JD Eicher is a singer-songwriter from Youngstown, Ohio whose roots in the Rustbelt spill into his music. Here’s what JD had to say about his music and how it’s shaped by his life experiences:

“There was an interview years ago that I did and they said something along the lines of, ‘you can hear the Rustbelt in his music,’ and I agree with that. I think there’s a certain world weariness, and I think we’re hopeful people, and we’re hardworking people, but we also can’t ignore the grit, and so I think that spills into what I do.”

“I think at this formative point in my life I had seen real people playing music. My parents bought me this harmony acoustic guitar from a Sears catalog and it was kind of a piece of junk, but it got me rolling. I just saw the right things around music and it inspired me to try it.”

“It’s an interesting time for me. I’ve put out a lot of music and I’m kind of at that point where I’m deciding how I’m going to evolve or reinvent myself along the way. So I’ve done the singer-songwriter thing and natural instruments so much that this new project I want to push it more modern. I want to experiment with pop sounds and just kind of see where where we can push the sound. So the new stuff is a little bit more modern sounding, a little bit more deliberately pop.”

“I think if people take one thing away from my music it’s that it’s genuine. If I don’t believe myself I’m not going to finish writing that song. So a lot of these songs are for me and my story… they’re like snapshots of these moments as I’m living.”

Filmed on location at the Soap Gallery in Downtown Youngstown. Learn more about the Soap Gallery here: The Soap Gallery