Bad Lives Q&A: Jordan Taylor Thomas
Q: Tell me about yourself, Jordan.
Jordan: I was born and raised in Texas. I didn't start playing guitar until my senior year of high school. I got a role in the musical Grease and I had to play guitar on stage. I had never played guitar before so I taught myself, and it turns out that I really enjoyed it. So I kind of stuck with it. I went to the University of Nebraska and studied theater there and just kept playing music and started to get really interested in things like recording and writing. I had never been in a band or anything like that. I graduated on May of 28th 2020. So when I came back to Texas that summer, you know, everybody was locked inside. And I had been writing music for I don't know…, like four years at that point? So I started writing a whole new kind of project that was an amalgamation of all of these different influences that I wanted to try to mash together. I had gotten really into the new California punk sound like Together Pangea, stuff like that. I was also super into retro indie stuff like the Smiths and the Cure. I had a really big appreciation for what had just happened in the modern alt-rock scene too like Grouplove, Cage the Elephant, Fitz and the Tantrums, etc. So I wanted to try to throw all that together. So I wrote a handful of songs which I eventually went down to Austin, and I recorded those with Matt, who is the bass player for Blue October. I met Victor too, who is the engineer that I work with. I work with them consistently now. In June, I went down there and we tracked all the drums for the second album that's coming out this year. So I started developing really great relationships with these strong musicians. I've been to a few studios down in Austin since then, but I got that first EP on its feet, and it was ready to be released. So I put that out independently.
Q. How did you meet your bandmates?
Jordan: I had never been in a band before. I was on this website called BandMix, which is like social media for bands. That’s how I met my bass player, Hunter. He messaged me and, at first, I was skeptical. His profile said he was from Oklahoma. And I was like, “um, I don't think so…” So I didn't respond. He hit me up again a few weeks later and we ended up chatting. We really clicked and then he drove down. Which is what he actually did for the first like six months of Bad Lives. Now he lives back in Texas but he was driving two and a half hours for every practice and every show from Oklahoma. I met our drummer, Stormi through Hunter. Hunter and Stormi knew each other from a previous project that took place in Seattle. He hit her up, and we had a couple practices. We all really vibed as people but also on a musical level.
Q: What’s your creative process like?
Jordan: The way the process will go roughly looks like this: if I have an idea I have to crunch as much out in one sitting. Most of the time, I'll sit down at my desk and it's pretty quick for me to find out if I’m going to write something; it has become more of a sense or feeling. If when I sit down I can’t come up with anything I'll just stop because I don't want to force it. It’ll be something contrived or boring or whatever. If I feel like I got something good then I just kind of zoom in. Sometimes it’ll be a few hours in a single session, but I'll do the whole production. I will record and write acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, program drums, vocals, etc. Most of the time, whatever vocals I come up with in that session stick because I'm not a big vocalist. A lot of the vocals are oftentimes like improv. I watched this interview with Mark Hoppus from Blink-182 and he was talking about how when they write, they do like what they call “mumble passes”, where they listen to the song and then mumble whatever melody feels right. I kind of do that. Then a lot of the times I attribute meanings to the song retroactively, like I'll listen back along and I can kind of see how that reflects whatever was going on in my life or what I needed to express at the time. It's not super flashy. It's like me in a dark room for eight or ten hours being a hermit. Once we get it all produced and recorded the masters get sent to Stormi. She works off of the masters of the track. She's really good about picking up the groove and just kind of vibing with it.
Q: Earlier last year, you debuted an EP called Whispers, tell me about that album, how did it come about?
