Can you imagine creating 43 albums? Jim Byron can. His work is varied in style but consistent in being meaningful. You can catch him live September 29 at The Terminal.
You are a prolific artist with a wide range of music. Please tell us more about yourself and what brings you to music.
Thank you so much for asking these questions! I’d have to say I’m mainly drawn to music for its capacity to be a vehicle for poetry. I am originally from the Bay Area of California where in the early ‘10s I got involved with a group called the Revolutionary Poets Brigade which was led by Poet Laureate of San Francisco, Jack Hirschman. Jack was my mentor along with Barry Spacks, Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara where I went to college at UCSB. I’ve always felt like I had something important to say and music is a powerful way to get those words across. I remember when I was in pre-school – I must’ve been four years old, I imagined myself on stage with a red Stratocaster. When I was 14, I got one and I started writing songs every day. But it wasn’t until 2010 when I dropped out of college that I truly became prolific, writing hundreds of songs over the years. Music is so many things to me: intellectual, spiritual, therapeutic, revolutionary, hopeful, a force of nature. I feel so privileged to have the gift of being able to make music and share it with the world.
How do you manage to create so much music both in terms of time management and creative inspiration?
Time management is pretty easy. I make music very quickly. I like to compare myself to an orange tree. A song is just the fruit that I naturally bear. I live in a situation where I don’t have to work necessarily, so I have a lot of time to pick up the guitar, or produce music on GarageBand. I’m very lucky in that regard. I feel like there are a lot of artists who write comparable amounts of music but just don’t release all of it. But I put out almost everything I create. Since I’m a solo project, I don’t have to work with other people’s schedules. I can do everything on my own time. And since my phone is my recording studio, it’s very convenient and simple.
As for inspiration, I guess I just absorb a lot and write down ideas whenever they come to me. Even when I don’t have any inspiration for lyrics, I can still write music, sometimes just out of sheer boredom. Other times, I might be going through something really intense like a breakup. I’m also inspired by politics and philosophy and watch a lot of videos on those topics. I recently went through a breakup this past spring and that fueled four albums, one of which I wrote and recorded in less than two weeks. It’s been a productive summer, though very tough. If you listen to my voice on the past four albums (Little Bird, Pluto Aquarius, Sovereign Heart Summer, and The Art of Being Alone), you can hear my emotions evolve. Sovereign Heart Summer is exclusively on Patreon and will be on Bandcamp at the end of September and The Art of Being Alone will be on Patreon this month and on Bandcamp in late October. The Art of Being Alone is entirely about the breakup and I guess I manage to keep inspiration by looking at it through different emotional perspectives. On Sovereign Heart Summer, I’m in denial thinking she will come back, even delusional. In the beginning of The Art of Being Alone, you can hear the acceptance yet deep sadness in my voice – but the songs are listed in the order I made them and you can hear me heal and become stronger.
For me, writing songs is the ultimate passtime, so I just naturally do it.
Your latest video (Ash in the Wind) is an anti-nuclear war anthem. Who would you like to hear the song? By that I mean, who needs to hear the message most?
I think the people I really want to hear the song are the leaders of the world who can have an impact on foreign relations with other nuclear powers. It’s crazy that we’re so close to a nuclear war now with the war in Ukraine and the repeated escalation. But really, I want everyone to hear it. I’d have to say it’s the song I want to get out there the most. I’d like Vladimir Putin to hear it. Maybe it could be translated to Russian. But I’d say, besides world leaders, people who have the same anxiety about nuclear war that I have, and maybe need it put into words ought to hear it. It’s kind of a doomsday song, but it has some kind of hope in it. It has a message that I think needs to be heard, especially by people interested in peace.
The production in Ash in the Wind is pared down from your earlier work Pluto Aquarius, it’s rawer. Do you think it will give birth to more raw performances or that Ash in the Wind might morph into something different?
Lately, I’ve been playing all my live performances in that pared-down style. I’m planning on recording in an actual studio session with a professional engineer to record as many songs as I can in two hours. It might yield a single, an EP, or an LP. Pluto Aquarius was recorded using all digital instruments on GarageBand, a lot of the time coming up with the lyrics as I recorded them, not even writing them down. Sovereign Heart Summer and The Art of Being Alone have a very similar style to Pluto Aquarius – you could say they’re a trilogy. But the Ash in the Wind release will be rehearsed and all the songs will be written and arranged before they’re recorded. It’s possible that Ash in the Wind will evolve into something else – I’m talking to the St Paul-based band Lulu & the Shoe about performing together at an upcoming show. I think it would be really cool to have a full band version. We’ll see what happens, but for now it’s just my voice, guitar, and harmonica.
Do you have any shows coming up? Or what is the best way for people to keep connected to you?
Yes! I’m playing at the Terminal on the 29th of September with Lulu & the Shoe, Alley Mattress, Plastik Boxes, and Arms Dealer, then Eagles 34 on the 29th of November with *Splash!*, Emmy Woods, one or two more artists to be announced. You can find me on Patreon (Patreon.com/JimByron) – I always put my albums on Patreon about a month in advance of Bandcamp releases, Instagram (@lookintheeyeofthestorm), TikTok (@jimbyronmusic) and YouTube as well as Bandcamp. If you download a release on Bandcamp, you’ll be added to my mailing list. I actually have a special offer right now where if you download Pluto Aquarius for $20 or more, I’ll send you a Dropbox link to Sovereign Heart Summer. You can also find me on Spotify and most other major streaming services. You can find all the links at my website, singintotheinter.com, where you can find merch, past press, and all relevant links.
Thanks so much for featuring me here! I really appreciate it! Peace!
Mostly Minnesota 