The Sit Down with Jackson Dean
After concluding the continental European portion of his run, Jackson Dean has returned to the UK in support of his highly acclaimed 2024 sophomore album “On The Back Of My Dreams”. The tour began in Birmingham with further five shows in the UK before concluding his European trip in Dublin on May 1st, all present the audience on side of the Atlantic to hear songs from the record played live for the first time.
Ahead of his arrival on these shores, Dean has shared the exciting news that he will release a brand-new single “Be Your Man” on May 9, marking a bold new chapter for the rising singer/songwriter as he expands to new territory both sonically and lyrically. The song sees him putting all his cards on the table as armed with his signature strong gravel-toned vocals and anchored by sultry bass beats, he provides listeners with a song perfect for when you want to tell the person you love exactly how you feel. Written by Dean alongside Rodney Clawson and Luke Dick, the groovy new track is destined to make hips swing and hearts swoon. Whilst he was in London, we caught up with Jackson at his label to talk about the new music and how the tour has been going so far.
Great to see you man, how’s it going?
“I got some sleep last night and hopped on the tube this morning and now here we are.”
Are you back in hotels now are you here or are you bussing?
“We’re on the big bus, it’s great.”
You’ve been over for a little bit now doing some Euro stuff haven’t you.
“Yeah, man, we did Switzerland, Munich, a show and a festival in the Netherlands then Birmingham was last night, it was an incredible show. Yeah, It's been really, really awesome, we came over early to do Scotland for some exploring and kind of all that sort of stuff, it was crazy exploring. I thought I was gonna have to take over the wheel a couple times, but we just packed in the Volvo and went out to the Isle of Skye, watched the sun go down over Lewis and it was incredible.”
So a bit of a change of scenery to the festival that you played in Holland then. It must be quite cool where you're playing these shows to have something did that breaks it up. Then with it being Coachella time and Stagecoach coming up, it sort of stops any FOMO from missing those out in Cali.
“Yeah man, when you go from your show to a festival, we held two thousand people in a tent that Paaspop, where there's like eighteen or twenty some stages there that was predominantly dance and like electronic music, it was crazy but we were on a like punk rock, like kind of like metal stage situation.”
They’re like really big on the festivals in terms of theming and stuff in that part of northwestern Europe, like Belgium has Tomorrowland which is the biggest dance festival in the world and the Dutch have Pinkpop too which is a massive mainstream one.
“It felt like Coachella, Burning Man and Bonnaroo all put together on a trip, you know what I mean? Just trippy as hell.”
Then you said that Birmingham went really well last night to kick things off over here.
“Yeah, man, it was about twelve hundred people, double decker club. I loved the club, it was really cool, they were enamoured. It was just a lot of wide eyed people and it was like, what the hell? But yeah, I was singing my ass off last night, man, it was it was incredible.”
Ahead of his arrival on these shores, Dean has shared the exciting news that he will release a brand-new single “Be Your Man” on May 9, marking a bold new chapter for the rising singer/songwriter as he expands to new territory both sonically and lyrically. The song sees him putting all his cards on the table as armed with his signature strong gravel-toned vocals and anchored by sultry bass beats, he provides listeners with a song perfect for when you want to tell the person you love exactly how you feel. Written by Dean alongside Rodney Clawson and Luke Dick, the groovy new track is destined to make hips swing and hearts swoon. Whilst he was in London, we caught up with Jackson at his label to talk about the new music and how the tour has been going so far.
Great to see you man, how’s it going?
“I got some sleep last night and hopped on the tube this morning and now here we are.”
Are you back in hotels now are you here or are you bussing?
“We’re on the big bus, it’s great.”
You’ve been over for a little bit now doing some Euro stuff haven’t you.
