Jason Eady

Although country music was Jason Eady’s first love, he was exposed to the musical stew of the lower Delta— blues, soul, R&B and primal swamp rock— while growing up in Jackson, Mississippi. Eady was performing in local bars by the time he was 14, singing and playing guitar. He began writing his own songs, but the live music culture in the Magnolia State was geared to hits and classics rather than original music.

Eady moved to Nashville to seek a record deal, but he became disillusioned and headed back to Mississippi, joining the Air Force on the way home. “Becoming a translator in the Air Force helped me be a better songwriter,” Eady says. “I got a much broader view of the world and of other cultures, which helped me see things from a better perspective.”

After the military, Eady got a job in a Fort Worth bank’s IT department, and he began attending open mic nights to blow off steam. Soon he developed a following.

“I was surprised to learn that Texas was exactly the opposite of Mississippi,” he says. “If you played too many cover songs the audience would get restless. They wanted original music.”

That encouraged Eady to step up his songwriting and step away from his day job, never to return. Eady says his first two albums, 2005’s From Underneath the Old and 2007’s Wild Eyed Serenade, “were about trying to zero in on what he wanted to do. They had singer-songwriter, country, southern rock and other kinds of songs. I had no idea about production or how to work in the studio. I was all over the map. Things really clicked when I started working with Kevin. He helped me focus on the music I heard growing up in Mississippi, but as a way of discovering more about who I was as an artist.

“With AM County Heaven and now Daylight and Dark, I’ve learned to stop second guessing,” Eady declares. “Now I understand that I’m a country artist. That’s the music I love, and that’s what I always want to be.”