A brief history

Some people find music. Jason Demain built a life inside it.

Growing up between Encinitas and Malibu, California, with a father who worked as a commercial artist in the film industry, creativity wasn't optional — it was the air in the room. By 1989, Jason was performing live in both San Diego and Los Angeles. By his early twenties, he had finalized hundreds of original compositions and developed an ever-deepening fascination with multitrack recording. By the early 2000s, he'd made his way to Portland with his band Satellite Heroes. A year later, he moved north to Seattle, recorded his debut album Exposed at London Bridge Studio with Jonathan Plum (Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains), joined both the Beatlesque Lund Bros and Canadian rockers Superjaded, and found himself playing the 2002 Winter Olympics with pop-punk act M-set, earning airplay on KEXP along the way. Two of his original songs (Novocain and Hello) were re-recorded at Microsoft's Seattle audio lab - one for Kodak's 5.1 surround-sound campaign, the other as a promotional commercial highlighting Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console.

Portland eventually pulled him back — and the scene became family. He joined Camaro Hair, spent nearly a decade with SmoochKnob on stages alongside Bush, Everclear, and Fishbone, and briefly shared a band with Everclear's Craig Montoya and Black Veil Brides' Jinxx in The Strain. Then, from 2013 to 2019, came Kill Frankie — a collaborative live band with longtime bandmates Stephen Kemp and Matt Routh, with regular rotation on local radio and highlights including supporting the Make America Rock Again tour in 2016.

Through every version of himself, Demain (the band) remained the thread — the group he's led since 1994, through countless lineup changes, real loss, and four albums. A P P L E arrived Halloween 2019. His cover album SKINJOB is complete, on its way, and already making noise, with "20th Century Boy" (T. Rex) currently in rotation on Hot Tub Radio PDX. Demain's 6th studio album, tentatively titled "Letters From Europa," is in the works and planned for release by 2027.

The road has also asked for things that don't come back. Drummer Mykael Allen Lundstedt — a cornerstone of Demain's earliest years — died on February 20, 2014. Keyboardist Brandon G. Williams, who brought color and texture to Red Colored Stars and the Candystrippers sessions, passed away in April 2025. These weren't just musicians who showed up. They were part of what made this worth doing.

In 2015, Jason established Calamity Audiolab, his Portland recording studio operating under D.B.S. Industries (Demain Balance & Sound), with production credits including Left Spine Down's Caution (2011) and Valiant Bastards' Harbingers of Chaos (2019). As a DJ, he has held the decks professionally since 1994 — across California, the Pacific Northwest, and British Columbia — including a long residency at Portland's Kit Kat Club.