Palmer is a new Ohio-based threesome who recently put out two absolutely killer tunes called ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘Tennessee’. Falling instantly in love with their sound and style, we were desperate to know more about the talented individuals behind the songs. Thankfully, songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist Jon Brasfield agreed to chat with us!
Going in-depth about how the three met, who some of the band’s biggest influences are, what he believes music’s role in society is, and how he takes an idea and turns it into a song, please give a big welcome to Jon Brasfield of Palmer!
Welcome Palmer! I’m so excited to introduce you to our ever-growing audience! I love discovering bands still in their infancy musically and I’m wondering if you could tell us how you three met and if it was love at first jam?
Thanks for the chat! We’re excited to make musical connections and hopefully, some of your fans might become our fans!
So it’s a pretty straightforward story. I (Jon) have been writing songs and playing solo with my brother throughout my teenage and young adult years, then grad school and life took over and music got left behind. A couple of years back, I put a couple of my songs up on a musician-matching site on a whim, and almost immediately, Dave (bass) contacted me wanting to jam. And yeah, it clicked really quickly! We shared a lot of cultural and musical touchstones and vibed really well. After we got a few duo gigs under our belt, we linked up with Nick (drums) through our producer and it just kind of exponentially exploded. We all jelled really quickly and it’s been nothing but fun since. (And I still get to keep my job as a professor).
I’ve been absolutely loving your latest two singles ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘Tennessee’. I know that both tracks focus on the theme of geography and movement, but what else can you tell our readers about these two cracking tunes?
Thanks! That’s really kind. It’s funny, these two songs have been a pair for a long time, so it makes sense that they’d be released together. They’re two of the oldest songs of mine that we’ve recorded, and so we’re releasing these before getting to newer material, but they hold a really special place in my heart. ‘Ghost Town’ is kind of an ode to my parents’ home town in rural Kentucky, and about the sort of internal struggle that some people go through when living in/leaving a small town. My parents did that, and I did too. ‘Tennessee’ is about the same sort of geographic place. I always say it’s a song about driving. It’s about driving, listening to music, and ruminating. Mild intrusive thoughts that float through our heads like radio waves, you know? That’s why the chorus is the same line repeated over and over.
I want to give a quick shout-out to my brother Chris here, who I played with for years and years growing up and we really fostered each others’ love of writing and singing. He contributes backing vocals on both of these tracks, all the way from Alaska! My dad is featured on an upcoming release as well, putting down some sweet guitar. We had a really musical family. My dad’s a great guitarist, my mom has a great voice and is a killer bass player, and all my aunts and uncles on my mom’s side play and sing.
Who would you put down as some of your biggest musical influences and who would you ultimately credit for helping shape and mould your overall sound?
I mean, starting with the Mount Rushmore (or whatever the British equivalent of that is), for me that would be The Beatles, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty. Storytellers through song. Of those, I’m probably most directly influenced by Elvis Costello. Wordy, thoughtful, and not very fussy. Never staying on one topic for very long. ‘Radio, Radio’ and ‘Chelsea’ kind of made me realize I have a part of me that HAS to channel this stuff. There’s some Bowie influence as well. I also think Ben Folds is kind of a parasocial guru for me. The New Pornographers, Jenny Lewis. Those are my favourites. I think with Palmer specifically you’ll hear a little of the Costello, and maybe some Queens of the Stone Age when our other stuff comes out. And we don’t really sound like them, but we all have a shared love of Talking Heads that I’d love to explore at some point. We do sometimes cover ‘Psycho Killer’.
What, to you, is music’s role in society?
Music has been a part of every culture and every society since the dawn of mankind, and even before. Birds sing, whales sing, you know? It’s coded into us to be able to communicate and be moved by music. It’s why we sing to babies. Not everybody is moved by any single song, but everybody is moved by music to some degree, and in a way that can’t really be expressed by words exactly. As a songwriter, I feel like a hundred thousand songs are floating through the air at all times, in all dimensions (and with radio, mobile networks, wifi, etc it’s both metaphorically AND literally true) and if you listen and practice, you can hear one sometimes and yank it into the material world, which is kind of fun. Everybody has a favourite song.
We’re always intrigued by the different approaches that bands and artists turn to in their creative process or processes. Can you tell our readers a bit about yours? How do you take an idea and turn it into a complete song?
Music is in this weird space between emotion and craft, I think, and they each require the other. So for me, the emotion comes first – I don’t usually succeed when I start a song with an intentional chord progression or something like that. For me, it comes with just hearing a little melody, or a phrase, or a lyric, and humming it and doodling around it and letting it grow. But you can’t do that without at least some knowledge of the craft. I’m not a great musician. I play guitar ok, I can bang a drum, I can figure out chords and melodies on a piano, but I’m not good enough to let the craft part lead, which is why I gravitate toward a more punk ethos I think. That’s why Palmer works so well, I think, because the other guys are really good musicians and we can take a song sketch that I care about and they can make it sound cool.
What would “being successful” in the music industry look like to you? And is it something that you think about when creating new music?
Oh, man. So we’re old, relatively speaking. The three of us range from around 30 to around 50, with me right in the middle. So I don’t have designs on selling out arenas. For me, and this is just speaking for myself, my dream would be to one day play a show where people I don’t know are singing the words along with me. If that could happen, I’d feel like I’d made it. Some of my very favourite bands are those smaller acts that have a modest group of fans who completely get what the band is doing. That sounds amazing. That said, travelling to new cities just to play – playing with bands and artists I love – making a little money – those would all be great too, but I don’t know. I just like to write, play, and sing. And when we write music, I don’t think I’ve ever considered what a particular song may do, popularity-wise. Honestly, I have no idea what’s going to work. With this release, we were sure ‘Ghost Town’ would be the one people liked better, and it seems like ‘Tennessee’ may be, so we just have to enjoy what we’re doing and hopefully, it’ll find the right people.
I’m a sucker for having to know the origins of a band’s name. I just can’t help myself! How exactly did Palmer come about?
It’s either because we’re all very good at basketball, we all have Palmer alter egos like The Ramones because we used to be called Saulmer until we had a religious awakening, or because I have a lifelong minor obsession with David Lynch & Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks and will take any opportunity to reference it.
Thanks so much for chatting with us guys! It’s been a real treat! I know that you have an EP in the works…Is there a release date that we can look forward to? And, I guess in a broader sense, what do you hope your musical future has in store?
No specific date, but watch out for our next dual single, ‘Spring Day Drive/Medicine’ in late May, our third dual single ‘I’m Glad You Waited/Aphrodite’ in late July or early August, and then, pending the level of interest, hopefully, a physical release of our first full EP, ‘Morning Came’.
One of the cool things about these releases is the gorgeous Art Nouveau artwork that comes along with each of them. They were done by a Pakistani artist named Faizan Kazmi and I feel like they really give a great connective thread between the releases. Each pair of songs is similar genre-wise, and each release is a little different than the others. This first release is a little Americana/Folk or country influenced. The next is sunny pop-rock, maybe in the vein of a Gin Blossoms and early Weezer, and then the last is a little heavier and groovier. ‘I’m Glad You Waited’ is kind of QOTSA-influenced, and ‘Aphrodite’ is a groovy trippy synthy bluesy sexy thing.
I hope these songs find the people who will like them, and I hope those people listen and get excited for our next stuff. I hope that one day soon people will be singing these songs right along with us!
