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A Musical Life: Jason Smith

Lisa Smith

Jason Smith is a founding member of the Oklahoma City-based band Traindodge and plays bass in the band Rainbows Are Free as well. Traindodge has released albums such as Time Will Never Know Your Name, I Am Forever, and On A Lake of Dead Trees.

“The most difficult part of keep a band together for over 20 years is mostly just managing expectations. When you’re first starting out you’re not really thinking that far ahead. You don’t really know how you’re supposed to grow older gracefully until you’re actually there doing it. Especially where we are: There’s no stage crew or tour bus at this level, so it’s pretty essential that you like what you’re doing. If all that’s in check and there’s still that creative and personal chemistry there, the hard part’s done.

“Traindodge doesn’t really have a mission statement as a band but I hope that people can walk away from our music just feeling better than they were beforehand. That can mean several different things for people and I don’t know that it should really be up to us to decide how they should be reacting. Live, or on record, if you can make a stranger forget where they are, even if it’s just for a couple of minutes, you’ve done OK in my book.

“If I could tell 16-year-old me anything, I would just say, ‘Stick to it and make sure you believe in what you’re doing. Just get out there and do it. Don’t be afraid to fail.’ Probably every word of wisdom that we could offer started as a mistake. Beyond that, though, just keep trying to make the music that you want to hear.”

Jedd Beaudoin is host/producer of the nationally syndicated program Strange Currency. He has also served as an arts reporter, a producer of A Musical Life and a founding member of the KMUW Movie Club. As a music journalist, his work has appeared in Pop Matters, Vox, No Depression and Keyboard Magazine.