JAWNY Press Conference
MIC had the opportunity to attend a press conference on January 25th featuring Interscope artist JAWNY, singer/songwriter/producer from the Bay Area. In 2020, he released a project titled For Abby, which presented his storytelling abilities and displayed his experimental style. Some of his most famous tracks include “Honeypie”, “Trigger of Love”, and “strawberry chainsaw.” He is releasing a new album on March 3rd and has been slowly previewing tracks from the album online.
During the interview, JAWNY explained that he moved around a lot in his childhood, so he had many musical influences including indie, alternative and southern rock. When he was 16, he decided to be a rap producer but didn’t end up pursuing that for a very long time. Although, that experience gave him an insight into the artist realm.
We were also given the opportunity to listen to two tracks before they were released. “Lalala” is an upbeat drive-around song and “Fall in Love” is a classic heartbreak song with amazing instrumentals.
Check out JAWNY’s singles and tune in for his new album: It’s Never Fair, Always True on March 3rd!
Question: “You have some really unique track names, like strawberry chainsaw… I wanted to know where you get inspiration for track titling?”
JAWNY: “I never really know how I’m going to write a song, like that one came from my notes, I didn’t have any other context of the song. I didn’t know it was going to be a love song, I just thought those two words sound cool together. Sometimes, that can end up being a track name, you write down a cool thing that could be a song title, and then you write a song in that universe, and then they go together. And then there’s obvious ones, you write a song and then take a line from it where you’re like ‘ooh that sounds good.’ By saying all that, in some weird way, I’ve consistently just had weird, interesting song title names. Maybe that’ll keep going and maybe it won’t, maybe at some point they’ll be normal… but for now, they’ve ended up being kind of wild, not on purpose but I’m not mad at it. I think they’re cool…”
Q: “With your track, Honeypie, you gained recognition at a young age. What were some the struggles of being a young quickly growing artist?”
J: “I feel like it was still hard for me, and [my fame] didn’t even come until I was in my early twenties… I don’t want to be all like ‘pity me’ because obviously it was a great thing that happened and now, I’m really grateful for it but yea at first it was really scary. You try making different kinds of art and songs and you put them out into the world and you don’t really have the same magnitude of a reaction. And then you try to put out a different kind of song or a different genre and it does what it does at its magnitude, like Honeypie, and then you start to get in your own head. You start thinking about what you need to do, and I thought I needed to make lightning in a bottle a bunch of times. Luckily, I just shook that mindset off, but yea it was a little jarring to go from a day job one day into immediately getting on flights and [meeting] labels, and [planning] tours, everything just changed on the flip of a dime. It never really stopped and now I’m just used to it, and it’s been years and I found my feeding. At first it was really hard to find stable footing because it was such a quick change, and I wasn’t ready for it. But it’s all a blessing in disguise…”
Q: “If you had a chance to write a song based off your favorite piece of pop culture, what would you choose and why?”
J: “Oh I don’t even know… I’m trying to think of all the things that have happened or what could even make a good song, even a funny song… maybe it’d be cool to write a little love song about when Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake showed up in those denim suits, that could be a cool little country love song that you could pick something out of… I’m going to go with that, that one I feel like could be an easy one to make a really good tongue and cheek, little cowboy love song.”