INTERVIEW: Jameson Rodgers on Bet You’re From a Small Town

This Friday, Jameson Rodgers will release his debut album – Bet You’re From a Small Town – through Sony Music Nashville, following the phenomenal success of his tracks including ‘Cold Beer Calling My Name’ and ‘Some Girls.’ Here, we interview Jameson about the journey to his debut record, the story behind the tracks and what he wants fans to take away from the record. 

Hey, how are you? It’s the final countdown, how are you feeling?

Oh, I’m nervous, excited, all the emotions…

It must be nice to finally be able to celebrate back in the real world – you’re actually able to play the songs and celebrate the album with your fans for the first time in about a year!

I know right? I mean, we started playing shows at the end of May – a few months ago. It’s been just such a blast the last few months on the road, it’s so good to be back.

It’s one thing hearing responses on the internet or being able to read ‘I love this song,’ it’s not quite the same as having people scream back the words to you and being able to celebrate that side. 

I couldn’t have said it better.

Obviously the records came together over the past few years, so how much was written during the pandemic? How long have you had these tracks in the pipeline?

You hear it all the time in Nashville, you have your whole life to write your first record, some of the songs were written a few years ago and some of them were written a few months ago. It’s been a two year process of going in the studio and recording the songs – we started a couple years ago, we went in and cut four or five songs and six months later, we’d go cut four or five more and put them in a pile not knowing if they would be part of an EP or a record one day. Some of them ended up being on my last EP, and obviously now we’ve got this record coming out – it’s just some of my favourite songs that I’ve written over the last few years. I’m just excited.

Obviously some of the tracks you released with the EP, but looking at the tracklist and working through, I felt that you really told a story – it felt very intentional the way that you’ve crafted the record. How long did you spend working out what story you were going to tell and how you’re going to lead from one song to the next? 

Yeah it is, I put a lot of time and thought into that, I spend a lot of time in my truck listening to the songs and I’ve tried every sequence possible with all these songs. I wanted the first part of the record to be mostly new songs and then the back half would be the songs that may be more familiar for people – like ‘Cold Beer’ and ‘Some Girls’ and ‘Good Dogs.’ I’m excited and proud of the sequence for sure.

I actually really liked that way of doing it. I think a lot of people often put the big hits that people know at the beginning, but actually, it’s really nice to be able to listen to a record and not know the initial songs and go through that journey. Obviously, the record’s title sets the premise – ‘Bet You’re From a Small Town’ – you have such an authenticity in the way that you write and there’s so much about small town roots throughout the record. Was that really important to you when you were going through crafting the project?

Oh, absolutely. You know that song especially is the most personal song for me, I’ve lived pretty much every line in that song. It’s hard to be something you’re not – I’m just a small town guy from Mississippi – and hopefully that theme is spread across the whole album.

One of the songs that really stood out to me was ‘Merle Haggard’ because it’s so explicit in your love of country music and your roots – has he been a particular inspiration for your music? How did that particular song come together? 

My dad is the biggest Merle Haggard fan of all time. I’ve obviously been familiar with his stuff since I was a kid, so when I had that idea, I just knew I wanted to write a song called Merle Haggard and I wrote that title down but I didn’t know how to do it. I actually sat on it for a couple of weeks before I presented it to any other co-writers or anything. I finally came up with the idea, ‘Merle Haggard would have wrote songs about you’ – for whatever reason, I like to write songs about a girl breaking the guy’s heart.

It’s a good story. 

I’m almost complimenting Merle and the girl in a weird way – it’s just a unique kind of angle.

Talking about taking that idea to particular co-writers, are there certain people in Nashville that you know to take particular ideas to? 

Oh, absolutely. Writing with all these people over the years, you kind of learn what certain writers are good at writing. I definitely save ideas for certain people all the time, for sure.

‘Some Girls’ was the only external cut on the record and it’s had phenomenal success – did you know that song would take off in the way that it has?

There was always something special about that song. Coming up with HARDY and all these other writers here in town, we used to share demos with each other back in the day and that song ended up on my phone and I would just always play it in my truck. For whatever reason, it was always something I wanted to listen to in my truck. Eventually, the song slipped through the cracks and it ended up in my possession and I got to cut it. As soon as we put the song out, people were singing it at shows, so I knew it was going to be a special song. Many stars have to align for a song to go all the way up the charts – that song was just destined to be a number one song.

We can’t not talk about ‘Cold Beer Calling My Name’ – how did that track come together with Luke Combs? It’s created such a sound base for releasing the record this week.

I met Luke back in 2016, before he was mega famous. I’ve kind of gotten to watch his rise to the top, which has been super cool. A few years ago, back in 2018, he had hit me up and asked me to go out on tour with him for 2019. Around the same time that he asked me, I was in the studio recording ‘Cold Beer’ with no intentions of it being a duet, but I was like ‘man, it would be cool to have a feature on my first record’. I just threw it out to him, with no pressure at all, luckily he said yes and obviously it wouldn’t be the same without him.

Going into this week and releasing the record, what do you hope fans to take away from the record when they’re listening to it? And in terms of knowing who you are as an artist?

I think the whole goal of music is to make people feel something, because all these songs, when I was writing them and recording them really made me feel something. I hope they know that it comes from a real place.

Well congratulations, it’s such a strong record and good luck for this week!