(by CSP)
On July 16, 2024, I sat down with my fellow Heavy Herb member, Jinxz, for an interview we'll be sharing in two parts here on HeavyHerb.com. In this segment we discuss Jinxz's musical background and how it relates to Heavy Herb's latest work.
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CSP: How long have you been making music?
Jinxz: I’ve been making music since, uh . . . (stops to think)
My family had a guitar in the house and a piano. Like an electric piano. Since I was maybe 7 years old? I don’t know. Maybe earlier, but . . .
I’d kind of just play around with those instruments but I didn’t really have any idea what was going on with them. And then I took guitar class in Grade 8. I was like, “Oh cool. That’s great.”
I took guitar class and after that I moved to Kelowna from Dawson Creek. I heard about band class but I thought, “Ugh band!? That’s for nerds. I’m not going to join band class.” So I totally missed out.
2009 was when I got my first electric guitar from Costco. It was a Kirk Hammett electric guitar. I started working with that and then I got a RC3 loop pedal from Boss. That’s when I started, kind of, rocking with recording and playing guitar and um . . .
Yeah, so I guess since maybe . . . I started working and recording in 2009.
CSP: What are the earliest recordings you have available online?
Jinxz: Yeah, that’s a perfect segway because I would always record. With the RC3 or the RC300 you can just accumulate a bunch of Wav files and download them to your computer and keep them. Or upload them to Soundcloud.
And so I made this account on Soundcloud called smokingflowerz. I have recordings going back to 2012 at least I think. Maybe 2010. They’re wild. A lot of them are 7 second songs. Or 7 second loops. Or 12 second loops. And they sound sick! I don’t know.
CSP: Do you like them? Do you still enjoy these recordings? Do you find yourself ever going back and listening to them?
Jinxz: Yeah I still like them. I mean, the quality would be nice if it was better, but I was always treating the Soundcloud account as a notepad or a sketchbook. Just somewhere to keep all my ideas that I could go reference. As a result, I’ll go back and listen to them if I’m feeling uninspired or whatever.
I especially would try to control my influences and so growing up I’d be careful of what I listen to a lot of the time and I’d listen to things I wanted to sound like. Then it was really cool with the loop pedal and having those recordings on Soundcloud to listen to cause I’d go back and listen to my own stuff and kind of like dose myself with my own music. And it just got super weird but I mean it was also really enjoyable for me and I think pretty unique.
CSP: I am personally familiar with these recordings. Do you have any plans to . . . I don’t want to say finish them, but put up updated versions of them maybe? Refined versions? Are there any plans for that work, which is truly your solo work, coming out in the streaming space? I personally have always wanted a Smokingflowerz mixtape or something like that. But something that held in the original vein of the Soundcloud work. Maybe updated, maybe the old stuff. I’d be happy with anything.
Jinxz: Yeah, I wasn’t really thinking of doing that. I saw it as something that I could do in the future. But, I mean, we are in the future.
I always made sure that all the stuff I recorded was really easy to play. And so, I’m pretty sure I could probably play all of it still.
I’d be happy to do that. It’s just about finding the time to get to it and, I mean, we’re working on so much stuff with Heavy Herb that I’d rather live in the moment and see what we’re coming up with right now. Just because it feels a bit more relevant, you know what I mean? Cause the world’s changed a lot in the past few years and we’ve grown a lot as people in the past few years as well and since those recordings happened.
It’s nice to just express what you’re feeling now, especially cause a lot of other people can relate to what you’re feeling. It’s like when you’re the first person to put their hand up in the class and you ask a question and then 5 other people have the same question. It's like, you write a song that expresses a feeling and then 5 other people are, “Oh yeah, me too!” I’m talking about right now. That’s so cool, I think.
CSP: What would you say is the connection between your earlier work and your later work and Heavy Herb?
Jinxz: I think a connection is the funk. I love funk music for its simplicity and catchiness and its popiness, but also its got a lot of substance.
Guitar is constant. Having synthesizers is constant there too.
Interesting harmonies of vocals just because with the loop pedal it’s so easy to harmonize a stack of vocals and so that’s just kind of been there from the beginning. Ever since I got a microphone with a XLR cable and then the adapter that goes from XLR to quarter inch, so you could plug it into the RC3. And so then you could just record vocals into this RC3 on top of the guitar.
So yeah, the harmonies are constant.
That’s pretty much it.
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Next week we’ll be publishing part 2 of my interview with Jinxz. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get notified as soon as that’s available.
