Jonathan Singleton To Appear At Celebration 2009

Tennessee Native Will Open For Phil Vassar

Jonathan Singleton will bring his hot new sound to Celebration 2009.

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."