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Jonathan Singleton’s hometown of Jackson, Tennessee lies roughly halfway between Memphis and Nashville, and that turns out to be a pretty good guide to the geography of the music on his debut album. Singleton’s gritty guitars and blues-saturated vocal attack draw heavily from the American center of soul, while the stories and lyrical craft are pure Music City. It’s a potent mix, one born of a searching musical spirit, and truth be told, Singleton is a little surprised to find himself garnering so much interest and support from country music.
“In the beginning I thought we would do a rock thing and that I would be the drummer,” he says, which sounds borderline crazy coming from a triple threat guitarist/writer/singer. For years, he was in a band with his older brother who held down the front man spot while Jonathan sat in back, keeping time and going with the flow. “We played blues and rock and we even tried to get a record deal and did some showcases for labels, but we did so many things nobody knew how to make it one thing,” he recalls.
This of course has changed. Singleton got serious about the guitar, took up his rightful place as a leader and finally let the world hear his voice, which is both fresh and weathered, rough and sweet. His writing came of age too, and when his songs began breaking through for other artists (he co-wrote the No. one “Watching Airplanes” for country maverick Gary Allan and Billy Currington’s recent No. one “Don’t”) he got a long look as a potential recording artist. Now with his self-titled debut album, he offers a collection that ranges from the jagged, lonesome “Lover,” through some country-simple explorations of love’s ups and downs in “Paradise” and “Good Guys,” to the near-five-minute southern rock jam “Storms” that concludes the disc.
Working with industry mogul Dann Huff in the producer’s role, Singleton aimed to integrate the sounds that make labels and radio stand up and applaud with the eclectic influences he brought to the table from a lifetime of loving and making music. “I think it worked out,” he says.
Those strong results came from talks with Huff about his desire not to be shoehorned into a flavor-of-the-month mainstream country sound. Jonathan made sure Huff knew that he’s as big a fan of alt-country legend Steve Earle and Kentucky songwriter Chris Knight as he is of classic country, and he says Huff got it: “When we got in the studio he’d say ‘No, no. Way dirtier than that.’ That’s what he spent most of his time doing – saying ‘that’s too perfect.’ That was great with me. That’s what I wanted. It’s why the album sounds like a band.”
The band is The Grove, a six-piece that’s been rocking houses in one form or another since 2000. It’s a brotherhood, and he thinks of himself as one among equals. “No matter what kind of music we were making we were always a band. And we still think of it that way,” he says. “It’s weird for me to say Jonathan Singleton and the Grove. So I most of the time just say we’re The Grove.” They even share a common tattoo - a tribal fire symbol that looks like a gear, which fits given that a gear is something that rolls and works hard.
“The great thing about those guys is it took us so long to get the record deal done and yet, they stayed with it and stayed with me,” say Jonathan. “We were doing gigs for nothing that first year. So we did the hard times together as a group. And now hopefully we’ll all share the good times.”
Singleton’s household growing up in West Tennessee wasn’t just full of music; sometimes it was like a music business tutorial. His mother was a committed country singer who performed in the area and who turned down a label deal because it would have required her to play hundreds of dates a year out of town. His dad, a full-time preacher, once rented out the county civic center and promoted a show featuring his sons’ bands. Fourteen-year-old Jonathan was just months into his first ensemble, Short Attention Span, and they played covers like “Wild Thing” and “Louie, Louie.”
“We had to do radio and pass out flyers. It was a great lesson for us,” says Singleton. “There were 300 or 400 people there. I got a girlfriend that night and made about 40 bucks. They were showing us you can make money doing this if you work at it.”
Jonathan has worked at one style or another steadily ever since then, surviving high school’s awkward years in a sequence of bands. He also taught guitar at a local music shop, where his students forced him to get his own chops together. One especially quick kid pushed Singleton week after week, learning everything Jonathan put in his way and came back hungry for more. Turns out he was the grandson of Jackson native Carl Perkins, which shows how deeply music is woven into Singleton’s hometown. It might also one day be said that two great guitar players were born out of that relationship.
Singleton attended Northeast Community College in Booneville, Miss because of its Campus Country program which offers playing opportunities as well as a music business grounding. And his dabbling in songwriting led him to frequently visit Nashville to play writers’ nights. That’s how he met Ted Jones, a Nashville writer making his way up the career ladder. He urged Singleton to focus on the craft and answered his many questions about how the business works. They co-wrote and liked the results, as eclectic as they were. “It was pretty abstract,” says Jonathan with a laugh. “Some of it was straight country and some of it was over here or over here. So I ended up having a big batch of songs that were a little bit different from what everybody else was doing.”
Singleton rose to the opportunity. He landed a publishing deal, driving to Nashville every week to write and network and then driving home to play long weekends as the house band at Barley’s in Jackson. Music Row magazine would eventually nominate Singleton as 2008’s breakout songwriter of the year.
He approached the idea of being a touring and recording artist somewhat guardedly, but eventually the chance to work with Huff and Universal South Records proved too perfect. He embarked on a more rigorous road schedule and culled his huge songbag into eleven that seemed to sum up who he is for his debut album. Those include the first single “Paradise,” a shiny road-trip-friendly song about living in the lap of happiness thanks to a good woman’s love, as well as the wistful “Good Rain or Jesus,” a co-write with Barry Dean that achieves the same unforgettable visual pictures that make “Airplanes” so successful.
The Grove did release two independent CDs in the early 2000s, so Singleton has felt the rush of watching his music travel from ear to ear and the excitement that comes from building a fan base. But it’s all taken on a new scale as the band has been embraced by country music fans. With blazing guitar in hand and his band behind him, he’s opened for Carrie Underwood, Blake Shelton and Eric Church. This spring Singleton earned the “Rising Star” slot on the premiere of "Legends and Lyrics," a live performance show airing on more than 200 public television stations, where he’ll be heard alongside legends Patty Griffin, Kris Kristofferson, and Randy Owen.
Unlike the stereotypical Nashville newcomer who always knew he wanted that Music Row brass ring, Singleton’s success is all the more interesting and promising given his years of hard work and focus on the music instead of the dream.
“I try not to get too far ahead of myself,” says the easy-going Singleton. “These songs and what we do on stage every night are real. I just try and stay focused on making authentic music that I can be proud of, and all the rest will just be icing on the cake.”
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