Today we’d like to introduce you to Jason Cline.
Hi Jason, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Featherpocket began when I was living in Portland Oregon in 2016. I was walking to Jazz Fest at Cathedral Park and found some feathers, which I picked up and put in my pocket. Later that night, I was at a show wearing the same shirt. During a conversation with a friend, he remarked “I’m going to put a microphone in a banjo and be called banjomouth.” I looked down at my shirt and replied “and I’ll be Featherpocket.”
Portland is an important place for another reason – the day I arrived, I received a gig offer to play the Oregon Garden Brewfest as a member of the band Watertower. The only member who could do the show was their mandolin player, so we essentially pretended to be Watertower for the gig. Later that month, Kenny Feinstein (the founder of Watertower) made it up to Portland where we did a few shows together as a more complete version of the band. This will be important later.
I stayed in Portland that summer writing songs, and then we got evicted. With nowhere else to go, I returned home via a month long roadtrip down the coast of California. I stayed in LA for a week with Kenny, where we spent most of each day busking with a banjo and fiddle on the Glendale freeway exit.
I continued the project in North Carolina, where I recorded a full-length album and a number of singles. Featherpocket has gone through a number of iterations featuring around 30 different musicians. The music we made was expansive and genre-bending. Rock n roll, folk, bluegrass, and blues all coexisting.
In 2025, I decided to do a straight-up bluegrass album. I thought about how and where to do it, when the idea hit me: I’ll call up my old buddy Kenny and make the record in LA with Watertower as the backing band. We’ve released 3 singles from the project so far with 7 more to be released throughout the year.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
We’ve had so many lineup changes and periods of doldrums with not much going on throughout the years. Despite that, I’ve just kept on going – writing, recording, and playing shows in whatever format I could come up with. The common denominator among every successful artist or band is that they kept going.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am concerned principally with songwriting first. Nothing gets me going like hearing a song that is cohesive – it tells a story, shares an experience, reaches out and grabs you. The music intermeshes with the story. A truly great 4-minute song can be as impactful as reading an entire book. I think ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’ Banana album is a great example of this. They’re not the most virtuosic or technical musicians but it doesn’t matter. In fact, it wouldn’t work if they were. The songwriting is raw, honest, and transports you in another world.
I strive to do that with my songs. As to whether or not I achieve that, you can be the judge. My songs are my lived experience and stories that I want to tell.
Secondary to songwriting is musicianship – I play guitar, banjo, piano, harmonica, and sing. I spend a significant portion of every day working on these skills in tandem with songwriting. Featherpocket has been reborn as the Featherpocket Stringband – we play bluegrass, but the songwriting draws from a wide variety of genres and fits more into an indie/pop format than what you find in traditional bluegrass music. I call it AlternativeGrass. The vocals are also a departure from traditional bluegrass. I think we’re bringing the genre somewhere different.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Luck is preparation and timing. Everything good in my life has happened because I showed up somewhere in the real world and was prepared. If you want to have luck in the music industry, you have to be able to play, and then you have to network. I don’t attribute much to luck, you just have to show up and connect with people.
Pricing:
- If you want to book Featherpocket, send us an email at booking@featherpocket.com
Contact Info:
- Website: https://featherpocket.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/featherpocket/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@featherpocket4
