Laney Jones
Biography
Laney Jones and the Spirits have big f*cking heart. It's undeniable watching Jones who usually performs live as a trio on her gnarly 1960s Sears Roebuck Silvertone guitar with her life and musical partner (Brian Dowd) holding the heartbeat on the drums. They're "everything that’s good about rock and roll” says GRAMMY-winning icon Lucinda Williams.
And like Williams, Jones's road has been hard fought. Cutting their teeth on mics literally and metaphorically across the US for the past decade, Jones's free-wheeling, do-it-yourself lifestyle is the stuff of modern folklore. With few prospects when the Florida-raised couple first moved to Nashville in 2017, they made rent by stacking beers at the local Piggly Wiggly. A chameleon of a songwriter, Jones has since found other ways to pay the bills, licensing songs for pop projects to the likes of Guinness and Google, but the music the couple creates cuts deeper than that. It's personal.
And nothing shows more clearly the spirit of their work than one of their latest self-produced and mixed release, the aptly titled “Feel Something” – “If everything was perfect, and we lived just like a king, I don’t know if it would matter, babe, I don’t know if I could sing. It’s the ripping of my heart out – the flicker of a dream – that binds us to tomorrow and makes us feel something.”
Catchy, yet raw and arrestingly sincere, it's no wonder Jones's cult following has been steadily growing since the release of their seminal record Stories Up High (2022) produced by Andrjia Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Langhorne Slim) of the famed Bomb Shelter in East Nashville. Though the record wrestles with themes of depression and the meaning of life, the vibes are more bittersweet than sad girl. Jones says “Stories Up High was me writing what I needed to hear. It taught me to let go. Let my ego die...it was deeply healing and freeing. It's where I live now".
As Laney Jones and the Spirits open for bands like The Heartless Bastards and Kurt Vile -- a night where Jones sold so much merch that the theater owner out of pure amazement doubled their opening band slot pay -- one thing is clear, their live punk energy is something to witness.
Jones's newest song, “Stay At Home,” released this February is an acid lick taste of where the band is heading. Sonically rich and lofi, it hints of Doolittle-era Pixies without the stale, microwaved mouthfeel of someone trying to reheat the 90s grunge scene. At the core, as usual, it's their songwriting that begs more from the listener. Using hyperbole and the popular pandemic catch-phrase to question modern man's true sense of reality and humanity.
From a youth growing up with kangaroos in swampy central Florida to officially showcasing at this year's SXSW, Laney Jones is not someone you can put in a box. Nor should you try with their music. They're something and someone wholly unique that you just gotta see for yourself.
