As Sarcastic Sounds, Toronto-born producer Jeremy Fedryk was thrust into the major label system as a solo act signed to Columbia Records following several lo-fi and/or hip-hop-assisted hits in the early 2020’s. His skillset was based on intuition, a natural sense of auditory proficiency, and a true tastemaker’s mindset. However, despite his successes, Fedryk ultimately did not find himself akin to the expectations of the corporate entity.

Once harmoniously departed from the label, Fedryk, an independent artist once again, shifted gears to more Americana and folk-focused work, contributing to songs like “I am not who I was” by Chance Peña and, soon after, the smash hit “Daylight” by relative newcomer David Kushner. Described as a life-changing record, Fedryk doubled down on this new sonic venture, going on to contribute to songs and projects by the likes of Hayd, Peña, Anson Seabra, and Brenn!.

This past fall, Fedryk released this yard has aged, the first EP of a new artistic moniker called jerm’s best day. The project, featuring the standout “wash away,” explored Fedryk’s emotional culpability and impressively expansive range. He quickly followed up with a three-track project under the jbd moniker, just when I found my voice, I lost it, out now. Standout track “hell of a year” amplifies the culpability of its predecessor EP with its devastatingly unvarnished bridge: “I think I deserve love/ But if I can’t have that, then I’ll take peace/ And if I can’t have that, I’ll just take anything but this/ I’d give anything to just be free.”

In anticipation of the release, Fedryk opened up about his artistic journey with a four-part essay on Substack, taking readers from his origins to present day. Through this medium, he openly discusses, often in self-deprecating fashion, his relationship with various aspects of his artistry. Throughout our conversation, edited for brevity below, Fedryk explained this willingness to identify his weaknesses while vehemently acknowledging the artistic characteristics that propelled him into the belly of the music industry.

In a post on Substack, you spoke about finding a narrative. Do you think your label ever tried hard enough to find a narrative for you?

jerm’s best day: I don’t think it’s necessarily their job to do that. Nobody but yourself as the artist can give you that, so I do think that that was mainly on me and had more to do with the music I was putting out. I was also pretty deeply insecure at that time. Too insecure to really commit to owning my artistry, or owning a story, because you have to stand by it. I have my qualms with labels in general, but that wasn’t one of them. If I’m giving them nothing, which I feel like I was, they’re gonna give me some shit that I won’t relate to, and I would have been pissed about it anyway. Whereas now, I intensely stand behind my story, my narrative, and my art. That, honestly, is the main genesis of the jerm’s best day stuff. Now, I have shit to say.

Why do you think you are so self-deprecating towards every aspect of your artistry except your producer side?

jerm’s best day: I’ve just always identified as a producer, so that’s the only thing that I feel like I am rather than just trying out. I’ve identified as a producer since I’m 12, and that’s how people see me. Maybe not in a public-facing sense, but amongst my friends and music. A lot of that Substack was talking about the Sarcastic Sounds era of stuff. Now, because I feel like I’ve found a style of music and singing that works for me, I can stand behind being a Midwest emo singer. And I think I sound f—ing awesome. That’s not ever something I felt before. I felt like I was a producer cosplaying as a singer, and that’s part of what led me to not take as many risks with my voice, even lyrically.

What are the qualities of a song you feel are necessary for the Midwest emo sound?

jerm’s best day: Not to be a f—ing nerd, but it’s just opening tuning on the guitar. FACGCE. Melancholic twiddling guitar riffs, nostalgic lyrics, and a little bit of screaming. The jerm’s best day stuff, specifically melodically, chord-wise, and production-wise, is more emo than the lyrics. A lot of Midwest emo lyrics are more satirical, depending on the era. The more popular Midwest emo stuff is more on the nose, intentionally whiny. I don’t do that as much. I try to approach the lyrics with a bit more subtlety.

You’re not at all subtle on this project vocally, which is part of the concept of you losing your voice doing it. Knowing that losing your voice is a component, do you think the integrity of what you’re trying to say is lost if you can’t scream it?

jerm’s best day: No, it’s not a conviction thing. It’s truly just a musical thing. I think it sounds f—ing awesome. “Sylvia Plath” is the song I noticed I was doing something wrong to my voice. I really screamed on that bitch. There are lots of soft moments on both EP’s that I think the lyrics land the hardest. If anything, I think the screaming makes it harder to understand the lyrics, I just think it sounds awesome. My voice is getting better. I may need to get a little procedure done, so we will see if I will continue screaming. To circle back about how I used to feel about my singing, I was just never fired up about it. Even the stuff I put out that did well. On this jbd stuff, I love how my voice sounds, but the only way I know how to do that is destroy my chords, so I can’t win. If I can make records where I don’t scream, and I feel like they’re as good, I would do that. It’s not super sustainable, especially if I want to tour.

Is the opening line of “Sylvia Plath,” ‘Should’ve seen your cracks from the days we used to lay in the grass,’ something you’ve mulled over a lot?

jerm’s best day: It just felt good when I was singing, and it’s something I relate to on a broader level. I keep a note of lyrics that pop into my head, and there are a few lines from that song in there, but that line wasn’t one of them.

