start Me up
From coffee-shop songstress to making her groundbreaking debut album, the California native tells her story…
Jade Jackson’s album, Gilded, is a work of remarkable depth and maturity for a songwriter who is barely over the brow of her teens. It leans towards country and Americana, with the occasional nod to cowpunk along the way. “I started playing guitar when I was 13 – out of boredom, mainly,” she tells us. “My parents had just moved us to a rural town and there was just a hundred people living there and I was too young to drive – there wasn’t much to do. So I just picked up my dad’s guitar, got addicted to it and haven’t stopped playing since.”
Her father’s record collection opened her up to artists such as Johnny Cash, George Jones and Hank Williams, and it wasn’t long before she began writing her own songs. “I always wrote poetry as kid and once I’d picked up the guitar, I realised I could put my poetry into songs. Once I started singing and playing guitar, I just did it all the time and took my guitar everywhere. I would go down to the coffee shop on Sundays and start playing my songs quietly in the corner.”
Still in her teens, it was happenstance that brought Jade to a wider audience. “One Sunday a local guitar player heard me play and asked if I wanted to open for his band at that same coffee shop on a Friday night,” she enthuses. “So I had my first gig!”
After this, the bug for music bit deep and Jade started home-schooling so that she could avoid homework and play more gigs. “I tailored my whole life around my music and I ended up going to the California Institute Of The Arts to study music.”
What sort of guitars was Jade using around this time? “The first guitar I picked up – my dad’s – was an Aria LW10, and a year after I ended up getting my first nice guitar that I still have and play to this day, which is a Taylor 510,” she says.
College days didn’t run smoothly for the fledgling songwriter. “In my first semester, I got into an accident and ended up having to put music on hold for a couple of years to get well. It was a sad thing because I thought I wasn’t going to be a travelling musician and I was a little bit down. I ended up going home for the winter break and started jamming with some local kids – we recorded a little demo in a basement at a friend’s house.”
Back at the coffee shop, Jade’s songs started grabbing some attention. Mike Ness, from the band Social Distortion, got in touch and invited her to his studio. “He had some time off and he wanted to help me put out a demo. I said, ‘Oh, that’s funny, I just recorded a demo, so why don’t I send it to you?’”
This led to Ness producing Gilded, Jade’s remarkable debut. “It was just so crazy for me because I went from thinking my dreams were over to getting to work with Mike and it really changed my life.” [DM]