By Rob Garner
Photos by Robert Maxfield and Andrew Sherman
J. Isaiah Evans has built his music career on a foundation of practicality and passion. The Dallas-based guitarist and bandleader moved from fronting the seven-piece 40 Acre Mule to forming J. Isaiah Evans & The Boss Tweed, an organ trio designed for both financial sustainability and high-energy performances.
The smaller lineup came together quickly in 2023 when Evans was needed as an opening act for Alejandro Escovedo at the Kessler Theater. With only two rehearsals and a performance that earned a standing ovation, the trio became a fixture in North Texas venues and on national tours with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Dave Alvin and many others.
Evans traces his musical roots to a family steeped in performance. His mother sang opera, his grandfather played guitar and bass on the chitlin circuit, and his brother composed for a Grammy-nominated record. Evans himself started in church music at First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas before moving through bass, theater at Abilene Christian University, and eventually back to guitar.
The Boss Tweed sound blends blues traditions with hard rock energy, filtered through Evans’s collection of Supro amplifiers and reissue guitars. The band records at Memphis Magnetic Recording and releases music on Tammany Hall, their own label, with their latest offering, Americana Radio released back in July. Evans maintains full control of his publishing and masters while navigating the economics of independent music. In this conversation, he discusses gear philosophy, the business of self-releasing records and his view of Americana as a music that unites, rather than divides.
Rob Garner: Talk about your early musical influences, guitar and otherwise.
J. Isaiah Evans: You know, it started early on. Music was always around, and not just roots music. My mom was trained in classical voice. She was an opera singer. And my dad sang, and you know, he’s still with us. Grandparents were musical. Granddad was a sideman here and there throughout the chitlin circuit. He found, you know, farming and ranching to be a little more lucrative.
Rob Garner: And what instruments did he play?
J. Isaiah Evans: Guitar and bass. Piano’s a big thing in my family too. My brother is actually the really talented one. Classical piano composition. He had a song on a Grammy-nominated record like a year before last.
Rob Garner: What was the record?
J. Isaiah Evans: I think “His Voice Is Rising,” or something. It (has) just kind of always been around, and of course, I was in the church. Raised at First Baptist Church downtown, here in Dallas – started singing there. First Baptist was a way different place back then. Old fire and brimstone preacher named W.A. Criswell ran the place and my grandmother worked at the church, worked for him. So I was around it early on, man. I remember the first time I had a guitar handed to me. I want to say it was something terrible like a Peavey Patriot or something, maybe an early Ibanez Geo. I mean, it was the pawnshop special. But I said, “I want a guitar.” So I got just a little tiny amp. And it was pretty fun. But actually, the first thing I got serious about was bass. I started playing bass in a little band in high school with my buddies, and then didn’t get back into guitar really, until I got to college, moved to Abilene, Texas, and not much to do in West Texas other than, you know.
In Abilene, and at Abilene Christian University, I played around there (but) music was always kind of on the back burner. I was a theater major. ACU’s got a very good theater program. I wanted to study theater, musical theater. I was singing and still writing and stuff. But it wasn’t until years later that I got really serious about playing music professionally.
And that’s about the time I joined a band called the Midnight Special, which was a cover band which was really successful around here. After that broke up, I started the 40 Acre Mule and that did surprisingly well.
Rob Garner: You did very well.
J. Isaiah Evans: That was a great band. And I didn’t have to do much heavy lifting on the guitar, because I had John Pedigo playing guitar. And when you have one of the better guitar players, definitely in North Texas, you know, I could be pretty lazy. Plus, we had a tenor, bari sax, in that band, too, and sometimes keys in that band. So there’s a lot going on. You know, that. That band was all over the country for a long time. And then kids and day jobs, man. Built to last long term. You know, you got other responsibilities and those. I started to kind of take the lead for some of my guys and had an opportunity to do this organ trio thing, which made me start playing guitar again and start getting serious about playing guitar.
Rob Garner: When you transitioned from 40 Acre Mule to Boss Tweed, were you deliberately trying to scale down?
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah, no doubt. The business side of this – it’ll whip you into shape real fast. And I knew that I was gonna need to move on from 40 Acre Mule. And it still plays together. We play a few times a year. But I wanted to be a working musician, a working musician in a way that made sense. That made sense financially.
