Conversations with Braxton Hay

Today we’d like to introduce you to Braxton Hay. 

Hi Braxton, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started the band, Jenny Kush, in 2021 with my friend Andrew, who had come home from college for the summer having learned a bunch of piano. I had been playing guitar since I was ten, but I had never really played with anybody, so once I found out he had been playing piano we started to jam almost every night that summer in a miniature house on the back of my property we call the Jam Shack. We went to farmer’s markets almost every Saturday and played on the street for tips, but mostly just because it was a chill time and it allowed us to connect with a lot of different kinds of people. We started recording our jam shack sessions and put some of them up online, and one day I thought, why don’t we make an Instagram page? A lot of my other interests lie in cinematography, creative directing, writing, and editing, so at the time it just seemed like it could be an outlet for me and a way to combine all of what I work really hard at daily. I’m going to keep it covert ops in terms of where the name came from, however… 

From there we decided that we should have a full band if possible, so we met a drummer on Facebook and eventually I brought my friend Dakota into it–we’ve been best friends since third grade and he has the best mind for business and quality control out of anyone I’ve ever met, so it was a natural fit. He sort of took over keyboard, and late that summer, we threw our own DIY festival out in the countryside based on an idea I had had since the inception of the band. We called it Kush Fest ’21 and invited a couple other bands to fill out the night, and it turned out to be a much, much bigger success than I ever could have imagined, which pushed us to throw another one around Halloween, Jenny Kush’s “Sounds From the UFO”. The turnout was just unbelievable. Lexi joined us for percussion shortly before the Halloween show, and I met Tyler at MSU over the 2021/2022 school year; he joined on bass and started doing lead vocals–he’s actually in an acapella group at MSU. Soon after we became connected with our current drummer, Noah, who really brought an explosive energy to the band and an irresistible groove. 

Since then, we’ve done shows on shows on shows with no signs of slowing down. We’ve played in Detroit, Grand Rapids, MSU, basically anywhere that gives us exposure. We’ve also been booked for two festivals this summer, The Grateful Bear Campout and the Michigan Tie-Dye Festival, in addition to Kush Fest ’22, which will be at least 3x the size of Kush Fest last summer. We have band merch now, too, that we sell at all our shows; our current lineup is tie-dye t-shirts, crop tops, lighters, hats, and beanies. Everything is made with love and Good Vibes. A big part of Jenny Kush is our focus on on-the-spot improvisation and constantly changing setlists–you could come out to our shows two times, three times, ten times and you’d get a different show every time. Music is a living, breathing entity for us that’s fed and nourished by the crowd. We’re addicted to the energy of it all. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I would say the road has been smoother than expected, and I think that’s mostly because I’ve never stopped following my personal passions with music and the creative vision. I never think too much about what the crowd wants or what people like/dislike because for me, that defeats the whole purpose of true art. And I think if you stick to that, if you follow your personal vision and what you love, people will be drawn to that in a much greater capacity than someone who is constantly trying to appeal to a specific audience. People are smart; they pick up on phoniness very easily. Jenny Kush is real. 

Of course, that isn’t to say it hasn’t been hard at times. For Kush Fest and every event, we throw as a band, that’s us betting on ourselves, which can be daunting. But I firmly believe that nothing worth doing is easy. Every single person that you look up to has taken risks and more risks to get to where they are, and they have most certainly had their failures. Nobody does anything awesome by giving up, either, or by being complacent and not trying to push themselves. 

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
As an artist personally, I do a lot of different things that all feel connected to one another. My first love is writing–I write short stories, novels, screenplays, and the majority of Jenny Kush’s songs. I just want to be the absolute best, and my work ethic reflects that. I write something every single day, even if it sucks. I read everything I can get my hands on, I take notes from movies, and I listen to probably ungodly amounts of music. For me, not much else exists outside of art and my creative endeavors. I’m just utterly obsessed with it all. 

I have also directed and edited several short films, a couple of which are forthcoming. I received a grant from a professor at MSU for a crime thriller short film I wrote about a month or so ago called “Ginseng Strip 2002”, and we’re going into production on it as we speak; we actually just cast the majority of our actors. I also have a literary fiction/adventure novel entitled “Beach House Interlude” I’ve been writing for the past three years that I’m finally finished with, and is definitely one of the things I’m most proud of. I’m looking to lock down an agent for it this summer. 

So, my days overall are very scheduled: I write every day, I practice guitar every day, and I hunt for project inspiration during the spaces in between. I like to say that I need at least three creative outlets at all times otherwise I just feel down. 

What does success mean to you?
Success, for me, is first and foremost: am I proud of what I’ve done, and does it reflect my creative vision and philosophies. That is to say, I haven’t wavered in my creative beliefs for the sake of appeasing others–if they like Jenny Kush’s music, they’ll pull up. If they like the idea of my book, they’ll read it. 

With Jenny Kush specifically, it’s adhering to the creative vision, yes, but it’s also the idea that we’ve put on the best, most grandiose show we could’ve possibly put on; in other words, we’ve given people entertainment on some level, even if they don’t necessarily vibe with the music. If one person comes up to me and tells me how much they dig what we’ve done one way or another, that is success. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jennykushband.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennykushband/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennykushband/?ref=page_internal
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOW7rmDIER45-QnMZtE1-Qw

Image Credits
Spencer Swenson