Jace Everett with Erik Koskinen

Jace Everett is an American country artist. Signed to Epic Records in 2005, he released his debut single "That's the Kind of Love I'm In" in 2005, which peaked at #51 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, and was the first single from his self-titled debut album. He also co-wrote Josh Turner's Number One single "Your Man". But by far Jace's biggest break came when his song "Bad Things" was chosen as the theme for the HBO series True Blood. Just “Google” Jace Everett’s name and you’ll find yourself knee-deep in the ooh’s and ahh’s of daily papers from Boston to Chicago and Seattle that can’t discuss the second season debut of HBO’s rocketing Golden Globe-honored drama TRUE BLOOD without mentioning the brilliant opening title montage, devised around the swampy rockabilly come-on of Everett’s “Bad Things.” True Blood creator Alan Ball’s series and films, including Six Feet Under and American Beauty, have regularly made music cues into iconic characters.

As a result, over 10,000 viewers seek Everett’s MySpace page daily, gluing him for months to the top spot among Americana artists on the site. And it’s formed an international following that is eclectic, committed and not to be categorized – much like his music. For this broad fan base, RED REVELATIONS is the complete and proper-sized helping of the sly wit, mystery, sensuality, drop-dead charisma and musical substance they’ve enjoyed so much in their weekly cable-cast sample of him.

The songs of RED REVELATIONS are equally expressive in the language of blue collar realism (“The Good Life,” “More to Life,” “Permanent Thing,” “Little Black Dress”) as in the metaphor and heightened experience of poetry and film (“Burn For You,” “One of Them,” “Possession,” “Damned if I Do”) – and the album is shot through with striking emotional moments, seamlessly entwined with Everett’s modern yet timeless handling of America’s roots music, from blues to rockabilly, country, and rock. “After finishing the record, I saw that many of the songs turned out to be about monogamous romance and how difficult that is,” Everett reflects. “Relationships in conflict. That happens in real life, when you have years together, and you have to stoke those coals.”

Everett’s music evokes the complex, vividly emotional and often over-heated works of Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Jim Morrison and Marvin Gaye, among others, precisely because it so plainly springs from the same sources of inspiration, contradiction and risk. Indiana-born and Texas-raised Everett’s upbringing in the evangelical church, and his far-flung travels are apparent in his songs: “The church is where I learned about music, played bass and did my first real public singing, and where the girls thought I was really cool. I’ve always been attracted to emotionally and spiritually mature themes – philosophically and musically. I was a father at 23, I’ve been in every grunt job in the world; I’ve been a preacher, a traveling musician, truck driver. I had adult responsibilities early in life, so I wasn’t attracted to ‘let’s party’ music.”

He continues, explaining the many influences on his versatile, powerful voice: “I love the way Willie Nelson never sings on the beat. And Ray Charles can do something with a note, just one: there’s so much pain and love and sexuality. I took something from everyone I liked.” As a songwriter, too, Everett’s work displays the same supreme grasp of his sources: “I love Willie and Waylon; late-model Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Roger Miller, for their directness of lyric, and the common-day things and people in their songs. Also, the cinematic side of rock — Peter Gabriel, Led Zeppelin, the urgency and hero-waving-a-flag quality of Clash and U2. In soul music, sexuality and spiritual redemption aren’t opposites on the coin, but actually the same. I aspire to get all those things in one song: Intelligence, some power and energy, and a spiritual, sexual quality.”

Jace clearly has a sense of humor as well. In a recent interview with CMT, he commented on his dramatic mid-career revival "I'm born again, you know what I mean? The vampires brought me back from the dead."

Americana/Alt country guitarist and singer Erik Koskinen opens.

Jace Everett

Jace Everett was born in Evansville, Indiana. His father's jobs kept them on the move though, as he traversed through Indianapolis, Indiana Carmel, and then St. Louis, Missouri before moving to Ft. Worth, Texas at the age of six. While in Texas, Everett...

Erik Koskinen

Smokin' guitarist in the Americana/rock 'n roll vein, proudly from the U.P. of MI, now based in Saint Paul when he is not on the road with Randy Weeks and others.