I also wanted to build something that was designed to open for bigger bands, and so a smaller footprint was always going to work out for that. And I’d wanted to do an organ trio for a while. You know, the concept of the organ handling a lot of the leads in the bottom end always fascinated me. It’s an old blues and soul and jazz trick, you know, everybody’s always like, oh, the Doors. And I’m like, yes, that’s true. But they got it from somewhere too.
Rob Garner: Where were your other roots? What other acts were influential?
J. Isaiah Evans: You know, when I started thinking about organ bands, it’s actually something a lot more modern. It’s going to surprise people. The Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio. You want to see an organ trio done as well as it could possibly be done? Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio. And they are – all three of them are monster players. And it’s incredible – it’s absolutely incredible.
But that’s about the time I knew that it could be done in a modern way and done successfully and there was still an appetite for it. But what they were doing was soul and it was funk. I wanted to do it in this Americana roots rock world I’d already been in for over a decade with 40 Acre. I just had to find the right players and, you know, I did, luckily.
Rob Garner: How did you find Matt (organ) and Spud (drums)?
J. Isaiah Evans: It’s funny that we’re here at Adair’s doing this. Spud for years was the drummer for a country band, Mo Robson Band. Most super talented country singer and songwriter. He and Spud played together here regularly for years, and that’s how I got to know Spud. I always thought he was a dynamite drummer and we became friends and I knew I wanted to work with him at some point.
And finding the keys player was kind of an accident. Originally I was going to work with a guy named Chris Watson out of Fort Worth. He’s got a band called the Retrophonics. He played organ for Robert Randolph and the Family Band. William Clark Green. So he’s been like a keys player for some heavy hitters.
His wife was having a baby the very week of that first show. And I only got like maybe a week’s notice that I was going to get a chance to do these gigs. Kessler Theater called up and said, “Hey, Alejandro Escovedo, I want you to open for him. And I don’t do the solo guy with the guitar thing that often. I respect the people that do, but my sound’s electric. And I replied, asking Alejandro if he’d mind if I try this organ trio thing I’ve been wanting to do for a while. And he said, “Yeah.” Alejandro is primarily a trio now too. He scaled back his whole band thing. So I had Spud, but Chris wasn’t available. And I put out a Hail Mary on Facebook. It’s like I need a solid – can hold down that left hand organ player. Who you got?
And a guy named Deb Wolf [responded]. He’s got a band called Dead Wolf and the Midnight Howl. He had a bandmate named Matthew Vasquez. And I knew Matthew just on social media. I shot him a message. And keep in mind, we are like a week and a half out from this having to happen. I’ve got…We got to rehearse.
He says, “Well, maybe. Let me think on it.” That afternoon, I ran into him at a Texas Gentleman show at Double Wide. And Texas Gentlemen were playing a matinee, like a pop-up thing. And he was there. And I said, “Hey, man, I really don’t want to pressure you, but I’m kind of up against it. And you’re. I think you’re the fifth.” And hemmed and hawed and I bought him a shot of tequila and he said, “Yes.” Right. So we had two rehearsals and seven songs, most of which were rearranged 40 acre songs that I reworked for keys instead of guitar and horn. And we played a sold out Kessler Theater and got a standing OV and looked at each other like, man, imagine if we actually rehearsed and worked. And so we did and we haven’t looked back.
Rob Garner: So from there you’ve kind of become the house band – “unofficial” house band – for the Kessler, maybe even the Granada.
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah, those are probably the two. The Kessler for sure. It’s the room we’ve played in the most since we put this thing together. Kessler, Granada, and down in Austin, probably Continental Club. So to be the house band of some pretty cool rooms isn’t too bad. But we’ve been real lucky to get the support of Kessler and Granada. And we’ve got some great venues up here. Yeah, and they want to support North Texas artists and they want to support roots music that’s coming from here. And they’ll try to put you on that stage whenever they can. That relationship led to us going on tour with Dave Alvin a couple of times. Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Alejandro took us out.
We just did a run with JD McPherson and a lot of that is because, you know, Your regional talent buyers and bookers have to roll the dice. And you have to live up to your end of the bargain to show-up and show-out. And I like to think we do.
Rob Garner: How do those crowds react? You’re opening for other artists who are (sometimes) a lot lower key. You come out with a wall of sound that sounds equal to a Marshall stack (or a Supro.)