“Yeah, man, we did Switzerland, Munich, a show and a festival in the Netherlands then Birmingham was last night, it was an incredible show. Yeah, It's been really, really awesome, we came over early to do Scotland for some exploring and kind of all that sort of stuff, it was crazy exploring. I thought I was gonna have to take over the wheel a couple times, but we just packed in the Volvo and went out to the Isle of Skye, watched the sun go down over Lewis and it was incredible.”
So a bit of a change of scenery to the festival that you played in Holland then. It must be quite cool where you're playing these shows to have something did that breaks it up. Then with it being Coachella time and Stagecoach coming up, it sort of stops any FOMO from missing those out in Cali.
“Yeah man, when you go from your show to a festival, we held two thousand people in a tent that Paaspop, where there's like eighteen or twenty some stages there that was predominantly dance and like electronic music, it was crazy but we were on a like punk rock, like kind of like metal stage situation.”
They’re like really big on the festivals in terms of theming and stuff in that part of northwestern Europe, like Belgium has Tomorrowland which is the biggest dance festival in the world and the Dutch have Pinkpop too which is a massive mainstream one.
“It felt like Coachella, Burning Man and Bonnaroo all put together on a trip, you know what I mean? Just trippy as hell.”
Then you said that Birmingham went really well last night to kick things off over here.
“Yeah, man, it was about twelve hundred people, double decker club. I loved the club, it was really cool, they were enamoured. It was just a lot of wide eyed people and it was like, what the hell? But yeah, I was singing my ass off last night, man, it was it was incredible.”
Well, I’m probably going to be a repeat offender with you on this tour as I’m heading up to Manchester on Saturday and it would be rude not to head along here to The Forum tomorrow night as that’s a great space and a lot easier to get toagain, now that the tube station has FINALLY reopened. I saw a review of the show from last night and I noticed that “Be Your Man” which is the song we will come on to talk about wasn’t in the set in Birmingham. Was it a conscious decision before the tour, knowing you've got a new single coming but you kind of wanted to wait and hold that because you wanted to keep the focus on it being the “On The Back Of My Dreams” tour?
“I’ve been very excited to bring the On The Back Of My Dreams record over here to see how you all responded to it, just because off the last time with us being over here, it was received at least from our perspective, received very well. But yeah, our set list is pretty fluid, you know, we're doing sixty to seventy fives, I don't think there's any ninety minute sets on this tour, which is which is great for this (points to his throat). We’re switching a few in and out, like tomorrow, we're gonna play some new stuff that has not been played ever, so we're excited for that.”
I guess that gets harder with each tour, like although it is only two records as such to be working off, If you just played the album all the way through, that would be thirteen songs and that’s hitting sixty minutes before you even think about “Don’t Come Lookin’” or “Fearless” and you’re always going to play “1971” in there too so there is a lot of having to feel the vibe of the night out there. Coming back to “Be Your Man” which is coming out in a couple of weeks on May 9th. You wrote it with Luke (Dick) and Rodney Clawson but it’s a little bit of a different sound so was that intentional where you tried to create something a little different or was that just how it came out in the process?
“Luke and I try to not repeat ourselves again, then well, I can go anywhere and sing a phone book, you know, so it's when you can do that, it's hard to know which direction to go. We’ve been trying to tap into that world of Khruangbin and Hermanos Gutiérrez, which is all slide guitar and samba’s, just like vibe music and it's great, it’s really, really great. Khruangbin kind of took the world by storm, they’re everywhere, they did a lot with Leon Bridges and have a great singer but we’ve been trying to figure out how to tap into that world in a way that makes sense for us and Luke just had like a drum pad and a little bit of his rubber bridge guitar in there. He was like, let's just go here today and see what happens. It was funny for a minute, we didn't think that it was finished because it was only got one verse, it's just the one. The rest is chorus and bridges, it’s just arranged in such a way but it's so fun, it's designed to make your feet move, you know? This whole new batch, we’ve got four done so far and we’ve got another day in June to go finish out the project and I'm really, really, really, really excited for that batch, but this is all new territory for us. We don't have anything like this in the set, the set's pretty much built now in chapters kind of and that's gonna continue, but they're gonna go to like two or three songs chapters and because we have so much music, we have two records worth, now we're having to take songs out that we really love and be like, ah we gotta play this one though.”
