Jason Schmidt talks single “Growing Up” and his ambitions as a solo artist
Interview by Tiara Starks
Juggling a strenuous Broadway performance schedule and a solo career is something only few people dream about and can actually endure. One of those people is Jason Schmidt, a versatile artist whose latest release “Growing Up,” is now available to stream on Spotify.
Schmidt’s Chicago-based childhood served as the basis of his journey as a performer, and helped him to create a unique sound that’s all his own. It’s obvious that the multi-hyphenate not only has a good head on his shoulders but is passionate about evoking human feelings from his listeners. It’s that drive that led him to fan-favorite roles on the stage and screen such as Buddy Aldridge on Paramount+’s Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies or as Sodapop Curtis in the wildly popular and Tony-winning Broadway production of The Outsiders.
As listeners, we can assume that many sleepless nights, countless rehearsals, and trying to find peace in the otherwise relentless world of entertainment, are part of the deal of being an artist. It’s his continued exploration of storytelling as both a solo artist and ensemble member that truly defines him as a talent. Read on as Schmidt divulges the process of crafting a specific verse in “Growing Up,” how his real life experiences have played a large part in his career, performing live, and what a positive future looks like for him.
I went all the way back to some of your previous releases; Thinking of the [EPs] ‘Intrusive Thoughts’ and ‘Meet Me at Midnight’. I mentally made a Venn diagram of your music and you performing on Broadway in [The Outsiders]. What motivated you to pursue a career in musical theater, but also to release your own music?
Musical theater came pretty early in my life. I started around age 9. Before that, I acted and did little skits and stuff with my family, but it was at 9 that I first did a bigger community theater show, and I really loved it. For a long time, from 9 to 14, it was just fun—it was all about fun and friends. That's all it was. At 14, I almost quit to pursue basketball instead. I was tired of being made fun of for it and dealing with that kind of thing. Then, I did Les Mis my freshman year of high school, and it was the director I worked with and the cast around me that really changed my perspective on what theater could do, what art could do. It was such a powerful show, despite the fact that community theater was 8 to 18. We had people crying, people coming up to tell us how much the story meant to them and how much our telling of it meant to them. I realized that we all have some kind of search for a way to make an impact in life—a way we can matter in life.
I don’t think I realized that theater could be one of those things until that show. In that show, I realized, first of all, that it mattered to people. Second, I realized I had a knack and a talent for it. From that point on, it was the path for me. Music had been in my life even earlier—my grandma was a piano teacher. This [referring to painting on-camera] is actually the painting that was in her living room.
My parents let me bring [it] to New York. My parents are huge music lovers. My dad loves all the '70s and '80s rock and roll, and that’s what I listened to for a long time. I think music was something I really wanted in my life, and I wanted it in a big way, but I didn’t know how it fit. Musical theater was the first thing I found that I was good at, and I thought, "Okay, yes, I can do this."
When I went to college, I started writing music and experimenting with arranging things. I’m not sure what age I was—probably a little before high school—but I started writing a bit then. Honestly, I don’t even remember what those songs were anymore, but I loved writing. At the time, I didn’t think I was very good at it, and I didn’t see a clear path forward. I thought I needed to know more about music itself. In college, one of my best friends, who was also my roommate later on, became a huge influence on me.
He was releasing his first rap album during the first week of our freshman year. I was blown away by his ability to go after that. I started asking all sorts of questions about how he got the recordings, how he made the tracks—just everything. I was really interested in it. I told him I had written music, but I hadn't written much until I had finished. I would get a section I liked, but then I couldn’t match it with a section that felt just as good. He really pushed me to write all the time. I was so lucky because he was someone who was brutally honest with me from the start about all of my music—both the good and the bad. He definitely complimented things, and I think I had a knack for it from the beginning, but I still had a lot of work to do. He was very direct... he would tell me the honest truth when things weren’t good or when something didn’t make sense, and he kept pushing me. The big phrase he often used was, "What can you say that only you can say?" Not in the sense of trying to be different from others, but something that was deeply personal to you—something that was so you, the reason why people would want to listen, because it's a self-search.
I fell in love with the therapeutic process of songwriting. It feels very journalistic to me, and I use it to get through a lot of life situations—it’s helped me through many huge life events, like breakups, falling in love, and dealing with group disarray. That’s where songs like 'Little Blue World' came from, and other moments like that. From there, I started writing all the time and wrote a lot. Eventually, he came around and said, "Now you’ve got to release it. This is part of the process." I was like, "I don’t really think it's that good." He said, "Yeah, but it doesn’t matter." He taught me how to be a songwriter by staying true to the craft. You’re doing it for the craft of writing, not for an audience.