J. Isaiah Evans: We want to put on a high energy show that ramps up a crowd and gets them excited for whoever we’re with next. And like we’re just out with Black Joe Lewis who puts on a high energy show himself. So that’s a great pairing. You always worry that you’re, you know, you don’t want to get uninvited to the party. And I’ve only had that happen twice in my life where the headliner has been like, “Ya’ll need to dial it down.” The first time it happened, it shocked me so much that I did it – it was a two night stand with the band. And so the second night, our show felt lifeless because that was in my head. And I walked off that stage saying, “I’ll never do that again.”
And the second time it happened, I had a chip on my shoulder about it. And I told that tour manager to go back to that headliner and tell him to be better at the job. And we settled it out and it was night. You know, they had a bad night. We had a great night. And the tour rolled on. But our job is to go out there and put on the best rock and roll show we can. Some nights we don’t feel good, some night there’s nobody there. Whether it’s one person or if a thousand people, they’re gonna get the same show because that one person is going to go tell their friends, “Man, you guys missed out.”
It’s now for the most part, everybody we’ve been out with, Dave Alvin’s a rock and roll guy. You know, he hates when people think he’s country. He’s like, “I’m a California rocker.” And to this day he cranks that old Fender Concert amp of his. It’s so loud. It is. And he’s still doing it. And he loves that we bring that kind of energy. My job is to go out there. They knew what they were getting into when they hired us. And I don’t mean that to sound arrogant, but I’m proud of the show we put on and its energy, and that it’s sweaty and loud, and we need more of that. We got enough people doing the quiet singer/songwriter thing.
Rob Garner: You put an original twist on blues organ trios. You’ve got a little stadium vibe going there.
J. Isaiah Evans: I’m the oldest in this crew, and, you know, we’re all late 40s. But we grew up listening to punk and hardcore, and I still love Van Halen, you know, till this day. And rock and roll is – it’s loud and it’s passionate and it’s real. And it has been since the days of jump blues, it’s been in-your-face.
I’m proud to be from that tradition, you know? And there’s a place, Jimmy Dale Gilmore told me like this. He said, “Man, you’ve got. You’ve got the groove, you got the rock. It’s okay to bring it down, too. Let the audience go on that ride.” And I learned so much about songwriting going on tour with him because he was right. It can be this high energy show. You can bring it down with some songs and then bring them back up on that roller coaster.
Building out a set list now like that. It’s like, let’s bring them down here. It’s like taking them to church. And if you go to any kind of Pentecostal church, black church, traditional Southern service, it is that. The highs of it and the lows and the crescendo of it all. Yeah. And that’s what I’m trying to do.
Rob Garner: One of your tracks on the new album, “Stand Up”. You kind of put your own stamp on it. What was the thinking around that? It’s a completely different song from the original.
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah. I was doing a guest spot with a band called Straight Tequila Night. They’re pretty huge. It’s so weird to say huge cover band, but they are. And they’re massive. They do 80s and 90s country and they were having their anniversary show at the Granada and they said, ‘hey, we want you to do a guest spot for a couple of songs’. And they let me choose a couple of Mel McDaniel songs. And I could pick whatever I wanted from the Mel McDaniel catalog. So I started going down the rapid rabbit hole and he ended up with “Louisiana Saturday Night” and “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On.” Those are the classics. But as I’m listening to all this Mel McDaniel stuff, I come across “Stand Up” and like this. The lyrics are a great story.
And I’m like, man, yeah, we’ve all been there, dude. You know, you go out, spend all your money on a lady and she takes off with some other dude. I was like, man, I feel for this guy. And I said, if I could rock and roll that song up a little bit, I think that’s gonna work. And I just said, let’s just go back to a church tradition, because that’s what he’s talking about. Testify.
And so we did. And it worked out. I’m sure I saw the video for that song. Back in the days of country music TV, that was always CMTV and Hee Haw – Hee Haw always seemed to be on at my grandparents house. So I know I came across a video at some point as a kid.
Rob Garner: They’re in the courtroom.
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah, it looks like they got the set of Matlock. And then the cast of Hee Haw to come over and make a video while it was on a break. It’s just great. It’s wild. Every time we head back to go play in Tulsa, we passed through the town, Okmulgee, Oklahoma, which is where Mel McDaniel is from.. And there’s a sign right at the city limits, right by a graveyard, says “Welcome to Okmulgee, Oklahoma, home of country recording star Mel McDaniel.” And we pull off to the side of the road and get a Subway. Hey, we’re headed back to Tulsa, when, you know, we’re seeing that sign. But yeah, the covers we do, some of them we’ll do pretty straightforward, but our own spin on it. But you should have fun with it. Somebody created a good song that got your attention in the first place.
