JR Jenkins, Musician

“I’m a musician. I have been since I was nine. I have a lot of styles, but I would say it’s mostly aggressive, like metal. I primarily play the guitar. I started playing bass about seven years ago.

When I was nine, my dad took me to an Eric Clapton concert. His boss had a box, so we had binoculars and everything. We sat up there with ham sandwiches, watching Eric Clapton. I just sat by the balcony with the binoculars and stared at Eric Clapton the whole time. I couldn’t believe how much the whole room ate up everything he was doing. I ate up everything he was doing. So I got a guitar within a month of that. That was very formative for me. I’ve always been very attracted to that heavy, riffy music from the ‘70s and blues-driven music. That definitely informed almost everything about my style.

Before moving to Goshen, I was in Austin, and there was a ton going on in every single corner of the city. I thought that moving back to Indiana was going to be a loss for me. But I ended up falling in with the Tumbleweed Jumpers and other creatives around town and working in restaurants that are full of creatives around here. I feel like I’m doing double the creative work now. I’m drawing, I’m writing, I’m writing lyrics, I’m writing songs. I work hard on it here. It’s just a small Indiana town, and I think there’s something to speak of people who decide to stick around here and what they want to do. People are serious here. I like that!”