BY LESLEY HASTINGS

Having interviewed Jackson Dean on each of his previous visits to London (plus a few more times via Zoom) I was not going to pass on the chance to catch up with him last week when his “On The Back Of My Dreams ” tour rolled into town. 

He is always a genuine pleasure to chat to, and the big smile and welcoming hug he gave me immediately he walked into the room was the perfect start to the proceedings! I introduced myself and our website ….I never assume artists remember either….but was assured that “Yes ma’am, I remember!”

Jackson had played Birmingham the previous night, getting six hours sleep (apparently that’s pretty good when it comes to life on the road) and I was interested to know if it takes him a while to come down from the high of a show ….

“It takes decompression time. The shorter sets are worse because you get so wrapped up …a 30 min set for us is five or six songs, a 75-90 is around eighteen, it’s hard to make that adrenaline go. I walk off stage and there’s not a dry thread on me, I’m sweating it out. Some nights it’s like ‘ok, I’m done’ but others, like last night, it took about three hours to come down and I knew I had to be up in the morning!” 

I then took things back to our first face to face interview, Jackson’s first visit here to play Highways Festival at Royal Albert Hall where despite being a relative unknown to many he received a standing ovation. Now in a relatively short space of time he’s playing a headline European tour. Can he believe how quickly we’ve embraced his music this side of the pond?

“TWO standing O’s! (oops sorry, Jackson!).

And yeah, it’s wild. The crowds over here have got bigger and bigger. Royal Albert was probably one of the best 30 minutes of my life, me and the boys still talk about that to everybody, it was very influential for us. And last night we had 1,200 people by the throat, giving them a hammering. It’s been really awesome and we couldn’t have asked for better crowds so far. To see our own people so far away from home is a wild feeling ….one that never goes away…even the boys in the band are like ‘this is ridiculous’. I’m excited that this tour is even happening”.

His latest album “On The Back Of My Dreams” (Big Machine Label) came out very shortly after our last zoom chat, he’d mentioned then that he wanted his music to inspire feelings in people, so which album tracks have achieved that judging by feedback on his socials or at shows back home? Has that influenced his set lists here? 

“It’s funny, people’s favourites are always different and I think that’s the tell of a great record. I’d say ‘Betsy’ is one of the bigger, emotional ones, to see the lightbulb go off for people when I explain at shows that it’s a Southern idiom, then they fully understand it. Here everyone’s phones go up when we play that one, they want to capture it. Last night we played  ‘Wings’ for the first time on this tour (the set list is fluid) and they loved it. 

Sets here are 60-75 minutes, as opposed to 2hrs sometimes back home which is long especially with how we perform! But we have so much music we’re getting to the territory where we have to cut songs that we really love or people love.  The number one recurring one we are asked for is oddly enough ‘Long Goodbye’ which is a lot of fun. We work the set in chapters of complimentary songs, we are subbing songs in and out most nights” 

Also at the time we last spoke he was touring with Lainey Wilson, and I wanted to hear about a unique gift he presented to her by way of thanks 

“Yeah I burned her a guitar! What do you get a gal who can have anything? Something she can’t buy. I wanted to do a lot more on it but I just procrastinated a lot and did it all in one six hour session. Two horses, the strong and the gentle, and when you walk with the two you create beautiful things which is what the wildflowers in the middle of it mean. She was floored!”

So back to the present …..Does he have any highlights of this visit / tour so far? 

“Sure, we went to Scotland when we arrived to get acclimatised and saw Skye and Glencoe …..I fell in love! It’s where they filmed some of the movie Skyfall, I love all the barren moors in Scotland and the thick, lush forests. We had incredible luck with the weather, watched the sun go down over Lewis, it was incredible. 

Another highlight was taking the train as far as it will go to Zermatt in Switzerland, I was literally playing at eye level with the Matterhorn which was wild to see. I played solo to 600 people and they were very receptive tho I know they didn’t understand much of what I was saying! And we just did Paaspop over in the Netherlands which was predominantly techno/dance music, about 2,500 people in a tent and they stayed the entire time we played! They stayed purely for the vibe, we got to do ’49 Tons’ and some of the heavier stuff we do and I thought they were going to mosh a couple of times! 

 I definitely like for you all to be rowdy but it’s so different to back home, here people want to hear what you have to say and I like that”.

