If you are a regular reader of these pages you’ll know just what big fans of Jackson Dean’s we are. We were the first UK platform to start shouting about his ‘Greenbroke’ album back in April 2022 and the first to interview Jackson when we met him at CMAFest in Nashville in June of the same year. It’s been great tracking his career and watching the rest of the Country world catch up. His ‘arrival’ moment in the UK was in May this year when he made his live debut at the Highways festival in London and it was great to see him back again so soon last weekend at the Long Road festival. He’s also playing some dates of his own this time too as we wait, impatiently, for album number 2 to drop!
We caught up with Jackson Dean at the Long Road festival to talk all about his rising career and the music to come.
Great to catch up again, Jackson, thank you for your time today. How’s the jet lag?
Thanks man, not too bad I suppose. I flew in from Sweden having done a showcase out there first. They love some Country music out there. One of the waitresses in a restaurant we ate in told us that the culture there is very similar to what it is in Appalachia once you get outside of the cities. They loved the music, it was so cool.
We last spoke on Zoom before the Highways festival in London in May. How was that trip and show from your point of view?
It was spectacular! I did not expect to get two standing ovations! I thought the festival was pretty well put together and I liked the vibe of it. All four of the artists on the bill put on a damn good show I thought. I would have loved to have played a little bit longer and I know Stephen Wilson JR thought the same, his set was great wasn’t it?
The UK is madly in love with Kip Moore so when the after response is all about you, you know you’ve made an impact and done a good job!
Kip is the king man! I know how big he is here and I’ve admired him and what he does for a very long time. I don’t give him and guys like Drake White enough credit for my existence. The are right below my Mount Rushmore of artists that inspire me to want to be better but I’m very grateful for what they have done over here in the UK in building up a crowd and a fan base eager to see our style of music.
My actual Mount Rushmore would be Robert Plant, Chris Cornell, Stapleton and Waylon – those are my vocal heroes. Kip’s ‘Dirt Road’ was one of the first songs I ever learned how to play on guitar though. It was cool to watch him do what he does at the Highways festival and it’s great to watch how he builds up loyalty through damn hard work with his fan base.
It’s been a big summer for you. Were you more nervous playing Bridgestone Arena in Nashville with Luke Bryan or going out and doing shows with Eric Church or do you not get nervous anymore?
I’ll get anxious, for sure. It’s not nerves, though, more so it’s adrenaline. It usually happens when you hit the bottom of the stairs to go up to the stage. When you walk out into the darkness everything starts to fall away.
It’s funny you ask about those two shows because we rolled from the Bridgestone show right out to Alabama with Eric Church. The stakes were probably higher with Eric, I think, to answer your question. I kinda didn’t know what was going to happen with Eric’s shows in terms of reception whereas we’d been building up to Bridgestone a little. My parents were at the Bridgestone show with Luke but my whole family flew down to Maryland and came down so that was a bit stressful. We rented an Air BnB, there was beach stuff, it was wild.
You’ve also recently guested on ‘What Are You on Fire About’ with Ashley Cooke, which is a great song.
Ashley and I did a song honouring Morgan Wallen on a show. We sang ‘Don’t Think Jesus’ together. She ended up coming along to my session in the studio I had booked because she was out on the road at the time. We sat there for an evening and did the song, she’s really wonderful, such an amazing person and singer. She was like, “Luke Dick is producing you, right? We just cut a Luke song,’ and I asked her which one because I know most of them because we’ve heard, cut or rehearsed most of his demos over the years. When she said it was ‘What Are You on Fire About?’ I already knew the song from years prior, Lainey Wilson was part of the writing team on it. She asked if I wanted to hop on it and it was an immediate yes from me.
The coolest thing about that song is that you don’t really know which one of us, once the song hits the chorus, is the true melody. We are both doing a variation of what Lainey did on the demo, but with each of our voices. There’s such a good contrast between our vocals and it’s a great song to play live too, I just kind of appear out of the darkness at the back of the stage, it’s so cool.
You were just about to head back into the studio to record some more of album number two when we spoke last. How did that go?
It’s pretty much the same wrecking crew as last time. It’s Kenny Greenberg, Fred Eltringham, Craig Young, brother Dave Cohen popped in on keys with us, I love him so much, Jake Hughes came and played some acoustic guitar and my guitar player, Brandon hopped in and played on some shit. It went well. We recorded 13 tracks plus two 1 take songs.
We are going back in for more in November, man. We’re hoping for a sort of second quarter 2024 release date. Realistically, there’s a lot of musical fusion to package up to be ready. I see people like Ashley Cooke, Morgan Wallen, Cody Johnson and Larry Fleet are all releasing these huge albums – that frees up some real estate on the record to do some interesting things. It frees me up to do some things that people who don’t have the real estate can’t do, if that makes sense? You know, so many artists get the message that they have to put out on EP and each song has to be a banger and all of them have to be directed at radio. I’m not in that position. I’m making an album, man, with twists and turns and weighty songs, sink songs and deep cuts with things like a 5 minute run time. That’s who I am.
Will there be any special guests on your album, like you were on Ashley Cooke’s?
Not as yet. There might be one or two in the end. I’ve talked to Luke Dick about this before but a woman’s vocal, kinda like the one you hear on The Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ or what you hear on Eric Church’s songs, can be so haunting and there are a couple of opportunities on my next record for that to be a thing if we want. I’m not talking about straight duets, I’m talking about making proper music, right? Improving the feel of a song by adding in some haunting female vocals.
There are a few interesting songs in your sets right now alongside the ‘Greenbroke’ songs.
We love to play ‘Heavens to Betsy’ and ‘1971’ which were on the ‘Live at the Ryman’ release we put out recently. We’re also playing ’49 Tons’ right now, which some people think is a new song of mine but it’s not. So many people have covered it over the years but it’s from Fred Eaglesmith, one of my favourite artists.
We are playing one of ours, a new song, called ‘Blackout’. That one is pretty heavy and gives us a chance to rock out a little bit. That one is a sink song, like I was referring to earlier. A deep cut that is proper music. There’s a band version of that then there is a studio version too that is post-apocalyptic, man, like – ‘there will be blood’, right? (laughing)
I want to make bodies of work that people can lose themselves in.
Jackson Dean is playing headline shows in the UK right now. Grab a ticket at the link here.
