Now that you have just finished a tour, what’s next for you at the moment?
What’s next? Waiting on the album to be released. The pre-order is May 31st, and it’ll actually be released on July 5th. And it’s my first physically released album in stores. This one is called Jason Benoit Revolution: Part I.
What is it about?
It’s a mix of songs that I wrote, and a couple other songs from some great Nashville songwriters. It’s a little bit [of a] newer style of music than I’ve been releasing and it feels really good and it feels more individual to me and my sound. I’m really excited to release it.
What has the process been like for creating the EP?
Basically we began with songwriting. I was in Nashville for six months last year, doing songwriting sessions and doing a bunch of meetings. So, it pretty much started there. And then we also talked to some great songwriters in Nashville. Once we had a bunch of songs, we thought we’d like to have some [more inputs] from some other great songwriters in Nashville who wrote some pretty big hits for Keith Urban and Blake Shelton. JT Harding is the contact that we had- he’s just a great songwriter from Nashville. So, we had all the songs together- and decided out of all those songs- which ones we wanted to choose to go on the album. So that was between myself, my management and my label. Once we figured out exactly what songs we wanted, we found a great producer and that’s Gabe DeLucci. He’s [based] out of Toronto, Ontario, at ALTR. And I went up there back in December and we recorded pretty much the whole album. We pretty much did it all in a week. It was a lot of fun and we got it done and I’m really happy with the result.
So you’ve been working on it for quite a while now?
It’s probably been about a year.
What’s your favourite song from the album?
Ooh it’s hard to pick a favourite song. There[are] songs that I wrote and there [are] songs that some other songwriters wrote and they’re different, right? I’ve got one that JT Harding wrote, it’s called Saturday’s for Girls. It’s a cool song about y’know, how guys work their week, and the song revolving around the weekend, and Saturday being all about the girls and pretty much getting out there and being all about them, it’s all about the girls. It’s an upbeat, good time of a song, y’know. And then there’s a song that I wrote called Two Wrongs, it’s a song that I started writing in PEI.
Were you on tour at PEI?
I was there in Cavendish, playing for the Cavendish Beach Music Festival. I had a friend over there, and I started writing it with him, and I ended up finishing it when I was in Nashville. So it’s called Two Wrongs and it’s pretty much about a guy and a girl who are at a bar and y’know, they know they’re not perfect for each other but y’know, sometimes you just- little differences that you have in your personality, it could work out really well right?
That sounds fun, is that a fun song too or more of a slow one?
Yeah, it’s an upbeat song.
Cool, is that what the album is mostly going to sound like?
Yup! It’s a lot of upbeat, it feels really good. There’s no really sad song on it. It’s all about love and and y’know, good feelings.
Hahah that’s good, it means you’ve been having a good time!
Yeah, exactly!
So, what was your favourite part about making the album?
My favourite part? Ooh lord, I love writing. I think that’s probably my favourite part. I just like sitting down and you just get surprised the stuff that you can come up with sometimes.
Yes, it’s fun telling a story.
Yeah, definitely. And every song is like a little story, a little book in itself and they’re a lot of fun to write, especially when you get one that you know is going well and you like the sound of it, it’s just so much fun.
Cool, and I know you’ve done shows with other artists as well, are you going to be collaborating with anyone on this album?
Actually, there is a song that’s already released just late last year that’s gonna be on this album as well. So that one’s with Leah Daniels- and Leah Daniels is an incredible female country singer from Ontario and I’ve known her for a while, just through country music associations and award shows. And finally, now we had a chance to do a duet and we thought that she would sound great on it, which she did. She’s incredible, so I was very happy to do that with her. It was a lot of fun.
Yes, she did sound really good on it! And last question here, what would you say to someone just starting out in the music industry here in NL?
If you’re just starting, like literally just starting, and you think you got what it takes and stuff- you just have to start at the basics, like at the bottom. You have to start at the basic level, which is y’know, going out, doing your gig. You have to be out there playing and just get a feel from the audience and about whether they like you or not, basically. That’s really a huge thing. It’s honestly really true, you have to be honest with yourself and just make sure you are realistic about your abilities to sing. It’s an incredibly hard thing to do to become a professional performer.
And the next thing you need to do is be individual- write your own music and make it your own and don’t worry about what everybody else is doing so much. It’s always great to use other artists as inspiration, and other music you like, but use that as pretty much a small part of a bigger picture that you’re gonna write. Once you get there, and you’ve got music, you have to get it out there more. So you set up your social media. Do it professionally so you have a really good online presence, putting up videos. That’s how I was first found, I was posting videos on Youtube and Facebook with friends and family sharing it and all that stuff, my first manager y’know, wrote to me on Facebook and said hey, I like what you do and I wonder if we can work together and that’s basically how it all started. The internet now is really a thing where it doesn’t matter where you live anymore, if you’ve got the power and determination, I mean with the Internet, you can really do anything. It’s pretty incredible.
Yeah, you just gotta put yourself out there.
Yeah. And finally, I’m pretty sure one of the most important things is your team. After you have everything else lined up, you need to have an incredible team around you. So your management- that would be first and foremost. Y’know, a manager you trust, and somebody that has your best interests in mind and really believes in the music as much as you do- that’s very important. And once you have that, then everything else builds around it. Then you get the label, and you get the PR people and all the pieces start to come together and hopefully it’ll all just take off from there right? But yeah, it’s a process and it’s different for everybody too. One person could go viral online, and they’ll just take off from there, and it’ll come together quickly, but [for] some people it’s gonna be more organic. For me, it was much more organic. Took a long time and it’s still going, still growing. But I’m very happy with where everything is right now.