Sad Songs and Serendipity: Introducing Jade Jackson

Photo: Xina Hamari Ness

Sometimes our lives feel like a series of completely random experiences. Like a series of haphazard, unconnected dots we spend our time trying to arrange into a meaningful pattern. Then there are those magical moments when an intangible masterplan seems to be unfolding; when everything feels like it’s happening for a reason. Hailing from smalltown USA, specifically Santa Margarita, California, singer-songwriter Jade Jackson knows that feeling. For a while it’s seemed like the universe wants to make her a star.

After attending a Social Distortion show at the age of 13 and being blown away by their frontman, punk legend Mike Ness, the young poetry fanatic was inspired to become a songwriter. Fast forward almost a decade and, while playing a gig in a café, she was spotted by Ness’s wife, who recorded Jackson’s performance on her phone and showed it to her husband. 

In recent months Jackson has been opening for Social D, while Ness kept his promise to produce her debut album, which was recently released by Anti-. A collection of lyrically beguiling, downbeat country songs rich with punk and gothic flavours, ‘Gilded’ is the work of a mesmerising new songsmith. We spoke with Jackson on release day to better understand the beats of her story.

It’s been three years in the making and ‘Gilded’ is finally out. Did you sleep last night?

No. And I didn’t anticipate not sleeping. I was like, ‘Ah, I’m gonna get a good night’s sleep’ and then I lay down and couldn’t fall asleep. I tried meditating and it didn’t work. 

Why has it taken so long to come out?  

When I first started working with Mike I didn’t have my band, so his original idea was to fund half an album, help me shop it to labels, and hopefully have the label pay to get the second half done. So I went into the studio and those musicians he had on the first half were Social Distortion. It was the most surreal thing.

So we recorded this demo, shopped it to the label and they signed me. But the contract stuff took so long, and it was so long before we were able to get back into the studio to finish the album, that I’d written so many new songs. Mike was like, “You’re a better writer now, you’re a better musician, I want to start over.” And he also wanted to use my band instead of Social Distortion. We thought it would help me grow organically if we started out with my band. They’re not just studio musicians, they’re my band and they’ll be with me on the next 10 albums.

In terms of being inspired by, and eventually meeting Mike, fate seemingly played a large part. Yet, you earned that lucky break courtesy of your determination to succeed.

I started writing when I was 13 and playing at coffee shops, restaurants and gigging locally for four nights a week. I was home-schooled for most of high school because I would play everywhere I could. I wanted it so bad. I didn’t know what ‘it’ was, I just knew I felt at peace when I was doing my music, so I was following that path.

Then I put myself through music college, but my first semester I fell off a rope swing and broke my back. I’d dreamt about touring, travelling and playing my music for the world since I was 13 and they’re saying they don’t know if I’ll be able to tour in a van. It’s like somebody took my dreams and just crunched them up. I got really depressed and did a lot of writing during that time.  

The first three days I was in the hospital they weren’t sure if I was going to be paralysed or not. The way my back broke, it was like if you crumble a cookie. It was an impact break, it didn’t snap. They laid me on this straight table and my bones fused back together, but until I started getting sensations they weren’t sure. After that I had to learn how to walk again, so it was pretty gnarly. A couple of years after that I had my full recovery and finally started opening up the possibility, “I think I can do it”. Yeah, I might have this chronic back pain when I’m touring but I want it so bad that shouldn’t cause me to stop.

And, in a strange way, I suppose that altered your trajectory and you ended up in the right place at the right time when Mike’s wife saw you perform?

It was just the craziest thing. What if I hadn’t have played at that café? Like everything in your life, it just all works together when you look back. It’s baffling that he’s the one who ended up…it’s just a very serendipitous, crazy thing.  

If you saw it in a film you’d think ‘That wouldn’t happen’.

I know. It’s so weird. And I love that stuff about life and the universe. If you believe in something in your heart very often it will come to pass. And as far as meeting Mike, him believing in me and my music is the reason this album is here. I tried to do this for over a decade before I met him, but it wasn’t until he believed in my songs and paved this way for me, introducing me to his record label and his manager is now managing me. He surrounded me with this family that he took 35 years to create and that blessed me beyond belief. I know they say not to meet your heroes but I liked him even more after I met him. He’s more than just my producer, he’s like a mentor to me.  

And I believe he gave you homework before you started recording your album?  

Actually that happened before I even knew that he wanted to produce me. When I went to his studio for the first time, I was leaving and he was like, “Here, take this album. I want you to only listen to this album until I see you again.” And it was ‘Car Wheels On A Gravel Road’ by Lucinda Williams. So I listened to that walking to school, going to bed, eating breakfast, in the shower, in the car. I just drowned myself in that album. Later I found out that he had already known he wanted to produce me but didn’t tell me because he was dealing with the legalities of it all. So he gave it to me to teach me the template of what kind of album he wanted to create.

On ‘Gilded’, Back When is a great song about the passage of time and the untainted, seemingly carefree, wonder of youth.

I wrote that a week after I moved back home from college. I decided to go on a walk to see the streets of my hometown and as I was walking this melody and lyric came to me and I started singing it. I saw a bird sitting up on a wire chilling, looking down on everything and I realised I had all these anxieties. That’s where the lyric, “I want to be like the bird on the wire, so many things I forgot to admire” came from. When you have anxiety you forget the simple beauties of life.

