Jacob Dillan Summers has been many things. A sheltered fundamentalist Christian kid. A world champion drumline drummer. A marine. A lovesick transplant to icy Alaska. But in July 2014, he was just a man stabbing a nail into his own palm to draw enough blood to paint with. This is the story behind Avid Dancer - the nom de musique under which Summers is releasing his first full-length album 1st Bath.
1st Bath | Tracklisting
- All The Other Girls
- Stop Playing With My Heart
- All Your Words Are Gone
- I Told You So
- Not Far To Go
- All The Things You Keep
- Medication
- I Want To See You Dance
- Whatever's On Your Mind
- Nobody Else
- Why Did I Leave You Behind
- Up Against The Wall
Those recordings contain some of the most kaleidoscopic, distinctly individual - and above all, honest - pop music you'll hear all year. Summers started Avid Dancer to express himself viscerally - sometimes literally. For 1st Bath's artwork, he wrote the album's title in, yes, his own blood over a collage of photos from his early childhood. "This music represents my entire existence up to making this record," Summers explains. "I wanted to really let people in, so I decided to paint the album title in my own blood. I actually jabbed myself until I got a big enough pool to write with. I mean, what could be more 'me'?" That philosophy boils down to the intensity suggested in Avid Dancer's moniker. "I realized the name matches what I'm doing musically," Summers says. "When we dance, we lose ourselves in it - we put ourselves out there and don't give a fuck. I'm not a guitar player, not a singer - I'm just putting myself out there with this music."
"I try to learn from other bands," Summers says, "seeing how they hone in on delivering their message." Ultimately Avid Dancer's own message manifested itself when he wrote the song "All Your Words Are Gone" - one of 1st Bath's most memorably plangent moments. "I met a sad girl and wrote that song to make her feel better,'" Summers says. "Writing that was a defining moment. Previously, I tried to write music that had never existed before. But doing 'All Your Words Are Gone' made me realize there are no new chords; what I needed to do was write a song that means something to me. I now understood I could do whatever I want: I don't have to carry around any baggage - I can do anything. Whether it's an acoustic country song, an electro track, or a heavy guitar jam, the style didn't matter: I just channel whatever I'm feeling into a song that has something to say. That's how I've been doing it ever since."
Watch the video for single "All Your Words Are Gone" and look for his debut album, 1st Bath, out April 14th on Grand Jury.