Jackson Scribner Is Still Finding Out What His Songs Can Hold.
Four years after his debut, the North Texas songwriter returned with Depression Kids, a record shaped by family, restless imagination and the freedom to let other musicians change the plan
– WORDS BY CJ • PHOTOS COURTESY OF JACKSON SCRIBNER
For a long time, Jackson Scribner thought “The Forest” was finished. It had verses, a groove and spaces filled with wordless vocals. He imagined the movement would carry the whole thing. Stuart Sikes, producer of Scribner’s second album, heard a missing piece. “When we presented it to Stuart, he immediately said, ‘It needs a chorus, yeah it needs a chorus,’” Scribner remembers. He and his brother Levi wrote one in fifteen minutes and recorded it. “You could just feel it had more power than before,” he says. A song he’d spent so long living with was transformed by somebody who hadn’t been inside his head while he wrote it. What might have felt like an intrusion became an example of why making a record with other people matters.
Scribner’s introduction to recording had been almost the opposite experience. He’d never been inside a studio before making his self-titled debut in 2021, assembled in a two-week burst from songs he’d only recently begun writing. He was twenty, and the attention that followed came before he had much experience of what an album demanded. “I think there’s something unique about a first time experience,” he says. But it didn’t give him a repeatable process. “Coming into my second record, I felt like I wanted to take the next step towards growing as an artist and felt like I had a lot more intention in writing the songs and creating an atmosphere through the music.”
Depression Kids, released in September 2025 on State Fair Records, took four years to arrive. Scribner wanted to move more slowly. “I wanted us to take our time in making decisions when working through the songs and wanted to feel like we were exploring as much as we could while still staying on track,” he explains. That balance is harder to achieve than it sounds. “There’s always a little pressure in wanting it to sound the way you envisioned it sounding,” he says. “At the same time, you have to surrender to the process sometimes and sort of ride the wave.” The title track’s lyric, worked out among sticky notes scattered on his bedroom floor, is an apt expression of following an idea before knowing where it leads.
Scribner doesn’t describe songwriting as translating a complete story into verse. He moves among phrases, images and people who may have little connection to his life, waiting for something to suggest itself. “So much of my writing process is really just wandering around and playing with words and phrases,” he says.
“If there’s something that needs to come out, that’s the best way to find it. But if not, then just exploring new ideas and scenes in my head.” The fragments give his songs a sense of having stumbled into a life already in progress. “If you let your mind wander, where would it end up? What scene would it paint? Who’d be there? There’s so many possibilities.”
Depression Kids is concerned less with one person’s suffering than with the distance people can feel from one another while experiencing similar emotions. Scribner was drawn to the contradiction between isolation and commonality. “I had really explored the idea of depression being such a commonality in human nature, and that idea has such a strange way of making me feel united with people rather than having the opposite effect,” he says. He recalls the childhood desire to belong to a group, to find others who understood you, and turns that instinct inside out. “To me, depression is a club all of humanity belongs in. Only everyone is allowed in.” It’s his metaphor for discovering you aren’t the only person who has felt cut off. “It’s something that can bring us together and connect us on a deeper level if we allow it to.”
That search for company surfaces in “Mr. Moon,” which addresses the night sky as an old acquaintance whose return isn’t welcome. Levi wrote most of it. “I do love the idea that the moon’s sort of the only thing to talk to and that’s part of what makes it unpleasant to see again,” Jackson says. “But it still carries this heavy connection with the moon because of the weight of what’s being felt.” When there’s no one else around, even a familiar object can become something to speak to. The brothers recognize the same emotional territory without needing to approach it in precisely the same way.
Music has always been part of the Scribner family. Jackson grew up in Melissa, Texas, learning guitar alongside his father Clint and his brothers. He speaks about Levi’s musicianship with obvious pleasure. “I’ve mostly worked with Levi in the studio which is always a lot of fun because I love watching him work,” he says. “He has such a great ear and knows how to translate his thoughts and vision really well.” Clint brings assurance earned from a life around music. “He has a ton of confidence in what he hears and what ideas he has to offer,” Jackson says. For “Train Song,” a co-write between the three, Clint wrote the entire second verse on the back porch. The family gatherings where Jackson learned music have become part of how his records are made.
The family influence extends beyond Texas country and Americana. Scribner absorbed what both parents played, then stayed awake late working through entire records on his own. “There’s something about being completely open to a song you’re about to hear for the first time,” he says. “I really attached myself to the way a song made me feel and what kind of scene it put me in.”
That openness matters more to him than genre allegiance. “What can I bring from tradition that’s rooted in me and how can I use it to stretch the boundaries and reach for new things?” The music he grew up with isn’t something to defend from change. It’s material he can keep working with.
On Depression Kids, that means a larger canvas than the mainly acoustic debut. Sikes and players including pedal steel guitarist Kim Herriage, drummer Jeff Ryan and bassist Tony Hormillosa built arrangements with room for individual ideas. Scribner sometimes hears a part while writing, but much of the pleasure comes after he brings a song to the band.
“A lot of it though is understanding what the band brings to the table,” he says. “I love to present new things to them and just watch them each add something artistically. This record was extremely collaborative and that’s my favorite way to work.” The instruments can redirect a song’s emotional movement, just as a fifteen-minute chorus redirected “The Forest.”
More than a year after its release, Scribner has found new possibilities in performing the album. “I think the biggest thing we discovered live is how big of a sound we could create with this record,” he says. “It has a lot of moving parts and different tones that make it unique. So I think live, it was cool to push those boundaries a little bit.” His pride in it hasn’t stopped him wondering what to do differently next time. Writing moves through unpredictable periods of activity and silence. “There’s times where things spark and there’s times where I just have to walk away and come back.” After years of assembling songs from scenes and stray observations, he’s curious about a more continuous narrative. “I’d love to try and write something that does follow more of a story and try and challenge myself in writing songs that way.”
