Name: Singer “Gotdamn Jack Jones” Holds Musical Showcase at BRAVA
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Singer “Gotdamn Jack Jones” Holds Musical Showcase at BRAVA

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                                Houston native and rock/soul artist Gotdamn Jack Jones held an invite-only music showcase on Thursday, April 25, from 6 - 10 p.m. at Brava (located at 414 Milam St). With the Houston skyline as his backdrop, Jones invited media and industry influencers to an intimate live performance. Backed by a full band, Jones performed previously released music as well as some brand-new singles from his forthcoming debut album, “Shepherd” (release date TBA). The exclusive event featured cocktails, light bites, and an intimate look inside the life and work of a uniquely gifted musician.Jack Jones (born Steven Jackson) grew up on the south side of Houston, Texas. Early on, he and his siblings lived in South Park’s Villa Americana (“VA”) Apartments, once considered dangerous. His family moved when he was in middle school to the Hiram Clarke neighborhood, where he lived in another notorious apartment complex called “Aristacrats” (AKA 4400).Despite the dangerous surroundings, Jones would always find solace in music. He credits his family’s extensive musical taste with helping him become a storyteller who’s comfortable in many genres. Jones recalls his mother only listening to country-western and blues for most of his pre-teen life.“My mother would only play old ‘70s &amp; ‘80s country-western songs during the day and at night? Blues…hard blues,” Jones shared. “B.B. King, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Z.Z. Hill, Johnnie Taylor, etc. I learned how to tell a story and deliver it by listening to blues and country.” Meanwhile, his brother was a huge Prince fan. One sister introduced him to artists like the Isley Brothers and Frankie Beverly; another loved ‘80s pop artists like George Michael and Madonna. The result was a diverse musical blend that influenced his current sound.When I reached the 47th floor of Brava — a luxury high-rise with stunning views of the Bayou City below, Jones was seated on a couch with what I thought were just friends. He suggested rehearsing; they did just that while musicians set up nearby. On the couch, without a mic or any accompaniment, he began to sing – a bluesy, powerful voice tinged with honey and gospel grit, surrounded by silken harmonies from the background singers; he says they write and produce together: “I’m really comfortable with this group. Fortunately, we know each other; the synergy is awesome.”In an exclusive interview with the Forward Times, Jones discussed his musical journey, his anxiety, his collaborators, and his memorable stage name.“My last name, my government name, is Steven Jackson, like the football player. My dad’s name is Jones, but I had my mom’s name: Jackson. So, the names blend together,” he says. “Jack Jones. The ‘Gotdamn’ was given to me by another musical friend of mine, who, every time I would sing, would say ‘Gotdamn!’ and when I came up with the name Jack Jones, he’s saying: ‘Gotdamn, Jack Jones!’ and so it just kind of stuck. I just adopted it,” he recalls. “And plus, there was another artist named Jack Jones from the ‘60s and ‘70s.” (Singer Jack Jones had hits in the 1960s and went on to perform the theme for The Love Boat.)“It’s always, like, a little gymnastics, ‘cause you want to clarify that it’s G-O-T, not G-O-D,” he says. “Politics and all that stuff, I’m not above it. I just won’t sell my soul. But I get it: you have to be marketable. If it makes people uncomfortable saying ‘gotdamn,’ just abbreviate it ‘GD’ and let’s move on,” he says, explaining that he wasn’t trying to be provocative.Jones released his debut EP, “Left-Handed In My Right Mind,” in 2020, giving listeners a look into his sound, which blends soul, rock, funk and blues. “I was in therapy and that whole album, that whole EP, was actually a part of the therapy,” he explains. “Like I said, my anxiety was pretty bad. I didn’t want to be seen or heard, and it kind of stems from childhood trauma,” he said. “The thing was: I was never shy, just introverted. ‘Cause if I’m talking to you, I’m fine. I can talk to people, but I’m just introverted. I don’t always enjoy mingling,” he says. “So that EP, if you listen to it from beginning to end, I’m literally telling you a story about events that were instrumental to Jack Jones, becoming who I am […] once I finished it while I was in therapy, the goal was to release it. No pub.”He didn’t promote it; the mission was to release it and accept whatever feedback he got. “In order to get freedom, you have to use