songs & stories: a history

Jason Brandt leads the band on vocals, tenor saxophone, and guitar. Raised on an eight-acre ranchette near San Antonio, he has been playing music and writing stories and poetry since middle school. He studied jazz at the University of North Texas alongside Micheal League and other members of Snarky Puppy, shook Herbie Hancock’s hand, and once earned a seat in the Nine O’Clock Lab Band. But with the power of words calling to him, he switched gears to pursue creative writing instead.

Since 2007, Jason has worked as a professional writer at local newspapers in Texas and Georgia, as a marketing copywriter for the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and as a public school teacher in Houston’s Third Ward, the neighborhood Beyoncé grew up in. He earned graduate degrees in creative writing from Southern New Hampshire University and Vermont College of Fine Arts, and he now teaches literature and writing as an adjunct lecturer at University of Colorado-Boulder. You can find his creative writing in national magazines if you know where (and how) to look.

Jason played solo and as a sideman in rock, funk, jam, and jazz bands in Texas, Georgia, and Missouri until finding a new home in Boulder, Colorado in 2018. Inspired by #vanlife and dirt-bagging culture, the Build-Out was named to symbolize the values of independence, love for wild places, and tolerance to adversity. His music is for anyone who has suffered a sense of hopelessness, an empty bank account, a broken heart, for those who have lied or have been lied to, for those whose only alternative sometimes is to shout at the top of your lungs from the peak of a mountain.