Jackson certainly isn’t one to sit on his laurels when it comes to releasing new music as not long after his last album dropped he shared the high energy single “Still Ragin’ “. I wondered if it was actually a contender for the album and recorded at the same time as sonically there were definite similarities? I told him I loved the line about his parents not raising a quitter ….

(laughing) “Hey, yeah! And yes it was an album contender. I thought it didn’t fit as well as the ones on there but it was done in the same batch….same instruments. It got sent in a file of 10-15 songs to the Yellowstone people and they were like ‘we want THAT one’. But it wasn’t out so we said I guess we’re gonna have to put it out now! But they did put ‘Duct Tape Heart’ in, which was pretty cool. But when Taylor Sheridan wants something he’s going to get it! It was a big thing when it first happened and now we open with it.”

And there’s more new music to come on 9th May when Jackson release another single, “Be Your Man” which I was fortunate enough to get a sneak preview of. It’s VERY different in many ways to his previous music, I told him I’d describe it as a dreamy, bluesy track with a touch of funk, bringing out his romantic side lyrically….what more could he tell me about it? And is it a taste of what we can expect going forward? 

“Yeah it’s quite a change of direction, definitely. I was writing with Luke Dick and Rodney Clawson that day …..Luke said ‘let’s go here’, we’d been trying to figure out how to tap into the world of Khruangbin in a sense that works for me.  They’re a three-piece band that’s mostly instrumental, sambas and slide guitar, it’s a really cool universe. 

The song structure of ‘Be Your Man’ is interesting as it’s only got one verse . It starts with the chorus then verse, bridge , chorus, bridge, chorus so it’s a funny programme but I think it’s grooving! This whole new batch we’ve done ( and we have another date in June to go finish the project) is all new territory for us. We don’t have songs like this in our set now. The first two records were pretty intense , and the shows we’ve been playing off the back of them really rocking. This all is laid back, crack a smile.” 

I said I had noticed he’s continuing to work with Luke Dick both as a co-write and producer and wondered who pushed who out of their comfort zone.

“We try not to repeat ourselves. Of course there’s songs that have kindred spirits between them. But I’m a very versatile man, I can go and sing the phone book if you know what I mean. And when you can do that it can be hard to know what in direction to go. I have so much music I want to make and can make. And I want it to stay that way. I want to make a grass record, work with a symphony orchestra and make a big strings record , some soul music . But these new songs have a classic/standards type of feeling about them. More palatable than the hard rock ” . 

I wanted to know how Alyssa Bonagura got involved on the backing vocals for the upcoming single 

“That was a Luke connection! I’d met her before, she’s fantastic, and we actually saw her in the airport dropping her dude off as he was flying over. So we talked for a few minutes and she was saying how much she loved the music”. 

As Luke also works very closely with Miranda Lambert was there any chance she may collaborate with Jackson at some point? Or can’t he tell me….

(sighs, wry smile) “Can’t tell. We are trying to get some collaborations that make sense….I’ve been turned down a few times, people have other stuff going on ….. It’s hard. We’ve done Josh Ross which was a GREAT recording, he’s a really good dude, and Ashley Cooke on ‘What Are You On Fire About?’ (I LOVE that song). But it is hard. There’s a few songs I’ve written and are in my pocket that are right for a duet, we are trying to figure that out”. 

So having already mentioned his new project, how far down the line is it? 

“We have four tunes cut right now, this is going to be a beautiful new project. Pretty chilled. Trying to keep it all fresh with new territory. There’s not going to be a ‘Free’ on it!” 

How did his long-time band mates feel about the new music? 

“We are actually playing ‘Be Your Man’ tomorrow (the London show), the first time we’ve played it out, and another one that we wrote in the bus about three weeks ago that we are going to cut in June” 

Well you can’t get much newer than that…….

“Yeah we have to work on them before it gets there. Know loosely how we are going to do it. We’re going to murder it tomorrow night but in six months from now it’s going to be a show stopper. We are super pumped” 

I said I was even more excited about the show then…..and  I must add here that both songs (the other was “Hey Mississippi” which was hardly “murdered” as far as I was concerned!) got the London crowd listening intently the following night. 

All too soon it was time to wrap up our chat up by wishing Jackson and his band a great end to the tour and safe travels home. 

“So good to see you! Thanks for your time”.

Presave “Be Your Man” here – https://jacksondean.lnk.to/BeYourMan!bio