Almost A Dirty Dozen with JASON PAUL and SASHA SIROTA from GXTP – August 2023

According to a recent press release: “While the nation fought and scrambled for supplies upon the news of the devastating COVID outbreak in 2020, three artists came together to create. Made up of Jason Paul, Sasha Sirota, and Triple Sixx, GXTP formed to not only provide us with unparalleled writing and musicianship, but to be an almost reflection of society unto itself. GXTP are an abbreviation for what the news and communities placed the most importance on: guns and toilet paper. The gripping new single boasts powerful lyrics and an adrenaline-fueled sound. The song takes listeners on an exhilarating journey of redemption and defiance.” We get Jason and Sasha to discuss new music, influences, and more.

1. Tell us a little about your latest release.  What might a fan or listener not grab the first or second time they listen through?  Are there any hidden nuggets you put in the material or that only diehard fans might find?

Sasha: It is a song that kind of pushes the boundaries of what a normal single would be. It has a very haunting vibe to the music which fits well with the lyrics and takes you on the journey of someone being wanted. It’s very visual about coyotes snapping at your heels. It is one of our favorite songs in the whole project.

Jason: Out of our EP, it has so many amazing different elements to it. Musicianship Sasha did an amazing job with the chords not having valleys and peaks. It has a lot of facets to it.

2. What got you into music, and can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a musician?

Sasha: Well, my parents weren’t musicians, but they were huge music fans so, my first concert was like, Grateful Dead when I was three months old. My mom was always playing music around the house. So, you know, sure that definitely kind of greased the wheels for me to get into it. And then when I was six, I just really know what started, but I really wanted a guitar. So, like, begged my mom to get a guitar, and they got me a little guitar and my parents got me a guitar and I started playing Green Day and Nirvana songs and trying to write my own stuff and then when I was eight, I got a drum set and started a little band with my brother and some friends and just kind of kept going from there. I was very fortunate to catch the music bug very early and I was so young it’s kind of hard for me to really tell you the ‘aha’ moment when I realized I wanted to do it because basically as far back as I can remember I’ve wanted it so it’s just kind of always been embedded in me and I went 17, went to Musicians Institute in Hollywood for percussion and started producing and it kind of just snowballed from there. It’s about an engineer, right? Started singing. So I was like 19 because we couldn’t find a singer for my band. You know, it had just kind of been a progression from there. I met Jason. I was like 23 in Las Vegas. We started working together and I learned a lot from our time together. And all the stuff we worked on. It’s just been a wild ride. I’m very fortunate to have found music so early.

Jason: Oh, man. The moment I realized I wanted to be a musician, I found a Stevie Wonder tape. I was outside of my apartment building when I was about eight years old and I wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music, anything that wasn’t like Christian music. So I would sneak in the middle of the night and listen to this cassette tape, ya know, in a cassette player headphones, the whole deal. And I was listening to the cassette on two sides: “I Just Called To Say, I Love You” and “Send Her My Love.” And at that point, I just felt like the way that music, the way that Stevie Wonder’s music made me feel, it just made me feel so like it took me, it took me away and it made me feel special. I never really felt like that before because I wasn’t allowed to listen to anything outside of Christian music. It was really amazing for me to be able to get opened up to Stevie Wonder because then that’s what made me want to be in the music business and made me just want to do anything to do with music, I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to do, I just know I wanted to be a part of music, wanted to be a part of making people feel the way that music made me feel. I wanted to be on the other end, at the giving end of that experience. So that’s what that was my first inspiration of like really wanting to, you know, to do music or have anything to do with music at all.

3. Building on that, is there a specific song, album, performer, or live show that guided your musical taste?

Sasha: I mean, there’s been a lot. When I was younger, it was a lot more like, what I said earlier.. I started listening to Nirvana and Green Day, so for sure, Nevermind, it’s like an amazing pivotal album for me and I was very influenced by that, but then at a certain point, I started making so much of my own music, so I kind of stopped listening to as much that was out there and just kind of focused on what I was doing. So it’s a lot more of what would inspire me back then. Those two artists were big for me.

Jason: No, there weren’t any artists that I grew up listening to and studying.

4. If you could call in any one collaborator to do a song with, who would it be, and why?

Sasha: I would really love to, for this project, write something with Dave Grohl.

Jason: I’m going to have to say Chris Martin from Coldplay.

5. What is your favorite activity when out of the studio and/or not on tour? What do you like to do to unwind?

Sasha: It’s kind of lame but I watch T.V. Hahaha.

Jason: I play tennis but that’s pretty much it.

6. How would you describe your music to someone who’d never listened to you before? What is the one comparison a reviewer or fan has made that made you cringe or you disagreed with?

Sasha: I would have to describe it as something that has moments that make you feel nostalgic about rock that came when it was pushing the boundaries and doing new things. And then in that, it’ll also stay true to pushing the boundary and doing new things where it’ll have sounds in it that you aren’t expecting to be in that type of music and that you haven’t actually heard before. So, it’s going to make you want to bang your head and it’s also going to make you think, introspectively, because the lyrics are so poetic and wonderful. Thanks to Triple Six. And definitely going to take you some places that you didn’t expect.

Jason: Yeah, and to add to that, I would say GXTP, this music is like, if, um, Baby Jesus and Fergie and Marvin Gaye had a threesome and made a baby.

Sasha: Adding to that because it just happened when we played our last show in Cannes. Someone’s like, “Man, you guys got a real Linkin Park thing going on.” I was like “Huh?”

7. When was the last time you were starstruck and who was it?

Jason: Hell yeah, I was definitely just recently star-struck.. I was in the Bahamas for the 4th of July and Lionel Messi was walking by me. I was taking a break from tennis and I got struck because I was like, “Oh shit, that’s him”, and I don’t feel that about a lot people.

8. What is the best part of being a musician? If you could no longer be a musician for whatever reason, what would be your dream job?

Sasha: I think the best part about being a musician is being able to get out of things by saying, “Man, I was in the studio all night, you know, sorry.”

Jason: And that’s a very acceptable, justifiable excuse.

Sasha: Yep. know, because it’s not a nine to five. It’s like you work in time. it’s like, you know, you could always be in the studio, which usually we are also. There’s that. And then if I couldn’t do it, 100% shrimp boat captain.

Jason: If I couldn’t do it I would just be selling water, be a waterboy like Bobby Boucher, the ultimate Waterboy. Or a professional tennis player.

9. What is one question you have always wanted an interviewer to ask – and what is the answer? Conversely, what question are you tired of answering?

Sasha: I would love for an interviewer to ask me if I was hungry. Nice. But, really, I haven’t been interviewed enough to be tired of asking to answer any question.

Jason: I want them to ask me when my birthday is, cause I love birthday’s. I think I am tired of answering what got me into making music.

10. Looking back over your career, is there a single moment or situation you feel was a misstep or you would like to have a “do over,” even if it didn’t change your current situation?

Sasha: Nope. Every mistake has led us to where we are right now and we like where we are.

11. If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording sessions for any one record in history, which would you choose – and what does that record mean to you?

Sasha: I think I would say “Yesterday” by the Beatles, because, like, I know that Paul McCartney said when he wrote the melody, he was saying “Scrambled Eggs” (in place of “Yesterday”). I’d like to see that moment when it turned into “Yesterday”, plus that’s the most covered song of all time. It’s just iconic, so I have to go with that.

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Category: Interviews