Photo by David Brendan Hall
With the Before Times now bordering on hazy, long-gone nostalgia, two years this month of COVID-19 has reset most artists. Jackie Venson was no exception. Only where most musicians have postponed releases, the ATX native guitar slinger, multi-instrumentalist and often solo showgirl has released two soul-pop/blues rock studio LPs.
Nor the 2020 jukebox vintage machine nor memory of southern roots 2021 love transcends has undergone pandemic isolation.
“The last two years have been crazy with really huge growth for me.” –Jackie Venson
“You’re talking to the one person that doesn’t apply,” she FaceTimes from her studio/livestream home in central Austin. “The last two years have been crazy with really huge growth for me. If you looked at a chart, it would go, ‘Do, do, do – BOOM.’ It would shoot in July 2020 and continue.
“And his directly back on my sales of derivative products. This is directly going back to my online streaming numbers. People physically listen to music.
In 2020, native guitar quasar Gary Clark Jr. swept the Austin Music Awards with a cruise of contemporary blues This earth. Last year, those honors went to Venson, who won Musician of the Year, Album of the Year for vintage machine, and Best Live Stream Artist. She graciously left Band of the Year to the Black Pumas.
Crush a Austin city limits The recording, while wearing a dress adorned with the names of black victims of police brutality, continued to raise her profile.
“It’s so weird that we’re in the craziest world, but my albums are home runs, out of the park,” she wonders from a space three times the size of her last apartment. “No other release can even compare to the number of streams and sales I’ve had on [Love Transcends].
“And it’s not like I haven’t always worked this hard. You’ve all been here, damn it. Hard, hard eight years. Hard all over the world. It happened after I put all this stuff on the internet and gained experience online. Then we’ve been through the last two years where the only form of entertainment was the internet.
Jackie Venson
Wednesday March 16, midday, Saxon Pub
Thursday, March 17, 11:10 p.m., Augustine
File under: Rising Local
