Today we’d like to introduce you to Jackson Snowden.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jackson. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started playing guitar when I was thirteen and instantly fell in love with it. My parents both love music and my dad also plays guitar, so I grew up being exposed to a lot of amazing music of various genres. About a year later I joined a program called School of Rock where I was able to play with a band for the first time, this experience moved me deeply and made me decide that I wanted to be a musician. When I was fifteen, I recorded in a commercial studio for the first time with my friend Cheyenne Mariah and we released our song “Human Constellations.” One year later, when I was sixteen, I was accepted to the School of Rock summer tour program and got to tour the east coast for two weeks and play a couple of shows with Dalton Rappatoni, an American Idol runner-up. Around that same time, I was hired as a sales associate at a local music instrument store in my hometown in Texas called Frisco Music Center, and began starting my own bands and writing my own original music.
Later that year, I also started doing live sound engineer gigs at work and started a Hardcore Punk band with some of my best friends called Lockjaw, and we recorded and mixed our debut EP by ourselves in my bedroom. I played countless shows with Lockjaw in Dallas, Denton and Fort Worth, even playing some bigger venues in Deep Ellum, and this is where I truly learned and got the hang of gigging life. During our time together, we also wrote and recorded our second EP, “Homefront Terrorism,” all in our drummer’s house. When my senior year of high school rolled around, my parents encouraged me to visit and audition for my dream school which was the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, where I now attend an academic scholarship. During my second semester of my senior year in high school, when I was eighteen, I joined a Progressive Metal band called Fall Europa and we began playing our first shows in the Dallas, Denton, and Deep Ellum areas.
Since then, we have played with many internationally renowned touring bands such as Between the Buried and Me, Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, Erra, Oceano, Betraying the Martyrs, Slaughter to Prevail, Entheos, Strawberry Girls and many more. We were also the winners of the Head-Bang for the Highway Battle of the Bands 2018 and got to play with the Grammy-nominated Between the Buried and Me at the Summer Slaughter tour date in Dallas, Texas at Gas Monkey Live. I also had the pleasure of being the one to book all of these shows for us and work with the promoters. Weeks later I began my first semester at Berklee College of Music, and during that first semester co-wrote and recorded the EP “The Collection: I” with my band Fall Europa and was able to have it mixed and mastered by engineer and producer Jamie King, who works with bands like The Contortionist and Between the Buried and Me.
The following summer, I was hired by Clio Cadence as a bassist to go on a one month long U.S. and Canada tour with Dead Girls Academy and Alive in Barcelona where I played my first international shows and also got to perform at the legendary Whisky A Go Go in Hollywood, CA. I now have recently started a deathcore band at Berklee called Survive the Sun that plays shows around the New England and Boston area. We have a new single called “The Minds in Which They Feast” that was just released on all platforms that I engineered recorded and wrote the guitars for. The rest of the EP will be out later this summer!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The process of practicing an instrument, writing music, or perfecting a mix involves a lot of trial and error and essentially is just a long series of encountering obstacles and overcoming them. However for me, I really love the learning process and how rewarding it is when you finally get the sound you’re looking for, nail a hard lick on guitar, or finalize the riff you’re writing. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.
Aside from that, I think one of the biggest challenges in being a musician, and especially going to an expensive music school, is taking the risk of deciding that you are going to dedicate yourself to this industry. Growing up, it’s common to hear things like “you have to go to college and get a real job to make money,” and “music/art school is a waste of time.” So I definitely had my doubts about going to school for music, but I knew in my heart what I wanted to do and my parents were always 100% supportive of me pursuing music, so they encouraged me to go for it, and I’m forever grateful for that. I can’t imagine what my life would be like now if I didn’t.
Can you give our readers some background on your music?
I’ve played guitar for bands as well as done session work since I was fifteen in the DFW, and now Boston areas, and through that, I’ve been able to perform at venues all over the U.S. and Canada to crowds of all different sizes. Although I primarily focus on writing and producing my own music, I also love collaborating and writing with artists of all kinds of genres. I’ve performed with many different kinds of bands playing everything from Blues, Pop, Jazz, and Punk to extreme styles of Progressive Rock and Metal, and I love it all.
I am currently studying music production and engineering at Berklee as well and hope to one day engineer and mix other bands as well as take more performing and touring gigs. My latest project was my band in Boston Survive The Sun’s debut single “The Minds in Which they Feast,” which is available now on all major streaming platforms, and the rest of our debut EP will be out later this summer, so keep an eye out!
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
There are a lot of people in my life that have helped me tremendously, but to name a few in specific, it would have to be my parents and guitar teachers. I never would have even auditioned to Berklee if my mom didn’t encourage me to, and my dad was the one who inspired me to start playing guitar in the first place, so needless to say my parents have been an essential part of my musical journey. My first ever guitar teacher was Steve Anderson, and I couldn’t have had more fun and inspiring experience. The teacher who I’ve learned the most from and taught me for the longest however, was Dustin Fleming of the Vandoliers, TrebucheT and Vinyl. Dustin inspired and challenged me in ways that made me want to dedicate my whole life to music, just like him.
After discovering the amazing music he had wrote for his bands, I completely fell in love with writing and composing for myself and my bands. Some other very amazing teachers and professors I’ve had the privilege to learn a lot from including Mark Akin, Don Lappin, Julien Kasper, Jon Finn, Tim Miller, and Tomo Fujita. I was also very fortunate to learn a lot from my old bosses David Pugh and Mike Lundiquist, as well as the rest of the guys down at Frisco Music Center during my two years as an employee there.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.falleuropa.com/
- Phone: 469-525-1515
- Email: jacksonsnowdenmusic@gmail.com
Image Credit:
Neil Ayengia, Jack Haden, Karen Beth, Peyton Wallace, Alexander Chase, Robb Miller, Jake Thompson, Leo Swatski.
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