{"id":18446,"date":"2022-09-26T10:20:31","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T15:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/online.berklee.edu\/takenote\/?p=18446"},"modified":"2025-03-10T18:49:33","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T23:49:33","slug":"bethany-and-blake-jurasin-on-being-partners-in-life-and-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/online.berklee.edu\/takenote\/bethany-and-blake-jurasin-on-being-partners-in-life-and-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Bethany and Blake Jurasin on Being Partners in Life and Music"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2016, Bethany Becker was an 18-year-old signed country artist looking for a guitar player to fill out her band. She put out a listing online where she heard from Blake Jurasin, a recent Berklee College of Music graduate. After passing the interview with Bethany and her dad, Blake got the job. For the next several years they performed together as bandmates, and eventually became more than that. 
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\u201cI think we had a really deep respect for each other professionally and personally, even before we started dating,\u201d says Bethany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to today and Bethany and Blake have been married for two years and are living in Austin, Texas. Bethany earned her bachelor\u2019s degree in Interdisciplinary Music Studies<\/a> from Berklee Online, and the two are continuing to create music together as independent artists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bethany and Blake at the 2022 Berklee Commencement ceremony. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What makes Bethany and Blake such a strong couple, both musically and romantically, is that they were both already far along in their own musical journeys before they met. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blake Jurasin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Originally from the New Orleans area, Blake started out playing alto saxophone at age eight. His mom\u2019s side of the family is made up of musicians, especially his grandfather Edward Merritt, who still gigs as a saxophonist to this day. Blake\u2019s family encouraged him to pick up the sax to help him cope with his parents\u2019 divorce.
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\u201cFor an eight-year-old, that\u2019s a lot, and so my parents were both trying to encourage me to do something, to work through different issues,\u201d says Blake. \u201cI wasn\u2019t particularly athletic, so they tried to put me in sports and it just didn\u2019t work. But one day my mom asked me, \u2018Hey, do you want to try saxophone?\u2019\u201d 
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In 2005, Blake and his family had to evacuate their home when Hurricane Katrina hit. He remembers it took two and half hours to cross the 26-mile Causeway bridge out of New Orleans, all four lanes directed north. While they were waiting out the storm in Monroe, LA, he remembers his uncle, Larry Merritt, introducing him to Green Day\u2019s music. Blake says that Larry had a big influence on him and was always supportive of his musical endeavors.
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\u201c[Green Day] is what I gravitated towards and used to process everything that was going on,\u201d says Blake. 
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The house his mom rented in New Orleans was spared of catastrophic damage because it was located on the north shore of Louisiana, whereas the south shore was hit the hardest. When his family returned, they still had 14 inches of water in their home. Blake remembers watching the first Saints football game at the Superdome following the hurricane, when Green Day teamed up with U2 for a powerful halftime show. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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