Outrunning a nasty storm in Nashville, a van barrels down Interstate 40 with sights set for the Carolinas. In it sits Jackson Dean, a burgeoning country success who is racing into his next chapter like his transportation down the cracked highway.
Videos by American Songwriter
Dean spent the last year doing a lot of what he calls “gettin’ after it,” releasing a debut album, putting on shows, and acting as support for country’s latest hitmakers while also becoming one himself. The whirlwind that was his breakthrough year is only gaining speed and, like many of the songs on his debut album, Greenbroke, suggest the 22-year-old, Maryland-bred artist is restless, relentless, and ready for more.
“Right now, I’m feeling pretty good,” the “Don’t Come Lookin’” singer tells American Songwriter as he looks ahead. He welcomed 2023 with a reworking of a Greenbroke favorite, “Fearless.” When it was first released, the song was a heartfelt banger, full of a slow-burning fire. His latest iteration of the tune, titled “Fearless (The Echo),” sees that heat turned up as he gives it the oomph of a live performance.
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“That’s when I really start laying into it,” Dean explains of the mainstay show starter during his sets. “How we play it live is just a hair faster and a bit heavier. I wanted something that was reflective of that, of what we had been doing out in the world.
“That’s why we made ‘The Echo’ a little bit heavier,” he continues, “and I came back and re-sang it because I’ve been singing it since the first half of the record came out … The boy I was then, I could eat alive right now vocally.”
The boy he was then was first introduced to the public eye when a video of him performing the national anthem went viral. It was before a hometown high school football game. His high school football game, to be exact. Adorned in shoulder pads and wielding an acoustic guitar, the teen gave a haunting rendition of the anthem.
Dean had been playing music for a while, but it wasn’t until that video that a career in music seemed to become a reality. “By the time that video had hit, I was already playing in a full band, running the Maryland circuit and Virginia and Pennsylvania and Delaware,” he says, but explains the video was a “massive stepping stone.”
A moment he thought would land him a headline in the local newspaper took the young Dean even further. “I was in New York and LA … all within the matter of a week of each other in the middle of football season, trying to get out of practice to go be on TV. It was just nuts,” he says. “But it was never meant to be that. I wanted to document it and we put it out, and then it just flew.”
Dean’s love affair with music had simpler beginnings rather than viral aspirations. “Music has always been something to ride to,” he explains, detailing how he wired a nice radio and an old set of his brother’s speakers into his vehicle right after he got his driver’s license. “It was the only thing I remember wanting to do, so I could ride around and have music to listen to.”
For Dean growing up, music was woven into everyday life in rural Maryland. “It was just a different life and music was so intertwined in that,” he says. On the drive to a hard day’s work; at a job site, mingling with the sounds of heavy machinery; on the drive home, dirty, calloused hands drumming out a steering wheel beat, music was a part of it all.
[RELATED: Jackson Dean Announces ‘Live at the Ryman’ Album]
“It was a big part of communication between family,” he adds. “Even now, I’ll go back home, we’ll go back to the barn and just listen to music and drink. It’s what we do.”
He holds home close when making music now, crafting a spirited, down-home sound brimming with a fighting grit and a brow-soaking heat. However, he knows when to grab his hat from the hook and throw that comfort to the wind. With their sturdy, radio-ready hooks and infectious foot-stomping beats, his songs also have the muscle to soon take on stadiums.
“I’m trying to walk in my own vein,” he says of his sound and how he fits into today’s mainstream country music with the current push and pull between pop and traditional sensibilities. “I know what we’re doing right now and what we’re about to do and what is about to come. We’re going to be walking a pretty fine line.”
But Dean admits he likes it that way. “There’s so many places to go sonically,” he says. “I don’t know how many people can open up for HARDY and Carly Pearce in the same week. Being able to bounce in and out of those worlds is a really cool spot to be sitting in and I want to keep it that way.”
Photo by David McClister / Big Machine