That's kind of a weird thing, I guess, just from the human element of what you do, that you're kind of going right, okay, “Still Ragin’” and “Be Your Man” are the new songs that you put out whilst “Heavens To Betsy” which you put out in August is still on the climb and you're pushing that still too. The lifecycle of a song’s ascent over there is absolutely crazy how long it takes.
“It's a conveyor belt, it's a lot of people trying to get to the same place and so there are a lot of great songs out there, you know. Betsy has been alive since well before we released it as it was started being played to kill time on radio tour, then came out on the live record from the Ryman. I've seen so much of that vinyl out in the wild which makes me feel so good, but that was it’s first real breath of life, you know, it was very, very influential and everybody kind of knew that it was like something's gonna have to happen with this, you know.”
You sort of said that you're going back in to cut some more stuff, so as we're planning ahead to chapter three. Of the four that you mentioned, is that including “Be Your Man” and “Still Ragin’” as being the start of the next project?
“Ragin’ is on its own. From “Be Your Man” forward is new territory for us. Ragin’ was done in the batch of “On The Back Of My Dreams” and I just couldn't figure out where to put it to make it make sense in terms of of the flow of the record. It got put into a file that got sent to the Yellowstone people and Taylor Sheridan was like, I want that one.”
I like that because a lot of people when they have a song where you're working towards a batch for it, you sort of get drawn into that deluxe kind of world, where it's basically you're just prolonging something for the sake of three songs where only one of them is gonna do anything. If you've got more songs that are good, like you’re saying it's kind of, well, hang on, we're not far off the next chapter anyway.
“On The Back Of My Dreams was a big, big record, like that's a lot to swallow there, that’s a big body of work. I moved to Nashville to make records, we talked about a deluxe and stuff but I was just like, why? Unless we're pulling live cuts or doing something drastically different with the songs, just let it live!”
As you’ve been teasing the new track on socials, I have seen that a friend of mine has been commenting on posts and that Miss Alyssa Bonagura was in the studio with you when you cut it. I listened back and was like I’ve definitely heard the soon to be Mrs Shirley woo like that before.
“Alyssa is great man, we saw her at the airport before we left Nashville and she was just like, oh my God, it sounds great, thanks for having us.”
She’s pretty much an honorary Brit now as she has been here so long but she’s awesome and I love her. I saw her last at C2C where I just had a hat coming to hug me with a scream and she’s been poorly so hopefully she gets better soon. I appreciate the hang as always man and great that I get two chances to see the show this week which I’m sure will be as wild as ever.
“I’ve been very excited to bring the On The Back Of My Dreams record over here to see how you all responded to it, just because off the last time with us being over here, it was received at least from our perspective, received very well. But yeah, our set list is pretty fluid, you know, we're doing sixty to seventy fives, I don't think there's any ninety minute sets on this tour, which is which is great for this (points to his throat). We’re switching a few in and out, like tomorrow, we're gonna play some new stuff that has not been played ever, so we're excited for that.”
I guess that gets harder with each tour, like although it is only two records as such to be working off, If you just played the album all the way through, that would be thirteen songs and that’s hitting sixty minutes before you even think about “Don’t Come Lookin’” or “Fearless” and you’re always going to play “1971” in there too so there is a lot of having to feel the vibe of the night out there. Coming back to “Be Your Man” which is coming out in a couple of weeks on May 9th. You wrote it with Luke (Dick) and Rodney Clawson but it’s a little bit of a different sound so was that intentional where you tried to create something a little different or was that just how it came out in the process?