You know, you can honor that song but still do your thing. Why do it the same way?
Rob Garner: Your version is an example of it being turned into something different. It’s not so much a cover as it is…it’s an original cover.
J. Isaiah Evans: I appreciate that. Yes. You can do something that stands out a little bit. Playing it straightforward. It may as well just be karaoke we’re doing. We have an EP coming out that’s a follow up to the record that’s. It’s four cover songs. It’s just a kind of a little book into this whole Americana radio era. And we do “Honey Bee” by Lucinda Williams – that just came out as a single. And Lucinda came out to see us in Nashville the other night, and we just missed her. And we do an Alejandro song, “Always a Friend”. And it’s a Mickey Newberry song on there, “Why You’ve Been Gone So Long.”
And I think when people hear it, they’re gonna be like, “I never thought of that as a funk song,” but it works as a funk and soul song.
Rob Garner: Changing gears a little bit, what is your philosophy on tone?
J. Isaiah Evans: It’s funny, I went through so many amps to get to where I am now. When I – I think I was playing a Hiwatt, little Hiwatt combo. Originally I thought I wanted something British, so I went through a Hiwatt. I went through a Marshall DSL40. The Fender Bass Breaker that they did a few years ago, it was kind of a semi digital tube combo. They made a 30-watt version of that amp that was really good sounding on stage. But it quit on me twice in a show and I cannot have that. And for a while I had – and this is going to surprise people – I had an Orange, but it was solid state. It was the Pro Orange Pro Crush 60-watt solid state.
You’ll see a lot of photos of me touring with that amp. It was reliable because it was solid state, but it was a one trick pony. Only the overdrive channel was working well. So I couldn’t switch if I wanted to the clean channel. It was terrible. And it would not take pedals well at all. And what a lot of people have figured out, especially as we’ve grown our live show, it’s a very pedal heavy band. I have lots of weird pedals. I’ve started collecting pedals because they take up less space than bass and collecting amps and guitars.
And a buddy of mine, he used to be the production manager at Granada, he said, “Well, you know man, I’ve had a lot of luck with the Supro.” And I was like, “Yeah, okay, I know a little bit about, you know, the Supro legend of the black magic amps.” And you know, this is the legend of Zeppelin use and black Supro amps. But these modern Supros were getting really good reviews. And so Kelly said, “Yeah man, try mine out.” And it’s like, “No, I don’t want to mess up your gear.” So I found one, a Supro Keely custom which was designed as a pedal platform. I said, well, let’s start with that. And Keely engineering up in Oklahoma City, they build all these crazy pedals and stuff. They got with Supra and made a great pedal platform that has master volume so you can get that Supra Breakup at manageable levels. Thing weighs maybe 23 pounds, 22 watts.
And I loved it. And it’s been everywhere. I loved it so much that as we started playing bigger and bigger rooms, I wanted to add another amp. We do a lot of tremolo. And I said that was gonna sound really cool through two amps. So I picked up a Supro dual tone which has a very cool built-in tremolo circuit of its own. Where the Keely is almost like a Fender breakup, it does like this British breakup thing. So together they sound. It’s become our live sound. So those. I run those two amps in stereo through an ABY with a ground lift on it so you can take out any hum. Guitar-wise, I go through a lot of guitars, but now I’ve seen settled on the Supra Coronado. Supra reissued Their Coronado. I just got that guitar.
Before that, I was using the Airline version of that guitar. Airline did a reissue of it before Supra started making guitars again. And I’m balling on a budget, so I can’t afford a real 60s Supra Coronado, a vintage one. But I had a chance to get my hands on the Supro version of it, which is superior to the Airline. So I let it go.
I still have my reissue Guild T Bird. And that thing has been all over the world with me. It was my number one guitar at 40 Acre. It’s still the guitar I reach for. Most of the time. It’s a reissue. The reason I got that guitar is if you look on the cover of Electric Mud, that’s the guitar Muddy Waters is playing. They call it the Gumby.
And it has these mini humbuckers in it that are so unique sounding and you can’t replace them. I was gonna play with some pickup configurations. And he’s like, ‘not without cutting it up’. I was like, ‘don’t you cut up my guitar. I’ll keep what’s in it’. The biggest surprise has been this new line of Hagstrom Vikings. I picked one up. It was just before the hurricanes we had last year. We were on two tours with Alejandro Escobedo again, and the tour was wrapping up in Atlanta. And there was a little guitar shop out there. I looked online and it said that it had a Hagstrom Viking in its case for 300 bucks.
