Jake Yoshioka Braid
Cool, hit me.
How do you introduce yourself? I’m Jake!
Can you talk a bit about what you do? I’m a musician slash multi instrumentalist and I play a lot of instruments. I write a lot of songs. That’s me. I like Japanese stuff.
Have you always been into music? I think so. It’s really funny. I started playing guitar, but the entire time I was playing guitar I always wanted to be playing drums. So I was learning how to play this instrument, but I was always thinking about a different instrument. I got given a drum kit for a birthday and was like “screw guitar, guitars sucks!”, and then put that down, then played drums. So was in some bands, playing drums, and then someone was like “oh hey, you should come and be a front man in this band”, and I was like “ok, sounds good! I’m in so many bands playing drums, why not start playing guitar again”. So did that, and wasn’t that great to start, but then sort of got a little bit better, and a little bit better. Jumped into the Jefferys, that was the peak for me, of being a front man in a band. Well, not really the peak, but that was when I was like “man, this is a really cool thing to do”. While that was all happening, all of this stuff, in the background I was still sort of playing guitar on the low key, and still kind of writing music but not really lyrics. Then while the Jefferys was slowing down a bit, I was like, ok maybe I can do some of this stuff. And then high school finished, and then all this stuff was happening, and I didn’t have to work that much, so I was just writing music and never having anyone to play it with, so I was just like, “oh, I know how to play all of these instruments, maybe I can just record it by myself”. And then, just went to The Stomach, did it all on my own, and it was real fun, and it actually came out real good. That is everything.
“man, this is a really cool thing to do”
And you’ve been doing it ever since. Pretty much, it just keeps going. And it just keeps getting better. I keep acquiring new skills, and it’s real great. It’s a little bit like with drawing. You know? If you draw for a short amount of time every day, or if you just draw as much as you can, then you just get better and better at it. It’s a lot like that with this recording style. It used to take me ages to get a single song done, but now it’s so natural. Like how a brush stroke goes. Knowing what speed you want a song to be at, how the drums need to be, sort of thing.
It’s nice to have practiced something enough to not have to think about it. You don’t have to focus on the little things so much.
Becomes way more fun. It does.
Sounds like you really enjoy the process of what you do? That’s probably the best part. The process and the live experience. Bringing other people into it is real fun. Because I can’t do all of the stuff by myself.
You just released a new EP? It’s going pretty good. I’ve had some really nice comments, people have said nice things, which is really great. And there’s probably a new one coming, I’m going to do like, a split thing between the two of them.
When did you go to Japan? August last year.
How do you think that changed you? It’s really crazy going to a place that you’ve always had to imagine for your whole life. I’ve been hearing about Japan my whole life.
Your Dad is Japanese? Yeah, my Grandma is Japanese. She sometimes would tell stories, sometimes would not. But when she would talk about Japan, it’s like, man that’s pretty cool sounding. I was the last of my siblings to go. My sister went quite a while ago, my brother went with my Dad. They’d always be like ‘yeah Japan is pretty cool, when are you going to go to Japan?’, then an opportunity came up last year and I had to go. You get there and it’s just as good as you imagine, it’s actually insane. It’s different at the same time. It’s bizarre. You get the whole culture shock thing, but I found myself relating to quite a lot of it as well. Growing up, obviously my Dad grew up with his mum teaching him all these little Japanese mannerisms, and that’s sort of rubbed off on me and all my siblings, and when we’ve been over to Japan you can see where you get things from.
Are there any particular parts of Japanese culture that you apply to your life? Everyone is so polite, all the people are so polite, everything is so clean. It’s the ideal place, sort of thing. Comparing and contrasting from big cities in New Zealand to big cities in Japan, it’s like there’s millions more people in Japan, but it feels like nice having all those people. Every single person does nice stuff. No one’s a dick in Japan, that’s how it felt when we were over there. On the streets in Japan there’s no rubbish bins or anything like that, they only have them outside certain stores, like outside convenience stores, but there’s no litter anywhere. People don’t walk and smoke or walk and drink or walk and eat, they will just be still in a certain place and just sit there and eat or sit there and drink the tea that they got from the vending machine. They will stand there and drink it, then close it up, then they keep walking. It’s so great. I think it’s an OCD factor for me. There’s all these little things that are programmed into every person, it’s so particular. Everyone stands on one side of the escalator, pretty sure they do that other places as well, but that’s one thing where you think, man that’s so genius. People here just slouch over both sides. It’s like clock work there.
Did going to Japan inspire you to study, or had you always planned that? I had no idea. It definitely pushed me into it a little bit, because originally I was going to study music, and there was this cool degree popping up in Wellington, I was like, that’ll be cool. Then there was a big interview process for that, and after a while I sort of stopped thinking that was something I wanted to do. My reasoning for not doing it was that I’ve always got music there to be my release from study. Like, that’s my hobby that I want to chill on. And having that as your release as well as being something you have to study at the same time, I thought that might be quite conflicting. You sort of have quite a lot of people telling you what to do, and I don’t really like that, because I’ve been doing a lot of stuff by myself for such a long time now. The degree is quite well connected to lots of people in the music industry, and it seemed like a little bit of a cop out for me to be like ‘yeah I’m doing all of this cool stuff by myself’ then go into this degree where people are hand feeding you sort of thing. So I was like, you know what? I’m going to study Japanese, and go to Japan, and do cool stuff.
I’ve always got music there to be my release
It makes sense to me. It means I get to sit in my room, write songs every now and then, whilst also having this... So I’ve got my creative space, and then I’ve got my academic, intellectual space that’s furthering my education slightly and at the same time making my music better.
One would influence the other, too? I think it does. I like to think it does.
That’s cool. Where do you think the music and Japanese studies will lead? It would be kind of cool even if all I get out of this degree is to be fluent in Japanese, I’d be cool with that. If it didn’t get me a job, that’ll be ok, if I can speak Japanese. It’d be beautiful. And then tour Japan, while being able to speak to everyone, it’d be so great.
Would you write lyrics in Japanese? I could try… I think it’d be real hard aye. Maybe, I’ll see if I can get that in 3rd year. At the moment I’d maybe be able to sing about how I like cats or something like that, that’s about it. Need to work on that.
What would be your suggestion if someone’s looking for a nice thing to think? A nice thing to think… Thinking about a nice thing to be thinking about… Think about the summer time. When it’s not cold. And you can be outside during the day and during the night at the same time. And, beaches and swimming, and not having to work. That’d be great, that’s a good think to think about. There’s so many nice things to think about.
Anything else you’d like to say? Nah, too busy thinking about nice things to think about.
