Today we’d like to introduce you to Jordan Taylor Thomas.
Jordan, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I began playing guitar late, at the age of 17 while acting in my high school musical “Grease”. I had never played any instruments up until that point and had no experience writing or recording music. Flash forward a couple years and the project Bad Lives started in my dorm room at the University of Nebraska. I was studying theatre and audio engineering and began to experiment with new guitar and synth sounds. I used to write a new song every single day and slowly developed my songwriting and recording skills. I graduated in 2020 during the pandemic and, while in lockdown, I wrote the 4 tracks that would ultimately make up the Bad Lives EP. A few months later, I found myself at Orb Recording Studios in Austin, Texas recording the four tracks with producer and Blue October bassist, Matt Noveskey and engineer Victor Gaspar. Following the release of that EP, I was contacted by Hunter Haddad, a bass player inquiring about joining the group. He and I hit it off and he soon after joined the group. He reached out to his former bandmate, drummer Stormi King and she auditioned to be a part of the Bad Lives live performances. Now that the live performance group was established, we began working up the material as I continued to write and record more tracks that would later be released, The 3 of us now are performing the songs all over north Texas.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
While in college, I had composed a full-length musical, which was to be workshopped at the University of Nebraska in April of 2020. The pandemic put a damper on that and halted my music aspirations for a while. Also, the fact that I had only started playing instruments about 7 years ago was and continues to be an obstacle from time to time.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a high school theatre and art teacher when I am not performing or recording for Bad Lives. I specialize in technical theatre (lighting design, sound design, scenic design, audio engineering). I also feel that I have a very unique perspective when it comes to music due to my ASD.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Growing up, I was always interested in music, I never knew how to play instruments, however, when I picked them up, I could always figure out how to make them sound like the things I had heard in other songs. I was not very social, likely due to my ASD, but I also tested as having a genius-level IQ, so I was always interested in my schoolwork and acquiring knowledge. I had a very obsessive personality when it came to learning new things, so when I started playing guitar late in high school, I picked it up very quickly. My father would always quiz me in the car about music. He would play a track from a CD and ask me who the artist was. He and I would go see movies in the movie theatre almost every weekend as well. So, I like to believe that over time, my brain created a connection between the emotional content of the film and the way the music was crafted to supplement that. That gave me the ability that I have now, in combination with the musical savantism from my ASD, to compose entire orchestral pieces by ear. My mother was and is always supportive of everything that I do. She worked very hard to give me every opportunity of life and I did my best to take advantage of it. I ended up receiving a substantial theatre scholarship from the University of Nebraska.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.badlives.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/badlivesband/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BadLivesBand
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGlDVbyOSz-lhdE897Lqz0w
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/badlives
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5BLU37kocEaU2l2CKLc5ty?si=nF1cr0ajTpuFVxkGP0rCHw
Image Credits
Alexandra Asgarian
