Indie Folk Pop

“It started out as a passion for the written word - Communicating beauty, heartache, and hope through song... With time, skill developed and music evolved.” Jake Down

Heather Renee: Are you a writer first?

Jake Down: Yeah I started writing in grade school, long before i did anything with music.

Heather Renee: When did you realize that music was going to be something you wanted to pursue?

Jake Down: I always enjoyed music, but didn't get my start until late college actually.

Heather Renee: Does it run in your family?

Jake Down: My mom sings, but that's about the extent of it.

Heather Renee: I saw on Facebook that you like: Rusty and Kelsey Vining, The Koh Koh's, Stavesacre, Mike Mains & the Branches, Rocky Votolato, Audrey, Uncommon Road, Nathan Gafford, who do you feel you sound like?

Jake Down: I don't know who I sound like really, but some of my biggest influences are Rocky Votolato, Frank Turner and Dustin Kensrue.

Heather Renee: What is your genre?

Jake Down: Folk Rock

Heather Renee: If you could open for someone who would it be and why?

Jake Down: Probably Rocky Votolato, he's an awesome down to earth guy and I really look up to him as a musician.

Heather Renee: Which instruments do you play?

Jake Down: Acoustic Guitar, Harmonica, a little drums.

Heather Renee: Tell us about your independent artist grind?

Jake Down: Just keep moving. Pursuing your passion means being patient. It's hard work, but easy things aren't worth living for.

Heather Renee: What is your measure of success?

Jake Down: Any time I get to share my music and my experience with people it's a success. I'd love to break out of Michigan and tour more extensively, play some major venues and festivals, but I am just as in love with small intimate house shows for the neighbors.

Heather Renee: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Jake Down: Touring outside of Michigan regularly, with a few more releases under my belt.

Heather Renee: What advice would you give to other singer/songwriters?

Jake Down: Write music that you like and be honest.

Heather Renee: I see that you just released a new EP called Shipwreck where did you record it?

Jake Down: The Foxboro in Grand Rapids MI.

Heather Renee: Who produced it?

Jake Down: Mike Cervantes produced and mixed it.

Heather Renee: How can we find out more about you?

Jake Down: www.jakedown.com

After stumbling across Rocco's Song on YouTube, I had to find out more about Blue Eyed Sun.

Blue Eyed Sun is a band of three musicians; Casey, Brennan, and Kenneth, who met deep in the woods of Northern Michigan and came together to create the music they love. In late 2012 and into 2013, they recorded their debut album Tidal Sound at Halohorn Studios in Traverse City. It was then mixed at Blackbird Studios in Nashville by two time Grammy winning engineer, David Hall (Gavin Degraw, Frank Sinatra, Etta James, Fall Out Boy), and Mastered by Benny Quinn (Lady Antebellum, Marshall Tucker Band). The three boys come from different cities and backgrounds, but they met at Interlochen Arts Academy (one of the top high schools for music performance in the world) outside Traverse City, Michigan in 2012.

Heather Renee: How did you come up with your band name?

Blue Eyed Sun: Our band name is a play on the Bob Dylan lyric in Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall. In the verse, the song says “where have you gone my blue eyed son?”. Bob Dylan is probably my biggest musical influence. You can hear it in the folkier tracks on the record like Fidelity Melody and Johnny Boy and Tidal Sound. We also like three, three syllables, three words and then throughout the ages the Sun has had importance to so many societies and literally spawned entire religions so we knew we wanted to use that word and we liked the word eye (after all it’s the window to the soul) and Blue is logical because its by far the most popular color for anything plus it has musical overtones.

Heather Renee: Who do you compare your sound to?

Blue Eyed Sun: I’d say we sound like Fleet Foxes mixed with Maroon Five, if you can imagine that.

Heather Renee: What is your genre?

Blue Eyed Sun: Folk Rock / Singer Songwriter.

Heather Renee: If you could open for any band, who would it be and why?

Blue Eyed Sun: Dead or Alive, it would be the Beatles of course. Living, it would be Bob Dylan.

Heather Renee: How long have you been doing music?

Blue Eyed Sun: Brennan, I’ve been playing music live since I was ten. I really love live performance and connecting with an audience. Its my favorite part of all of it.

Heather Renee: Does it run in the family or are the band members anomalies?

Blue Eyed Sun: Some of both. My dad is in a classic rock cover band that plays corporate events, private parties and casino gigs. We grew up singing in church being from Arkansas. Kenneth’s mom was a singer and his dad was a musician he taught himself piano and guitar in 7th grade.

Heather Renee: What is Blue Eyed Sun's measure of success. Define "Making it in the music industry" for the band.

Blue Eyed Sun: I think we’ve had a nice start toward success. We have an album that we’re proud of and we’ve had a small successful tour this past summer, lots of bands will never experience that. Making it for us would be, being successful enough to eat and pay the rent and do what we love. If we could pay our living expenses and write and perform our own material for our living, that would be success.

Heather Renee: Do you feel that the music industry today is better or worse for musicians trying to make it?

Blue Eyed Sun: Neither. Its just going through more growing pains. Its better in that more people have access to our music, but its worse that we work so hard and pay for our recordings only to have them streamed for free.

Heather Renee: What are the short term 1-2 year goals for the band?

Blue Eyed Sun: Get more training and education. We are all on a bit of a hiatus now at college and post grad programs.

Heather Renee: Where do you see the band in 10 years? Headlining the pyramid at Glastonbury or playing a set of exclusively progressive rock on the moon. Who knows that’s part of the fun of this is the mystery…

Heather Renee: What is the craziest thing the band has experienced either at a show or in the studio?

Blue Eyed Sun: Getting to record in Nashville. I got to play a 1975 Epiphone Casino that was hand made for George Harrison (Epiphone made 12 of them for George) and given to one of our producer friends, Rob Feaster, in the same room at Quad Studios where Neil Young recorded Heart of Gold in the early 1970s. Now that’s crazy…crazy fun.

Heather Renee: What is the most challenging part about your goal to "make it in the music industry."

Blue Eyed Sun: Easy one here…being taken seriously in spite of our age. We don’t write bubble gum pop. Our lyrics and melodies are thoughtful and complex but simple enough for anyone to enjoy and find meaning.

Heather Renee: If you could get three wishes to help your band, what would they be?

Blue Eyed Sun: Find great management who believed in us and wants to partner with us, get signed to a major label, and start booking Scandinavia and Europe.

...Or that someone wise and knowledgable would appear out of nowhere and become our mentor/producer, and help us produce some great recordings as well as give us insightful advice. That someone would give us magical instruments that would fill us with inspiration every time we picked them up and allow us to write some crazy catchy songs, and that 4 years down the road we'd find out that they aren't actually magical and the magic was inside of us the whole time.

Heather Renee: What advice would you give to other musicians pursuing this dream?

Blue Eyed Sun: Use the internet to your advantage. That's where the music industry exists now, find a creative way to engage people. And also, don't forget the importance of revising songs. You can take a crappy song, spend several days woodshedding it and polishing it and turn it into something good. You can do the same with good songs and make them great songs.

Keep creating art, always. Don’t be afraid of hard work (practice, practice, practice). My dad always reminds me of this phrase.. "Overnight success takes about 15 years."

Heather Renee: Where can we buy your ablum?

Blue Eyed Sun: Our album, Tidal Sound is available for sale on iTunes.

Heather Renee: Where can we find out more about you?

Blue Eyed Sun: www.blueeyedsunmusic.com