Jarrod Lawson

For singer/songwriter/keyboard player Lawson, who had previously worked as a stone mason and piano tuner, the appreciation of his music in his native US was particularly gratifying, since his breakthrough in 2014 had been primarily in Europe.

"It was in late 2022 that Jarrod Lawson had the biggest, and most unexpected, thrill of his music career. He had just received a glowing endorsement in print from Michelle Obama, who was asked by Entertainment Weekly who she was listening to and, after mentioning Beyonce’s Renaissance album, added “There’s this young jazz, blue-eyed soul kid Jarrod Lawson that I’m loving….”

At the time Jarrod, who had relocated to Nashville from his long-time base in Portland, was receiving major airplay in the US and in Europe on his remake of the Isley Brothers Seventies classic “Footsteps In The Dark”, which followed his 2020 sophomore album “Be The Change”.

The album is a beautiful, restrained, dreamy mix of love songs, irreverence and social commentary. Describing the album as “a masterpiece”, SoulTracks.com hailed the title track as “an instant classic that would have fit just as comfortably in 1970 as it does in 2020”.