100% of Bandcamp profits from “Pictures of Flowers” will be donated to Harriet’s Apothecary, an intergenerational Brooklyn based healing village led by Black Cis Women, Queer and Trans healers, artists, health professionals, magicians, activists and ancestors. The intention of Harriet’s Apothecary is to continue the rich healing legacy of abolitionist, community nurse and herbalist Harriet Tubman.
Written by Jess Williamson
Performed and recorded by Jess Williamson, Meg Duffy, and Jarvis Taveniere remotely from their homes during quarantine
Recorded in Los Angeles, April 2020Jess Williamson – Acoustic guitar, Vocals Meg Duffy – Electric guitar Jarvis Taveniere – Bass, Drums, Mellotron
The Texas-born, L.A.-based singer and songwriter Jess Williamson makes deeply felt songs that orbit around her powerful voice, a voice that’s strong and vulnerable, big room flawless, quietly ecstatic, and next-to-you intimate. In her most recent work, “Sorceress”, that voice is surrounded by a deep-hued kaleidoscope of dusty ‘70s cinema, ‘90s country music, and breezy West Coast psychedelia.
While attending the University of Texas, Williamson began to find her footing as an artist in the DIY and student-run art and music spaces of Austin. A photojournalism major, she interviewed and photographed bands for the school newspaper and hosted a radio show on KVRX, the student-run radio station. But quietly, she had an insistent pull to pursue music herself. In her last year of school, following an impulse after seeing Austin’s Ralph White play the banjo at a house show in her friends’ basement, Williamson took up banjo lessons at South Austin Music, and soon after was writing songs and making home recordings. After graduating, she moved to NYC to attend an MFA Photography program at Parsons. But after a couple semesters, she realized the call to pursue a career in music was too big to ignore, and she dropped out. She started a band in NYC called Rattlesnake with another friend from Texas: Williamson played banjo, her friend played electric guitar, and they both sang. They played their first show at the now defunct venue, Death by Audio, in March of 2010. A few months later, drawn to her larger hometown community, she moved back to Austin to focus on her solo project.
Her fourth album, “Sorceress”, also with Mexican Summer, arrives 2020. It was written in Los Angeles, recorded at Gary’s Electric in Brooklyn, and finished at Dandy Sounds in Dripping Springs, where she recorded Cosmic Wink. While she’s stayed true to her deep country roots, the music has grown in its ambitions. It’s her biggest, most assured collection to date, and a true document of the hard work paying off. About two-thirds of the way through the title track on her new album, Jess Williamson sings, “Yes, there’s a little magic in my hat / But I’m no sorceress.” Agree to disagree. Williamson is, at the very least, bewitching on Sorceress, her fourth album. It’s a blend of folk and country, with a dash of psychedelic rock, that brings together the strongest elements of her previous work—all the hints and glimpses of something deeper musically, and vocally, that never felt completely explored—into a fully realized collection of 11 songs that are at once polished, precise and visceral.
Jess Williamson – from the album ‘Sorceress’ out May 15th on Mexican Summer.
Jess Williamson released her third album, Cosmic Wink, in 2018, and she’s preparing to follow it with a new one tilted, “Sorceress”, due out on May 15th via Mexican Summer. The first single, a folky, psychy singer-songerwriter track, she says, “grief has a way of making the veil between worlds very thin. Prior to the memorial service, I was sitting on a porch passing around a guitar and drinking beers with a few very dear people in my life who I look up to greatly and who were very close to the person who had passed. We heard an unexplainable sound in the wind that made us all pause. Like a flute, but more angelic. It kept going. We tried, unsuccessfully, to record it. The sound was indescribably beautiful and heavenly. “Were the angels singing just for us, or is that what the wind out here does on tin?” Regardless of the answer, I know that for that brief moment we were lucky initiates into the mystery realm, and I’m deeply grateful.
Williamson says, I’m thrilled to announce that Sorceress, my new album, will be out May 15th on Mexican Summer. We are living in the midst of an occult revival. THE WITCH: in the not too distant past she was abhorred, executed, or at the very least – kept underground. It’s 2020, and she’s gone mainstream. We have witnessed the meteoric rise of astrology apps, Tarot, crystal lifestyle brands, and smudge kits for sale alongside fast fashion. Magic is something that can live in chaos and make use of chaos, and these are uniquely chaotic times. Many of us are seeking a higher power, something to hold on to, to keep us afloat. Some look for it in these mystical realms, others seek it in spirituality or in traditional religion, some pursue it in material success or in romantic relationships, others are caught (understandably) in such muddy, murky waters that even the brightest beacon of light won’t get through, and far too many of us give away all of our energy trying to be that light. Technology – quite the modern trickster – makes all of this somehow more and less accessible to us. This record is me sifting through some of these modalities, thinking about and questioning our spiritual impulses, and exploring the different ways we try to cope.
That said, I am but a mystically inclined fumbling observer. Yes, there’s a little magic in my hat – but I’m no Sorceress.
Today, I’m sharing the first single, Wind on Tin, – streaming everywhere now – along with a music video and a month of tour dates across this great nation. Sorceress was produced by me, with co-production contributions on various songs from Shane Renfro (who I also co-wrote a track with), Dan Duszynski, and Al Carlson. We all played on it, along with Josh Jaeger and Dan Iead. It was recorded by Al at Gary’s Electric in Brooklyn NY and Dan at Dandysounds in Dripping Springs TX.
