Watch the full interview above
Usually, if you check out some of the bands an artist has opened for in concert, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what to expect from their sound. Not so with Ayron Jones. His list is so eclectic you’d be forgiven for thinking he plays multiple genres. Catching up with him via Zoom, he struggles even to remember all the names.
“Man, everyone from, you know, Robert Cray, BB King to Guns n’ Roses, Run DMC and Public Enemy to Sir Mix-a-Lot to Bush to Metallica, you know, you name it, man. I just opened for the Rolling Stones now.”
See what I mean!
Ayron Jones is a singer, songwriter and unbelievably talented and compelling guitarist and storyteller from Seattle who just played Montreal opening for Shinedown. Filled with raw emotion and depth from his personal upbringing, the gritty genre-blending artist is an amalgam of the incredibly rich history of the city of Seattle from Jimi Hendrix to Nirvana.
His debut single, “Take Me Away,” cemented that vision and chart-topping success, hitting Top 5 at Rock Radio and setting the bar for singles to come, including his most recent track, “Mercy,” which hit #1 off of his 2021 album Child Of The State. The song, full of charged lyrics and melodies, strongly captures a collective consciousness of the time, though underscored by a vision of hope and endurance.
The video has been viewed well over a million times on YouTube since its release last year.
After a decade as a hard-working, independent musician, Jones seems fully prepared for success. “It’s been ten years plus in the making, and I’m just now getting to the major portion of my career being signed by a major label, and opening for major acts, you know, so a lot of that stuff happened, and the trend continued and then got bigger as I got signed, you know. I got signed, and my first single went to the top five on the Billboard charts shortly after that, you know, and that was my first thing. My second single went number one. And then we were allowed to tour again, and I think that’s when everything kind of started coming together. And my career since then has been turned upside down. My life has been turned upside down. My life is not the same as it was anymore.”
As Jones continues his ascent in the rock world, he also continues to break barriers as he explains, “Being black in the rock industry, I was forging a path into establishments and onto tours that had not previously embraced an artist like me. But the one thing that always changed minds and spoke for itself was the music.”
“I wanna do a bunch of different stuff. But I think musically, I just wanna keep touching people, man. It’s been an honour of my lifetime to be able to go out night after night and people who listen to my music and know my lyrics. I’ve been all over the world now, and there’s been somebody in the front row screaming my lyrics back at me. I just wanna continue that trend. I wanna continue making people proud and making people smile and just put my head down and work. And as long as I keep doing that and I open up my eyes and wake up somewhere cool, I’ll be happy.”
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