“I got a record player for my birthday one year, but I only had a limited amount of money to start buying. So, rather than just buy one or two records I was more tempted to get my hands on as many different sounds as I could. I left the store with an armful of records by Van Morrison, Phoebe Snow, Rickie Lee Jones, The Animals, Dennis Wilson, Steely Dan, and Pink Floyd. I’ll never forget that first moment of being in a record shop and about to dive down the rabbit hole of music and never return! I suppose the vinyl record that has stuck with me the most from that shopping spree is Luxury Liner by Emmylou Harris.”
“Compared to people who I know who have massive vinyl collections, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I am a hard core ‘quantity’ collector. But I do have a decent collection, and every record that I own has a great meaning to me. That is the probably the biggest reason why I wanted to release my EP on vinyl as a limited edition vinyl pressing. You can really achieve such a great sound for the music by listening to it on vinyl. Especially with recordings, such as mine, that were recorded live to tape (Studer A820 24-track) at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in the UK, which in itself… is a deep rabbit hole of recording gear that I won’t even get into!
As I delved deeper into my own songwriting, I found it a lot more interesting to continue on with my vinyl collection as a way to discover older records. This was before music became digitized and other than the local vinyl/CD shop or the public library, it was hard to catch on to great music. Buying old or new vinyl really opened up new possibilities for finding an artist that I hadn’t encountered before. Jackson Browne was someone who I found at the record shop and his single “Doctor My Eyes” was something that I gravitated to without knowing why. I have probably listened to that song over 1,000 times on vinyl.
In college, I became obsessed with owning as many vinyl versions of Joni Mitchell’s Blue as I possibly could find. I would scour the record shops and put bids on eBay to see how many versions I could collect. It all got a little bit too crazy and over-obsessive so I eventually gave away a lot of the copies, but I still have the matte/canvas version that I will always treasure.
There were a few months after college that I had a job at a cafe that encouraged the baristas to bring in their own music collection. I got to make playlists for the cafe, but at that time that basically meant making a mix CD.
When I would get home at night I would need a break from those same daily playlists and one day I picked up a 4 disc vinyl set of old country classics. I don’t remember what it was called, but it had a bunch of Carter/Cash tunes that made me really happy. It had some good Dolly songs, John Denver, Waylon Jennings, and Loretta Lynn. I think in a way that country vinyl box set became my personal library for country music. It taught me a lot about meaningful songs chock full of great lyricism and I would say that it deeply influenced my writing in a lot of ways.”
—Delta Jackson
Delta Jackson’s self-titled, debut double EP arrives in stores later in 2018—on vinyl. Pre-order it here.
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PHOTO: ELLIOT A. THOMAS
