Jake Markow Is a Houston Based Swiss-Army Knife of music related skills and knowledge, working with a huge breadth of artists and firms. He has produced for artists ranging from Lil Lotus to Caskey, went on National tours in his own bands, managed a number of artists, and writes for Elevator and Dirty Glove. His watertight work ethic, razor sharp focus, and ability to adapt are but a few of the facets of his being that make him absolutely lethal in his productivity. Take notes.
Underground Underdogs: Thanks for doing this Jake. For starts, Where are you from?
Jake Markow: I’m originally from the Bay Area.
Oh shit I’m in San Jose.
Yeah I saw that, I was like “Okay he’s bay kid.” [laughs]
Where did you go from there?
I was Born in Alameda County Hospital, I went to elementary school in Castro Valley, while living in San Leandro. Then in 5th grade I moved to Southern California. Freshman year of college I went to a private college in San Dimas. They have a Raging Waters, and in Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure they talk about the high school football team.
That’s all its known for?
People only know the city I really grew up in (Rancho Cucamonga) from Workaholics or the movie Friday. Super suburban, nothing special, just normal I guess.
And when did Texas Happen?
I was 20 when I moved to Dallas.
So when did music start to stand out to you? What made you interested?
That’s a good question. When I was young my dad got a job in Southern CA, he would be commuting between Southern CA and the Bay Area, a few times a month. Our family wasn’t super excited about him being back and forth. Then he decided we’re going to move, my Mom and Dad also wanted to be closer to their families, so it just made more sense. My dad ended up getting me “moving present” or rather a “sorry for moving you away from your friends” present – an electric drum set. I was in 5th grade, and I just wanted to play something.
My dad had always been musically inclined. When he was 16 he was in the South Bay (LA Beach Area). He was a surfer kid growing up, and one day he traded his surfboard for a guitar and the rest was history. He was in some popular local bands during the hair metal era, opening Mötley Crüe and all that cool stuff.
Could you talk a little about your musical inspiration from the jump?
Uhh..
What?
Britney Spears.
Britney Spears?
First CD I ever owned.
That’s amazing.
No yeah, like, It’s Britney Bitch.
What was the appeal there for you?
I thought she was hot, I was really young, curious. Next thing you know I was just into it, she had catchy music. When I was a little older my dad had got me into classic rock like Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, so they were huge for me. Hendrix was my idol for a while. Then I started getting into Van Halen, Def Leppard, and then came metal like Slayer, and eventually I started getting into metal-core bands like As I Lay Dying.
Did you know that dude in As I Lay Dying, a Christian band, tried to get his wife shot?
I don’t think they specified how he tried to get her killed, but yeah that was crazy. When I was in a band and we were opening for bigger Christian metal bands, who were doing drugs and partying in the back, just living the normal rock star life – it blew my mind. That guy’s a douche though, he’s serving time or something. But yeah, then local hardcore came up. I started liking rap too around the same time, I came across Aesop Rock, Murs, People Under the Stairs.
Thoughtful rap, or something.
Yeah for sure. Also Biggie Smalls. I would be playing rap or metal, and my dad was like, “You’re not allowed to listen to that stuff.” Being an angsty teen, I was in love with it from there on out.
I knew every single word to every song of Biggie’s. I was never huge into the underground rap scene initially, but also not not a huge fan of what was on the radio. But eventually I found artists like SPG when he was playing hardcore shows in LA with Trash Talk, and Yung Simmie and it took off from there.
Right now you produce and write among other things, but you also played in a band for a while, right?
Yeah, and that’s where it all started for sure. I got that drum set, then in 8th grade I wanted a guitar.
I was like, “Nobody likes the drummer.” I’m trying to be in the front, but not the singer. I wanted it to be known, I’m here.
My home was a super Christian household so I was playing drums in church and stuff at first. In 9th grade I would jam with friends, and in 10th grade I started playing guitar a band, just for fun. The first show we ever did was a house show in our drummer’s back yard that we called ‘Tomato Fest,’ because they had a ton of tomato plants. It was just a bunch of high school kids, nothing crazy, but we had like, 50 friends and we invited some bigger local bands. From there we were like, “We can probably do this.”
We started playing bigger local shows, working on writing music with a guitar player of a bigger band. Other members of the music scene mentored and helped us out. One of the guitar players of a band that was really helpful to us is actually producing for Bones and SESH. In high school we started to make a little money off t-shirts, and we all saved up and got money together to tour like a ‘real band.’ On our first tour our drummer’s mom drove us from Southern California to Seattle so we could play shows all up the coast because we were too young to drive.
What a badass mom.
For real, shout out to Clay’s mom. We were pretty involved in the Southern California metal scene, kind of ‘up next’ at the time. We’d be regularly opening up for nationally touring bands, doing some festivals. At local shows we’d bring a decent amount people out. We eventually started taking it a little more serious, and were starting to work on our debut EP with a bigger producer in the metal scene.
