When I set out to record this album, the idea was to make a follow-up to the Brian Jasper Hull album Into the Blue. However, along the way, it became increasingly clear to me that this wasn’t a “solo” album. Considering the musical collaboration that has been developing over the course of over four years, it was only natural that the collective aspect of the project should be brought to the forefront. Hence the birth of the Jasper Grooves Collective.

From the start, this project has fostered a commitment to exploration: sonically, poetically, and stylistically. You might call it “exploratory soul” or “globetrotter soul” if you insisted that our style needed a name. Yes, we tend to dig deep into the archives of American roots music for inspiration, but we’re simultaneously always looking forward and outward, reaching to find new territories for sonic exploration. Making Bird Watching has also been a quest to find the unique sound that each particular song needs to embrace its full potential. Each song starts as a seed, growing but incomplete. Like words without melodies shouting out into the silence or melodies without words searching for their poetic embodiment, every story on this album inevitably found the accompaniment it needed: a reggae vibe, a hip-hop beat, an afrobeat groove, a candomblé-inspired rhythm pulsing like the heartbeat of a poem.

Jasper, the mineral that inspired this musical collective’s name, is a mineral born from fusion. Its diversity can be traced to the volcanic event at its origin. Jasper is an aggregate stone formed from multiple other minerals that were once fused by the intense heat of a lava flow. And our musical approach, like jasper, is synonymous with the surprising blends of color that come about when unexpected influences collide and engage in interplay.