the gift that God’s given you,” he said. “Your music is your ticket…Once I put it out, I found God, had a purpose. I knew exactly what I needed to do.”He started writing more songs.And each song in his roughly 45-minute set had a message. “I wanna tell y’all about ‘Can’t Breathe,” he began. “When you say, ‘I can’t breathe,’ sometimes it can be charged [politically]. When I wrote ‘Can’t Breathe,’ it was mainly about me. I was stuck in a box for a long, long time, and I couldn’t breathe in that box. It wasn’t where God wanted me to be. It was where I wanted to be, and my will is not His will…once I got out of that box and followed the path that He set forth, I got to breathe. But the song ‘can’t breathe’ is telling you exactly what I was doing to myself and allowing society to do to me.” After a rollicking guitar riff, Jones broke out into a call-and-response, backed by bluesy horns — painting a gritty portrait of a man suffocating in a box he’s placed himself in.The next song was “Eagle Flies on Friday.” “Some of y’all might be old enough to remember that back in the day, paychecks used to come in the mail. The mailman delivered your checks,” he said. “And so, it was always said that the eagle flies on Friday […] my old man was a rolling stone, and he liked to go into those hole-in-the-walls and he’d spend up his money real, real fast. My mama wasn’t having that. So she tracked them down just about every Friday,” he remembered. “And so that’s what this song is all about. It’s about my old man trying to beat the odds, to spend some money and drink his sorrows away.”“Water on Mars,” released last year, is a sweet, soulful love song Jones said he was proud of.“You write a song like ‘Water on Mars’ about love. Before you can get to a place like that, you’ve got to go through something. And you know that box I was telling y’all about? You can’t have relationships in a box […] when you’re in a box, you can’t let God in. So, after years of therapy — a lot of us need it; we deny it — that was the calling, to realize that accountability was the first step to even moving forward.‘Borrowed Time’ is about my accountability, my place in it. No matter who else was involved with it, it was all about me and what I needed to do,” he said. As he reveals in the song’s opening lyric: “I came to terms with myself this year. I’m showing all my cards, exposing all my fears.”The song depicts a failing relationship. Sometimes, he expresses, we stay in things longer than we should. “Girl, I’ll testify that I tried to change you to someone else I knew,” he sings on the track. “Then I realized: you never tried/You never changed/So I pretended we were fine/And just borrowed time.”“After you finish borrowing time, you do all that you need to do to get on that path. I finally fell in love for the first time – and it was with myself. I don’t know how people can say they love someone but don’t love themselves. Sounds like you’re making more withdrawals than deposits. I think that’s probably what I was doing the most.“I was able to find love with myself and then with my wife, who is the most beautiful person in the world,” he declared. “True unconditional love is something that I wish everyone could experience. It was a first for me and it made me a better person, a better husband, a better father and a better Jack Jones.” The next single that Jones performed, “Pretty Lies” is about his wife Crystal.Before he performed “Get Free,” Jack Jones explained: “We get outside boxes; We find love with ourselves,” he mused. “We find accountability…Freedom is the ultimate goal. Freedom is what I asked for. Freedom is what He’ll give me if I am faithful in doing his will. And that’s what this whole thing is about. It’s about freedom. It’s about waking up each day doing something that you love and what you were put here to do. And the only way you can do it is: get free.”Follow Gotdamn Jack Jones on Instagram@gotdamnjackjones
                                
                                



                                
                                
                                
                                Houston native and rock/soul artist Gotdamn Jack Jones held an invite-only music showcase on Thursday, April 25, from 6 - 10 p.m. at Brava (located at 414 Milam St). With the Houston skyline as his backdrop, Jones invited media and industry influencers to an intimate live performance. Backed by a full band, Jones performed previously released music as well as some brand-new singles from his forthcoming debut album, “Shepherd” (release date TBA). The exclusive...

Singer “Gotdamn Jack Jones” Holds Musical Showcase at BRAVA

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