Arundel High musician rocks sold-out crowd
After national anthem video, Jackson Dean rocks sold-out crowd at Rams Head
Under a wash of hot purple lights, Jackson Dean Nicholson takes a step into a dream.
With an old wooden guitar scrawled with drawings and signatures from friends in his hand, Nicholson — stage name Jackson Dean — performs songs he wrote through high school at Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis on Saturday.
It’s his first headlining matinee show — sold out — mere hours before opening for Mitchell Tenpenny at the Fillmore and just weeks after shows in New York, Washington, D.C., Colorado and Los Angeles.
It was only a few months ago, in late October, that he was the Arundel High School football player whose viral performance of the national anthem was heard by hundreds of thousands.
In the months since, Nicholson’s career has accelerated into lanes he didn’t even know he was driving toward. He’s drank coffee with country music artist Luke Bryan. He’s appeared on CNN, “Fox and Friends,” Steve Harvey’s talk show and multiple radio shows, to name a few. He’s won two Maryland Music Awards for Best Songwriter and Best New Breakout Artist.
He performed before Redskins and, mostly, Eagles fans in Landover on a football field slightly larger than his high school team’s.
“The last few months have just been awesome,” Nicholson said.
Before landing in Los Angeles for Steve Harvey, Nicholson had never flown further than Wyoming. Just like Arundel, Harvey had no clue what the 18-year-old was about to really do, Nicholson said.
“Afterwards, he was floored,” Nicholson said.
Harvey asked him if he’d already been talking to “people,” agents and the like.
“I gave him some names,” Nicholson said. “He said, ‘Just be patient.’ And that was probably the best piece of advice I’d got from anybody.”
One of the people piloting Nicholson’s young career is Scott Lehr, the founder of B Chord. After discovering Nicholson a little over two months ago, Lehr has served as his consultant, cultivating his brand, social media following and, occasionally, bookings. He also shot the anthem video.
“Jack is a very, very talented kid,” Lehr said. “It didn’t surprise me at all that things took off the way they did because you know from the get-go if someone has talent and Jackson Dean has talent.”
Between songs, Nicholson jokes one-onone with members of the crowd. “How’s that knife treating you?” he asks his uncle Brad. When another in the crowd says, “Pretty dope!” during an opening riff, Nicholson turns his head back and replies, “Pretty dope,” before charging into the song.
Even with an easy on-and-off-stage demeanor, Nicholson is truly giddy about few things. A plate of crispy chicken tenders is one of them. Another was when Johnny Morris, CEO of Bass Pro Shops, offered to take him fishing.
Nicholson sang at his holiday party, where Morris gave him the Defender of Freedom Award.
“The man, during Jack’s national anthem, was just weeping,” Lehr said. “To see someone that cares that much about our national anthem, and our military, it was just awesome.”
Nicholson, who has always felt older than his classmates, has seven classes at Arundel until he’s graduated. Math class is time to write emails and set lists. His teacher is a fan of his music (though that’s not the only reason he’s passing).
“Wasn’t too fond of high school” is the first line of Nicholson’s song “Young and Wild,” which he played early at Rams Head on Saturday afternoon.
“It’s a very weird feeling,” Nicholson said. “My entire life has been my father telling me I have to be a man. … The last few years I’ve been living my life like I’m in my 20s. That’s hard to switch on and off sometimes.”
On Saturday, the Rams Head is stocked with Arundel alumni eager to hear one of their own.
Jeff Frey, 66, of Crofton, graduated in the late 1960s. He first heard Nicholson’s national anthem on YouTube after his friends clued him into it, as did his daughter Mandy Roberts, 41.
“I think he can be something big. I really do,” she said. “What he did with the national anthem was amazing.”
Nicholson didn’t strum on every song Saturday; that’s where his guitarist, Brandon Aksteter, came in. The two met at a blues jam in Bowie when Nicholson had “nothing better to do on a Wednesday night.”
“He brought out all-black custom Les Paul. I was like, ‘Oh! You’re interesting,’ ” Nicholson said. “Next song, he brought out a slide, and I said, ‘You’re in the band.’ ”
In Aksteter, as well as bassist Rich Kolm and longtime drummer Sean Mercer, Nicholson feels he’s found the band that’s going to stick. Melancholy tinges the Nicholson’s lyrics, but it’s not always easy for him to get to that mindset in the recording process. When he found himself in a rut while working on his sadder songs, Mercer turned the lights out.
It was there, in a studio blanketed in total darkness, that Nicholson came alive.
“They can’t see me, so I’m just going to town,” he said. “It was cool. It was really cool.”
After finishing up at Arundel, Nicholson is headed south. Nashville will be just a place to sometimes perform, this time at the Tin Roof Broadway on Valentine’s Day. He’d rather go on tour, based at home, than get lost in the sea of aspiring acts in Music City.
“It’s a romantic idea, but it’s not a realistic idea,” Nicholson said. “It’s everybody, the best of the best from every small town in America, and there’s I-don’t-even-knowhow-many towns in America.”
His next album, still untitled, is due out in March. Though he acknowledges the industry is turning more and more to computerized sound, Nicholson opted for live tracked instruments this time.
“Every sound that you’re hearing on this coming record is real,” he said. “We made that sound.”
Before his last song, Nicholson tells the Rams Head crowd about all of the things he’s experienced in the last months since the national anthem. Luke Bryan, he said, “scared him.”
“He put his hand on my shoulder, and said, ‘You did a real nice job,’ ” Nicholson said.