A reference to the Jungian idea of synchronicity, or “meaningful coincidences,” Cosmic Winkis as much a reflection on inspired companionship as it is a rebirth. Jess Williamson fell deeply in love, and then her life was uprooted; she left Texas for California, leaving behind the roadworn verses of her previous albums for brighter, bolder songwriting. The Byrds-ian jangle of album opener I See The White airbrushes halos around the brain with an immortal pop hook. When Williamson asks her listener to “tell me everything you know about consciousness,” it’s an invitation down a two lane blacktop, both vessels heading the same direction. The Rhodes-soaked Wild Rain begins with a ghostly air until a swell of synths gives way like the heavens parting. Williamson’s voice emerges from the clouds promising that she will “treasure your patience / from you I learned what it means to make a family.” Concluding withLove On the Piano, Williamson’s new musical and lyrical mind declares “Love is my name now / Love, Darlin” over an evolving acoustic guitar line and lightly pressed upright piano notes. Vulnerability can feel something less vulnerable when love – true, deep love – creates a latticework to hang the frame of our humanity, which in many ways is the message underlying the entire album.
Jess Williamson – Wild Rain From the upcoming album “Cosmic Wink” Available May 11th via Mexican Summer Records
On her third album, singer-songwriter Jess Williamson is a giant, throbbing valentine, so taken by her new romance that she has become tenderness itself. “Love is my name now / Love, darling” she coos at the top of “Love On The Piano.” It’s a far cry from where she left us with 2016’s Heart Song, a stormy, brutally beautiful collection of prose about gnarled matters of the heart. Cosmic Wink a journey, a reckoning, choosing a path, dealing with it, learning, growing, disappointing, finding, evolving, being cruel, being crueled, wildness, loving, turning toward, turning away, fool energy, finding, pleasing, past lives, future lives, soul mate, twin flame, Home, new Home, old Home, fate, luck, chance, new love, old love, Ancient love, being in love, being Love, being loved, Dream wisdom, death, rebirth, sacred everyday, sacred every damn DAY. Y’all…. this is my baby. Her name is Cosmic Wink. All my life she’s been waiting to be born and now she is finally here. Worldwide. Thank you
Jess Williamson – I See the White From the upcoming album Cosmic Wink Available May 11th via Mexican Summer Records
Texan singer-songwriter Jess Williamson’s sophomore album Heart Song is not even a year and a half old yet, but Williamson is about to return with a new collection, her first for the label Mexican Summer. Named Cosmic Wink, it finds Williamson once more exploring a new chapter of her life in new surroundings while, appropriately enough, further broadening her musical palette.
The name Cosmic Wink is apparently a nod to the Jungian concept of synchronicity, summing up an album as rooted in an “inspired companionship as it is a rebirth.” Plenty of Williamson’s past work chronicled her experiences in and outside of Texas, her stints in other towns and the call of home and the anxiety of searching for new places. Cosmic Wink picks up where its predecessors left off, with Williamson having fallen in love and decamping to California. Across the album, she meditates on her new life, at times conveying her thoughts via folk-rock, other times bearing the influence of her new home by situating ruminative narratives in enveloping, warm compositions that recall stray elements of ’60s rock.
Along with the announcement, Williamson has shared Cosmic Wink’s lead single “I See The White.” It’s a low key gorgeous composition, an acoustic rocker that sounds like a meandering, twilit journey down the beach that’s equal parts melancholic and joyous. Starting with the memorable line “Tell me everything you know about consciousness,” “I See The White” soon builds to one hell of an old-school pop paean of a chorus. Here’s what Williamson had to say about the song:
Love is at once so precious and so painful when we acknowledge how little time we have with the ones we love. Most of us walk through life like we will live forever. Since most of us have no memory of ever dying or being born, it’s pretty common for us to act like we are immortal. There are benefits to this way of living, but the dark side of that is it can lead to a lot of complacency. But start to notice the graying of your dog’s fur around her eyes, see the sun move lower in the sky, recognize that the wave you’re riding will one day descend, and see how your life starts to change when you inject a little more gratitude into your every day. This song is a love song and it’s also kind of me throwing a tantrum. It’s begging for answers and making a few demands too. I get it, life is short but our souls live on, right? So, I’m gonna need my sweetheart to come too, okay? And maybe my dog. Is that so much to ask? Musically, I wanted this song to feel joyful and pretty, because why shouldn’t we celebrate love alongside the tough questions? Life is wild and beautiful and sad and ecstatic all at once, and I wanted this song to be the same way. We might as well dance and sing and have fun with the time we have because we’re here and then we’re gone, and nothing lasts forever… or does it? 😉
“I See The White” also comes with a video by Eli Welbourne that alternates between matter-of-fact beauty and tongue-in-cheek reflections on mortality. Early on, Williamson serenades a skull and accidentally shatters an hourglass. Later, she dances on the beach and wanders LA.
The latest excellent songwriter to come out of Texas, Jess Williamson is set to release her debut album, “HeartSong”, at the start of November. This week, fresh from touring Europe with Kevin Morby, Jess has shared the latest cut from it, the sublime single, “See You In A Dream”.
See You In A Dream is a attempt to write something simultaneously sad, without slipping into the cliched realm of minor chords. The track is built around the gentle tick of drums, Jess’ pained Caitilin Rose meets early Angel Olsen vocal, and the sort of beautifully twangy guitar line Roy Orbison would be proud of; and if you don’t think that sounds fabulous you’re probably reading the wrong site. Lyrically it’s a classic country ballad, a tale of someone long gone from your life who still weaves their way into your dreams. This single serves as timely reminder of just how good Jess’ upcoming album could be.
The Fat Angel Sings 