Jesse Thunderwake's music can be described using only one word: rough. Raised in Boise, he came to Austin, TX to pursue his dream of being a writer, actor, comedian, director, singer, songwriter, stuntman, producer and "a whole bunch of other stuff too!" He has always taken his music very seriously, often pouring his soul onto the page and into the microphone. Having no musical talent whatsoever though, was a challenge for his producer, Jim "Platinum Earz" Cunningham who maintains this page and acts as Jesse's Label and management team. The following is our discussion with Jim about Jesse's music.
I think I covered this already.
When I met Jesse, he was playing on street corners and fighting for the occassional shitty coffee house gig. He can barely play the guitar so I, seeing the raw passion for his music and the potential for profit, stepped in and helped him develop this album. He would come to me, messed up on one thing or another with half an idea and I'd go put together an entire track and let him "sing." About 3 hours of auto-tune per track later, we have this result. I don't see him playing live much but I'm sure he'd love to.
Jesse is kind of a cross between Eminem, Killswitch Engage, The Beatles, Dashboard Confessional, The Doors, Bob Dylan and Shania Twain. Like, if all of them got together and had an orgy, Jesse would be the resulting unwanted, aborted fetus of that.
I don't like to divulge my secrets but it's the man, not the gear that makes the music. Jesse's record was made with a handful of guitars, a drum set, some high end microphones, some high end mic pres with great A/D and a fantastic word clock in an acoustically perfect room with highly sought-after monitoring. We used a variety of software in addition to the hardware including pitch correction, delays, compression, synthesizers, amp modeling at times, and chorus.
Get out of here, I'm busy.