Get To Know: Jasper Hodges

Jasper Hodges on songwriting, The Basement Sessions, late-night recording in Ramsgate and the next chapter already taking shape.

At 19, Jasper Hodges keeps his own explanation of what he does pretty simple.

“I would say that I’m just a normal 19-year-old lad from England, who tells stories through writing songs. stories about my life and the people around me, in the only way I know how.”

That last part tells you more about Jasper than any list of milestones could. Songwriting isn't something that arrived alongside a growing audience or bigger stages. It's what everything else has grown from.

“I have always built my life around songwriting. writing songs and playing them to people has always been my pursuit ever since I was young, whether it's playing to 10 people or to the masses, it will always be a massive part of my life.”

At one point, that pursuit became a very public commitment. Jasper challenged himself to write and share an original song every day until he reached 25,000 Instagram followers.

“well, the way I looked at it, all possibilities were positive. I knew that I would not quit no matter how long it took.”

What ends up in those songs depends heavily on what surrounds him. The people he knows and the places he spends his time continue to shape what eventually makes it onto the page.

“I think the environment a person is raised, always has some sort of effect on the type of person they become. the people around me and the place I am, are what shape the stories I tell.”

That idea sits at the heart of The Basement Sessions.

Rather than writing songs and returning months later to rebuild them into something cleaner, Jasper kept them attached to the moments that produced them. Each was written and recorded in the same night. Those recordings became the versions being released.

“To me, ‘the basement sessions’ feel very authentic and real to myself. Each song was recorded in the same night as it was written, and those are the exact versions being released. They are three individual stories, completely different from one another, but all from the same period of my life.”

Then there's where they were made.

The Basement Sessions were recorded in Ramsgate inside a house formerly occupied by Vincent van Gogh. It's the sort of detail capable of swallowing the rest of a project if you let it. Jasper's explanation is much less calculated: his friend happened to be living there.

“I recorded the songs there because a close friend of mine, who I often record music with, was living there at the time. we have always recorded music in his bedroom, and it just happened that it was previously van Gogh‘s place. I used to often step out the front of the house in the middle of the night, as that was when we would record, and you could hear and see the ocean, and feel the wind coming off of it, it was definitely a nice place make music.”

The historical connection makes a good headline. Jasper stepping outside between late-night recording sessions to the sound of the sea tells you more about how the songs actually came together.

Bound To Leave came first because, quite simply, it happened first.

“Bound to leave was the first song in the timeline. The first one I wrote, the first one we recorded, it only felt right to be the first released.”

Its follow-up, Picture On My Phone, arrived on 25 September. The song didn't require Jasper to search particularly hard for what to say. The story was already there.

“Picture on my phone was a really easy song to write. I felt like I didn’t have to say anything too special, as the story was special enough.”

That doesn't mean every story ends up becoming public.

“I write songs about everything, once I’ve written them, I decide whether I want anybody else to hear them or not I’ve so many songs that no one will ever hear, but I will still keep them in my memory for a rainy day”

Writing comes first. Releasing comes later, if at all.

The rooms Jasper is playing have changed considerably faster.

One of the biggest jumps came at Alexandra Palace, supporting Louis Dunford in what Jasper says was his first London show. Six months earlier, his experience looked very different.

“I think the craziest one has to be playing Alexandra Palace with Louis Dunford to 10,000 people. This was my first ever show in London. Considering six months before I was playing to almost empty rooms, I’d say this is a pretty big jump.”

His growing Instagram audience also opened a completely different door. Fashion came alongside the music rather than as some carefully constructed extension of it.

“I’d say the fashion has all come very naturally alongside my music. I was scouted through my Instagram, and got offered some pretty cool jobs, I thought I’d be a fool to turn it down!”

Yet for all the movement happening around him, Jasper's songwriting still seems to operate in exactly the same way.

His music reflects wherever he happens to be when he writes it. That means The Basement Sessions can only ever capture one period.

“My music always reflects the time and place that I am in, so I’m actually, personally already in the next chapter, writing and a recording new material that reflects where I am in my life at the moment, and I’m sure there will be new shows around the corner.”

That might be the best way to understand Jasper Hodges right now.

The Basement Sessions aren't an attempt to define him. They're three stories caught as they happened, recorded on the same nights they were written and left as a record of where he was at that moment.

By the time we're hearing them, Jasper is already somewhere else, writing the next ones.