Jackie Venson, Austin, Texasâs resident singer, songwriter, guitar shredder, and joy dispenser, took a couple of months to restart the locomotive momentum of her career after it was halted by the coronavirus pandemic in March of 2020. A summer of stepping up her touring and festival appearances trashed, she had to purposefully and intentionally consider a way forward.Â
She chose the path less traveled, but she never trekked it alone. By the end of 2020, Vensonâs totally independent team had landed her at number 10 on Pollstarâs Top 100 livestreamers chart for the entire year — higher than superstars Luke Combs, Brad Paisley, and even K-pop, heartthrob boy band BTSâs stream counts, with streams totaling more than 2.8 million viewers.Â
âIt felt like the train stopped and then I created work for myself,â Venson admits, describing an intentional pivot to virtual, streaming shows and alternative programming that never felt like she was giving up the most important parts of her art and expression. Just the opposite. Venson is a rare example of a musician who has utilized the pandemic to not only discover a new, novel way forward in an industry that promises burnout, extractive power dynamics, and the commodification of selfhood even in the best, most profitable cases. She also grew her fan base, her community, and found enough time to release five projects in the last calendar year, as well.Â
I wanted to start by asking you about joy. It feels so obvious and palpable in your music, especially in your playing style. Not just in how youâre so engaging and charismatic, and not just because itâs the title of your 2019 album, Joy. On âSurrender,â for instance, you sing, âFeet are so tired, but I keep running/ Heart is so heavy, but I keep singing.â That sounds like the radical act of choosing joy, to me.
JV: Well, itâs literally what Iâm feeling while Iâm actually playing the music. Itâs just really cool to be able to play the guitar. I worked really hard to be able to play the guitar and when I look in the mirror I see the same face who started guitar, I guess ten years ago now, except this person can play the guitar! This person can play the guitar, and everybody likes listening to this person who can play the guitar. Not only is this person having a really good time doing something she set out to do ten years ago, but everybody else is enjoying it and having a good time on a base level — and by base level I mean, often theyâve just walked in the room. [Laughs] They werenât there ten years ago! Theyâre enjoying it, objectively, and Iâm sitting here looking at the depths of [the music] and then Iâm watching other people, who donât even know the story, just having a good time. That is pretty awesome and actually, Iâm pretty sure thatâs why most people set out to play instruments. They see somebody having fun doing it and they want to have fun, too.Â
Well, absolutely. Gratitude is the foundation of joy. You canât really have joy if you donât have gratitude.Â
One thing that jumped out at me from your livestreams and performances is the way you sing along with your guitar lines, the way youâre constantly in dialogue with yourself and your own voice. It made me think of the age old tradition of fiddling and singing along with yourself — and of course, it makes me think of jazz and bebop solos as well — but I wondered where singing along with the line in your head came from for you?Â
My dad told me the best way to learn how to improv solos. I had been working on trying to improv from even the time I played piano from when I was like fifteen. I remember getting another piano teacher who knew jazz so that they could teach me how to improvise. Obviously, [Laughs] thatâs the wrong angle. I was four years into playing guitar before I learned that I was approaching improvisation the wrong way. The funny thing is that my dad told me, when I was fifteen, he was like, âAll you need to know about improvising is that you just think of a melody and you play it, and after you play the melody you thought of a few times, you start messing with it.â So you play it, and add a note here or subtract a note there, and heâs like, âThatâs all youâve got to do and then itâs a great solo!â Because a melody isnât just playing notes randomly, it has purpose. You want your solos to have purpose. My dad told me that fifteen years ago and I just didnât hear him. I wasnât ready to hear him. It took the guitar and years and years of singing, as well, to put it all together and arrive at the destination my dad tried to usher me to.Â
Itâs a touchy subject! Itâs like singing, how people are way more sensitive about their singing. Theyâll show you their drum licks all day, but you ask them to sing and theyâre like, âNoooo!!âÂ
Itâs the vulnerability!Â