And I was like, even for a reissue, that’s got to be a mistake because it was well underpriced compared to the others I was seeing online. I said, you know what if that guitar is out there – I wasn’t crazy about the color, but I read good things about these reissue Vikings. And I wanted a semi hollow that wasn’t another 335. And I’ve never liked anything from Epiphone that was recent. I didn’t like any of the dots. So I went out there, I walked into the store, they said, ‘can we help you?’ And I wanted to keep a low profile because in case it was a mistake, I didn’t want them to catch it. So I was like, no, just going to look around a little bit. And I found their semi hollows. I picked up, I played it.
It’s like, I plug this in. It’s like, there’s not a thing wrong with this guitar. And I was like, ‘you got a case for this?’ They looked at the tag like, ‘yeah, we do’. It’s the factory original sweetheart case. Like, will you guys take $250 out the door?
So I’m at the front checkout counter and they’ve completed the transaction. Transactions closed. The owner of the store comes in. He’s like the counter, he goes, oh, extra. Oh, very cool, man. Yeah. He’s like, ‘man, that’s pretty’. It’s like this sunburst flame top, but it’s like an orange sunburst. I wasn’t crazy about the color, but I like the guitar. And he sees what I paid for it and he goes, ‘that’s mispriced – that’s way mispriced’. I said, ‘well, you know, deal’s a deal, man. You’ve already charged my debit card, man’.
So he goes, ‘it’s not your fault. You got a great deal, man’. And he goes looking for his floor manager. I used that guitar that night in Atlanta and fell in love with it. I wasn’t crazy about the color, but I’ve since bought two more of them. And the cherry red sparkle is the one I’m using primarily now.
Rob Garner: How do you like the quality of other reissues?
J. Isaiah Evans: It depends. You know, a lot of these reissues that are carrying the name of these legacy brands, they’re made in China or Taiwan. Now you’re getting to the point where the Korean made ones are going up in value. Some are better than others. You know, I’ve. I’ve had a couple of those guilty birds that, like I talked about and none of. Neither of the other two could touch my red one, you know. Now I’ve also played that guitar forever and know it backwards and forwards, so. But then I’ve had a couple of Hagstrom Vikings that I picked up and played in stores that didn’t feel the same as the ones I did end up buying. So it’s hit and miss. But when they hit, man, they hit. And you can get into them at a price point.
It’s important for people to realize – you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on good gear. You can get a good reissue and take it on the road to not worry about it. You know, I have a Flying V that I’ve had forever that I’m terrified to take out because you look at those wrong and the headstock will break and I don’t like, I don’t want to take it out.
And so it lives at home, safely tucked away. All the guitars that I take on the road now. And I’ve got my rig down at three guitars, two amps and a pedal board. All three of those guitars. If something fails one of them, one of the others can do the job. It does so much like bring it full circle. Putting together an organ trio work smarter, not harder. I take guitars on the road that I’m not overly concerned about. If something were to (happen), I’d be sad, I’d be mad. But they’re not absolutely irreplaceable. Right. You know, I take amps on the road that I know are going to work because they’re tried and true. I built out my pedal board to do the things I need it to do.
It’s a lot of pedals now, but as we keep experimenting with tones and sounds, I need new toys. We actually record in Memphis. We don’t record in Texas. Our home studio is Memphis Magnetic Recording. Actually. J.D. McPherson is the guy that put me in contact with Scott McEwen, the producer and owner of that studio.
Rob Garner: It’s analog?
J. Isaiah Evans: Yes, it’s analog. And JD Made Undivided Heart and Soul up there and he made the Socks, which is, I think the best modern Christmas record I’ve heard in a while. You know a guitar player named Nick Waterhouse, very cool dude. West Coast guitar player. He recorded up there. So we made our record up there in 48 hours. We moved into the studio.That’s what I could afford. You know, I don’t. I don’t have a record label. You know, I’m. I’m a one stop shop and it’s like I can afford this much time.
Rob Garner: Do you have a name for your own label?
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah, technically we call it ‘Tammany Hall’ to go with the whole Boss Tweed thing. Yeah, yeah, but that’s kind of what we call everything, you know, it’s Team Tammany Hall.
Rob Garner: Do you want to talk about the business side of music?
