We were lucky to catch up with Austin Jenckes recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Austin, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I started making music for a living about ten years ago. I grew up in a family full of musicians and when I moved to Nashville from the PNW I noticed that songs seemed to be the biggest difference between long careers and short ones. I’ve written songs that I love, songs that I don’t love and about 500 other songs that I don’t really remember how I feel about. It’s easy for me to stay in creative mode and just hope that will move the needle, but burn out is a real thing haha. Writing 5 days a week taught me that it’s easy to come up with good songs but it’s really hard to write a great one. Knowing then what I know now I probably would have focused my energy on making sure the great ones were heard. Music is subjective and if you don’t know what you want from your work it’s all a shot in the dark. I am lucky to have people around me that put the gutter guards up and say “here is your lane.” I think my biggest obstacle has been finishing things and believing that they are good enough.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I doubt that you ever wondered who’s yelling “baby” and “crazy” in the chorus of “Singles You Up” by Jordan Davis but if you did it was me.

I’m that kid that always played the battle of bands in high school…. But somehow I’m 35 and I still play guitar and sing songs everyday and I don’t really understand how it is my job… but it is!

I’ve co-written songs for Assassins Creed (The Movie), Madam Secretary, Riverdale, The Ranch, Messiah, The Super Bowl and I’ve had songs recorded by Upchurch, Colt Ford, Taylor Ray Holbrook, Lee Brice, Morgan Wallen and more…

Have you ever had to pivot?

I bought a new truck, lost my publishing deal and found out I was going to be a dad all within about two weeks. At the time I kind of convinced myself to focus on writing songs instead of touring anymore. So I took meetings with talking points being that I needed to find more stability with my schedule and I wanted to be home more often… the week our daughter was born I left for twelve days to play shows. My wife worked from 5am to 1pm and I was still writing in the afternoons and playing shows when we could make it work… but mostly we were just trying to learn how to be parents. A friend introduced me to someone who had heard me perform live. After three or for meetings they offered me a record deal and I got to record an album which lead to multiple tours in Germany and the UK as well as a bunch of awesome festivals here in the states. What started as eighteen months of not really having anything going on turned into the most productive three years of my career.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I think NFT’s in the context of music is a really cool idea. I have a TON of old iPhone recordings from years ago that I think are amazing when I compare them to the final mix and master.

I wonder if eventually there will be a value put on original recordings of songs vs the versions that end up on Spotify etc…

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @austinjenckes
• Facebook: @austinjenckes

Image Credits
Jens Fricke Alysse Gafkjen