The first two releases were really important for me. I had written so much and wanted to take the next step in the process—producing and recording it. It didn’t matter to me at all whether people listened to it or not. I’m grateful for that mindset because I still carry it with me. Now that I’m more involved in the music industry, I understand that how much people listen to it does matter, but for me, it still comes from a place of just loving the process of writing music and the craft itself.
You grew up outside of Chicago in the suburbs, and there is an influence of music there and theater as well and being aware that there's a music scene. So it sounds like that you were doing things solo on your own, and then you had your friend. Were there any specific influences or artists that you drew from in order to develop your sound?
Yeah, absolutely! A friend of mine gave me a book called Steal Like an Artist pretty early in my musical journey. It talks about how artists of any kind—this particular artist is a painter—find their unique artistry by identifying what they like in other people's work and incorporating that into their own. I feel like all my favorite artists, whether you can hear it or not, are present in my sound.
It was the rock and roll vibe that I gravitated toward most. That definitely makes its way into the undertones of my music. Then, I got really obsessed with artists like Daniel Caesar, Rex Orange County, and others in that vein—Backseat Lovers, Billie Eilish, Lizzy McAlpine. These artists have a bit more of an R&B, soulful sound, and I think that influences my vibe as well.
As someone who's a big proponent of new music, it was really cool to just go and listen to it and then look at the lyrics of “Growing Up,” specifically the verse that I really like: There's no one in this time zone / who has known me for more than a year, so I feel free to be myself / Though I don't know what that might look like, it's sure not like anyone else.
I really was struck by that. Walk me through what you were thinking when you were writing it.
I had just finished the out-of-town run of The Outsiders in San Diego. I was moving to LA to live with my best friend, Maximo, and we were going out there to pursue the TV and film scene. Very shortly after we arrived, the strike happened, so there was no TV and film scene to dive into.
The idea of writing “Growing Up” was something I was thinking about while sitting in my apartment in San Diego, with boxes packed around me and suitcases ready to go. I was about to drive up to LA, and it was the third or fourth major project I had done in the past two or three years. You enter these beautiful communities of people, whether it was Grease [Rise of the Pink Ladies], [The] Outsiders, or college. You make all these friends. I made so many beautiful friends. In each place, there were at least two or three people who felt like, "Oh, these are my people." I wished I could take them everywhere with me. But that's just not how life works. A mentor once told me when I was younger that growing up is about missing someone everywhere you go.
[My mentor] is a part of the theater world. He stage manages, he directs. His name is Matt Silar. That started to resonate with me. It was something that stuck with me at the time, and it resonated with me later because I was more in the life that he was living at the time. I realized that, no matter where I go now, there's always going to be people that I wish were in that place with me. Especially in California at the time, I was moving in with my friend Maximo, who didn't know me for past a year at that point. Nobody else, the outsiders, knew me for more than a year. There's something beautiful about that to me because I feel like I'm an ever-growing, changing person like everyone else is. Self-discovery is a big thing for me. Post-college was a big evolution period. It was, ‘Okay, now I'm an adult.’ What does that look like? Who do I want to be as an adult? What friends do I want to keep? What are my values? Who do I want people to see me as? The beautiful part of nobody knowing me is that I get to choose that very clearly. In Chicago, I can return and be whoever I was or whoever I am now, but people have known me since I was a child—since before I was even a child, really. All those failures and successes stay with you, and there's an element of change being hard when people know who you are. I’m grateful that I traveled so much in my early 20s and have continued that track, because I feel like it makes the evolution a little easier. It gives me the time to be who I feel I truly am. Then, when I go back to a place, it feels more legitimate because I can say, "I've lived that version of myself more concretely."
I was thinking about going to LA, and I realized, "Damn, nobody on this side of the country really knows me or knows who I've been, so I get to be who I am." At first, it was a melancholic thought, but then it shifted into something positive because I was excited to explore this new version of myself.
Analyzing “Growing Up,” it definitely makes sense with the context. You can move around, and people might know you as something that maybe you don't want to be known for anymore. You can't really change people's perspective of you. You just have to live life the way you want to live it.
I noticed on your Instagram, you have micro music videos for your songs. Do you plan on making full visualizers, particularly for “Growing Up” or your other releases?
I have some music planned for Q1 and next year and I have a whole music video planned for one of those songs, and I'm very excited about it.
You're going to be performing during Christmas time; Shifting out of performing on a stage in the context of a character and stepping into your own musical persona, how do you prepare for that and moving around [when you tour] as you go to LA and all these other spaces?
