What Is Emo Country?
Hi there. Nice to meet you. I’m Jonathan, and I have been an artist for as long as I can remember.
Sometimes to my own detriment, I have also always been a thinker, and even more detrimentally, a questioner. Making sense of the world that I miraculously happened to be born into has always been a fascination, and if you know me, that could mean anywhere from 1-100 projects at any given time…but I digress.
Does any of this have anything to do with Emo Country music?
Yes.
When I made the decision to pursue “the arts” professionally at the distinguished age of 15 years old, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was aware that it would be difficult, but it could not have prepared me for what I was really in for. Balancing a rigorous training schedule in dance and music, a relatively uninspiring scholastic course load, and an angst that I look back on with both amusement and amazement (i.e. cringe) - let’s just say that I am happy that social media started to dawn as I was exiting my high school years.
During this time, I moved through a variety of social circles:
The country crowd:
These were the folks I worked and played sports with. It wasn’t uncommon to hear the term “good ole’ boy,” but I never would have described myself as such. They were tough, hard-working, and possibly the least emotionally sensitive group of people I remember being around in my life. They pushed me to be better than I thought I could be and did not tolerate mental or physical weakness. While I was athletic enough to be useful in this crowd, I never felt like I truly belonged. I liked art more than automobiles. I loved to play baseball, but I’d rather sit with an issue of Alternative Press rather than Sports Illustrated any day of the week.
The playlist of this crowd: Tim McGraw, Travis Tritt, George Strait, and perhaps the greatest country star of all, Nelly.
It was metro-Atlanta, so I’m not sure how to justify this position in any other way.
The emo crowd:
These were the folks I felt like I most identified with on an emotional level (surprise!), and it was only an added bonus that my parents were extremely skeptical of them. This crowd was everything that I perceived was missing from the country crowd. They embraced the angst but they directed it through music and fashion in a way that made sense to me. This group of misfits, even the music elitists, was much easier to feel welcomed by since we all had a general understanding that we were weird. While this seemed like the crowd I could root my identity in, the general lack of discipline and wholesale rejection of anything traditional being good never sat well with me. I loved playing air guitar to Warped Tour Compilations well before I knew how to even hold a guitar, but I still felt like a fake when in a group setting of the emo crowd.
This crowd's playlist, much like the fashion, was enough to make any rational parent a bit uneasy. While some of the sounds of New Found Glory, Jimmy Eat World, Panic at the Disco! and Sum 41 didn’t set off any red flags, I can’t be sure that my infatuation with bands like The Used, Underoath, Hawthorne Heights, and Silverstein were particularly well received, but having gracious parents was a blessing since they let me explore this world of music without too much harassment.
All of these influences took me through my late teen and early adult years where I would bounce between genres depending on the vibe of the week where I would go on to take inspiration from the more mainstream melodic acts of each genre including: All Time Low, Boys Like Girls, We The Kings, Florida Georgia Line, Jason Aldean, Mayday Parade, and the likes.
More than anything, I wanted to connect with people.
This feeling of never quite fitting into a crowd became never quite fitting into a genre once I decided that I wanted to start writing music. I didn’t live a down home, backroad, dixie cup pickup truck lifestyle anymore than I lived a life of awful, toxic relationships. I enjoyed partying here and there, but I didn’t want to write about getting wasted, making bad decisions, and then going to church on Sunday (I’ll touch on this more in a future entry). I had a healthy distrust for authority, but I didn’t want to write songs that added to the negativity that was starting to become so common in the mid 2010s. More than anything, I wanted to connect with people through shared experiences, and even today, that’s still my goal with this project.
So what is Emo Country Music?
Musically and lyrically, it’s a mesh of 2 worlds that I could never fully exist in. It’s a real-life lyrical journey paired with the sonic familiarity that brings one back to the days of waiting for that Limewire.exe download to wreak havoc on your family’s PC. It’s a product of being too city for the country and too country for the city. It’s the most authentic art I’ve ever created because it is 100% me. I hope that if you’ve made it this far that you relate in some way. I enjoy making these songs more than words can express, and I’m happy to have you along for the ride.