J. Isaiah Evans: I’ll talk about the business side of this any day. Yes, love talking about this, man. It’s a great time to be an artist in that you have so many ways you can put out your own music. You can self distribute, you can connect with your fans directly through Instagram and Facebook to an extent. I love Instagram because it’s just here’s this picture, here’s his story. It’s snapshot in the life of J. Isaiah Evans and the Boss Tweed. But you can reach out to radio directly. You can do it. You can do so much of this on your own. But there is a cost.
I am fortunate enough to be in a situation where I have a fantastic wife who supports what I do and she’s my partner in this and you know, pay off the credit bill as fast as you can so you don’t build that interest and take as much control of your career as you can. Because a record deal – I want to preface this with this – if the right record label came along and offered me something that I couldn’t do for myself, a reach that I could never get on my own, I would absolutely have that conversation. I don’t want to put down the record label. Matter of fact, this one was almost put out on a record label, Heroes. Good friends of ours, Cross Canadian Ragweed.
If you know the problem with that record label, as great as it was, and it’s a great indie label, they wanted to shelve the record for 18 months ‘cause that’s where it fit into their release cycle and we had momentum going, right. I was like, I can’t wait that long.
And I said to my wife when I got home, I was like, I think we should gamble on us and get the record done. Got it mastered at a great mastering studio up in Pittsburgh, Tree Lady Studios. And there they are. There are studios, there are producers, there are engineers that want to work on projects that they want to work on. If you’ve got a good project, if you’ve got a good band, a good sound, a good idea, they’ll luckily cut you a break here and there and you can pull this off and get your music out there while you’re hot. And that’s what I did. I got my record pressed here in Texas. I didn’t have to go out of the country to press my record final. got my CDs made in Arizona and CDs.”
I’m already sold out of CDs. Pressed a 150 copies of the CD and I’m sold out. CDs are back. For some reason, people like tangible media.
Rob Garner: I receive them. People send them. Publicists send them.
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah, publicists still send them out. Radio still wants them.
Rob Garner: Vinyl too. What advice do you recommend to other artists, in terms of intellectual property and owning your rights?
J. Isaiah Evans: Publishing and performance rights, hold on to it as long as you can. Yeah, it’s the only thing you can really bargain with. You know, Ray Charles negotiated a record deal which allowed him to keep his masters. And that’s unheard of. You know, I know I’ve got friends that have had to sue to get their masters back, sue to get their publishing back. Because once it’s gone out of your hands, it’s real hard to get it back. Sync licensing is mailbox money, you know, so if you can hold on to as much of that as you can, cool. Now that’s also what record labels want a piece of.
They’re not wrong. They need to get something back. They’re going to invest in you. So they’re not wrong to want a piece of that. But keep that piece as small as possible. You made the song, you wrote it. You know, the record label exec, the A and R guy, they didn’t sit there toiling over that melody and this bridge and you birthed it into the world. Keep, keep your baby.
Rob Garner: Streaming platforms, they have kind of designed it to where artists can’t make money.
J. Isaiah Evans: Streaming is a… The way we look at streaming has to change. It has to change. We have to stop thinking about streaming services as a tool to make money. Streaming services are just a business card. It’s a way for your music to get introduced to the fans that don’t know who you are. I like the concept of like, you go to Spotify and you turn on J. Isaiah Evans and the Boss Tweed radio. The algorithm introduces me to bands I’ve never heard of and man, this band’s really good. You know, maybe we can tour with them if we’re in their region, go look up where they are. And I’ve had people reach out to me from all over the world saying, hey, ‘I found you on so and so’s radio, this artist radio’.
So it’s a good way to introduce your music to people who wouldn’t find you otherwise. But it’s not going to make you rich when you have an artist like Taylor Swift who is, I think a billionaire now or something. And good for her because she writes her songs. And it may not be made for me, not my jam, but she writes songs. I respect that. Anyway, when she’s trying to take on the streaming services, she gets, I’m sure, billions of screens a day, but she’s still trying to fight the good fight against what they pay out. You’re not, you’re not going to make money from them. You need to look at it like another social media platform.
We had an opportunity. We got tapped to open for Neil Young in Dallas and in Austin. Unfortunately, Neil got, he and his band got sick and those are the shows they canceled. But were going to do the two Texas dates and shortly before that, Neil had a dust up with Spotify and pulled all his songs off.
Rob Garner: I remember that.
