Name: Dakota Jones
Members: Tristan Carter-Jones (vocals), Scott Jet Kramp (bass), Steve Ross (drums), Eddy Marshall (guitar)
Interviewee: Tristan Carter-Jones
Nationality: American
Recent release: Dakota Jones's new single "Sugar Pie" is out now.
Recommendations: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Maggot Brain by Funkadelic.

If you enjoyed this interview with Dakota Jones and would like to find out more about the band's music, visit their official website. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I've been singing and writing songs for as long as I can remember. As a little kid, I listened to whatever my mom was listening to, which was a lot of classic soul and contemporary R&B. Singing has always been my greatest passion, the thing that makes me feel most at home and can bring me comfort no matter where I'm at, mentally or physically.

I think I've always been drawn to the magic of music and what it can do. How a great voice can wrap itself around you, how music can transport you.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

I see color, too. It's always a color that's connected to the mood of the music.

Listening to music has always had such a great power over my emotions. It can pull me up or bring me down, or it can meet me exactly where I'm at at the moment. It can make my heart race, or cool me down. I find it to be one of the most powerful things in the world.

My hope is always that, with our music, we just make people truly feel something - to feel the mood of the space we're coming from, and to feel connected to what I'm talking about when I'm singing.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

When I was writing in my teens and early twenties, I really had no interest in song structure - I just wanted to capture moods and feelings, sometimes over the course of an 8 minute song.

I think the more I've journeyed down my songwriting path, I've become more focused on distilling a song down to its most essential parts. Still capturing the mood, but doing it as precisely as possible without sprawling.

That's tightened up my lyricism as well, I think. It's almost like I've found greater freedom within more straightforward song structures, and more of a challenge to say what I want to say, to get in and out.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I feel strongly tied to my identity as a Black and queer woman. I take great pride, and joy, and comfort in listening to the voices of the Black women that have come before me, the Black people that have come before me and helped to pave a path for me to do what I'm doing as a musician and as a person.

I feel the same way about listening to queer artists. I feel empowered watching queer artists share their stories and their worldview, and creating space for artists like me to speak their mind. That's not to say that I don't listen to artists that don't identify in the same way that I do, because I absolutely do, but listening to people that I know understand me and understand where I'm coming from feels like home.

On the flip side of that I feel it's just as important to seek out music that's coming from perspectives that I'm less familiar with, and I feel like I get a good balance of both. I consider myself a student of music, and I think that, coming from a number of different marginalized communities, I feel a greater push to share my story, to speak my mind in the hopes that it resonates with like-minded people, and opens the eyes of those who might be less familiar with where I'm coming from.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Emotional honesty, for one. I feel it absolutely necessary to speak my truth without holding back about the things that I've been through, or the things that are on my mind. Second, I create for the audience in my head.

I never create things to please other people. I make the things that I want to listen to, that make me feel deeply, that excite me. That keeps me honest, I think.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I definitely lean more towards originality and innovation. I'm all for a timeless classic but perfection is neither attainable nor interesting to me.

I think that Dakota Jones sits somewhere right in the middle of "music of the future", and "continuing a tradition". Sometimes we make music that's definitely rooted in soul and funk, but we're also very interested in pushing boundaries beyond genre, and coming up with sounds and vibes that can't be placed into any box. We dig into soul, funk and R&B just as much as we dig into rock, synth-pop, electronic, jazz.

Most of my favorite artists these days don't fit into a genre, either. They're starting a new tradition of bending boundaries and blurring the lines of categorization, and I like to think Dakota Jones is doing the same.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

Two things immediately come to mind.

On a more technical level, we get huge insights from critically listening back to old practices and performances. Can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been.

On a more emotional level, Dakota Jones is made up of a group of friends that have become family. We've been learning from each other and growing up together for quite some time now. We've watched each other go through life changing experiences, and supported each other through good times, and some really hard times.

The ability to grow together, as people and as a band, I think has made us understand each other on deeper levels, and the music that we make reflects this.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

I wake up at about 5 or 6 every morning, and immediately get out of the house to go for a run. That, and making the bed, are important first-thing tasks for me - I feel like I've accomplished something right off the bat.

Every day is different, but my favorite days include a few hours in the morning to do something purely for me: listening to music, writing something, reading something. This'll turn into an afternoon spent with the band, working through new music or practicing for upcoming gigs. We get a solid handful of hours in, then enjoy a meal together.

The day ends calmly, curled up on the couch watching a movie with people that I love, or just talking, hanging out, and listening to music until we're too tired to stay up.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

When I get struck by a piece of art, I get struck hard. Most recently, I watched Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, and there's a moment in the documentary where he's playing "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" on a grand piano, alone on stage. I was immediately enveloped by the sound of this song, its longing, its mournfulness, and its ... maybe hope is the word.

I stopped in my tracks, stopped the movie, and sat up straight. Grabbed a pen. Immediately started writing all of the words that came to my head. I was full of them, phrases appeared out of nowhere. I didn't stop until the song was done. It was the first song I'd written in a while, and the last song I wrote in 2022.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

For me, creating music is both intensely private and collaborative at the same time. Sometimes we make music together in one room, sometimes there are pieces of things that sprout up in Scott's (our bassist's) head, that get passed around until the music is complete.

No matter how we start, the lyric-writing process for me is intensely personal, and private. I don't share anything with the band until I feel it's done, and every melody is sitting exactly where I want it to. I still get nervous to share new writing with them, even after nearly 8 years together.

It's always the most exciting when we're just in a room together, figuring out something new, letting the pieces fall where they may, and finding a groove that just works. In those moments, the writing just comes and everything just feels right.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

My work and creativity is always a reflection of where I'm at mentally. It's always a reflection of what my world looks and feels like to me. So it's always the representation of at least one Black, queer woman's view of where things are at.

I guess, ideally, the role of music in society is to soundtrack our lives. To be representative of different world views, to hold a mirror to society, to make us all feel something, together. I don't think that it always functions this way, but it's a nice idea.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

Writing has always helped me to process my big emotions in a more straight-forward way than anything else.

When it comes to the things that I listen to, I think that music has often been my first experience examining loss, death, love, or pain. For instance, listening to soul, R&B, and the blues as a child, you're presented with such high highs, and low lows, and you feel those emotions so strongly that you think you understand them. I was always singing that joy and pain right along with them.

Then you find yourself going through life and experiencing those emotions on your own, and realizing that the lived experience is even more intense. But the fun part is that you can still return to those songs that laid it out for you, and feel them on an even deeper level now.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

I don't know how qualified I am to speak on this, but I think that at its core music is both an art and a science. They're inextricably linked, right?

Sound is produced when something vibrates, and those vibrations are brought to the ear as sound waves in varying pitches, rhythms, etc. It makes you feel, it makes you move, it has a power over the body - all bodies.

I don't know what they reveal about each other, but I think it speaks to a deep connection between all of us.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I think different types of people just express themselves differently. My chosen outlet is songwriting and making music. That's how I share my emotions, my love. Some people share their love by caring for others, by making and sharing that great cup of coffee.

I suppose it depends on the intention behind it, but there can be just as much power and impact in those small mundane tasks, depending on who those moments are shared between, and what folks' intentions are.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it is able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

Different vibrations just make you feel different things, transmit different emotions.

The how and why - I am not totally aware of. But I think there's a bit of magic involved and I'm content to leave it at that.