The Black Opry Launches Label & Signs Jett Holden

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Black Opry Records, Jett Holden. Photo: Kai Lendzion

Artist collective the Black Opry, started by industry veteran and advocate Holly G, has launched a record label in partnership with Thirty Tigers. The first artist signed to Black Opry Records is Jett Holden, who will deliver his debut album The Phoenix in October.

The Black Opry is an organization and touring collective focused on celebrating and supporting Black roots and country artists. When Founder Holly G first heard Holden’s music online, he had just given up pursuing an artist career.

“I found the first verse and chorus for ‘Taxidermy’ and asked if he planned on finishing the song,” she says. “He told me he wasn’t sure, so I got him a grant to finish and record it.” Holly G reached out to Rissi Palmer, Founder of the Color Me Country Artist Fund, who was so moved by Holden’s songwriting that she awarded him the funds to complete the track, setting him off on what has now become a full-circle journey.

As such, The Phoenix opens with the song that started it all. “Taxidermy” is a powerful anthem written in response to police brutality. Its vulnerability fits in well with the collection of songs that reflect on Holden’s experience as a Black, queer man growing up in the rural south.

“The title The Phoenix represents the resurrection of my career,” he says. “When Holly found me, when the Black Opry found me, I had quit music. I was done. This whole process pulled me back into music. Everything feels possible now.”

To celebrate the signing announcement, Holden has released the album’s debut single, “Backwood Proclamation.” The song was co-written with his friend and fellow queer singer-songwriter Roger Dale Locklear and features Charlie Worsham and John Osborne on electric guitar.

YouTube video

“We were playing a line of Mother’s Day shows in North Carolina. One morning, he’d gone out to the dollar store and I got the idea for a song about loving someone who feels like home whenever they’re around,” Holden recalls of writing the song with Locklear.

Recorded at Cartoon Moon Recording Studio in east Nashville, The Phoenix was produced by CMA and Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Will Hoge, who asked Holden to collaborate on the record after the Black Opry opened for him at Nashville’s 3rd and Lindsley.

“From the first time you hear Jett you realize how genuine he is,” Hoge says. “You feel the honesty. That comes through in the songs he writes. It comes through in the way he sings them. He’s a special artist and it’s exciting to get to watch the world discover it.”

The Phoenix Track Listing:
1. Taxidermy
2. Necromancer
3. Karma (feat. Cassadee Pope)
4. Perfect Storm
5. Scarecrow
6. When I’m Gone (feat. Emily Scott Robinson)
7. Better Off
8. 65611
9. West Virginia Sky
10. Backwood Proclamation (feat. Charlie Worsham, John Osborne)

LB Cantrell
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