Jameson Rodgers has just released his new EP – In It For the Money – out last Friday. Here, we interview Jameson about the project, his journey so far and what’s up next for the rest of the year.
Hi, Jameson. What’s up? Happy release day! How does it feel to finally have it out?
It feels great to say the least, I’ve been sitting on these songs for a couple years at this point. So, it’s nice to to finally get the chance to put them out – it’s awesome.
This project just feels like the story of your life. When I was going through reviewing it, authenticity was the word that kept springing to mind, how important is it that authentic self was the core of it?
It’s hard for me to try to be somebody I’m not, I’m just a dude from Batesville, Mississippi – a little small town in Mississippi – that moved to Nashville with a big dream. I’m not trying to be anything I’m not. A lot of people ask me what I learned from Luke Combs, when I was on tour with him in 2019, I learned you can be yourself and it can work. I’m just trying to be Jameson.
Talking about Luke Combs – your track with him is doing amazingly – how did he come to be a part of that track? Can you just talk about the evolution of that song?
When I wrote the song, I wrote it with Hunter Phelps, Alysa Vanderheym and Brett Tyler. When we were writing it, we never had the intention of ever being a duet, so we were just kind of writing a song for me. We went to the studio. Even when we put the band on it, I had no intentions of it being one. When I was in the studio, Luke hit me up to go on that tour with him, I thought man it would be fun to have a feature on my first record – that would be cool. It just made sense to ask Luke, I was just gonna be with him for literally a whole year – we both like drinking beer and honestly I expected him to say no, just because he’s never featured on anything. For whatever reason, he’s done me more favours than I’ll ever be able to repay him for.
It’s an amazing track, so it just brought it to life really. ‘Rolling Rock, Rolling Stone’ is one of those tracks which makes me crave live music. How important was it to you to have that bigger sound, particularly with everything that happened last year and now we’re finally getting ready for live shows again? It’s great to have that diversity in sound on the record.
I think I grew up listening to classic rock and 90s country – I like to call it baseball music because it’s the stuff they play during the game – ACDC, Rolling Stones, all that stuff. I don’t know, I’ve just always kind of gravitated towards that kind of a sound mixing the rock and the 90s country in a way. I guess that’s kind of where my influence is coming from.
I can’t wait to hear that when we get back to the live show. Obviously, ‘Some Girls’ was kind of a tipping point in your journey, did you expect that track to change the game?
Well, it’s funny, I moved to town to be a songwriter and I had some success as a writer, but I actually didn’t even write that song. I moved to Nashville in 2010 and throughout the early years, you do build a class of other writers that you come up with – Hardy and so many others that I’ve come up with – and that song was just a demo that him and Jake Mitchell and CJ Solar had shared with me. It was an older song and I was just like, ‘man, if no one ever recorded the song, I’m doing it’. So, it somehow slipped through the cracks and I just knew it was a special song, it’s hard to even explain. It’s just one of the songs that you hear for the first time and you’re just like, ‘Wow.’
It’s an amazing way of putting out that story that I haven’t heard before. Are you glad that your trajectory happened this way? Obviously, you had so many years as a songwriter and had time to hone your craft and your songs and kind of know what story you wanted to put out there that’s helped shape you to be the artist you own?
Absolutely, when I moved to town, I was so green – I was green as a as an artist, obviously and I figured out to learn fast just by going out here – and wrote and played with other singers and writers, I had a lot of learning to do. I kind of just put my head down, writing for years and honed in on that skill before I went out and started cutting my teeth. I think having the foundation as a songwriter definitely has helped me.
With ‘In It For The Money,’ you had so many years grafting and it would always be easy to step away. I guess what does it mean in the light of that track to have the level of success that you’re finally garnering? It must feel worthwhile now that you’ve had so many years from that perspective.
I guess just the way I grew up, I’m just so focused and I’m just so thankful for the opportunity. I mean, people from Batesville, Mississippi just don’t do this job. I’ve just tried, I’ve kept that in the back of my mind the whole time and so I’m just humbled by it all, I’m thankful to even have a chance to have some success.
The humility and authenticity comes through in the music, which I’m sure is part of the reason why it’s so successful. One of my standout tracks on the record is definitely ‘When You Think of Mississippi,’ there’s so much heart on there. Where did that song come from? Could you talk about the inspiration in the moment?
It is funny that you say that, I love that song, obviously and it’s kind of a personal thing, but I didn’t know how many people were going to like that song. I feel like I’ve had the most comments about ‘When You Think of Me,’ – there’s only so many people from Mississippi, but I guess Mississippi can be whatever, but that song I wrote it last year. Every year I’ve rented out a cabin east of Nashville on a lake and we go up there the first week of January, every year. I take some of my buddies up there and we write songs for a week or so – that song was one of the first songs we ever wrote on one of those trips. It came from an idea, I would say 90% of the time, we start with the title – my buddy, Josh Miller was like, ‘man, we should just write a song called Mississippi’. Jake Mitchell picked up the guitar and started playing that exact groove to the song and we just kind of wrote it one line at a time – it wasn’t like we had this huge angle that we were trying to get to. It just kind of fell out. You draw from past experiences, bits and pieces of truth and every song, so it was a kind of one of those deals.
It was a special moment, just after ‘Rolling Rock, Rolling Stones’ – it’s a nice breathing moment. Is it important to you to have that balance of all the different sonic elements and introduce yourself as an artist?
Yeah, I mean, the whole EP sequencing is very intentional. I rearranged them everywhere I went, I’d listen to it down this this way and that and after hours of doing that it would click into place.
Well congratulations – this EP is just really something special. I really hope that you it gets the attention it deserves and we can hear it on the road soon. Do you yet know if this will be a part of a longer project? Do you expect to release more music this year and kind of tour it out?
Yeah, we’re kind of expecting to put out a full album this fall. I’ve got a bunch of songs in our back pocket, waiting for whenever the timing is right and all the stars align.
Can’t wait to hear it! Thank you so much for your time today. And congratulations and happy release day.
Thank you so much.
