Jess Zimmerman
What is it about music that has made it such an important part of your life?
Music has been the soundtrack for every emotion that I could have possibly felt growing up. When I didn’t understand my own feelings or thoughts, I would turn to music to try and sort them out. I found that being immersed in music was a way that I could feel lost and found all at the same time. As I am older now, music has been such an important part of my healing process and my journey with mental health. I have found that the Lord put music in my life to help me understand my thoughts, my feelings, and my experiences through music. We have songs that are soundtracks to different memories in our life. I don’t think that’s by chance. To be inspiring to someone through something that was extremely difficult for me to go through is a really great feeling. I know that I was blessed with the gift of music and I hope that people can fine hope in music, and faith and therapy, just as I am.
There are many different types of music: jazz, hip-hop, folk, country, pop. Can you describe your genre of music and what makes that genre what it is–like what makes rap, rap and how is it different from other music? Is it the way you use your voice or instrumentation?
The genre of music I would classify ours as would be country rock. Normally I don’t like to put our music in a box though I feel that country has been expanding its forces into much different sounds than you would hear traditionally in country. My biggest vocal influences our Carrie Underwood, Adele, and Halestorm which is a rock band and I think the combination of all three is something I have used to inspire my own music. I think each one of us have a little bit of something from every genre in us if we’re being honest. I think country music is described by its face and stories and the typical truck and beer metaphor. So our songs are not straightforward stories. I’d like to allow for interpretation from every person and how they feel the song touches them and their own personal experiences. On an instrumental end of things, we add a bit of edgy rock or guitar and more of a country sounding vocal to get the mixture of so-called country rock.
Talk about the instruments you incorporate into your songs when you perform? What are your favorites?
We incorporate quite a few different instruments in the making of our songs. I truly enjoy fiddle, the piano, and a synthesizer. Each one of them may not be able to carry out our songs fully, but when they are added into the standard bass, guitar, drums arrangement, they bring so much life to the song. It is a whole other way of adding emotion into each song.
You don’t need an instrument to be musical. You can make music using everyday household objects like pots, pans, and rubber bands. What did you use to make music with when you were a kid?
I grew up with two younger sisters and we most definitely always had a band growing up. We often would use sand buckets as stage props and old blankets with holes in them to shine lights through for backgrounds. I do remember as a kid, to make music we did the typical drums with pots and pans. I soon learned that was not my strong suit. When I started to fall more and more in love with singing, I would grab my hairbrushes and stand in front of my mirror and practice for hours and hours. When I was one and a half, I received my first cassette player from Fisher-Price. I still have it to this day, and I was able to listen to my first sing-along’s because they were recorded on it.
See Jess Zimmerman perform this song:
