It might not seem like a glitzy Grammy afterparty — one where Jess Williamson drank champagne with Taylor Swift, no less — and a gem and mineral show in small-town Texas have much in common. But for Williamson, they both somehow ended up representing the same thing: a feeling of being welcomed yet transient, with a foot in multiple worlds but never quite settling in.
“I thought, ‘I’m a tourist,’” Williamson says, calling on Zoom from her living room in Marfa with her hair in loose braids, the desert sun pouring into the airy home. “That I’m this visitor stopping in, and I don’t really belong in either one. But somehow, I’m kind of allowed to go to both.”
That feeling, and that wild night at the Chateau Marmont, made its way on to “The Gem and Mineral Show,” the closing track on Williamson’s gorgeous new LP, A Mile South of Heaven, out Oct. 8 on New West. It’s the album’s core tension, too: There lyrically, on the first single “Goodbye to All That,” where Williamson tries to commit to Texas full-time but can’t shake the pull of Los Angeles, or on “Battle Scar,” where she remembers trying to fit in with the rich kids at the private school her mom worked overtime to afford. And it’s there sonically, on songs like “Tracking the Tropics,” out today, that builds its palette from pedal steel and acoustic guitar but also sounds, as she remembers her producer Shooter Jennings putting it, “a little like Nine Inch Nails.”
Williamson’s music is as beautifully unmoored from place as she is. With 2023’s excellent Time Ain’t Accidental and her 2022 album in the duo Plains alongside Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, Williamson has honed a sound that’s built on elements of roots and country but ventures freely. It’s her ability to combine it all with a knack for a perfectly-crafted chorus that exists somewhere in the middle between earworm and poetry that makes her songs unforgettable.
That song craft is what likely caught the attention of Jack Antonoff, who posted on his Instagram stories at the end of 2023 that “Hunter,” from Time Ain’t Accidental, was his most listened-to song of the year, according to Spotify Wrapped. Williamson was shocked, and sent a DM to Antonoff to thank him. A few weeks later, the producer and Bleachers frontman reached out to invite her to a little party he was throwing. It was at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, after the Grammy Awards. She grabbed a dress from her tour pile and headed there alone, nervous that no one would want to talk to a singer-songwriter amongst the flashy pop stars.
“I realized really quickly that when you’re at a party like that, people are really, really, really nice to you,” Williamson says. “Because I guess they think you must be someone that they could benefit from knowing. And so that was interesting, because there were a few musicians there that I’ve known from being around Los Angeles that have never been that warm to me. But that night, let me tell you, I was their best friend. But I also got to meet all of these people I admire so much, like Taylor Swift, and she was incredibly kind and warm and cool. It felt like a total surreal fairytale.”
Last night, though, she was at a different kind of star party: out in the desert of Marfa, looking at constellations with a laser pointer. Though she was born in Dallas, Williamson has spent the last 10 years in Los Angeles, coming to Marfa part-time. Recently, she started wondering if she needed to settle permanently in Texas. Those fair-weather friends, the pace of city life, the warm Christmases, they were all taking a toll on her. She wrote “Goodbye to All That,” based on the Joan Didion essay of the same name, as a way to make peace with leaving Los Angeles and chasing a new, more mellow existence.
“I sometimes feel guilty as a woman, having this much ambition,” Williamson says. “Do I need to settle down? Do I need to have a different kind of life? Do I need to think about becoming a mother? And around the third verse, the part that says ‘Goodbye to the dreamers, the poets and their songs,’ I started crying because I think I realized I didn’t want to say goodbye.” She makes it work going back and forth between California and Texas now, embracing long hours on the interstate. Like the music on A Mile South of Heaven, she exists in two worlds, owned by both and neither at once.
Texas, though, is at the core of who Williamson is as an artist. It’s a place and a feeling she’s always writing about. On this album, it’s there in the delicate twang of “Texas Time.” She loves the people, the food, the music. She’s happy to be an advocate for a misunderstood place.
“Unfortunately, politically, I think it’s understood quite well, though,” she says. “It’s not something I can make excuses for or defend. But the Texas that I’m in, and the things I get to do and the people I know, it’s magical here. There’s this specific warmth and boldness and independence to Texans. It’s home.”
To make A Mile South of Heaven, she partnered with someone who understands well what it means to both love and leave the place you were born in: Jennings, son of country music royalty Waylon Jennings, who now calls Los Angeles home. They bonded over their love of L.A., and “how he left Nashville deliberately because he needed to do his own thing,” Williamson says. “And similarly, I left Texas, because I needed to do something different, in this big swirling, beautiful melting pot of all different kinds of artists doing all different kinds of things without feeling boxed in.”
“Jess Williamson is such a unique singer and songwriter,” Jennings tells Rolling Stone. “When I first met her, I was taken by her explorative spirit with where she wanted her music to go. But I always found her songs, and even singing style, mysterious and refreshingly original. I’m proud of the album we made together, and I really am grateful for the time we were able to spend exploring this music with each other”
Williamson and Jennings recorded A Mile South of Heaven at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, where classic albums have been made by everyone from the Rolling Stones to Prince to the Beach Boys. They avoided the electronic drum machine sounds that populated her last record for the instruments that both she and Jennings were naturally drawn to, like fiddle, steel, and banjo. The result lies somewhere between country, roots, and indie folk, always anchored in her distinct and memorable Texas twang.
It irked her a little, though, when she heard from a friend after the release of “Goodbye to All That.” “She said, ‘I love how you are leaning into full-on country,’” Williamson recalls. “I said thanks, but it got me thinking, because I’m not. I’ve always worked with the same kind of instruments and sounds. I think about Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Joanna Newsom. Those are some of my favorite artists. You can hear the traditions that they’re working in, but I don’t think anyone would call any of them country.”
Don’t get her wrong: She adores country music. Witness that Plains album, and though there are no plans for another, Williamson would be open to it down the road (and, contrary to internet speculation, she says she and Crutchfield are on good terms). A Mile South of Heaven is filled with those references and sounds, painted with the colors of country but, like Williamson herself, undefined by expectations of what exactly that should look, feel, or sound like.
“We even have stomp-claps in there, which is almost something that one could roll one’s eyes at,” Williamson says with a laugh, talking about “Tracking the Tropics.” “I don’t even know what you call that song, or what genre, but I don’t think it’s country music. To me, country music is Willie Nelson, and modern country is pop music. It’s really just a song about wanting to escape to a simpler time.”
Williamson has been thinking a lot about success, and the idea of what it means to make it. A Mile South of Heaven evokes that idea of being close to the goal but always a little short — and it’s never clear if you’re rising or falling. “Tracking the Tropics” thinks back on her early days in Texas, when playing sold-out stages and parties at the Chateau were distant dreams, before she got caught in what she calls the “compare and despair” cycles of her career.
“Being a mile south of heaven, you’re never going to get there. You’re never going to get to that thing where it’s finally enough. The goalposts are always moving, so how about just enjoy where you’re at?” Williamson says. She’ll head back to Los Angeles again soon, but for now, she’s going to enjoy the quiet, unflashy nature of a Texas day. She’s getting better at being happy with where she’s at.
“Am I Taylor Swift’s friend? No,” Williamson says, smiling. “But did I get to bask in her light for an evening? Yeah. And it was awesome.”
