Independent rock n roll from the gutters of Nashville, Tennessee. Laney Jones and the Spirits have a 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. 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”. From a youth growing up with kangaroos in swampy central Florida to opening for bands like Kurt Vile and the Heartless Bastards, to officially showcasing at this year’s SXSW, Laney Jones is not someone you can put in a box. Nor should you try with the music. The crew’s live punk energy and heart-on-their-sleeves mentality is something that you just gotta witness for yourself.”
