The OB lane

Although they admit to some “talking” over Instagram, the boys in Fashion Jackson say a full-fledged proxy war has not erupted over the use of their name.

“We claimed dibs,” jokes bassist Sterling Gietzen.

“The other Fashion Jackson is just a fashion blog by a girl named Amy Jackson,” explains guitarist/lead singer Eddy Allen.

But wasn’t she using it first? “That blog is just not as interesting as us,” says Allen. “We’re the real Fashion Jackson.”

The name came to them in OB’s Te Mana Café in 2016. “We wrote down names we thought were catchiest,” says Gietzen. “We were Electric Maria for two shows. For one show we were the Jones. We were sick of not having a name.”

Fashion Jackson, aged 20-23, also includes guitarist/vocalist Jake Nuffer and drummer Shawn Gardner. “We’re all from Ocean Beach,” says Gietzen. “We all went to Point Loma High except Jake, who went to Francis Parker.”

“I think of us a band from OB but we’ve never really felt truly accepted as an OB band,” admits Allen. “The OB music consumer is older and more conservative. They like hearing the same thing they’ve heard before. That’s why I think other OB bands like [reggae-rockers] Slightly Stoopid and the [classic rock-ish Band of] Gringos get more hometown acceptance. They stay in the OB lane.”

Not staying in any one lane is exactly what drives Fashion Jackson, creating their own gumbo that mixes in R&B, garage rock, and funk.

It’s worked. The fact that they grew a strong fan base led the Che Café cooperative to invite them to headline the first Che show in over a year when the all-age UCSD venue recently reopened.

The band came up at the same time that the Snykes, Fake Tides, and Bad Kids formed in the wake of the Frights’ successful surf-punk formula that was unleashed four years ago.

“We appreciate what the Frights did,” says Allen. “We were kind of an antithesis to all that. We come from a very, very different place. We are about blowing up genres. We appreciate all those bands, but if anything, we are a response to surf punk. We think every band should do its own thing. You don’t have to have a genre. People are starting to experiment. I think the scene is flourishing now.”

On Monday, July 23 Fashion Jackson releases a new single, “Cinnamon Burn.” Like their three EPs and two singles before, they were all home-studio produced by Allen, who also produced an album for local nu-rockers Nikola.

“I learned how to do it by trial and error,” Allen says about how he learned to be a producer. “You make mistakes if you over think it and try to come up with some intricate form of cultivation. On the other hand, you can’t just hit ‘record’ and go.”

Fashion Jackson appears Friday, July 20 at Soma with Jara, Kid Cadaver, PVKE (pronounced puke), Disco Shrine, Nikola, and Wizærd. They also appear Monday July 23 at the Casbah with MDRN HSTRY.