Returning to his roots, reflecting on individual growth and throwing everything into producing a personally crafted debut body of work.

That is exactly the world you step into when experiencing Jack Gray's debut album ‘Swimming in Jeans’.

Pursuing his craft as a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from a young age, Jack has already made a name for himself, with international appearances and performing on stages opening for some of the world's biggest acts.

Before sitting down with Jack, I knew that there was a massive amount of anticipation leading up to the release, with loyal fans online ever so vocal about their excitement about his long-awaited debut album.

To the jealousy of many (I can only assume), I got to not only hear the album just over a month out from its release, but also talk to the mind behind it, joining me via Zoom from a caravan located in the Gold Coast.

Looking back across the last five to ten years, Jack said the album was a collection of “all the little random bullshit things” an outlet to “wrap up everything into a nice bow and move forward.” This saw him discovering a catalog of songs and ideas that still resonated with him, whilst writing other tracks from his current perspective.

“I wrote a ton of new songs in the last 12 months, but also had this whole body of writing from over the years.”

“Drawing from this, I had a clear sense of which ones stood the test of time, even though it'd been four or five years since I wrote it,” he said, resulting in older material capturing a younger version of Jack, reinvented to take on a different meaning years after he wrote it.

“These coming-of-age stories which had that melancholic feeling of growing up, it was really fun to rework those and bring them a new life, to have them feel new again.”

No song finds its presence in the world in the same way, whether it be developing a concept from lyrics in a journal, crafting a melody or just writing from a beat he felt inspired to make. Across the album, Jack said it was a real mix in terms of how inspirations struck.

What began as a literal depiction of a girl swimming in jeans went on to become the album's title and a title track, a personal reflection on the feeling of trying to stay afloat during uncertainty.

“It felt as though it could be a cool metaphor in trying to keep your head above water, which is what a lot of the last five years have been for me. Telling these stories about hardships, falling out of love and all these roller coaster moments.”

“A lot of those moments have felt like swimming in jeans, and so it just felt really poetic and something that people could remember.”

An ambitious decision for Jack was taking on the production for the album himself, one he admits came with moments of doubt.

His musicianship across the work features on the piano, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, synth, bass guitar, ukulele and drums, just to name a few.

“There were moments where I didn't think I was actually going to be able to do it,” he said, with a feeling of uncertainty and spending “unfortunately too much” time in the production process.

Despite the moments of doubt he came out the other side thrilled by what he had created.

“I'm really proud of the songs, I've grown a lot, and I feel like that person that set out to make this record would be proud too.”

That perfectionism is partly what made the production process so time consuming for Jack, wanting to explore all avenues of a song before “happily calling it finished.”

“This can be a gigantic waste of time, but sometimes you stumble across some magic,” he said.

But in his musical efforts of pulling out every instrument on the shelf he could find, it was one instrument he didn’t play that took him back to his start as a musician.

The pedal steel guitar, an instrument which can be heard scattered across several tracks on the album.

“I’m from Mackay, North Queensland, a little country town, and the only way to get on stage was to play these country music festivals. There was always a session band there and a pedal steel player, so I fell in love with the instrument from an early age.”

For Jack, the pedal steel became synonymous with his introduction to music, “It’s the signature country sound, and I actually grew up in a little country duo when I was in high school,” he said.

“I completely abandoned all my country roots,” he admitted, back when he first started making music.

But for Jack it was important that in creating his debut work, he returned to the time and place where his love of music began, finding his spark once again and creating a “full circle moment,” for himself.

Incorporating familiar sounds whilst discovering and developing his most emotive works yet at a time where country influences are ever so present in music.

While spending most of the production process alone, the people in his life were his starting point, bouncing off them for feedback on rough demos or even collaborating to write the tracks alongside one another.

“I spent most of the time making this record by myself because of how long it takes me to produce these songs, but in reality a lot of the songs had many hands on them.”

Extending his musical talents into vocal productions, with big choral arrangements and angelic vocal lines, his songs across the album “have a million layers.”

“‘Dumb Shit’ actually has the most and ‘Bedroom Floor’ has a bunch too. Normally, I just get whoever's around, whether it's my family, my girlfriend or my mates,” he said.

“I'll be like ‘can you just come here? I've got to get a part in real quick ’, and I make everyone sing the lines with me, and you get those big gang vocals, and it doesn't matter if they could sing or not.”

“At the end it feels as though it had been me the whole time, but it’s always started with friends.”

With the record set to be in the hands of fans soon he hopes they don’t get too mad at him for making them cry but more importantly, that the album can offer the same comfort to others that the music has offered him.

“I’ve had a lot of really sweet messages from people who have said these particular songs have gotten them through hardships and really tough times, which always means the world to me.”

For Jack, knowing his music can help someone through a difficult moment is perhaps the greatest achievement of all. “If these songs can do that, then that’s my job done.”