Jackson Culp and The Company Are Not Exactly Making Music From the Middle of the Road

Jackson Culp is from Northeast Louisiana, plays guitar, writes the songs, produces them too, and for almost ten years now he’s been chipping away at a sound that’s hard to pin down and, once you hear it, impossible to forget. There’s a darkness to it. A groove underneath that darkness. Psychedelic haze, theatrical stuff, characters that show up in the songs like they’re recurring cast members. He’s got a name for the whole thing: vampire rock.

It fits. The music can pull you in one minute, or unsettle you the next. There’s rock in there, some funk and soul in the low end, a psychedelic wash over the top of it, and a sense of place that’s unmistakably Southern. But what stands out is that this isn’t a genre he borrowed. It’s one he made.

Jackson Culp and The Company have a new single coming, “You Own Me,” due out October 23. Culp wrote it on acoustic guitar earlier this year, and there’s still some of that same psychedelic thread running through it that shaped the last record. The guitar comes and goes through the song, disappears, comes back. Synths are in there too, but used sparingly, like he doesn’t trust himself to overdo it. The frontman, who plays all the instruments on the song, is keeping the rest of the story close to the chest for now.

One thing worth noting: Kris Crummett mastered the track. If that name means anything to you, he’s worked in the world of emo, pop-punk and alt-rock with bands like Sleeping With Sirens, Dance Gavin Dance, Sum 41, Alesana and more.

If you’re just finding out about this band, Jackson Culp and The Company, that’s fine, but you should know it’s not really a starting point. It’s more like walking into the middle of a movie.

There are three albums, and they connect. THE LAGOON, which came out in 2021, is about two people stuck together in some kind of isolation they couldn’t quite name. Next EVERYONE’S FAVORITE VAMPIRE in 2023 is where a charismatic character starts to show his darker side. Then WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SKULL BOY?, which dropped this past January, reveals the uglier end of that whole arc. Skull Boy, the character, used to be powerful. Now he’s falling apart, caught up with forces he doesn’t fully understand. It’s less a concept album and more just how Culp thinks. The story isn’t decoration on top of the music. It’s the frame the music hangs on.

Monroe, LA-based Culp does basically everything himself, writing, recording, and producing it all out of his own studio at home. He builds the songs in Ableton, then runs them through an old TEAC reel-to-reel to master. That’s probably why the music feels so authentic. A lot of artists slap a concept onto their music after the fact because it tests well, but this doesn’t feel like that. The sound, the story, the characters, the whole look of it, all came up together, and it’s executed remarkably well.

So far it’s working, at least by the numbers. Culp’s music has racked up 571,421 YouTube all-time views, 137,043 TikTok likes, 157,238 Spotify streams, and 284,787 Instagram views just in the last 90 days. Press has started paying attention too. Shreveport’s News Star called it “riveting music and electric entertainment.” Louisiana Life Magazine described the vampire rock sound as “a mix of sultry soul, stabbing guitar riffs,” which hits the nail on the head. Belmont Star threw out comparisons to Nick Cave, Queens of the Stone Age, the Misfits, Arctic Monkeys, Tame Impala, but landed on the idea that Culp’s got “its own logic and its own emotional temperature.”  And Breakline Press put it about as well as anyone could: “For Jackson Culp, music isn’t just something you hear. It’s something you step into.”

Culp and his band are about to prove that live, too. October’s stacked for Jackson Culp and The Company:

October 2: Hurricane Alley, headlining, Bossier City, LA

October 3: El Paso, Monroe, LA

October 10: Enoch’s Irish Pub, Monroe, LA

October 22: Flying Heart Brewing, Bossier City, LA

October 23: Sundown Tavern in Ruston, LA, the same night the single drops, opening for Blue Widow

October 29: Downtown Monroe Main Street’s “Fright Night 5K”, Flying Tiger Brewery, LA

October 30: Flying Heart Brewing, Natchitoches, LA

Jackson Culp and The Company takes all that studio atmosphere and put it on a stage where people can actually stand inside it. They’ve already shared a bill with Grammy-nominated pop-punk band Bowling for Soup at Green Street Monster Fest, a festival that described Culp’s sound as a place “where eerie beauty and emotional truth collide.”

There’s no clean way to categorize what Culp does, and it doesn’t seem like he wants there to be. At the end of the day, he’s not trying to explain where he fits. He just built his own spot and started operating from there.

To keep up with the band, visit their website and Instagram page.