A lot of it comes down to preparation and rest. I feel like I ran myself into the ground this past month—not in a literal sense, but I definitely felt it. It was like, "Okay, I’ve got to get more sleep, drink more water, eat better." I realized that I’m doing a lot, and if I don’t take care of myself, my body starts to crumble a little bit. I can push myself to do the extra things, but I also have a commitment to my team and to the outsiders, and I want to be there for them—whether that’s the performers or the artists involved.
The persona I present outside of performing, for the people who are watching, is something I’m still figuring out, which I’m excited about. I’m still very early in my live performance career, and it feels similar to that stage of growing up where I didn’t know what things looked like, but I knew it wouldn’t look like anyone else’s. I’m starting to piece together who I want to be on stage. I have a vision of what I want people to feel when they hear my music and experience my performances at my shows.
To me, the most powerful thing I get from music is nostalgia. I had a friend over recently, and I was showing him a demo of something I’m working on. He said, "Yeah, man, I was really transported by that. It made me think of something from my childhood—a story from back then." He added, "I don’t want you to think I wasn’t listening." I told him, "No, to me, that’s the most powerful thing music can do: it reminds you of your life. It gives you pictures and stories of things you’ve been through." If you can do that with a song, that’s the most beautiful thing and if you can do that in a live performance, with a group of people, I think that’s even more powerful.
I’m excited to continue shaping what that looks like for me, especially in terms of how it relates to [The] Outsiders. I get to be completely myself on stage with my music, which can be scarier at times because there’s nothing to hide behind. As an actor, you’re playing somebody else, and there’s a certain detachment between you as a person and the character you're portraying.
Ideally, there is no detachment, and the audience believes you're just the character. That's the best thing you can do as an actor. With music, however, everything you say and do up there is you. They're seeing you. They're believing it’s you. There's also something deeply spiritual about that for me: the ability to share yourself so completely and so rawly with an audience.
I’ve always said that writing music can be hard for me because it’s difficult to share parts of myself with other people. One of the most powerful things early on in my music journey was when I would sit alone and write a song, then show it to someone. It felt like telling them something they didn’t know about me, even if it was a very close friend. It was sharing a part of myself they had never seen—something I didn't know how to simply communicate to them. For me, playing and sharing my music has become a way of being known. And the ultimate goal of that is for other people to feel known and seen by the songs as well.
It is interesting to hear you talk about The Outsiders and having [the ability] to hide behind that character, at least when interacting with fans. How do you go about engaging with fans and introducing yourself and your music outside of performing out of character?
Innately, I’m a storyteller. What I’ve found that I love most is sharing the stories of how I wrote the song and what it’s about. I feel like that gives people a chance to relate to it even more because I believe we’re all interconnected, and we’re not alone in our experiences. When someone shares a story that’s even remotely similar to something you’ve experienced, it helps you see yourself more in the song they’re singing. The more you see yourself in it, the more impactful it can be for you. So, for me, the favorite part is telling the stories of my life up there.
As we enter the new year, what's next for you as an artist? What does the future look like for Jason Schmidt as a singer-songwriter and as an actor?
I have so many plans and ambitions. I’ve always been that way. I’ve written so much music—about 40 to 50 songs—and my goal is to get them out there, to fully realize them, and to continue writing. As I get more involved in the music industry, I’m doing more sessions with one-off producers, writing from scratch, and making some really cool stuff. For me, it’s all about sharing more music.
I have a lot to give this next year, and I’m excited to open the floodgates on all the music I’ve been saving up over the past few years and finally share it with people. That’s the big part for me—releasing all the music I’ve stored up.
On the acting side, I’ve got so many plans and goals as well. I feel like I’m at a point where I’m going to let the spirit lead. We’ll have some exciting opportunities to explore after The Outsiders. I’m really excited for whatever comes next, whether it’s TV, film, or something else—that’s my main hope. There's some cool theater projects coming up over the next year that I think would be super awesome to be a part of. Wherever I'm taken, as long as it's a good story, a powerful story, an entertaining story, I'm excited to be a part of it and delve into it.
A good story as an audience member, that's all you want out of entertainment; Really excited for your music that’s coming out and excited to see a full visualizer soon. I'm going to hold you to that.
We're making it happen!
You can see Jason as Sodapop Curtis in The Outsiders, which is currently running on Broadway. To see if he’s touring in a city near you, visit: .jasonschmidtofficial.com/tour
IG: @jason.s.schmidt
TikTok: @jason.s.schmidt