Which lines are?

jerm’s best day: “Walking down Park Ridge wondering how all those rich f—ers live. You said, ‘Don’t you wish we’d grown up in a place like this?’” That’s a real memory I have, and very representative of how I felt as a teenager.

Where was “hell of a year” in the writing process?

jerm’s best day: It was last!

When you wrote the bridge, was it a sigh of relief or were you dreading coming to terms with that moment?

jerm’s best day: That was another lyric I’d had kicking around. I don’t think of “hell of a year” as a cathartic song; it’s a f—ing bummer.

I, personally, find it cathartic…

jerm’s best day: I don’t know it that makes me happy, but it’s affirming. It doesn’t feel good to know that you deserve something more when you don’t have it. It is cathartic, but that’s why it didn’t feel cathartic doing it. It’s aspirational more than acceptance. Or, at least, it’s accepting some sort of void that you have to fill. I had come to terms with that before I’d written the song, but coming to terms with that kind of feeling is scary.

Much of the sentimentality of that song is where you’re sitting melodically. Was placing it in that key an intentional aesthetic choice, or was it just where you landed?

jerm’s best day: Most songs I do start with some sort of seed of musicality rather than a lyric, and then I write based on how the music makes me feel. So, yeah, I wrote that song in that tone because of the music. It’s the music first, then “What does it make me feel? What’s happening in my life that can apply to the feeling the music is giving me?”

Did you find it difficult to offer an intro, body, and conclusion over just three songs?

jerm’s best day: No, I didn’t. Three songs are the minimum amount of songs needed to tell a story, and I feel like the songs are very diverse musically, sentiment-wise, and tone-wise. There is no redundancy between the three, so they inherently tell a story.

What twist did you want to take on the idea of ‘I’ll always remember you, us, etc.,’ that is “you were mine”?

jerm’s best day: That’s the cathartic one for me. Musically, that slightly more major key is more cathartic. That’s why I found so much catharsis in “this yard has aged,” the song, as well. The song, more than being an “I’ll always remember you” song, is more so questioning how you reconcile with the idea of knowing that you always love someone. How do you carry real, tangible love with this person for the rest of your life without being with them? I do feel like, with who it’s about, I absolutely will, but that’s the nature of things. When things end, you carry that shit, and you go through more and more as you go through life. The lyric that encapsulates it best is, “Something so alive can’t just be left to rot.” You can’t just discard it. It’s not possible. It’s a beautiful thing, but it’s heavy.

Is there a more metaphysical meaning to the title of the project beyond the literal sense?

jerm’s best day: I don’t think tongue in cheek is the right way to describe it, but if you didn’t know about my vocal cords, you’d never know that that’s what it’s about. It sounds like being silenced by the world… by something that happened to you. It is chiefly about my actual voice, but I feel like I can apply it to a lot of different things regarding my actual life, and that’s why I like it. On a broader level, it can be about how, when things are going well, they fall apart. Or, from a musical standpoint, not that I regret anything, but if I had this voice, this artistic conviction, at the peak of my popularity, that would have been amazing. Now, I don’t have the platform in the same way, but I have my voice. It can be interpreted in a lot of different ways.

You’ve talked about riding the wave of folk and Americana after your work in lo-fi and hip-hop. How does one ride a wave of a genre they’re not necessarily privy to?

jerm’s best day: The biggest thing is that I wrote a song that was really f—ing popular. That’s how you ride a wave. Musically, it’s not that I’m not privy to it. I was really into that shit when I started working with David, but more what I was getting at is that it’s not a culture that I… [Pauses] I like the music, and I can make the music, I just don’t have the personality for the music. I did one stomp-clap song for my 2022 album I’m A Disappointment called “oh f—, I’m not ok,” and I f—ing hate that song. I can do the musical elements of it, but I can’t sell it as the lead man.

“Daylight” is going to be around forever.

jerm’s best day: Conceitedly, I thought it had peaked, but it’s gotten significantly bigger. I thought we’ve been in the end stages of it for the last two years, but it keeps chugging along. To have some small part of that is really cool.

Have you had to change any of your signature artistic choices from your time as a lo-fi artist now that you are solely doing Americana and Midwest folk?

jerm’s best day: No, because I haven’t identified as a lo-fi artist in so long. Even at the end of the Sarcastic Sounds run, I was really trying to not do lo-fi music, and I suffered because of that. But I haven’t made music from that perspective for at least five years, so now, that’s not even a consideration. At one point, my producer acumen was not in line with that, but for the past three or four years, I’ve been dialed in on all the non-lo-fi stuff. The Americana sound was my bridge into the Midwest sound. From a producer standpoint, I got so many reps in tracking live and acoustic stuff, and recording really well. That’s the most important thing for doing a project like jbd. It laid down a good foundation. What I did was take the workflow, the ethos, of the folk and Americana sound and apply it to the Midwest emo stuff that I identify with.