Itâs a new level of vulnerability. But hereâs the thing, itâs not very hard, all you have to do is just listen to a crapload of music, stuff a bunch of melodies into your brain, and then, just think about all of the melodies you know and think about them a lot. Always listen to music. Keep listening to the music you already have listened to and listen to new music. If youâre constantly listening then youâre going to be sitting on stage and everyoneâs going to point to you to solo — say Cm going to F — BOOM! All of a sudden youâre playing, [Sings] âThey smile in your face/ All the time they wanna take your placeâ on the guitar. Youâre playing âBack Stabbers,â because suddenly youâre going from Cm to F7 and you know it will sound good. You know? [Laughs] Because youâve heard that melody and itâs not very hard! A beginner could play it. [Hums line] But youâre crushing it with some tone and everybody in the audience is thinking youâre a master. When really, what youâre playing is not that hard. Itâs just musical.Â
In that moment, it felt really busy, but it also felt kind of maddening. I was busy, but I was never leaving my house. Then it felt crazy. And in the next moment after that, the numbers started to juice. For a couple of months it was full stop, for a couple of months it was maddening like, âWow, these numbers are really rad, maybe this is the way.â A couple of months after that I knew this was definitely the way. I stumbled upon the way. I was walking along on a path and then that path had like, a giant tree fall over it and I couldnât go down it anymore. I saw this side path — you know when youâre in the woods and you see a path but youâre not sure itâs a path or if your eyes are just tricking you?Â
âIs that a deer trail or is that actually a trail?â
Right. Is that really a trail? Itâs like, âI donât know⊠but thereâs also a giant tree over the path I was on. Canât go that way. I guess Iâm going to go down this path, I hope thereâs not too much poison ivyâŠâ [Laughs]
That was the livestream path. There was maybe one creature that walked down this path, one way, one time. It appears thereâs a path, but it clearly hasnât been followed very often. Thatâs what it felt like, to be on this uncertain path, which then ends up opening up and it turns out I was right the whole time. The way I feel now is not the way I felt when it was all happening. The way I feel now is all because of having retrospect on my side. And the development — the direction things are going in. Itâs a lot more clear than it was six months ago.Â
As if today couldn’t be any more extra… Y’all, I just found out I was named number TEN on @Pollstar‘s top 100 live streamers for ALL OF 2020. Completely independent, my team is small but we fight hard! â€ïžâ€ïžâ€ïž pic.twitter.com/d1kkaF4teX
â Jackie Venson (@jackievenson) January 22, 2021
I have found myself repeating throughout the pandemic that we should be building the world we want to exist after the pandemic while weâre in it. To me thatâs what it sounds like youâre describing, finding this other path. Looking to the future, what will you be bringing with you from this time, into whatever a post-COVID reality looks like?Â
The thing Iâm taking with me is the fact that thereâs never any need to be desperate, thereâs never any reason to act out of desperation. Thereâs no person or contract to be signed that holds the âkeys to the kingdom.â There is no kingdom. We are IN the kingdom. We just exist within different perspectives of it. Maybe your perspective in the kingdom right now is that youâre a baby band, youâve just established yourself. Youâre in the same kingdom as BeyoncĂ©! Youâre just standing in a different spot than her. There are thousands of spots you can stand in this kingdom. BeyoncĂ©âs spot isnât the only one thatâs good. There are lots of places to stand! Millions of artists, that you donât know about, are standing in pretty sweet spots in this kingdom that we all exist within, together.Â
Thereâs no person thatâs going to give you her spot. She got to her spot by her own weird, twisty trail to get there. Maybe a deer walked down it once! She took her own path. Youâre not going to be able to recreate that, but she just took a path to get to a spot, not the kingdom itself. You consider that spot the kingdom, but weâre all in the kingdom already. The way we used to live had this weird illusion that we all had to climb these ladders, but really you just need to get where you want to be. You donât need to climb that same ladder just because someone else climbed it, and theyâre famous, and youâve got to do what they did. It doesnât make any sense, itâs completely futile, and youâre going to just be spinning in your hamster wheel, stuck in the same vantage point. Thereâs not one guy or gatekeeper who can unlock everything for you. There are people who will say they can, but what happens? You end up stuck at one spot, one vantage point. Thereâs no one person, one artist who has it all.
All photos: Ismael Quintanilla III