How much do you enjoy writing and singing femme fatale-type songs like Good Time Gone?

Oh, it’s really fun. I’m generally kind of awkward and shy when I’m not doing my music, but I feel more confident and comfortable on stage. So those songs are always really fun to sing. But it’s also funny because my family and friends are like, “You’re a different person when you’re on stage….I can’t believe you wrote that.”

Good Time Gone, like Finish Line and Motorcycle, is very empowered and independent. Is that reflective of you?

Ever since I decided I wanted to be a musician it was like tunnel vision and I was very reclusive. I didn’t socialise like the other kids on weekends. I came home and wrote songs or worked at my parents’ restaurant because I wanted to save money to buy guitars. I got lonely a lot and at first was like, “This is kind of sad, I feel like I’m missing out, I feel like I’m not getting the normal teenage experience.” And those songs are important to me because it was like my subconscious telling me I don’t have to do what everybody else is doing. I can go against the grain, I’m on the right path, this is what I’m supposed to be doing and I can have peace and confidence in it.

I love Troubled End – it’s spaghetti western outlaw country with a Bonnie and Clyde type narrative.

I played in this rockabilly band when I was 15 for about a year. I’d always written really sad, slow, melancholy songs at that time and because I was in this band with these two older rockabilly boys I wanted to write that type of song. I thought it would be really cool with upright bass and we made a little demo of it. Mike heard it and was like, “I want this song to be on the album.” But because I wrote it when I was 15 it needed a lot of work, so he helped me rework it and one of the verses he re-wrote.

Going way back, who were your earliest musical influences?

I was raised on old country and punk music. My Dad had a big record collection and was always spinning records when I was a kid. I think the most played artists in my home and the ones that inspired me the most as a writer were Hank Williams, Townes Van Zandt, George Jones, the Smiths, the Cure, the Rolling Stones.

Like yourself, a lot of those artists tend to write quite sad songs. What draws you to that style of music?

I don’t think when people write sad songs they’re trying to make people sad, it’s this feeling they’re putting on paper that people can relate to. Most people I know have had their heart broken, so when you hear a song about somebody saying “they broke my heart” you’re like “Wow, I felt that too”. You can connect on this more human level and it makes you happy, even if the song is sad.

You were brought up by your parents in a small town in California and weren’t allowed access to the internet or a TV. How did that shape you as a songwriter?

It really funnelled me toward music and if I wasn’t around music I was outside. I find when I’m in the garden, or playing in dirt when I was a kid, that’s when my imagination can really run wild. So it was like this swirling of creativity that I don’t think I’d have manifested if I was in front of a screen, zoning out to whatever the cartoons were teaching or showing me. And the small town, sheltered upbringing gives you that wild imagination, so when you tell stories you can be whoever you want. So that’s sort of how I wrote.

At what point did your songs start to become informed by your own experiences?

I write a lot and, nine times out of 10, they’re stories. But when people write we get these feelings that are true to us, whether somebody broke your heart or you have high anxiety, and when I feel those real, personal things I generally pick up my guitar. Sometimes I’ll write and it’ll just be for me, I won’t show anybody the song. But then Finish Line was more autobiographical and about something I went through. It’s just sprinkled inbetween the stories I tell.

You’re a very prolific writer and it sounds like it’s something you need to do as a form of therapy. Is that fair?

Yeah, totally. If I don’t write a song in a long period I feel kind of sick. It’s really how I cope. For example, this last tour with Social Distortion we were so busy, and were performing every night, that I didn’t have the time to sit in a corner by myself and write songs. I feel I need it to have peace in my life. I get that feeling in the pit of my stomach and have to write. That’s why most of my songs are written on envelopes, cardboard boxes or my hand, whatever I have closest to me. And it usually happens quickly, like “I wrote it, now I feel better.”

People love to pigeonhole new artists, but everyone describes your music differently. That must be satisfying.

That’s been the recurring thing throughout my musical career. The question you’re always asked is “What’s your genre?” And I could never answer because I didn’t know. I didn’t write with the intention to fit into a certain mould. At first I was like “This is confusing, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.” But when I got signed to Anti-, one of the things the president of the label told me was they want to sign artists that, if they went into the record store they wouldn’t know where to look for them. So I fit that criteria and thought that was the coolest compliment ever.

How do you feel about Rolling Stone describing you as one of 10 new country artists we need to know?

I feel like I’m still processing it. I feel like it’s not real. In my hometown a really big article just came out in the local newspaper and all these people are telling me “I read that article on you.” It was like a huge caption ‘The Edge of Stardom’ and I’m like, “I don’t know, that’s not real, the guy who wrote the article was really nice.” I have trouble accepting compliments in general so it’s been a funny process.

You’re supporting Social Distortion in America again this summer, but what are the chances of you coming to the UK soon?

If I was in complete control I’d be like “Alright, I’m going tomorrow.” I don’t know when we’re going to go over there but I can’t wait because I’m so passionate about travelling and seeing new places and sharing my music. If you ever see my name playing there then just know I’m the happiest person in the world at that point.

'Gilded' is out now on Anti-.

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