On a Tuesday night in early September whilst London was experiencing the first signs of an Indian summer, Maryland native Jackson Dean decided the capital wasn’t quite hot enough as the Big Machine Records artist really brought the fire to The Garage in north London.
Backed by a full live band and playing to a packed house, Dean delivered a slick and captivating performance packed full of blues influenced country, laced with southern rock and tremendous energy. His acclaimed debut release “Greenbroke” formed the backbone of his eighty minute set, which started with “Trailer Park” and ended with his first top five smash hit “Don’t Come Looking” before returning for an all too brief two song encore of “Wings” and “Red Light”.
Dean’s sound, ideology and personality is a really perfect fit for the UK audience which has continued to grow off the back of his appearance at the inception of Royal Albert Hall’s Highways Festival and presenting one of the standout performances of last months The Long Road Festival. The fifteen song set at The Garage balanced tracks from his first album along with a collection of wonderfully delivered covers which included a crowd pleasing, singalong version of the 4 Non Blondes classic “What’s Up?” in addition to interpretations of lesser known songs in the form of Fred Eaglesmith’s “49 Tons”, Uncle Lucius’s “Keep the Wolves Away” and Ryan Bingham’s “Hallelujah” which all fitted so perfectly that the audience could well have assumed they were new songs written by Dean himself. It was the actual new songs from Dean, that were the most enticing moments of the show. We are aware that a new album is in the works and can likely expect to encounter it at some point in 2024 whilst earlier this year prior to the last show in London, an eight-track live album recorded at The Ryman in Nashville gave the first taste of what is to come. “Heavens to Betsy” and the roaring “1971” which is likely to be a staple of his set for a long time to come as it is an anthemic song that has the scope for Dean to reach even further throughout the country music community, both featured on the recording whilst “Big Blue Sky” and “Black Out” also look set to be fan favourites from the first opportunity to hear these songs.
The thing that is most evident from seeing Dean live is that before he gets on stage, he is the sort of artist that you have heard everyone talking about and tipping as the “next big thing” which you regularly encounter and in many cases is often label driven BUT here this hype feel’s almost understated within a matter of seconds because this guy genuinely is the real deal! Everything about his live show is so slick, completely clean and absolutely jaw dropping to the extent that you know that it is not going to be long at all before he is selling out stadiums over here, let alone the much bigger venues that he will be playing on his next visit over here. “Greenbroke” from Jackson Dean is out now through Big Machine Records (available HERE). You can learn more about Jackson and all his upcoming tour dates on his WEBSITE and keep up to date with him socially via INSTAGRAMTIKTOKTWITTERFACEBOOK