We recently had the chance to sit down and talk with Jeremiah Jensen – Crum Commons RA, journalist and drummer for Blue Apollo. And we talked about it all, folks. Check out Jeremiah’s reflections on his SMU experience, spanning music, his job and thoughts as he heads towards graduation this month.
HCSMU: Let’s start off easy. Can you tell us your major, year and hometown?
Jeremiah Jensen: I’m a senior, majoring in journalism, minoring in psychology and photography and I am from Pflugerville, Texas. Before that, I lived in Oklahoma City.
HCSMU: What student organizations are you currently involved with?
JJ: Right now, just Beta Upsilon Chi (BYX), a Christian fraternity on SMU’s campus.
HCSMU: You also spend a lot of time playing music with your band, Blue Apollo. Can you describe your sound?
JJ: We have indie, pop, blues and jazz influences. Do you like Stevie Wonder?
HCSMU: Okay.
JJ: Do you like John Mayer?
HCSMU: Sure.
JJ: Do you like Maroon 5?
HCSMU: Eh, less.
JJ: Then you’d love Blue Apollo!
HCSMU: How did you guys get started?
JJ: I met the lead singer, Luke Nasser, my freshmen year in this class called Foundations of Musical Acoustics. The teacher passed around a sheet that said “put down what instrument you play” and Luke saw that I was a drummer. He came and sat next to me the next class and was like, “Hey, we should jam sometime!” So, we did, and we became friends. Then one day after class he was like “I want to show this song I wrote.” So I went up to his room, and he played me his song called “Avalanche” that’s on our first EP. I wasn’t expecting anything. When your freshman year friend tells you they wrote a song about a girl, you think, “You’re just trying to discover yourself and…it’ll be cute.” But it was actually a really good song.
Over the summer we figured out we were both living in Austin at the same time and decide to write some of the things we were just messing around with back in school. We recorded three songs, listened back to them, and were like “Wow. We should be a band.” Then we spent three hours trying to name ourselves and came up with Blue Apollo.
HCSMU: Blue Apollo- where did that come from?
JJ: After three hours of going through stupid names like The Cartographers, The Panoramics…I think Blue Typhoon was in there somewhere…I don’t even know. We had been saying that we should just put a color in front of a word, like The Black Keys and The White Stripes. So we decided to start with the color blue, and Luke was watching a documentary or something about the Apollo missions. Suddenly he was like “Blue…Apollo. Blue Apollo?”
The more theoretical reason for the name is that it sounds kind of like a jazz club, which reflects our blues and jazz influences. Apollo is the god of music and light. And…it just sounds nice. We had our first show in September 2015, and the rest is recent history.
HCSMU: The band has gained some popularity, like you guys are not some small campus band. Has that affected your psyche? Like do you feel anything when you see someone with a Blue Apollo laptop sticker or catch a glimpse of yourself in a music video?
JJ: I don’t really think about it until someone asks about it. We are doing well and we make good music, but I don’t feel like we’ve made it yet. We have a lot more coming down the line.
HCSMU: Speaking of “down the line”- you’re graduating this month. What’s been your favorite SMU memory or experience? Any funny RA stories you can put on the record?
JJ: There was something recently that happened! I went to Homebar, and there was this girl there that used to live in Crum. We were just walking past each other in the crowd, and I was just being nice and said, “Hey.” And she goes “Oh, hi Jeremiah. I’m glad to see you know how to go out. I didn’t know that was a thing you knew how to do. I’m glad you know how to rat on people too. You suck, Jeremiah.”
So, as you can see, I’ve made a huge impact on campus. People love what I do as an RA. [Laughing] That probably puts in perspective what type of RA people think I am.
HCSMU: What are your reflections on graduating? What are you going to miss?
JJ: I will miss Crum Commons. It’s going to be weird not having people sitting outside my door for me to talk to. If that happened at my apartment complex, it would be super weird. Not having a place where people need me- I guess that’ll be super interesting.
HCSMU: Is that really important for you, feeling needed?
JJ: Yeah! I love feeling needed. It makes me feel like a special snowflake. Things I won’t miss: homework, being on call, dealing with drunk people- well that’s just present everywhere but I won’t be responsible for their wellbeing anymore.
HCSMU: If there is one thing you hope you’re leaving behind as part of your legacy, what would that be?
JJ: I hope that if I leave anything behind, it’s somehow that I helped my friends and the people I came into contact with deal with life. I hope that I’m leaving SMU better than I found it, even if it’s just in the lives of people that I’m close to.
Interested in Blue Apollo? Check out their website here.
And check out one of their songs: