Texas-born/Los Angeles- and Marfa-based singer/songwriter Jess Williamson is releasing a new album, “A Mile South of Heaven“, this Friday via New West. Now she has shared its latest single, “Hum of the City,”. She’s also announced some 2027 tour dates. Rocco Rivetti directed the video.
Williamson had this to say about the song in a press release: “I’m kind of a wanderer by nature, and this song is about my complicated relationship with the idea of home. I’ve spent years feeling pulled between the excitement of life in the city and the peace of a more rural life, never quite sure where I belong.
“There’s a romance to being in hotels alone. I love checking into my room, going down to the hotel bar, and talking with the bartender. I once checked into a hotel and realized I was staying in the very same room I’d been in years earlier (room 12, from the song), during a completely different season of my life, right before a major life change. There’s something uncanny about the anonymity of a hotel room holding such a personal memory.
“The song imagines a conversation with the hotel bartender, asking him to change the music. Sometimes contemporary music feels a little weird if you happen to have history with the person singing it. But old country music always hits.”
Shooter Jennings produced “A Mile South of Heaven”, recording it at Sunset Sound in Hollywood. It follows 2023’s “Time Ain’t Accidental” and 2020’s “Sorceress”. In 2022 Williamson teamed up with Waxahatchee (aka Katie Crutchfield) to form Plains and the duo released their debut album under that name, “I Walked With You A Ways”.
“Depending on your outlook, a mile south of heaven may sound sad, or it may sound hopeful,” Williamson explains of the new album’s title. “We’re always a mile south of the impossible goals we set for ourselves, and my point is, maybe that’s ok, because a mile is pretty close. It’s about appreciating where we are now, because there is no finish line. There is always more work to be done.”“
A Mile South of Heaven
