Jason Reeves interview

Your debut album from 2007 is called The Magnificent Adventures Of Heartache (And Other Frightening Tales) – that’s about seventeen syllables. What possessed you to go with an album title that was that long?

I’m not sure. I guess I was sick of how ADD everyone is getting and how short our attention spans are becoming as a people, as a civilization. I wanted the record to sound like a fairy tale and have a fairy tale title, and I kind of just didn’t care that people would actually have to take an extra five seconds to read it or something. Maybe that was mostly the reasons.

It’s been such a gradual buildup for you in terms of people finding your music. Are you surprised that some people are still just now discovering your earliest work here in 2010?

I guess a little bit, but not really. And I hope that people keep discovering the older music as the years go on. I don’t expect everybody by any means to know all my songs or anything, so the more people find it, the better, I guess.

Your name has come up in association with so many high profile artists that I’ve interviewed over the past couple years. Before I found out who you were, I was kind of expecting you as some kind of entrenched Hollywood power broker in a back room somewhere. But you haven’t even been in Hollywood for very long, have you?

No, I moved out there maybe five years ago or a little bit less than that. It’s just been crazy what’s happened since then. I mean it’s opened so many different hallways that have led to so many places I never imagined, in a really short time. So it’s really good that I went there.

You’ve written so many songs for yourself and for so many other artists, I’m sure you’ve gotten a sense for what turns out well and what ends up in the garbage can. What songwriting approaches end up working out the best for you?

I guess when what you’re writing about is being inspired at that moment, when the inspiration is instant, it’s gonna probably be more pure and the writing is gonna most likely be more honest. I just feel like if you let the song come out on its own and not try to force it, that’s when they’re gonna be the best.

You’re from Iowa City, which is a big city. When people in California hear you’re from Iowa, do they think that you’re from a farm?

Yeah, it’s really strange how not only California but a lot of places that I’ve been to, people don’t really know much about America, especially places that are far away from where they’re from. A lot of people don’t even know the difference between Idaho and Iowa and Ohio and all that. You know, it’s just funny to me because we learned geography really well when I was in elementary school, and it seems like people really don’t know what’s going on in our country.

You and Kara DioGuardi are performing “Terrified” on Lopez Tonight. I know you guys co-wrote that song together, but what gave the two of you the idea to go ahead and perform it together on TV?

I guess they asked us to. I’m not sure if you can just make that sort of stuff happen without somebody being interested in it. I guess the main reason was because after we had first written that song we put a video up on YouTube of us playing it. First of all, Kat McPhee recorded it for her new record, her and I did a duet of it on there, and then after that, Didi Benami, the girl that was just on American Idol, sang that song on the show. It’s just been getting a crazy amount of views and it’s kind of become its own little thing.

When you guys were writing that song, did you have any sense at that time that it would end up being such a popular song? Do you ever have those gut feelings when you’re writing them?

Well it’s strange, cause it was the first song that Kara and I ever wrote together, and that can be a really hard thing to do, and it could be really awkward. You could write a pretty bad song the first time you write with someone, just simply because you’re not familiar with them or how they write, and it was just really cool because that one came out really fast for us and we kind of realized that there was something special about it right away, so it was exciting.

I see on Facebook you’ve got about ten thousand fans, and yet every single time somebody writes to you on your wall, you take the time to write back to them. That’s got to be time consuming. Why is that so important to you?

I just don’t want to take for granted that anybody would want to write me in the first place, and a lot of the things people write on there are incredibly meaningful, touching things, and it’s really hard to just ignore that without saying at least “thank you.” As often as I can get on there, I try to go and respond to everybody if I can. I mean it’s not really that hard of a thing to do, I just don’t think most people take the time.

A few months ago you released Patience For The Waiting, an acoustic EP. Are those new songs, or are those older songs that just hadn’t seen the light of day?

Most of them are new songs. Maybe one or two of them I’ve been working on for a little while, but none of them had ever been recorded before. Even if only that small of a batch of songs, I wanted to get out some new music for the people who have been waiting, and that’s kind of where the title came from too. Let alone the fact that I wanted to put out new stuff just simply for myself, cause I don’t like waiting so long between releasing stuff. It’s just the way it’s got to be.

What are your thoughts on your full length album that’s eventually going to come out?

I actually just finished recording it, and we’re getting a good chunk through mixing it right now, so I’m just very excited about it. It was a long time in the making, and like you said, it’s been about three years since the last full record came out, and that’s just way too long for me. Basically I’m just sitting there impatiently as anybody can me, waiting for the day they tell me it’ll be out.

Will there be songs on the new album that are from Patience For The Waiting?

No, it’s gonna be all different songs. I actually have two almost full records that I finished, and half of it’s gonna be the first record that we put out, and I still have a whole nothing thing of these other songs. I write way too many tunes to keep up with myself, I guess.

You do so much co-writing with other people for their albums. Did you do any co-writing for your own album?

Almost every song I wrote, I co-wrote on the new record. Over time I’ve grown to love co-writing songs more than writing by myself, and I just don’t feel like you can get the same thing out of yourself over and over again that you can when you put a couple different people with all their different experiences and all their imagination in the same room. It’s kind of intimate, so it’s far more exciting for me.

Can you reveal your co-writers?

One of the main ones is named Makana Rowan, he’s from Hawaii, which explains the name. Then Jordan Lawhead was another one of them, and a girl named Danelle Leverett, who’s actually a country artist from Nashville who is in a group called the JaneDear girls. Those three people and I pretty much wrote the whole record together, not necessarily everybody on every song.

And the name of the album?

It’s called The Lovesick.