Short Bio
George Jackson is a Nashville-based fiddle player and the 2022 IBMA Instrumentalist Of The Year Momentum Award Winner, who performs as a band leader and fiddler for hire with artists such as The Jacob Jolliff Band, Jake Blount, Tall Poppy String Band, The Local Trio, Front Country, Peter Rowan, Missy Raines, Charm City Junction and others. Born in New Zealand, George grew up in a musical family and first heard bluegrass music around the age of 14, immediately falling in love with the style he started trying to work out how to play it from recordings and from mentors in New Zealand. Moving to Australia as a 16-year-old, he won the Australian National Bluegrass Championship on fiddle three times and toured the country with his bluegrass band, "The Company", playing all the major folk festivals on the Australian circuit. As a resident of Nashville and the USA from 2016, George has released three albums of fiddle tunes, "Time and Place" in 2019 and "Hair & Hide" in 2021 and most recently “George Jackson’s Local Trio” with Eli Broxham and Frank Evans in 2023. He was awarded first place in the Mike Auldridge tune composition award by the DC bluegrass union in both 2019 and 2021 for his tunes "Chapel Hill Deer Stalk" and "Neighbor Mike" respectively. He also sparked a viral fiddle tune frenzy with his composition "Dorrigo", when hundreds of musicians learned the tune and posted videos of themselves playing it online, becoming known as the "#dorrigochallenge". In his free time, George loves to watch Star Trek and cook food at home, with recent obsessions in Italian and Cajun fare. He loves Swedish fiddle music and —fun fact— he was a competitive Highland dancer until the age of 21.
George Jackson’s Local Trio - Bio
From his work as a sideman with the likes of Jake Blount and Jacob Jolliff, as well as his beloved collections of original fiddle tunes, including viral sensation “Dorrigo”, Jackson has already made his mark on the traditional music scene in the United States. Having lived in Nashville for much of the past decade, Jackson now digs further into the various inspirations he has found in his newfound home with his album George Jackson’s Local Trio, featuring Eli Broxham and Frank Evans.
“I feel a much stronger sense of identity with this record,” he says. “In many ways, it’s still working with the concepts that I was getting at with Time and Place, trying to be a part of something with a long history while also trying to bring myself to the table as an outsider, but now there’s a lot more confidence in bring together the different elements I’m interested in and continuing to form my voice with less fear of ‘doing it wrong’.”
For his Local Trio, Jackson enlisted two friends who he felt could help capture the experimental spirit of the project. Banjo player Frank Evans, originally from Toronto, Canada, is known for his work with the Slocan Ramblers. Fluent in both three-finger and claw-hammer banjo styles, Jackson sought him out for his genre-crossing abilities. “He can go very deep in old-time as well as bluegrass music, and also has an interest and proficiency as an improviser and with jazz concepts”, explains Jackson. “He just feels like such a natural fit for me musically.”
Bassist Eli Broxham is from Chicago and has studied both old-time and classical music. “He has such a fearless spirit in the way that he approaches music”, explains Jackson.
Fellow fiddle player John Mailander (Bruce Hornsby, Billy Strings) produced the record, collaborating closely with the trio to achieve Jackson’s boundary-pushing vision. “Something that I’m proud of with this record is that it doesn’t sound like music that has been made before, we were able to push old-time in genuinely new directions using arrangements, samples, and recording techniques”, explains Jackson.
The material on the record ranges from traditional tunes like "Lady Hamilton" and "Raleigh and Spencer" to originals by both Jackson and Broxham, to an instrumental cover of Sylvan Esso’s "Ferris Wheel," picked apart into their base elements and seemingly put back together, along with free improvisation, melody as rhythm, and samples of dog howls and old source recordings. On the album’s closing track, “Tennessee Blues,” Jackson took inspiration from a single bass solo in the original Bill Monroe recording, which features the repeated use of a non-diatonic walking line for a “particularly deranged exploration of the tune”, according to Jackson’s liner notes.
As a producer, “John (Mailander) helped us temper the arrangements,” explains Jackson. “I was giving myself permission to explore on this album, and I tended at times to take that to the extreme. John helped to take the ideas that I had and keep the spirit of what I was trying to do while tempering the ideas into perspective. He also had a pretty strong concept of how to record the band, specifically, with a combination of using mics and amps so that we could introduce amp-affected tones at certain points, and have room to explore all of the sonic options from fully acoustic to fully electronic."