Jordan: During COVID, it was a really dark and gloomy time, but during that time I was writing these really happy and fast songs. So I don't know, maybe that was some way of coping. So I would finish a song and then I put it on my phone. I would go on walks and listen to it on repeat for a couple hours because I’m a very compulsive listener. It was that way for the first four songs on Whispers. That sort of ritualistic process continued for some of the songs on our new album. Later on, I ended up moving out and recording these songs towards the end of 2020. Most of them were recorded in 2021. The album was recorded in three sets of sessions. So for the first four tracks, I did those with Matt and Victor. I went back again and did “Valentine” and “Human” later. That's kind of my issue with the first album. I feel like it lacks cohesion because it was recorded in so many different frames of mind and with different drummers, etc. So that's the first album. A lot of it was ideas that were spread over a long period of time; some of those songs were written over a year apart.
Q: You have a new album in the works and you’ve shown sneak peeks of some cool tracks that will be featured on it such as “Nihilism” and “No One’s There”, what can we expect from your next album? Where was it recorded? When do you think it will be done?
Jordan: I'm really excited about the new album. The album's called Professions ot the Teenage Drama King. It has ten tracks. It's got a vibe, but still has that modern punchiness that I'm after. It doesn't sacrifice the indie feel of it. I'm basically going for music that would be in a John Hughes film. Some of the recording took place in Austin at the new Warm Studios, which is gorgeous. We tracked the drums with Chris Schreck- who I love working with. He's from Austin. He did half the songs on the first album, and he's just a monster. He's very effective at taking what's in my head and putting it on the kit. So we recorded all the drums down there. It was like 30 microphones because we had two full setups. We had an API setup for all API preamps because you know there's a little bit of genre bending in the album. I wanted the drums to always be consistent, but to always suit the song. So I took all that and then I did everything else in my studio. So electric guitars, acoustic guitars, bass and percussion. I'm just wrapping up vocals, hopefully, sometime this month. Joe Costa hit me up out of nowhere one day. He did all the American Authors stuff. And I'm a huge American Authors fan. He's also done like Good Charlotte, all kinds of wild stuff. So he hit me up one day on Instagram and we ended up chatting for a while. He listened to the entirety of the second album (the demos). He totally vibed with it, and we talked music and our influences for a few hours in a video call. Ultimately, that led to him asking to mix it. I'm super excited about that because I love all of his stuff, I really dig his sound. With the second album, I decided to try to take everything that I liked about the first album, but make it super concise and with more refined songwriting to it. Something that I was talking to Victor about was about how songwriting has changed. You're not really allowed to have a third chorus. You're not really allowed to have a bridge anymore. If you do, it's got to be very intentional because you're not going to get playlisted with a “3 minute and 40 seconds song”. They'll skip you just because they know their audience does not have that attention span. So as much as I hate it, because I love to write songs that are a fully satisfying experience. Although, I will say there is one song in the album where I was like, “I don't care, I'm making four minute!”. There were like intentionality and marketability in mind when creating this album. The way music is blowing up I want to be able to reach a broader market.
Q: Bad Lives played about 30 shows in 2022, what are your shows like? Does Bad Lives have any gigs coming up?
Jordan: We really really pride ourselves on our energy. When a lot of people meet me they are very surprised because I'm like the person who hides in the corner- the wallflower type. At the shows. I don't like socializing, but when we’re up on stage we just go crazy. The second I'm off stage, I'm right back down. So a lot of people are like, “You're not exactly what I expected you to be like”. I’m just not programmed to be fun offstage. I don't know it's weird. I put out a post yesterday I was talking about 2022. It was nothing like I could have ever imagined in every single way. I wouldn't have thought a distributor would want to put on music and pay for it. Or like we'd get up in a show across the country in a frame for some festival. We played 30 shows out of nowhere and I get to meet so many cool people. Walk the Moon followed us this year. I was so shook, and I messaged him like was this an accident? It’s just been really crazy. We have like five confirmed gigs coming up two at Killer’s Tacos in Denton (1/6 & 1/12), one at Ridglea in Fort Worth (1/14), one at the Chess Club (4/3) and at Kickback Bar (4/4).
“Bad Lives is a band ahead of the curve with electrifying groove and whiplash anthems. With strong musicianship and dedication these guys are bound to go forward.”
-bluegirlhours
