Q&A with Jesse Pound
Music is an important part of life, but especially the life of a college student. Deciding who’s in control of the aux cord has become a big decision, usually decided by the driver, and made even bigger when the trip you’re taking is seven hours long one-way.
Whenever I stepped into journalism junior Jesse Pound’s car, I had no idea what to expect musically. Throughout the drive I became more and more intrigued with Pound’s musical taste, and what became the soundtrack to our Houston, Texas, trip.
Q: How would you describe your taste in music?
Pound: “I just usually say it’s bad and if people disagree it’s whatever, but I don’t really have a word for it. It’s all too different and I don’t want to say it’s country because people expect it to be Florida Georgia Line or something, and it’s not. I just kind of tell people that they don’t really want to listen to it and usually that’s right so it doesn’t matter.
Q: How did your music taste evolve?
Pound: “My music taste is ridiculous. So, my mom loves 80s power ballads, so when my mom drove me around when I was little it was Aerosmith, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi. You know those commercials on TV where you buy those box sets of CDs? She bought one of those that was literally 80s power ballads and it was a box set of like 30 songs and I knew all the words to all the songs that were on there, the ones that weren’t like too sexual that she skipped because I was 10.”
“My dad is old school country music, like Hank Williams Sr., Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and growing up I kind of — I like both of them but when I got to high school, because you’re 15 and don’t want to be like your parents, I found my own type of music and so I listened to a lot of 90s alternative rock. There’s a band called (Sunny Day Real Estate), which is a weird band that is not that good, but I played bass for a little bit in junior high and the bassist was really good and so I listened to their music because if I could ever play any of those songs it would be good. I never got to it. I started listening to that, I started listening to a lot of Jimmy Eat World, their older 90s stuff is good, and then I got to college and Radley Balko works for The Washington Post and I follow him on Twitter and he recommended on Twitter, he said it was the best album I’ve heard of the year, Jason Isbell’s Southeastern album, which we probably played twice on the way to Houston and it’s probably my favorite album of all time now, so now I listen to all of Jason Isbell’s stuff and the Drive-By Truckers, which he used to be in, they have a new album coming out on Friday so you’re going to hear that multiple times this weekend.”
“ So yeah, the age of my dad, the country music he likes, the people he listens to are a generation older than him. He didn’t like the country music the 80s when he was in college, he liked it in the 60s and 70s, and now I like country music in these guys that are like 35 and 45 so it’s kind of funny my dad and I essentially have the same music taste, just 30 years apart.”
Q: You said your brothers listen to a lot of rap. Does that mean they didn’t really develop the same kind of eclectic taste you did from your parents?
Pound: “I think, at least one of my brother’s, listens to it probably to tick off my dad, and then the youngest brother takes after him more than he does me so that’s probably how that happened.
Q: You mentioned that you played bass in junior high. How did you get into that?
Pound: “My parents at one point wanted us all to play musical instruments, like everybody was going to have to play it, so they made me do the violin for a year when I was really little, like fourth grade. And I hated it and was terrible at it but I’d already got it in my head that I was going to try to do music things and that didn’t work out so I just switched to bass. Please don’t say that I play bass. I just had one and could play three or four songs and learn some blues riff stuff and learned a bunch of James Brown songs, but I couldn’t play it in public or anything like that.
Q: Do you still play bass and if not, why’d you stop?
Pound: “No, I don’t have it anymore. I pawned it at some point. I gave it to my dad when my parents moved and told him to pawn it and send me the money and he never did that so I don’t know if they just threw it away or what, but my dad owes me $100.
I started playing junior high football and couldn’t keep going to lessons.
Q: What did you mean when you said you knew you were “going to try to do music stuff?”
Pound: I don’t know. I was little and I’d already started. I loved playing bass but I wasn’t any good at it. I didn’t put in the time and effort to be good at it, but I enjoyed it.
Q: Now that you have such a defined taste in music, do you ever suggest music to your parents when you’re with them?
Pound: “Yeah, well my brothers listen to a lot of rap and they can’t do that with my parents in the car, and my brothers and I have heard all my parents’ music at this point and don’t want to hear it anymore, so I kind of get to control it because it’s a nice middle ground, I think. My dad typically
Q: What role do you think music currently plays in your life?
Pound: “I don’t know that it has a defined role. It’s just sort of in the background of everything. I always have music playing. I’ll go through easily, except on days I”m really busy, I’ll listen to probably three or four albums of something on any given day and it’s probably not a wide range — you’ve probably heard all of it at this point — because it’s probably a rotation of 20 or so albums that I go through and add new ones occasionally.”
