After a lively set opening for Sir Chloe at the Fonda Theatre, we had the opportunity to converse with four musicians still basking in their post-performance glory. The alternative rock band Telescreens is made up of Jackson Hamm on vocals and guitar, Josiah Valerius on keys, Austin Brenner on bass, and Oliver Graf hitting the drums. Formed in New York City 2016, Telescreens has drastically evolved from their early SoundCloud days to the release of their most recent track, “Nothing.” Telescreens has mastered the art of crowd engagement, as proven by the swarm of new fans eagerly waiting at the merch stands after their set. This energy will undoubtedly take them far as they travel across the country for their North American tour and beyond.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity purposes.
Lily Stockton: Okay, we’re gonna start with some quick icebreakers. First question: in your song, “Nothing,” you describe not feeling anything. What are you feeling in this moment?
Josiah Valerius: Gratitude.
Jackson Hamm: Yeah, “Nothing” is about not feeling anything and wanting desperately to feel something, and so it’s like that moment where you’re just like, “fuck, I don’t feel anything,” and just the climax of that moment.
Austin Brenner: Moments like this are always super humbling and I feel grateful to have that moment with everybody. That’s what that song is about. It’s like we’re all releasing that energy together in that moment, so we can all feel together and open that up in ourselves.
Oliver Graf: Yeah, you just feel so blessed to be able to travel around the country with your best friends and do our favorite thing in the world every night, which is play music together. We have so much fun on stage and in the studio. Our only hope is that that fun translates to people in the audience and to listeners at home.
Lily: Next question, another one about your songs. You have a song called “Games,” and you talk about playing games to pass the time. What’s your favorite way to pass time?
Jackson: I like playing basketball.
Lily: Do you guys play together?
Jackson: Me and Austin play.
Kayalani DeGrave: Who’s better?
Jackson: Austin’s better, but he got his shit together. Austin played, he was an all city point guard in high school, and then I got in shape, and was like, beating his ass and then he got in shape and then now, he beats me again [all laugh].
Josiah: My favorite thing to do to pass the time is make music. Even if it’s for no point, I just like creating,
Lily: Do you do mostly electronic or do you play other instruments?
Josiah: Yeah, like synths, keyboards, piano, ya know. I program drums here and there. I’ll noodle on guitar, let them take it away.
Oliver: Yeah, I just like hanging out [laughs]. I like drinking beer. I like spending time with friends and loved ones. I still really enjoy spending time with these three guys, which is great. Someone came up to us the other day and was like, “Do you guys hang out? Are they like your colleagues? Is it just like work, do you like, clock in?” And it’s like, no. They’d be like, “do you guys, like, drink beer together?” Like, yeah we’re friends.
Lily: On that note, if someone could tell us a little about how you guys found each other and how you decided to start a band. And why you’re still together?
Josiah: It’s quite a tale. These guys [points at Jackson and Oliver] knew each other first. [Oliver was] best friends with Jackson’s younger brother growing up, so they always saw each other. He [referring to Jackson] would want to jam in the garage, and he was playing FIFA with his younger brother. [Jackson would] be like, “hey, come play some drums with me.”
Then I met him in the summer high school program at NYU. We got along, we liked producing, we liked hip hop. The vibe was the same. And then, we go to college. We were all in the same class: Clive Davis at NYU. We kind of found each other immediately. Not that many people were really passionate and really trying to hunker down immediately, so we found each other. Jackson said he had some songs and we were musicians. We played one show at Bushwick Public House and we felt the magic immediately. We were like, we’re gonna keep doing this, we can’t stop doing this. Then, we made our first album. It’s a lot of produced stuff and a lot of computer production and weed inspiration, fresh college vibes [all laugh]. And then we played a show at The Cutting Room, which was catastrophic because we didn’t have a drummer. We were playing off of computers and it was horrible. Then, [Jackson] runs into Oliver in New York just going about school…
Oliver: And I had, like, totally quit drums. I thought it was something like how people play baseball in high school. I played drums a lot growing up, but I have a real job. Yeah, it was just one of those things where I was going to school and I just gave up on music. I ran into Jackson on the street in New York, and he’s like, “You still play drums?” And I was like, “not really.” He’s like, “you want to come to rehearsal and see if you like it?” I went to one rehearsal, I had so much fun. We played a show and it was just lightning in a bottle. One show turned to five to 10 to 100 to 1000 and, you know, here we are. It’s been a blast.
Lily: How was the college music scene at NYU?
Jackson: There’s a lot of people from our generation who are doing really cool stuff now. And yeah, I hated school the whole time, but it allowed me to meet good people. So I think that’s what school is really about.
Kayalani: Clive Davis is an awesome program so that’s super impressive.
You guys are in the middle of your tour, but this is your first show with Sir Chloe. How has the experience been so far and how do you see it continuing?
Oliver: Great, except we got robbed yesterday [all laugh].
Jackson: A successful tour is not getting anything stolen. If you’re a rock band who is thinking about touring, the most important thing is putting everything in a safe place before you explore the city…But other than that, the tour has been great. We loved San Francisco, Salt Lake, Denver, Detroit, Chicago, and St Louis.
Kayalani: What has been the best stop so far?
Jackson: [Los Angeles] has been great. We really love our people in San Francisco. That was amazing too.
Josiah: [LA] is tied with it honestly.
Lily: What’s the mindset you get into when you’re performing live? How do you hype up the crowd? Do you put on a character?
Jackson: I feel like rock and roll is about expression, and it’s about freedom and movement and all this type of stuff. Especially when you’re playing an opening set, you’re just trying to encourage everybody to get out of their skin and get out of their head and forget their lives and just enjoy themselves. That’s kind of the main focus. And sometimes you gotta act like the biggest fool in the room to make everybody else feel like they’re alright.
Josiah: I would say also, we really talk a lot about being a vessel for whatever you want to call it, “universal energy,” whatever we’re all made of and connected by. We just try to get out of the way and practice so much so that you don’t have to think in the moment, and you can just be. You can just express yourself through your instrument and then you disappear and then everyone’s together, ya know.
Kayalani: And the last question is, we’re from a college radio station… If you guys had to host a show on anything, any genre of music or any topic, what would you host it on?
Josiah: I would have a show about metaphysical spirits, ya know. People from all walks of life, all traditions, philosophy, religion, whatever.
Jackson: I would probably have an open political discussion and make everybody talk about politics in a safe space.
Oliver: I’d do something way less serious. It’d be like, a really dumb “would you rather?” based thing.
Austin: I would just join one of their shows and I would just sit there and say something. I could DJ but I could also just say stupid shit on Oliver’s show. That’d be fun too.
Oliver: I would love to have him co-host the rhythm section.
Lily: Well those sound awesome. We’ll have to have you guys come in for a set next time you’re in LA. Thank you guys so much for doing this!
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