Recorded and mixed at The Tractor Shed by Grammy-winning engineer Sean Sullivan, George Jackson’s Local Trio continues a long heritage of stretching fiddle music out in every possible direction, and maintaining a living, breathing tradition through reverence and simultaneous newfound relevance. With this new record, Jackson continues to show his brilliance as a student of the fiddle, with a seemingly never-ending well of creativity to draw on when it comes to writing and producing new and fascinating music.
Hair & Hide - Bio
Hair and hide is literally what bluegrass and old time music is made of. Focusing on the raw materials of the fiddle and banjo, in tandem with the stripped back sound of only the two instruments, is both a classic and revolutionary choice on fiddler George Jackson’s sophomore record Hair & Hide. To assemble these fourteen tracks, he enlisted seven banjoist friends who also happen to be some of the finest players of their generation such as Brad Kolodner, Jake Blount, Frank Evans, BB Bowness, Joe Overton, Wes Corbett, and Uma Peters. Each player recorded two tunes, a traditional and an original Jackson wrote to suit their individual playing style. Throughout the album each duo explores improvisation in traditional music and juxtaposes archaic Appalachian tunes with the progressive side of bluegrass music. You might assume the album is a niche listen, but it’s quite the opposite as Jackson explores the full sonic palette of these two key roots music instruments. From trance-inducing moody original tunes to classic barnburners, the album has something for serious or casual folk music fans alike. The end result is as unique as Jackson’s musical background he was born in New Zealand but has lived in Nashville for a number of years. It’s hard to tell which tunes are original and which are generations old and that’s exactly how he wants you to hear them.
Time and Place - long Bio
George Jackson Challenges the notion of “authenticity” with new Old-Time album, Time and Place
At the heart of all traditional music lies two important coordinates, the time and place of origin; objective definitions in the ever evolving aesthetics of folk music. These coordinates are the concepts explored with infinite new possibility by New Zealand born, American old time fiddler George Jackson on his debut album, Time and Place. Traveling has been a way of life for Jackson, who was born to musician parents in Christchurch, New Zealand. He spent the better part of his childhood living and touring around in a house bus with his family band. An avid student of American fiddle styles, Jackson eventually made his way to Nashville, TN where he now lives. On Time and Place, he offers a mesmerising collection of original fiddle tunes, which reflect an uncannily deep understanding of American roots traditions, while remaining entirely true to his own musical and personal identity. As global cultures meld, this album offers a fascinating look at what time and place mean to fiddle styles in today’s world.
Jackson’s Time and Place was recorded at the Rubber Room in Chapel Hill, NC, with a number of renowned young musicians from the region, including Jackson’s long time collaborator Andrew Small, Charm City Junction’s Brad Kolodner, Mark Kilianski of Hoot and Holler, and Mandolin Orange’s Andrew Marlin, as well as fellow southern hemisphere native Ashlee Watkins. Each track on the album is named for it’s time and place of composition, and traces Jackson’s journey from New Zealand to 10 years spent in Australia touring and performing, to his new life in the United States. "Dorrigo” is named for one of his favorite Australian festivals, while "Cabin on the Cumberland", and “New Floors, Old Knees” memorialize his new home in Nashville, TN. The immigrant story is central to American history and culture, and Time and Place offers the chance to dig into an entirely new immigrant story in the form of some delightful and gritty new tunes.
Jackson first fell in love with old time music at the hallowed Appalachian Old Time String Band Festival in Clifftop, West Virginia; one of the biggest hotspots for American old time music. Having just finished jazz school in Australia at the time, Jackson felt a new found freedom in old time music. “I spent so long thinking about soloing, which is supposed to be all about freedom, but it was at Clifftop that I realized sinking into a great melody and a groove deeply with a group of people, leaving egos at the door, was more freeing than anything I’d experienced”. Growing up, Jackson played many different styles of fiddle music, Scottish music was a particular focus and he was also a competitive highland dancer. “Dancing to bagpipes was so exhilarating when I was young, but I spent a lot of time later on playing Bluegrass and modern Jazz, which are not really dance musics per se. I think when I got really into old time music it was like coming home to dance music for me”.
With “authenticity” being such a strong focus for the old time community, it might be hard to imagine a foreigner being respected musically. “American music is melting pot music,” says Jackson, “and you can hear the history of America through it. For example, the way that you use rhythm in your bow is very African, and some of of the tunes are Scottish or Irish in origin. I haven’t been an American until now, which is why I like to write and play my own tunes, because that’s me bringing myself, the New Zealander, into the mix”.