Meet Jackson McGrail

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

Jackson, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.

It can be challenging at times to keep that creative inspiration burning while juggling adult life. Paying the bills, work, cooking, cleaning, relationships, social obligations, health and fitness, can really add up and create overwhelm and stress in our lives. It can be difficult to create during these times of overwhelm, with so many things vying for our attention at any given time. The thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older and more experienced navigating the world is that the real magic is in carving out that time for myself to play like a little kid almost. I think to myself often what my 5-10 year old self would be doing, I would just get right out of bed without a care in the world and start building things with Legos every single day. I didn’t care about if what I made was good, or would sell, or would be appreciated by others. I just made things because I wanted to, and because I wanted to express myself and put a little piece of myself into the world. Now being a music producer I try to take the same approach to my work, and realize I’m that same little kid just trying to play every day, and leave something of myself behind in the world. Everything I do now is for that kid version of myself, the art and music I create, the experiences and relationships I create, the clothes I wear, the music I listen to, everything. I try to give myself permission to have and do the things I always wanted to as a kid but maybe didn’t get to.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Most of what I do is writing dance music on my computer. I grew up playing guitar and singing a lot, and also played a lot of video games. A friend introduced me to electronic music in early high school and it really stuck, I thought “it can’t be that hard to make this,” so I bought a pretty beat up Macbook and just started messing around. I grew up in a pretty rural area and my last year of high school my friends and I snuck into a music festival, and I saw Skrillex perform for the first time, it was a pretty core moment for me. Something clicked and I just decided that I wanted to take this as far as I can. I’m currently focused on continuing to write and release music for my project GRAIL, growing my brand, and performing shows around LA and eventually worldwide. I plan to continue to grow the music collective I am a part of (Midnight Society) to new heights, and build the platform enough to be able to provide consistent work to myself and other artists when we’re not touring.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Definitely a willingness to work hard and get your hands dirty. My parents were both very hardworking (Construction, Nursing) and instilled that in me from a young age. I worked all through high school and college, and immediately moved to LA. I bounced around a lot of jobs, a lot of restaurants, teaching music lessons, some construction work, eventually I ended up working in a bunch of nightclubs in LA doing sound technician stuff, which I still do today to support my music career. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t had that example from my parents to do hard stuff, especially if it’s to get somewhere you want to go.

I’d also say persistence was really important for me. There were so many times I wasn’t seeing any movement or growth with the music thing, and so many times I considered quitting. I realized I actually couldn’t do anything else with my life and want to be here, I just eventually got it fixed in my mind that I’m gonna succeed in music or I’m not going to do anything. It’s definitely paid off, I feel like I burned the ships and now i’m just focused on moving forward.

Lastly would probably be some kind of spiritual practice. I grew up a Christian and although I kind of hated it at the time, as I’ve gotten older it’s kept me really grounded and at peace. The community aspect made a big difference in my life, I’ve always been very introverted but those values of friendship and community really pushed me to form close relationships with others, without whom I would not be as far as I am today. The call to introspect and connect with something higher than myself, and truly love and accept myself has helped me a lot. There’s a lot of things in the music industry that can get pretty dark, substance abuse, fast relationships, shady behavior, etc. and having something to ground me has been a huge win. I feel like that’s necessary to reach the highest level of being an artist, I look at all the bigger acts in dance music right now and most of them are pretty no nonsense, sober, working really hard and about their business and I realized pretty early on that if I want to be where they are, I can’t get lost in all the craziness of the industry.

Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?

Learning to love myself. I’m kind of a perfectionist and always pushed myself really hard, and have generally been very hard on myself from a young age. It was really helpful getting me through school and building the musical skills I have now, but the last year has been a lot of learning to be a bit nicer to myself. That and eliminating distractions and things I do habitually but don’t really want to you know? Loving myself enough to get rid of all the things in my life that don’t make me better or serve me. And especially anything that gets in the way of my creativity or music career.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

James Weir

Travis Byerly

Alexis Sturm

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