Scruffpuppie
The second thing that struck me was his subscriber count: over 533K a the time of this entry. Leland Sklar has 131K. Apples to Lettuce, of course, but numbers is numbers.
Jeremiah James Shurbet (aka, Scruffpuppie) is 19 years old, based out of Appleton, WI. He posts from various rooms in his home and often from a spartan, echoing room he calls ‘the dungeon’. Active for a couple of years now, his following perfectly complements his demeanor: a brooding, angst-ridden, post-faithful segment quarantining from bloody everybody in a network we call social.
The posts are varied, invariably a song or group of songs with or without blocks of confessional pedestrian narrative. JJ knows exactly what audience he’s talking to and exactly how to talk to them. And how to stay engaged: wired across every platform, he’s a renaissance man-child of modern media, truly an omnichannel master of feeds. His followers are equally engaged, as evidenced by not only the hundreds-per-post of fawning comments but the quality of their sentiment. There are masses of minions.
His posts date back three years. Interlaced with a few vignettes of sk8board reps and domestic voyeurism, the overwhelming majority are simple voice-plus-guitar covers of indie-plus artists. I’d emphasize the ‘plus’; you’ll find Roy Orbison and Elvis punched into the requisite Bon Iver and Nirvana entries. Here, his Alt credentials are undeniable. The instrumental component is minimalist, dark and slow. The voice is pitchy and in that golden (leaden?) tessitura that invites the glottal attacks and vocal fry that is the very purr of suburban adolescents. Young man, we like the cut of your jib.
But the jewels herein are the original songs, and there are over a dozen as of this date. They’re tiny, no more than three minutes, and indeed a couple are less than two. The small scale has more to do with his minimalist style, both of form (a single, elongated verse, a non-contrasting section of swelling volume and higher range, a murmuring outro) and of content (two-chord progressions and a narrow range of melody), than any deliberate design. For the time being, Scruffpuppie is aware that his free agency on social platforms is perfectly suited to these sizes. On more traditional media – an album of $1.29 songs – this dough will have to rise. In the meantime, don’t dismiss the low-budget production. Last year’s Ego garnered 2.3M views. That’s pretty rare air.
The songs that JJ is intending to position are attended by an ‘official video’, (more) professionally shot and edited, the audio recording augmented with vocal and instrumental overdubs. They keep, though, the unvarnished mood of the original dungeon demos.
I’ll call one out for special attention without saying too much (which I already have anyway).
Clueless was recorded a year ago, and features the same hallmarks of mood and melody that I outlined above, but here it’s the guitar accompaniment that stands out. The open tuning (a neck-warping D-A-D-F#-A-D) affords the player some pretty interesting sonorities with a minimum of effort. The creative tap-slide in the right hand brings sharp relief to the ambling verse that uses a more traditional strum but exploits the established left-hand pattern in several more positions. The result is an accompaniment that’s considerably richer than most of his other originals. JJ is no virtuoso, but he uses what he’s got.
Oh, the first thing that struck me? It’s all there but the record deal. And that’s coming. You heard it here first.
