We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jerry Travis. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jerry below.

Jerry, appreciate you joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

It was definitely a risk to join High Plains Drifter. At the time I was playing with a band that I had been with for many years. Unfortunately that band and I had a falling out at the time, and right around that time Matt Targos (Sutphin, TF Bundy) got me in contact with Adam, and the rest his history. I certainly do not regret it. Joining High Plains Drifter has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life and I got three life long friends out of it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Adam had been writing with our late bassist, Sean Stuckey. Eventually they started to expand the lineup and I hopped in later on, right before we released our first LP Psychic Weather Patterns.

In addition to being the drummer for the band, I also run all of our social media accounts and built our website. I’m also an audio engineer so Adam and I have worked really closely going into this new album.

We’ve played all over Wichita and we’re really excited to release this next collection of audio and hopefully expand our horizons a bit.

As far as recording goes, it’s an honor to work with Adam. He always pushes us to be the best representation of what we bring to the group. We’re always pushing each other to be better and better. I hope that shows in our next album.

Honestly, I’m most proud of us as a band. We’ve been through so much getting to this point. Any time we’ve had a little bit of traction, something awful or tragic has happened. I think finally, with the addition to Cody in the band, we’ve finally found the best lineup we could have. We’re extremely excited for the future and we hope there won’t be any more multi-year gaps between new music ever again!

How did you build your audience on social media?

The biggest thing I learned about growing our social media presence was to always be authentic. Everything we post has a story or is out there to make you laugh.

We’re not trying to make it big or get a record deal. We’re really just trying to get our music to people who would enjoy what we do and the sounds we create.

Since we started the band I have been in charge of all the social media. It’s been an incredible learning experience. My best advice is to look at some of your favorite bands. Either big or small. Look at what their doing and see if their content format is similar to something you could do with your content.

It’s a constantly evolving and growing task to have a presence. Again, the biggest thing is to be authentic and represent what you’re trying to put out there. Wether that’s music, art or anything you’re passionate about.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

This journey as High Plains Drifter has not been easy. We lost our original bassist a few years ago, Sean Stuckey. He was an absolute savant and the funniest guy you’d ever meet.

After he passed away we spent a lot of time trying to regroup and mostly focus on our friendship. Eventually we started auditioning new bass players, and the great Colton Cox put us onto our current bass player Aaron Plummer.

Aaron immediately locked with all of us, and has become an integral piece to this band. We’re so lucky and fortunate to have found such a great friend in Aaron.

A few years went by, and we had to forcibly remove our guitar player from the band. Trigger warning going forward.

He was accused of being a sexual abuser. We immediately took action and removed him from not only the band, but our lives. There is absolutely no room in our or anyones scene for abuse of any kind.

We were all worried that people would look at us differently or think we’d let this slide, when we certainly didn’t. I will say the immense support we received from the actions we took spoke volumes about our music community in Wichita. They all came together and supported us remaining members and helped us move forward.

After a few lineup changes, we locked in Cody White. All of those past events led us to an amazing person and an amazing musician that we are so fortunate to have playing with us. We’re all so close and excited about our music.

Contact Info:

• Website: HPDICT.com
• Instagram: @highplainsdrifterict
• Facebook: High Plains Drifter ICT
• Twitter: @hpdict
• Youtube: High Plains Drifter
• Other: Tik Tok: @HPDICT

Image Credits
Patrick Heath Photography