Former Birds began as the songwriting project of Jesse Montgomery, as a way to write as a solo musician while traveling through all 48 contiguous states and several countries in a variety of somewhat-reliable vehicles.
While living in as many cities as the leases and subleases have allowed, Jesse refined his songwriting with a storyteller’s ear. He lived are Philadelphia, Queens, Minneapolis, France, and the Hudson Valley. While traveling and refining his songwriting, Jesse taught creative writing, English as a second language, and college composition. He earned two masters degrees, including a MFA in Creative Writing.
2016’s Suitcase in Hand and 2017’s Life’s a Vacation are two lo-fi collections that were recorded entirely by Jesse in apartments, basements, attics, and cars.
In 2018, Jesse began to record with Matthew Molnar (producer of several Sunflower Bean records, member of Friends and Dead Nation). Jesse’s recording sessions in Brooklyn resulted in the October in New York EP in 2021 and The Broken Clock at Sundown in 2022.
It was after Jesse moved back to the Hudson Valley mid-pandemic that the current version of Former Birds came to be. Former Birds blends garage rock & Americana with a deep appreciation for various genres and sub-genres, not limited to rock, punk, hardcore, shoegaze, lo-fi, and outlaw country.
