, and I do not think that a live band would be able to translate the album to a live setting. I could be receptive to being apart of a band moving forward, but I would want to record in a manner similar to how we performed. The debut Swimming release was recorded live by Joel Paul, who would go on to be a bassist in the band. There is a sense of reciprocity in those recordings that can only be attained though a group of musicians responding to one other. The band members have a reciprocal relationship with one another. That action and reaction is what attracts me to playing live. It is difficult for me to find other musicians who I can collaborate with, but I believe that playing live has the potential to be a form of performance art.

Q: What themes do you find inspire your lyrics? When you write your songs, do you find that writing lyrics usually comes first or creating the music?

A: The lyric writing was inseparable from the music writing. The stream-of-conscious nature of the words allowed the lyrical themes to remain universal. Similarly, the improvised instrumental performances gave the music a sense of spontaneity. The songs were written for a specific person, who I will not name to spare them embarrassment. The album was originally conceived under the delusion that it would make said person fall in love with me, but their response inevitably fell short of my expectations. 

Q: How has moving to Fayetteville, AR from Arlington, TX impacted your own music?

A: In comparison to Arlington, Fayetteville is relatively isolated. While Arlington is centrally located in the Dallas and Fort Worth metroplex, Fayetteville is surrounded by nothing except for the Ozark Mountains. Secluded environments rid their inhabitants of certain distractions that are inescapable in a developed area. Being enveloped by hills, Fayetteville lends itself to introspection. A limitation that moving imposed on me was that I could no longer play loud music, and did not have space to store equipment such as drums or large amps. This drove my music into an increasingly acoustic direction. I have since acquired ample room for musical equipment, but it was a valuable experience for me to have to approach writing in a stripped down setting.

Q: Most of your songs are short in length. What is the appeal of short songs to you?

A: The brevity of my songs is another aspect of my music that is heavily influenced by GBV. Pollard made me want to convey complex emotions in concise compositions. I have always questioned why songs have been structured a certain way for so long. What I strive to create are songs exempt from requirements of what is considered to be a socially acceptable length and quality. I rid myself of preconceptions concerning what a song should be and trust my intuition. I believe that a musical concept is pure at the moment of conception and any further development is unnecessary embellishment.