At our age we were taking it more seriously than a lot of people. We just didn’t have the right direction and around then it was time to go to college for most of the members, people were deciding whether it was going to be music or school and we were not sure. I had a lot going on in my life around that time, so the fresh start and going somewhere new (Texas) was appealing.
So how did you start producing?
I actually started producing because of downtime in the studio. I was just interested in recording, and in metal there is a lot of midi programming. That was what I got really good at. Freshman year in my dorm I was mixing drums and tracking guitars. It sounded like shit. No one will ever hear it. Like ever. Ever ever ever. Super ass. I would be recording demos, then take it to a studio and pick the best songs, work with the producer, we already had the midi information, and it just cut a lot of time out. I got good at Logic doing that. Then when the band kinda ended, I decided if I was going to make music on my own, I might as well just make beats. I was pretty good off rip.
I saw you produced for Lil Lotus, I saw Caskey, and with Elevator you cover a lot of Southern Rap, and now you’re telling me you were in bands. Is there a genre you don’t like?
Not a big fan of country, to be honest. [laughs]
I don’t know if you saw that I had done a couple songs off that new “Coward” project, with Jon Simmons from Balance and Composure and Wicca Phase..
I was just about to say, I was just listening to it. It’s heat.
Yeah, the song – “Song For No One”- that was probably one of my first beats, the earlier beats. Probably 3 years old. It was one of the first few I liked that I made when I moved to Dallas.
That’s interesting, It still seems modern to me.
Yeah, the sound that I had in my head didn’t really work with a lot of artists… and here comes a project with a singer of a band that I had been a big fan of. I had Balance and Composure shirts out the ass. My friend’s mom would be taking us to their shows, sneaking backstage to stage dive.
That has to feel amazing for you – to have his vocals on your track.
It does… And to be honest when he was hitting me up, he was saying like “we’re honored for you to be sending these beats”, and “these are some of our personal favorite songs.” And I was like, if 9th grade me knew Jon Simmons was going to be telling you that your music was inspirational to him, you’d probably start crying.
That’s how you know you’re doing something right, artists who you look up to start to hit you up.
Yeah, it’s surreal, I was really excited. There was a kid on twitter who tagged me in their tweet saying that they needed beats… and then he sent me the tweet in a dm. He was like bro- this project is going to be be nuts you gotta send beats and I was just like… “Okay, sure.”
Just a random kid?
Yeah.
Shoutout to that kid.
Yeah, I think his name is Taylor Morgan? Shout out to Taylor. I was in the car with my ex when they sent back the songs. To me it was a big deal, but explaining that to someone who doesn’t really know your background very well isn’t easy, they don’t understand the music or what is happening – like this is the beginning of something that could potentially be a huge group… She was just like “Eh, that’s cool…”
Oof.
Yeah, We’re not together anymore. I’ve always had a thing for dating girls who don’t get what I’m doing, and It never really works.
Do you actively pursue that quality?
I mean it’s cool dating someone who is not involved with the music, ‘cause their not trying to clout up or anything. But also they don’t really understand WHY I’m on my computer all day- why you can’t hang out cause you’re sending emails. A lot of people don’t really understand what you have to do to force yourself to progress.
I know what you mean. People actively tried to pull me away from this interview for example. I saw that tweet you had talking about how people will actively try to diminish your successes recently, and it’s true.
Yeah, that’s kind of just the reality, and I think personally I try to be motivational on twitter because people reach out and say it’s motivating or helpful… People don’t care if I tweet about my personal life, so I’m just trying to be encouraging.
So I see you constantly working, did you just always have this drive and smothering work ethic- or did you have to acquire it somehow?
That something I had to learn. I’ve always had that passion for music. That work ethic is partly fueled by that passion. When I went to college for the first time, I wasn’t in the right mindset. I got burnt out after the first year and dropped out and was touring more. Then I developed a problem prescription drugs, and for a year or so that really killed my motivation. I got super out of shape, didn’t really care about much other than the band I was playing in. Then one day I had woke up and gave myself a reality check. I woke up one day and looked in the mirror and knew that who I was not who I was supposed to be. I had a pretty bad relationship with my family. Was in a really unhealthy relationship, just not really taking my life as serious as I should be. I knew where my life was capable of going, and I was miserable with where I was at. I was tired of my life, I realized the only way to change
that was to just bust my ass. Even if you don’t get that day-to-day immediate satisfaction, you just go hard and one day you will wake up and be kind of happy with where you are at. I just decided I was going to keep working. Then, I get to Texas. For that whole summer that I moved there before I started school again at a community college, I made 1 maybe 2 friends. A few months after that I started getting involved in the local Dallas underground rap scene. I really just wanted to prove to everyone that I left my entire life, girlfriend, friends, scene I had made a name for myself in, with a bigger plan in mind than what people could see at the time. I was going to make beats, produce for up and coming artists in Dallas, get mentored by the bigger producer in the city all while working to get my GPA up, get an internship, finish school, and then get a job.