“Luke and I try to not repeat ourselves again, then well, I can go anywhere and sing a phone book, you know, so it's when you can do that, it's hard to know which direction to go. We’ve been trying to tap into that world of Khruangbin and Hermanos Gutiérrez, which is all slide guitar and samba’s, just like vibe music and it's great, it’s really, really great. Khruangbin kind of took the world by storm, they’re everywhere, they did a lot with Leon Bridges and have a great singer but we’ve been trying to figure out how to tap into that world in a way that makes sense for us and Luke just had like a drum pad and a little bit of his rubber bridge guitar in there. He was like, let's just go here today and see what happens. It was funny for a minute, we didn't think that it was finished because it was only got one verse, it's just the one. The rest is chorus and bridges, it’s just arranged in such a way but it's so fun, it's designed to make your feet move, you know? This whole new batch, we’ve got four done so far and we’ve got another day in June to go finish out the project and I'm really, really, really, really excited for that batch, but this is all new territory for us. We don't have anything like this in the set, the set's pretty much built now in chapters kind of and that's gonna continue, but they're gonna go to like two or three songs chapters and because we have so much music, we have two records worth, now we're having to take songs out that we really love and be like, ah we gotta play this one though.”
That's kind of a weird thing, I guess, just from the human element of what you do, that you're kind of going right, okay, “Still Ragin’” and “Be Your Man” are the new songs that you put out whilst “Heavens To Betsy” which you put out in August is still on the climb and you're pushing that still too. The lifecycle of a song’s ascent over there is absolutely crazy how long it takes.
“It's a conveyor belt, it's a lot of people trying to get to the same place and so there are a lot of great songs out there, you know. Betsy has been alive since well before we released it as it was started being played to kill time on radio tour, then came out on the live record from the Ryman. I've seen so much of that vinyl out in the wild which makes me feel so good, but that was it’s first real breath of life, you know, it was very, very influential and everybody kind of knew that it was like something's gonna have to happen with this, you know.”
You sort of said that you're going back in to cut some more stuff, so as we're planning ahead to chapter three. Of the four that you mentioned, is that including “Be Your Man” and “Still Ragin’” as being the start of the next project?
“Ragin’ is on its own. From “Be Your Man” forward is new territory for us. Ragin’ was done in the batch of “On The Back Of My Dreams” and I just couldn't figure out where to put it to make it make sense in terms of of the flow of the record. It got put into a file that got sent to the Yellowstone people and Taylor Sheridan was like, I want that one.”
I like that because a lot of people when they have a song where you're working towards a batch for it, you sort of get drawn into that deluxe kind of world, where it's basically you're just prolonging something for the sake of three songs where only one of them is gonna do anything. If you've got more songs that are good, like you’re saying it's kind of, well, hang on, we're not far off the next chapter anyway.
“On The Back Of My Dreams was a big, big record, like that's a lot to swallow there, that’s a big body of work. I moved to Nashville to make records, we talked about a deluxe and stuff but I was just like, why? Unless we're pulling live cuts or doing something drastically different with the songs, just let it live!”
As you’ve been teasing the new track on socials, I have seen that a friend of mine has been commenting on posts and that Miss Alyssa Bonagura was in the studio with you when you cut it. I listened back and was like I’ve definitely heard the soon to be Mrs Shirley woo like that before.
“Alyssa is great man, we saw her at the airport before we left Nashville and she was just like, oh my God, it sounds great, thanks for having us.”
She’s pretty much an honorary Brit now as she has been here so long but she’s awesome and I love her. I saw her last at C2C where I just had a hat coming to hug me with a scream and she’s been poorly so hopefully she gets better soon. I appreciate the hang as always man and great that I get two chances to see the show this week which I’m sure will be as wild as ever.
Lastly, the other thing since we last spoke and when you were doing promo around the album, you'd started doing bucket list videos on YouTube, which I think is really, really cool. Playing Red Rocks was the first one and it’s one that every artist looks to do along with the Ryman and RAH which you mention in the video then I suppose Madison Square Garden on a bigger scale but prior to playing there, what was your connection? Had you seen a gig there that stood out?
