Jason Kerrison

ROCKHAPPENZ Public Collection

Jason Kerrison  —  founder of Opshop

Jason was born in Invercargill on October 15th, 1976 and moved to Christchurch as an older child, attending St Theresa's, St Bede's and subsequently Hillmorton High School.  For his 15th birthday, he received a cheap hondo bass and this led him to join the school band at St Bede’s College.  The music teacher also told him that if he wanted to play bass, he would have to play the violin, so he also spent an undistinguished year in the school orchestra.  Jason then moved to Hillmorton College and played bass in a funk group called D-Funk Express, though was forced to switch to singing when he joined a new group, Hillmotown, as they already had a bassist.  After school, his various groups fused together to become Gorilla Biscuit and took up a residency at Dux De Lux doing sets of covers on Friday and Saturday nights.  With help from Rob Mayes (Failsafe Records), they also recorded a song, Wish, which was included on an NZ On Air hit disc.

Jason studied broadcasting at Christchurch and took an internship at Mai FM in Auckland (subsequently moving through jobs at TVNZ, More FM, and as an original staff member/DJ at Kiwi FM).  He supplemented his income by doing two-hour sets of covers at a local bar (Embargo on High Street) and busked for a living between broadcasting jobs.  During the intervening years, Tim Skedden had played in a very early line-up of The Feelers and regularly toured with them as a second guitarist before deciding to form a new group with Jason under the peculiar name, Goldfish Shopping Trolley.  Between broadcasting jobs, busking was the way to make a living!  Jason was studying ethnomusicology and so brought in Ian Munro, a friend from university to play bass, while his high school friend, Bobby Kennedy, joined on drums. GST had some success with their early songs – gaining NZ On Air music video funding for Hey You in 2000 and a new recording grant for Put Up A Fight the following year, however, it was a chance meeting with a school friend from St Bede’s that really got things going.  Matt Treacy was living in Auckland and he was playing a gig in Ponsonby, the two embraced and discussed hooking up musically.  Matt had a band called Chrome with Adrien DeCroy, who owned York Street Recording Studios.  In the end, Treacy joined Jason’s group and DeCroy kindly loaned the band some digital recording equipment (a Yamaha O2R) to do some early demos.  The results were promising enough that DeCroy’s label, Siren Records, funded a further set of demos at York Street, though they did make one demand  —  they had the wherewithal to suggest a change of name, and much grief and angst followed, though finally the name was decided and hence Opshop was born.  Since everyone was skint at the time, clothing was purchased at opshops.