Hi, friends! Today is my 39th birthday. It is also the day before Halloween, just like it’s always been, so I’ve always had a particular fondness for the holiday and the playful atmosphere it brings.

Last year, I wrote about how I’m going to start celebrating myself again, at least for one day.

I’ll save the self-flagellation for the other 364 days. This year, I think I’d like to talk more about my creative side. I am a natural born creator, maker, disassembler, builder, engineer… all the related terms. And because the Infinite Creator saw fit to make me an obsessive, attention-deficit autodidact, I have manifested my creativity in a wide variety of ways.

I’ve always been an avid music listener, so it was only natural for me to want to try my hand at making it. There has been a long line of instruments over these past four decades. One of the earliest I remember was my little color-coded harmonica—Hohner, I believe—with a book containing children’s classics so you could easily play along without needing to read music. In elementary school, I tried out trombone briefly but became so bored with it that I was kicked out of band class for using the instrument’s mouthpiece as a resting place for my eyeball. (Which, can you blame me? It’s a perfect fit!)

I took a little break, then gave band another shot when I got to junior high. This time, I played baritone, which is like the tuba’s little brother. Since I had prior trombone experience, I was already practiced in bass clef—so I picked it up rather quickly. Within a matter of months, I was invited to upgrade to advanced band where I became proficient to the point where I could compete in the state University Interscholastic League (UIL) competitions. I remember one of the competitions was sight reading. You were handed a piece of sheet music, presumably one you’d never seen before. They gave you something like 5-10 minutes to study the piece, make any notes, and then you would play the piece of music as flawlessly as possible on your first try. I recall doing well, but it took place at Sandy Lake Amusement Park, so I mostly was focused on the having fun part.

I naturally became bored with baritone because I felt the parts I had to play were too simple and repetitive. So I switched to trumpet, because the cool kids were trumpet players and it seemed more fun. Unfortunately, this dealt a fatal blow to my band career: doe to some combination of my lip size, the angle of my teeth against the mouthpiece, and various other factors, I quit playing trumpet because it made me physically uncomfortable.

Shortly after that, though, my dad bought me a used bass guitar from a guy he worked with, so I started teaching myself to play. I still struggle to come up with a good bass groove… it’s something you just have to have a knack for. Around the same time, he let me start playing his American Fender Strat. I hated the twangy sounds it made through the little portable Pig Nose amp he had at the time, so I started figuring out how to get that gnarly distortion sound of so many of the alternative rock bands I loved Somewhere around my 16th birthday, he and my godfather (his longtime business partner and, for a while, employer) got me an Ovation Adamas Celebrity model electric-acoustic guitar.

As I transitioned into high school, I began learning how to make electronic music using a pirated copy of the Fruity Loops Digital Audio Workspace (DAW) software. I produced two complete songs which, sadly, have been lost to the sands of time. Then I started getting into lyric writing and went in the singer-songwriter direction for a while. As I got stronger at guitar and expanded my repertoire of chords, I started trying to put my lyrics to music. My first song was called Keystone. I had taken a humanities class in high school which covered architecture, and that’s where I first learned about the concept of a keystone—and it fascinated me. A keystone is a special brick placed at the apex of an arch. Due to its design and how physics and gravity work, a single keystone can keep the whole structure standing without the need for mortar or cement. It bears the whole weight of the structure and will cause the arch to fall and crumble when removed.

In my young mind, I thought it was a sweet gesture—in reflection it has themes of codependence and seeking my strength from my loved ones rather than starting from within. But beyond that analysis, I dare say it still holds up as a pretty decent song.

I also got a drum set briefly when I was about ten. My dad had closed off the garage door and turned it into a wall, and he built a little riser to put the drums on. Unfortunately, we had a very small house and it was a short-lived experiment. I still love to drum, though I have absolutely no tyraining and my skills are simple as can be. I briefly drummed with my friends Caleb and Arik when I lived in Dallas. We formed a band called Citrus. After playing a few small gigs, we found ourselves a bit directionless and I ended up forming a band separately with Arik and a friend of a friend named Frank.

Initially, we just played some of my songs under my name, but as a band. After a couple of well-received shows, we figured we liked what we were doing and should come up with a band name. In Dallas, there’s a jewelry chain called Jared. The jingle was well-known from their ubiquitous ad campaigns. Between songs at practice one day, I sang, “🎶 That’s Jar-eeeeeeeeed 🎵” and our drummer, Frank, said, “Hey, we should call ourselves Jared and The Jewelers!” And so we did.

I ran extremely long today because, well, the story of my adventures in music is an incredibly long one. But I will pick up at this point tomorrow—the rise and fall of Jared and The Jewelers and all that led up to today.

Thanks for sticking with me through this extended edition. Go step outside, stretch, take a palate cleanser, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

—Jared Caraway

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