I’ve Got Songs to Sing is an enjoyable mix of classics and new material.
For Tony Jackson, recording his first country music album — titled, simply, Tony Jackson — was a dream come true. And he’s quick to credit the notables who helped him fulfill that dream.
After his recording of the George Jones classic “The Grand Tour” became a viral hit, the Virginia-born singer-songwriter was brought to Nashville by Donna Dean Stevens, widow of the late Jimmy Dean, and veteran manager Jim Della Croce, who would produce Jackson’s highly acclaimed 2017 debut album. And although he was then a relative unknown, Jackson’s talent and reputation impressed such A-listers as Vince Gill, John Sebastian, Little Feat’s Bill Payne, George Marinelli, Steve Cropper, Paul Franklin, Mickey Raphael, Joe Spivey and Billy Thomas, who readily agreed to join him in the recording studio.
Tony Jackson yielded five charted singles, and his music videos scored 80 million views. As a result, he was invited to take the stage for multiple Grand Ole Opry performances, and made dozens of TV and radio appearances amid his busy touring schedules. Unfortunately, his plans for a second record had to be put on hold because of the COVID pandemic. During his downtime, however, Jackson was able prepare an impressively diverse song list for his sophomore album, the aptly titled I’ve Got Songs to Sing, which is set for release Friday, Sept. 29
“On the first record,” Jackson recently told C&I, “I worked more at the direction of the other musicians present, and the producers, and my managers, because I had the mindset of, ‘Hey, you are the subject matter experts.’ And so I leaned on them a whole lot for, ‘How do you sing this? What do you sing?’ And for instrumentation and such. I really am proud of and enjoy that record.” While preparing the follow-up, however, “I kind of wanted to be more of the artist. Sure, I took input from others, but I relied less on it and decided that, ‘Yeah, here’s how it feels to me. Here’s how I want to sing it. Here’s what I want it to sound like, and here’s what I want to say.’”
I’ve Got Songs to Sing “has some newer sounding stuff, but the traditional sound is there as well. And some standards — stuff that I think fits me to a T. I’m not trying to emulate the greats, but I do feel like I’m an artist, so that things come through me — how I hear them, and how I want them to sound.”
The new album — produced by Chuck Rhodes and Buddy Hyatt in Nashville, and John Sebastian and Jim Della Croce in Woodstock — includes new material written by Mo Pitney, Vince Melamed, Bobby Tomberlin, Jamey Johnson, Karen Staley, Erin Emberlin, and Jackson himself. Jackson is especially proud of his duets with two artists he has long admired: Country Music Hall of Famer Randy Travis (“Do You Remember Country Music”) and “Queen of Bluegrass” Rhonda Vincent (“Leave a Light On.”). But he’s just as pleased to have included his versions of standards like John Sebastian’s “Darling Be Home Soon,” one of the most deeply affecting cuts on I’ve Got Songs to Sing.
“I’ve been fortunate to call John Sebastian a friend of mine since we did our first record,” Jackson said. My manager does some work for him also, and he wanted to do ‘Nashville Cats,’” a song Sebastian originally recorded as member of The Lovin’ Spoonful. “So John came in, and we really hit it off. I think he's just a great, great, great person, outside of being a phenomenal songwriter.”
Later, Jackson attended a concert Sebastian gave at the historic Franklin Theatre in Franklin, Tennessee. “John does these shows — just himself and his guitar — and he kind of tells the stories behind a lot of his songs. And he sang ‘Darling Be Home Soon,” another Lovin’ Spoonful hit, which he originally wrote for the soundtrack of the 1966 Francis Coppola movie You’re a Big Boy Now. “And just hearing him sing it, and having met his wife Catherine and knowing how much the song reflected their love… Man, it was just beautiful. It really hit me.
“So I told John, ‘You know what? We’ve got to bring this song back. I’ve got to do this song.’ We didn’t do it for the last record. But for this one, John joined in and agreed to do some of the production work for the stuff we recorded in Woodstock. So we added ‘Darling Be Home Soon’ to the mix. And I’m thankful, because that song’s a powerful song — very, very, very well written — and the sentiment is real. This is how he feels about Catherine. And so that’s how it got on this project.
