Free At Noon Flashback: Jade Jackson performs her first (ever) encore

Jade Jackson | Photo by Emma Silverstone for WXPN

Jade Jackson makes me want to invest in a good pair of cowboy boots and try (for the umpteenth time) to get into country music. The singer-songwriter from California brought her twangy, rocking tunes to World Cafe for XPN’s Free At Noon series today, and from her command of the stage and strong presence I never would have guessed that this was a performer on just her first national tour.

Jackson released her debut album Gilded on Anti- Records in May, and it’s filled to the brim with small town anecdotes and personal, introspective honesty delivered by her deep, wise-beyond-her-years voice. The record was produced by Mike Ness of Social Distortion (whose wife and son discovered Jackson playing in a coffee shop, as the story goes), which is where the slightly odd tour pair of the punk band and the country singer-songwriter came into being.

Free At Noon started off with the uptempo breakup track “Aden,” missing that awesome fiddle accompaniment from the record in the live show but the band’s high energy and awesome play between electric and acoustic guitar more than made up for it. Following a track co-written with Mike Ness “Troubled End,” a standout of the show was the building, anthemic “Bridges.” I can easily picture Jackson playing this song a few years down the road, a few albums later, as a throwback favorite of a sold-out crowd that sings along to every word. The following two songs were co-written with two different members of her band, one with bass player Jake Vukovich and the other with drummer Tyler Miller (the last member of the band is guitarist Andrew Rebel, who absolutely crushed every one of the many guitar runs of the show).

Before playing the very cool “Good Time Gone,” Jackson took a minute to thank the World Cafe crowd “that is so attentive and listening and nice,” which must be a welcome change for a brand new act opening on a national tour of a throwback punk band. That wasn’t all, though. Encore performances aren’t extremely common during Free At Noon shows, not like the unspoken expectation of one during a normal full set, but this crowd would not leave without one. The band returned to the stage to the applause that never stopped, and performed “No Guarantees” in a very unplanned encore performance — which they said was their first one ever.

Jade Jackson will be playing tonight at The Fillmore with Social Distortion. For tickets and more information, check out the XPN Concert Calendar.

Setlist

Aden
Finish Line
Troubled End
Bridges
Back When
Better Off
Gilded
Good Time Gone

Encore:
No Guarantees