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Meet Jesse Owen Astin

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Jesse Owen Astin.

So, before we jump into specific questions about what you do, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I got my start in Atlanta playing all the local dive-bar blues jams. I was a bit of a shy kid so my dad would literally drag me out (even on school nights) and push me to get on stage. That really forced me to learn how to communicate and improvise with little to no preparation. When I was 15, I went into a studio with local producer David Leonard to record a 5-song demo of instrumental songs I had written. I fell in love with the recording process and hearing my ideas come to life. I started recording on my own with a 4-track cassette recorder that my mom bought me, and eventually got into digital recording when I bought introversion of Cakewalk. I continued to play in bands throughout high school and eventually landed a gig playing lead guitar with a band called Travisty Theory. We made a full album with Jesse James Dupree & Jeff Tomei and toured a lot for about three years or so. When that comes to an end, my father & I built a studio on the west side of Atlanta near six flags and I started recording bands. After getting a few projects under my belt, I started to realize how much I really needed to learn to be able to do this professionally, so I set out to move to L.A. I reached out to a hero of mine, Matt Mahaffey (Self), who at the time was producing with another hero of mine, Jeff Turzo (God Lives Underwater). They had some work lined up and needed some help doing some assistant engineering/editing work. I sold all my gear, moved to L.A. and the first project I worked on was a band called Forever The Sickest Kids on Universal Records. I helped them on a few other projects that were recorded at a studio called Annetenna in Burbank. I met the owners of that studio, Scott Cutler & Anne Preven, who hired me to be a studio manager/engineer and I got to work on a Miley Cyrus album, “Breakout”. I started to play my song ideas for Scott & Anne, and we ended up co-writing some songs together.

In a short span of time, Selena Gomez cut one and Demi Lovato cut another. Those songs unfortunately never ended up making their records, but it was enough to get me a publishing deal with Scott & Anne’s publishing company, Pulse. I was a staff songwriter for them for about 3.5 years. I got to write songs with Bonnie McKee, Ashley Gorley, Katharine McPhee, Paloma Faith, Juliet Simms and many more. It was a huge opportunity for me. I learned so much during this time and I am so grateful to have been able to work with such talented, beautiful people. As sweet as it was, at a certain point, it became pretty obvious to me that the L.A. chapter of my journey was coming to an end, so I got a job tending bar downtown and saved up enough money to move back home to Atlanta a few months after that. When I got back, the first person I hit up was Jan Smith, who I knew from taking lessons from Dionne Osborne at her facility from age 15-21. Jan’s co-producer/engineer was about to move out of the country, and an opportunity opened up for me at Jan Smith Studios. I’ve been working with Jan, co-producing with her and engineering records for about five years now. In that time, we’ve produced countless records together for some of the best talents I’ve worked with yet. Victoria Canal, Tessa Joy, Ella Collier, Sage Hammond, Revel In Romance, The Band Perry, Maggie Renfroe, Caroline Culver – just to name a few. I continue to produce on my own as well, and I also put out records under my initials JOA and front a band called World Is Watching who plays out regularly, as well.

Has it been a smooth road?
At times it has been smooth, and other times there has been a lot of adversity. Towards the end of my L.A. experience, I ended up getting let go from my publishing deal. It was rough because, for the first time in my musical journey, I wasn’t sure if I was even good at music. It really made me second guess my career choice for a while. I didn’t make any music of my own for almost a year after that. I continued to engineer and worked on records as a producer and engineer, but times were tough. I partied a lot. I made some mistakes. It was a dark time for me, personally, and I ended up dead broke and I got evicted from my apartment. I was living out of my car and sleeping on friend’s couches for a few months there. I remember the darkest moment was laying in a friend’s bed one night, knowing I had just enough eggs for breakfast the next morning and beyond that, I didn’t know where my next buck was coming from. My car had been impounded from unpaid parking tickets, and it was going to cost several thousand dollars to get it back. I remember feeling hopeless and yet strangely free at the same time. Because I had no more options left, I felt something brand new. I surrendered to it. I went to sleep that night not knowing anything at all. The very next day, I got an email from a publisher saying that they had a check for me and wanted to know where they could send it. Since I didn’t really have an address, I asked if I could just come to pick it up. So, I walked to their building and got it. It was from a song I had written that had been used in an episode of Shameless. I didn’t even know about it. It was more than enough money to get my car back, pay some debts and even get myself into a better living situation. That was the first time I ever really understood what people meant by the word mercy.

I learned a lot about myself from that experience. Honestly, I can’t say I would change any of that because it made me so much stronger in the long run. That’s life. It’s brutal sometimes but it gives you what you need.

Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
In simple terms, I just make records because that’s what I love to do. Sometimes, it’s as a songwriter or instrumentalist, sometimes as a producer or an engineer, sometimes it’s both, and sometimes it’s all of those things. I think what I am most proud of is my reputation and my relationships. I think that the people I work with really trust me and know that they can depend on me. The music business can be a terrible thing, really. It’s full of a lot of big egos and a lot of thieves. It glorifies style over substance and can be a mentally hazardous place for an artist. I maintain my own lane by staying away from most of that, and yet still being able to somehow co-exist within it. I care about artistic vision, a meaningful song, and powerful performance. I always go above and beyond for all of my clients, because I honestly believe that the more we give, the more we impact our world and the more we start to see real results in our own lives.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I was born in Atlanta and after being in L.A. for a while, coming home was a big eye-opener for me. I left for six years and when I came back to the city was coming to life! It continues to blossom, too. I’d have to imagine it would be a much more exciting place to start out than it was ten years ago. And if you’re already here, then the city is your oyster. There’s a lot of talent here and a lot of great local businesses that are making our city truly unique and diverse. If people would just learn how to drive in the traffic, that’d be great. Keep it moving, folks!

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Image Credit:
Images by Lola Scott Art (www.lolascottart.com) & MrShamoozoo Films

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