Jarrod Lawson

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And India.Arie says about Anthony: “He’s a great talent and one of my oldest friends. Not only did he encourage me to start performing professionally but it was him who suggested I use my first and middle name as an artist. There was even a time when he spent his rent money for me to experiment in the studio”

Formerly held close as one of the Pacific Northwest’s best-kept musical secrets, Jarrod Lawson has exploded as an international sensation, garnering awards, performing at prestigious venues and spawning fresh notability for Portland’s burgeoning soul/jazz music scene. Ever since Lawson released his eponymous debut album in 2014, the smokey voiced singer-songwriter and virtuoso pianist has been sending positive ripples around the globe with his powerful message music. He has completed six successful international tours with prestigious highlights extending from Rotterdam’s North Sea Jazz and the UK’s Love Supreme festivals to Java Jazz festival in Indonesia, with performances in Beijing, Melbourne and at Tokyo’s Billboard Live. His very first overseas performance was at the world famous Ronnie Scott’s Club in London in 2014, following which the Jazzwise reviewer wrote: “With the deafening buzz surrounding this gig Lawson has to show and prove, and he does so and then some, pretty much from the downbeat” I flew in from Chicago. We were doing a little US tour and we were right on the tail end of the tour when I got the call: ‘we’d really like to bring you to London for this award show,’ and I was like (laughs) okay, I’d better not go home then. So I literally flew straight from Chicago. Soul Artist of the Year Jarrod Lawson surprised guests at The Jazz FM Awards 2015 with a beautiful cover of ‘A Song For You’.

Jarrod Lawson Maida Vale Session “The Point of it All”

Jarrod Lawson, the singer-songwriter-keyboardist from Portland, Oregon who emerged seemingly out of nowhere at 37 with a debut album that took the jazz and soul world by storm, has completed recording of his long awaited second album. I don’t think I can find an appropriate superlative to describe how gifted this young man really is and to make comparisons between him and Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, Leroy Hutson and Stevie Wonder 2017 is in my opinion no way sacreligious as he is overly bestowed with all the qualities that have made the aforementioned into legends. For all that he has perfected his own trademark sound that is steeped in soul, jazz, gospel, latin and blues, all elements he has distilled to perfection to produce his seminal self titled debut lp. I think for this album I’ll probably produce myself again. For the third album I’ve toyed with the idea - not because I have to, just because it will be fun - of maybe reaching out to somebody like, say Omar, just because I think the result could be really special. Oh yeah. Absolutely. I’ve already got three songs that I have been previewing to people on our last few tours that will be on the next album - ‘Soul Symphony,’ ‘Connected,’ and ‘Not Gonna Let Them’, three songs that I’ve been mixing into the set. It will be very soulful, it will be very jazzy also, but even a little bit more, whereas I think my debut album was maybe leaning slightly more to the jazz side, this one is going to be leaning slightly more to the soul side.

Jarrod joined his college’s esteemed music program and sang in the Chamber Choir along with singing and playing piano for the college jazz ensemble. While honing his performance-craft, Jarrod continued developing his composition talents in melody, harmony, chord progressions and lyricism and much of that developed into the mature and steadfast compositions that we hear in Jarrod’s music now. The mature composition and performance heard now in Jarrod Lawson has made him wildly and widely popular in the Pacific Northwest—sharing stages with the likes of Bilal, Average White Band, Angelique Kidjo and Ronnie Laws. He has performed with Portland sensations like Farnell Newton, SoulMates and international star Liv Warfield who refers to Jarrod Lawson as “The Truth.” Maybe best of all for Jarrod, so far, was performing at Stevie Wonder’s birthday party. It’s a huge honour. For me to see my face on this little marquee right here next to D’Angelo and Lalah Hathaway, it feels like I’m living somebody else’s life (laughs)… It’s changed a lot. It’s been a year of growth for me in a lot of ways, as you’d expect when a person goes from tuning pianos every day to suddenly touring all over the world and getting to share my gift all over the world. Hearing the song Universal Chord from Jarrod Lawson’s new album Be the Change had much the same effect as Take 6 did all those years ago, and it’s just as good, if not better.

On The Go

Good news for the many fans of JARROD LAWSON in particular and lovers of classy, jazz-flavoured soul in general… the now Nashville-based singer/songwriter is releasing some new music and going out on the road! Full Flava, led by UK producer/songwriter Rob Derbyshire, have over the past couple of years released a series of remixes of key songs from their 20-year history. Working with a stellar line-up of US and UK female vocalists - including CeCe Peniston, Chantay Savage, Carleen Anderson, Donna Gardier and Incognito’s Joy Rose - they cover a wide range of styles from disco to Latin, soulful house to soul-jazz.