I had nothing to do other than go to school and make beats, nobody knew me. Nobody knew I was the high school burnout, the kid with a nose ring in a metal band. I had to re-establish myself. You’ll lose some friends but you’ve got to realize that you’re focusing on growing as a person, and at the end of the day the only person you really have to make happy is yourself and your family. It’s what I wanted to do. Turn up on music.
This confirms my thoughts that you are super conscious, and you always do things for a reason. When I was digging through who you are, I seen your music, how you fuck with soccer moms, AND you have a Linkedin. The Linkedin says a lot about you, I think.
Yeah man, for sure. Dude, Soccer Mommy is up next! Imaging if Taylor Swift never went all the way pop…bedroom indie but slightly folk/country influenced. You gotta peep. I love rap, but if it’s good music I’ll listen to it.
Oh, for sure, I’ll check her out. So with all of this work, what do you do for fun?
I work. [laughs]
So you just love working.
Honestly if you love what you do you’re not going to see it as work. Today I woke up at 8, I had to schedule an appointment with my advisor. Then the rest of my day was spent doing homework, writing, I have an artist’s mgmt that I had to call because we needed to make adjustments on the mix of a song I’m producing, and then more client stuff. I spent most of today in the library…homework and emails. It’s not that I consider it fun, but if that’s what I have to let consume my life right now it’s fine. At one-point last year, a political science class had me working on an 80-page research project that our professor sent to the state congress. Nobody is going to believe me but I enjoyed working on it. That kind of got me thinking that writing for blogs might be the next step in what I want to do in music.
Aside from working my favorite activity is probably bar hopping. I’m still normal… well I’m not totally a normal college student, I want to be normal. I don’t want people to think my identity is solely just being involved in the music scene. I’m honestly kind of jealous of college kids who got to join a frat and just do the bare minimum with school and party a lot, sometimes I wish that would have been me. Oh, and I do have a crippling Fortnite addiction. I’ll be scouring SoundCloud and YouTube for new music while playing Fortnite, that’s fun. Anything involving music is fun for me. If I don’t do one thing that pushes me forward, then that’s a bad day. Even if it means any kind of work, there’s nothing I would rather do to push myself to progress, even if it’s just a little bit.
Anything involving music is fun for me. If I don’t do one thing that pushes me forward, then that’s a bad day. It’s more like, what can i do today that isn’t homework. Even if it means any kind of work, there’s nothing I would rather do to push myself to progress, even if it’s just a little bit.
I imagine the internal momentum and direction feels good too.
Right, with music there’s a lot of highs and a lot of lows. The more you progress, the highs get higher and lows get lower. One week I have absolutely no life because of midterms as well and it feels like the worst week of my life, then the next week I’m in Austin, TX for SXSW having an absolute blast.
When I first started taking producing more serious, I was going to Whataburger to get an order for a producer, swiffering the studio floor, so I could sit on the couch and watch him. Making spreadsheets of artist contacts, helping him stay more on track so he could focus on actually making the music. I was just trying to be an asset so I could be around and learn from someone who was doing what I wanted to be doing on the level I wanted to be doing it.
All of a sudden you’re surrounded by older, more experienced people who have placements with crazy artists. Then your beats get better, so you get better placements. Sometimes it sucks. I’ve sacrificed dating and a lot of my free time. Even with my last relationship, it was just taking too much from me, and I realized I really needed to re-focus my life.
Even money, I’ve put the little I have into what I’m doing because It’s all an investment. You don’t think it’s paying off, but then one-day people start taking you as serious as you take yourself or start asking you for advice. Most people that I know that are successful, are focused on long term goals and that’s not the stuff that a lot of people like to think about. People want quick clout, cash, a or quick hit – I guess there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not for me.
To have a long lasting career in music, you have to be able to pivot. When I was first making beats in Dallas, I absolutely wasn’t the biggest producer in the city, I wasn’t working with Post Malone or anything; but I went from just making beats in my room producing to constantly being in the studio and working with artists who had established themselves in the city, you see the growth you’ve been focusing on. The ability to adapt to change and think long term pays off.
In my opinion, many aspiring artists seem to be blindly throwing darts at the board, instead of brick-by-brick building something.
Yeah, like think about Juicy J. The perfect example of having a long term career as an artist. He found a sound, stuck true to it and as the music industry changed he adapted. To be successful, I think you really have to know what you’re trying to do. So when you did get that one break, one song, whatever it is, you’re ready for it.
