NOISE POP PRESENTS:JESS WILLIAMSON
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The Texas-born, L.A.-based singer and songwriter JESS WILLIAMSON makes
deeply felt songs that orbit around her powerful voice, a voice that's
strong and vulnerable, big-room flawless, quietly ecstatic, and
next-to-you intimate. In her most recent work, Sorceress, that voice
is surrounded by a deep-hued kaleidoscope of dusty '70s cinema, '90s
country music, and breezy West Coast psychedelia.
Williamson grew up in the suburbs of Dallas. An only child, she was
raised by music-loving parents on a healthy diet of Bonnie Raitt, Van
Morrison, and KT Oslin. A lifelong singer and performer, her earliest
memories are of putting on concerts for the other kids on the
playground at recess.
While attending the University of Texas, Williamson began to find her
footing as an artist in the DIY and student run art and music spaces
of Austin, Texas. A photojournalism major, she interviewed and
photographed bands for the school newspaper and hosted a radio show on
KVRX, the student-run radio station. But quietly, she had an insistent
pull to pursue music herself. In her last year of school, following an
impulse after seeing Austin's Ralph White play the banjo at a house
show in her friends' basement, Williamson took up banjo lessons at
South Austin Music, and soon after was writing songs and making home
recordings. After graduating, she moved to NYC to attend an MFA
Photography program at Parsons, but after a couple of semesters, she
realized the call to pursue a career in music was too big to ignore,
and she dropped out.
She'd started a band in NYC called Rattlesnake with another friend
from Texas: Williamson played banjo, her bandmate played electric
guitar, and they both sang. They played their first show at the now
defunct Brooklyn venue, Death by Audio, in March of 2010. A few months
later, drawn by her larger hometown community, she moved back to
Austin to focus on her solo project.
For the next couple of years, she was active playing and booking shows
in the Austin music scene, and self-released records on her own Brutal
Honest imprint: her debut EP, 2011's Medicine Wheel/Death Songs,
2014's Native State, and 2016's Heart Song. Along the way, she began
incorporating guitar and piano into her songwriting and live shows.
In 2016, she relocated to Los Angeles, a move that proved to be life
changing. Inspired by the new environment and the deep introspection
that can come from being alone in a foreign land, she wrote the album
Cosmic Wink, which was recorded the following year in Dripping
Springs, TX, and became her first release on a record label, Mexican
Summer, in 2018.
Her fourth album, Sorceress, also on Mexican Summer, arrives Spring
2020. It was written in Los Angeles, recorded at Gary's Electric in
Brooklyn NY and finished at Dandysounds in Dripping Springs, Texas,
where she recorded Cosmic Wink. While she's stayed true to her
deep-country roots, the music's grown in its ambitions. It's her
biggest, most assured collection to date, and a true document of the
hard work paying off.
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04/06/2020 Last update