“No, I had always known that it was gonna be one of my top places to play ever. I made a deal with a guy that used to manage us, he was my forty year old best friend, he actually lives less than a mile away from my brother, back home and his name is Scott. I made a deal with him that I wouldn't go or even look at it until I played there, just like just like kind of the deal that you make with yourself about the Ryman, where you don't step into the circle unless you have a guitar on you, you know. I held true to that, I held true to the Red Rocks one and it was everything that I had dreamed of and and more. That thing is laid out like a cannon, like you can feel the sound shooting out of that ravine like a cannon into the sky, it was incredible. Yeah, I drove past it, I don't know how many times but never looked at it once, then we finally got to play there and it was just incredible.”
I hear so many people talk about the steps, like trying to get like their crew to run up and down it to sort of see like who needs something at the top.
“Yeah, who needs some cardio work? It was crazy, man, it’s a very sharp incline. Even the bowels of that place are pretty, it's really cool with all the signatures down in the basement and we went and signed the wall and stuff. But yeah the steps up top, like if you get to the top and look down, it looks like the belly of a ship. It looks like the hull, you could throw a bowling ball down in, but in reality, they’re six feet apart, you know? It's crazy.”
Wow! I hope to get there some day and look forward to catching you at Kentish Town for the London show and then again in Manchester.
“No, I had always known that it was gonna be one of my top places to play ever. I made a deal with a guy that used to manage us, he was my forty year old best friend, he actually lives less than a mile away from my brother, back home and his name is Scott. I made a deal with him that I wouldn't go or even look at it until I played there, just like just like kind of the deal that you make with yourself about the Ryman, where you don't step into the circle unless you have a guitar on you, you know. I held true to that, I held true to the Red Rocks one and it was everything that I had dreamed of and and more. That thing is laid out like a cannon, like you can feel the sound shooting out of that ravine like a cannon into the sky, it was incredible. Yeah, I drove past it, I don't know how many times but never looked at it once, then we finally got to play there and it was just incredible.”
I hear so many people talk about the steps, like trying to get like their crew to run up and down it to sort of see like who needs something at the top.
“Yeah, who needs some cardio work? It was crazy, man, it’s a very sharp incline. Even the bowels of that place are pretty, it's really cool with all the signatures down in the basement and we went and signed the wall and stuff. But yeah the steps up top, like if you get to the top and look down, it looks like the belly of a ship. It looks like the hull, you could throw a bowling ball down in, but in reality, they’re six feet apart, you know? It's crazy.”
Wow! I hope to get there some day and look forward to catching you at Kentish Town for the London show and then again in Manchester.
April 24th – London, O2 Forum Kentish Town
April 26th – Manchester, New Century Hall
April 27th – Bristol, O2 Academy
April 29th – Glasgow, SWG3 Galvanizers
April 30th – Belfast, Limelight 1
May 1st - Dublin, Green Room at The Academy
‘Be Your Man’ is the new single from Jackson Dean which will be released on May 9th via Big Machine Records and is available to pre-save HERE. The remainder of Jackson’s UK and Irish dates are shown above and you can find more details on his WEBSITE or you can keep up to date with all that he is up to by following along on INSTAGRAM TIKTOK X & FACEBOOK.
April 26th – Manchester, New Century Hall
April 27th – Bristol, O2 Academy
April 29th – Glasgow, SWG3 Galvanizers
April 30th – Belfast, Limelight 1
May 1st - Dublin, Green Room at The Academy
‘Be Your Man’ is the new single from Jackson Dean which will be released on May 9th via Big Machine Records and is available to pre-save HERE. The remainder of Jackson’s UK and Irish dates are shown above and you can find more details on his WEBSITE or you can keep up to date with all that he is up to by following along on INSTAGRAM TIKTOK X & FACEBOOK.