I was lucky enough to attend Lyor Cohen’s keynote during SXSW. He was Run DMC’s tour manager, then an exec. at Def Jam, then was with Warner, and then he founded 300. Now he’s the global head of music at YouTube, that’s a legend right there. I got up early, was hungover as fuck, sat in line and made sure I was one of the first people in the room. I was just super excited to soaked up game from someone who’s done it all. He’s one of the most successful people in the music industry.
The biggest thing that stuck with me was him talking about you have to be able to adapt to survive in the music industry. When I was in Dallas, I could access artists all the time but then I went to College Station for school. It’s a huge college town that’s literally the middle of nowhere in Texas, everyone there is a college student. When people who aren’t from Texas imagine Texas, that’s College Station.
I was getting some placements, selling beats, working with a dope band, working with a singer I’m developing… I was really forced to adapt to what my situation was. Sometime life gives you these cards, and you just gotta deal with them. To be what in my head is successful – you need to go hard no matter what is going on in your life. That move to College Station forced me to work harder.
At the end of when I was in College Station is when I started talking to Lil Lotus. And the first beat I ever sent him was the “I Don’t Wanna Die RN” record we did. From there I knew I was going to Houston, and I needed I had to start off in a city like that with some credibility. That’s when I first started writing for Dirty Glove Bastard and I did an interview that did really well with June James. No other blogs were talking about him, but he was producing major records. That was something that opened a lot of doors for me here.
I have an amazing friend…she knows who she is, who’s totally the plug in Houston. She doesn’t even live in Houston anymore but she’s super plugged in. We met at a studio in Dallas and kept running into each other. We both felt like we would be seeing each other for a while so we should team up, so she as told me who to fuck with, who not to fuck with so I don’t waste time. That’s helped a lot since I’m in a new environment all over again.I kept writing for Dirty Glove and eventually Elevator reached out to me. It wasn’t a completely random coincidence, there has been a relationship there for a while. One of the LVTR editors thought I had a good ear and eye for talent. For me, it was huge. The fact that other people recognize what I’m doing is awesome. I’m starting to see all the hard work I’ve put in pay off. I love being able to get behind artists with a credible name like Elevator. It’s dope.
I meant to mention- you are always interacting with so many different artists and people from different walks of life. Is there ever friction between personalities there? Or is everyone there for the same reason, just progressing.
I won’t lie, being a clean cut looking white college student has always put me in an
interesting position. At first, when I’d be around new artists I don’t know, people would be like- “who the fuck is this.” This isn’t me complaining, but sometimes I don’t fit into the mold of someone who’s all about rap. I stick out like a sore thumb. I undeniably come from a different background than many artists and people usually don’t assume off-rip that I’m a huge fan of Southern trap music. Sometimes people are quick to assume.
Working with artists that are still in the streets you just have to be understanding of what they’ve been through and what they’re going through. It’s the same as a suburban kid expressing their depression and anxiety through their music.
So, when nobody knows who I am in a studio session or backstage at a show it might be a little awkward, but it usually doesn’t take long for me to get across that I’m there to be a resource.
So what’s next?
Oh man, I’m super excited about some of the artists I’m working with. Hopefully people will start hearing what I’ve been working with the next few months
Any particular things we should know about?
There is this artist from Dallas that I’ve been working with named Juan Mone, he’s starting to catch on out here. Even if I’m not making all of his beast I’ve been helping him a ton, getting him in better studios, pushing his music. I’ve got a ton of music lined up with this super super fire artist named WAV. He’s only got one single out right now, but it’s been going crazy on SoundCloud and the music we have in store is nuts. Another artist I have been focused on is a singer from LA named Samantha Stone, she’s someone who’s going to be one everyone’s radar by the end of next year.
There’s this kid in Austin, Quin NFN, he has the potential to be the future of Texas rap. He may be the first real breakout rap star from Austin. He just turned 17, the first time I met him was at this b-day party. Super chill, has a great team behind him, and he has his head on straight. I found one of his early music videos on YouTube with 40,000 views, and it was just so fucking hard. I posted it on Dirty Glove, then SayCheese picked it up and this kid started going crazy.
I was working with his team on his first feature, and we recently premiered a video of his on Elevator. I fuck with him tough, if I had to call an artist that’s up next out here…it might be him
You clearly have a lot going on. Do you have something you feel like you should say before we end?
I think that no matter what it is you’re doing in the music industry, there’s always going to be people that hate, talk shit, and downplay your hard work. That’s reality of how the game goes. I’ve been working at this for a while now, and while I’ve come a long way, I have a big picture goal that I’m still working towards. People will see where I’m going with all of this sooner or later.
Let the work talk for itself.
Exactly, that’s what you have to do. Let your work speak for itself and take your steps fearlessly.
Keep an eye out for Jake’s hand in the underground.