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah. And that got all the headlines. But very quietly he put his songs back on. I like Apple music a lot. Apple seems to pay out a greater revenue share. We have, we’ve had some success with Tidal. People finding us on Tidal. I don’t know enough about the platform.
I think it was started by Jay Z and a group of Jay Z, Madonna. Some heavy hitters got together trying to start a platform. But yeah, if you look at streaming services as a way to get the word out about your music and ‘hey, come buy it from me’. When you come buy a ticket to a show, order it on my website. Maybe the answer is not putting entire albums on streaming services. You know, just here’s a few tracks and if you want the whole thing you still have to come buy it from the artist. I don’t know.
You know there will be something that comes along to challenge the streaming stuff. Service by demand. Whether it’s because of the music consumer or because of the artist. Something will challenge it. Something will replace it. Hopefully it’s something that is more fair in terms of what it pays out to the artist because $.003 cents or whatever per spin.
Don’t count on that. You know you’re not, you’re not gonna get rich. You’re not gonna pay your bills on that. You still have to get out and do the work. I love touring. I love playing live shows. I love going to Sea lobby when I’m not on the road. You’ll find me here, you’ll find me at Double Wide. You’ll find me at Granada, you’ll find me at Cascade. Like who’s in town tonight? I want to go check it out. As long as people continue to support live music and live musicians and pay covers and buy merch and buy that record, we can keep the lights on. It’s. But people have to commit on both sides.
Rob Garner: Do you think AI, and the aversion that a lot of people have to AI, is pushing people to more organic experiences?
J. Isaiah Evans: Human type, creative content? I hope so.
Rob Garner: Roots music in general. Across a wide number of genres. Are you seeing that?
J. Isaiah Evans: I think I am. You know, I just got back from Americana Fest. And we were in Nashville for that week or whatever, the turnout for events, I was enthused to see so many young music consumers, like people in their twenties playing this music and coming out to the festival and seeing these shows, not just people in their 40s and 50s and up.
I think you’re right. I think there is a rebellion against the over-processed. You know, all music has a place. I never want to dog what somebody’s doing. What may not be right for me is right for somebody. I have zero interest in an AI artist getting a record deal. What does that even look? What is that? What are you even saying right now? That makes zero sense to me. So you signed a laptop to a contract.
I think that there is something that people want that is real, that’s tangible, that is something that pushes back against the AI and the constant scrolling and all of it something they can listen to, they can put on a record and just for that 30 minutes or an hour be connected to something real. And I think that is a pushback too.
We’ve gone over-digital. You know, I was digging through a box the other day and found my box for my, my old Motorola Razor. Probably the first flip phone I had. It’s like, man, the phone’s in there as the phone’s long gone. But it was the box for it. And I remember thinking back on how it was cool just to use your phone just to talk, maybe text somebody. And that was it.
My wife teaches high school at Booker T. There’s a plug for Booker T. My brother went there. My wife went there. My mom went there. I’m the one that didn’t go to Booker T. I wanted to go so bad. She says that a lot of the kids are opting for flip phones now. They’re seeing a pushback, and I’m like, good for them. If they can break away from it. What’s something she teaches? History and government. Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Garner: You’re a history buff.
J. Isaiah Evans: History nerd. Absolutely. We got engaged at the World War II Museum in New Orleans. That’s how big of nerds we are.
Rob Garner: The term ‘Americana’. Like it?
J. Isaiah Evans: Love it.
Rob Garner: What is positive about it? What does it lack for you?
J. Isaiah Evans: A friend of mine – that’s an excellent question, by the way. A friend of mine told me once, Americana [has] become this umbrella for any genre of music that still plays real instruments and kind of goes back to what were talking about digital music and, know, vocal processing.
You know, MIDI synths and this and that. Well, there’s a place for all that, but there’s also a warmth to just picking up, you know, real drums and real guitar and the breakup of a real amp. And so to me, Americana, somebody said this week, is, I don’t know, but you know it when you hear it. It’s like when you hear rock and roll, you know, when you hear bluegrass, you know it. When you hear blues, you know it. And all of that comes out of this melting pot tradition that we have in all shares, Americans and not.
I don’t want to get political here, but, man, do we need music to be a great uniter right now. And I think that [it] is. That is something where your people on the left, your people on the right, your people in the middle, you can agree on, man, that’s good music. You know, you can agree on Freddie King, you can agree on Stevie Ray, you can agree on rock and roll and country and roll, and you can agree on bad barbecue. So that’s Americana. That’s what Americana is to me, man. It’s real music that hits you in a place that the fake stuff can’t.
