Hearing Jackson Emmer for the first time required a bit of good luck (and blind faith). The Ojai Underground is a music venue for people who love music. It is an intimate setting where the audience shows respect for performers by not talking, keeping the camera usage to a minimum and hitting the head between songs. If we have a free night, we’ll take the drive up to Ojai even if unfamiliar with the evening’s performer. That is how we “discovered” Jackson.
Jackson played a lot of the music off his latest release, “Battle Hymn of the Early Riser” and a song that jumped out was Hickory Street. It is a song about an impeding tornado coming down Hickory Street or could it be a song about ignoring the warning signs that life throws at us? You get to decide.