And you feel it. There’s some people who do. I do not consider blues music as something separate. And I disagree with that. I think blues and traditional rhythm and blues, not what we can consider modern. R/B. Yeah. Traditional rhythm and blues, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, all the stuff in the Chess record stuff, all that is the foundation of Americana.
All of that falls under the umbrella. So I think, yeah, blues music is there too. And I guess I’ve run across just as many alt country fans that are blues fans, that are red dirt fans, that are folk fans and are rock and roll fans. They just create a trucker hat for a cowboy hat or a black T shirt. And it’s all under this umbrella of Americanism.
Rob Garner: It seems like Americana kind of branched out from progressive and outlaw.
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah.
Rob Garner: In the 70s, Buddy Magazine and Texas Monthly were calling it progressive.
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah.
Rob Garner: Nashville called it outlaw. It seems like that it branched out from that, but they’ve now all fallen underneath that bigger wing of ‘Americana’.
J. Isaiah Evans: And there’s a lot of talk now. It’s a lot of noise. Right. Really, about what’s Outlaw, what’s not, what’s country, what’s not. And there’s room at the table for everybody. We don’t need to be eating each other up over this. I think a lot of it’s a pushback to the Nashville pop country, you know, and so you have that. What was going to be an inevitable pushback against that stuff. And here we are with Americana.
Rob Garner: A bit ironic, isn’t it?
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah.
Rob Garner: It started off as a rejection of that, and now it’s become that.
J. Isaiah Evans: It’s funny to see how many of these big Nashville labels are now starting to want to sign Americana artists. And I think that what we’re seeing is that the industry sees the shift in taste to something more real, something more heartfelt. I think they’re trying to get ahead of the curve and sign these artists now. But what fills that void.
Rob Garner: Like you said, it seems like Red Dirt and Outlaw is kind of still being used to keep that identity. Apart from Nashville.
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah. You know, we play in Oklahoma a lot, so we’re around. We heard some Cross Canadian Ragweed earlier. We’re around those guys a lot. We’re around the Turnpike Troubadour guys. We play with a lot of country bands. Our second show ever was with – they were Mike and the Moon Pies then – now they’re Silverado.
Rob Garner: [Buddy photog] Robert [Maxfield] talks a lot about them.
J. Isaiah Evans: Yeah, fantastic. We play a lot with those guys and they become friends. And we’ve all adopted this idea that your country kid and your rock and roll kid are the same kid. It comes from the same place. The music comes from this struggle. It’s poor people music.
You know, they. You can call it whatever color you want to, but it’s about a struggle. It all comes from the same place.
Rob Garner: Last question. So speaking earlier to what you said about music being a uniter, do you think music is sacred in that sense? Is there something differentiating or spiritual about it?
J. Isaiah Evans: I think. I know for me it is. I know I’ll have moments on stage where something’s happening in my life, whatever it is, and I’m singing a song in the set and I get lost in it. There’s a song that we just wrote for the next record, and we’re playing it live now. And I wrote that song about a specific somebody that is no longer in my life, but playing it live. Not long ago, I connected with that song in a whole different way. And, you know, that’s a song I wrote. But I’ll have moments where I’ll listen to something and be moved spiritually to tears. And I hope that everybody has that relationship with music at some point.
Where a song moves you so deeply, touches you in a way that it feels like you went to church before we all got jaded.
Rob Garner: It doesn’t lie.
J. Isaiah Evans: You know, it doesn’t. You know James McMurtry’s Canola Field? I hear that song, and that song’s very personal to me and my wife, and I hear it, and it’s very much our story. And I’ve only met James McMurtry once, and that’s a story for a different time, because it’s real funny. So I don’t know the man, but I know his work, and I know the stories he tells, the songs he writes. And I know that one song, every time I hear it reaches down into me. And through all the jadedness, everything that’s gone right, everything that’s gone wrong, and it touches me in a way that I will fall to pieces every time I hear my friends get it.
I’ve seen him countless times, and every time he plays that song, they know I’m gonna cry.
I don’t care who’s around, I break into tears. So I pray that everybody has that relationship to music. And if. If you do, you got a heart in there. If you got a heart, we can all get past all this crap that’s just set up to divide us. It’s all just set up to divide us.
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