This is part of our ongoing series on musicians who perform in the Berkshires.
Jordan Weller is a Berkshire-based musician who plays solo and with the band Jordan Weller and The Feathers. Being relatively new to the region, I first learned about Jordan in May when my musician neighbor, a long-time resident, called me and said there is this legendary band returning to the Egremont Barn after a seven-year hiatus, and you have to go. We went. The Barn was packed, everyone danced, and we had a blast. We’ve now seen Jordan several times, both solo and with The Feathers.
Since his return, Jordan has been getting back into the Berkshire music scene and working on new material. He and The Feathers will be playing a special New Year’s Eve show at the Egremont Barn along with The Picky Bastards. I had the opportunity to catch up over Zoom with Jordan to learn more about his return to the Berkshires, his musical journey, the upcoming show at Egremont Barn, and his plans for 2024. I hope you’ll enjoy our conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity.
I understand you recently moved back to the Berkshires after living in Galveston, Texas, for the last seven years. What brought you back to the Berkshires?
I think it was getting back to the pace that we used to live at – wanting to slow down. My wife and I looked at each other and figured we’d had enough time running ragged in the restaurant business and wanted to get back to the Berkshires and take in some mountain air.
You’ve been performing a fair amount lately: by my count, nine times since May 3, when you returned to the region and played at the Egremont barn. In addition to the Barn, you performed at the Apple Tree Inn, The Lion’s Den, and The Stationery Factory. You’ve got an upcoming show with the Picky Bastards on New Year’s Eve at the Egremont Barn. How do you feel about the reception you’ve been getting since you returned to the Berkshires?
I think it’s been great, especially when I’m performing with The Feathers. The two shows [with The Feathers] that we’ve been able to do so far have been just awesome. People come out, they dance, and we have a great time. We don’t get a lot of time to rehearse because we’re all busy. But I think we’ve been able to pull it off so far. And we have a couple of rehearsals coming up, so that’ll be good. But we’re really excited about New Year’s Eve. That’s what I was working on just before this call.
Can you tell us anything about what we can expect for the New Year’s Eve performance? Will the two bands be doing separate sets? Or will they be performing as one sort of “super band?”
I believe it’s going to be two separate sets. Rob [Sanzone] plays in both bands, so he’ll have a busy night. But other than that, I believe it’s going to be two separate sets.
In addition to Rob, who will be playing with The Feathers?
We’ll have Miles Lally on the bass, Joe Rose on the keys, and Thomas Parker on drums.
You’ve been performing solo, with Bobby Sweet, and with The Feathers. Do you have a preferred configuration, or is it dependent on the venue or who is available?
I love to play with The Feathers as much as I can. I started out playing folk-country music. If I’m sitting at home writing with a guitar, it’s usually folk-country stuff. I love playing with Bobby. I like playing by myself. But it’s so much fun to be able to just let loose with The Feathers and have a band like that behind you. You can kind of just let it go. You know? I didn’t play a lot when I was in Texas, in fact, almost not at all. It took me a while to get my fingers back in order – I’m just starting to get there. The solo stuff is getting better every day. I hope to be playing a lot more with Bobby.
You mentioned to me at a break during a show at The Lion’s Den that you had a long relationship with Bobby. Can you tell us a little bit more than that?
I first moved here in 2009, and I met Abe Guthrie. He played a show at our original restaurant. And we got to talking, and I wanted to put out an album, and he had a studio. So I went to his studio in Washington. We became really good friends and I met Bobby through Abe, and Bobby is just a great guy. And Abe is a great guy. And so I made a record with Bobby, Abe, Pete Adams, and Dan Teichert on drums. It’s called Where The Green Grass Be. It took us a long time to make because I only went up there on my days off, and Washington is about an hour from here. It was great – it was a really good experience. And then I got to know all those guys from booking them at our venue, and we’ve been friends ever since.
You’ve released four albums – a self-titled album in 2010, Where the Green Grass Be in 2012, Lovan in 2016, and Mama Didn’t Raise No Dummies in 2017. You’ve also put out a few singles, including “I Fall for You” in 2020. Are you working on any new songs or an album?
Yes, most of the stuff I’m working on now is more like Where The Green Grass Be – more of a solo folk-country thing. That’s what I write when I’m at home. I probably have 30 songs to pick through since I’ve been back, which is good.
I have this problem: I record things with my voice recorder on my phone, and I forget to label them, and so I just have this long list – and Bobby Sweet makes fun of me and says, “Oh look, that was New Recording 507.” And I’m like, “Shut up, Bobby” (Jordan laughs). I have to go back and find what was good and what wasn’t.
Do you think you’ll release that as an album or just some singles?
Yeah, hopefully, I can get it out as an album. Everybody is so talented around here, but they’re all busy. It’s it’s hard to find people that aren’t in three bands. Once I get the stuff together and get a list of songs that I can really pick through, I’ll start calling people and see if we can get some stuff together and get it down. It’s not as hard as it used to be.
Tell us a little bit about your writing process. Do you start with a lyric or a concept, or do you start with music or a riff and work from there?
Most of the time, I’m in the car or I’m sitting around, and I think of a phrase. And then I might write the whole thing in two minutes, or I might leave that phrase in my phone forever and then find it one day. A lot of times, though, I just start singing. I can play guitar fairly well, but I don’t read music, and I don’t know much theory. What I’m singing has to come together with what I can actually play. So most of the time, it starts with a lyric or a line. The one I wrote yesterday actually started with a riff, and I recorded the riff. And then I went back to it the next day, singing a melody that didn’t have any words. And then one popped in, and I was like, “Okay, let’s run with that.”
The song is called “Close Call.” Right before I met my wife, I was sitting on a park bench in downtown Great Barrington, and she walked by and told me she had lost her keys. And I was like, “Oh, Okay.” I didn’t know until later on that she was trying to get me to walk her home. The song is about the first couple of months that we knew each other. We met in July and got married in October, 12 years ago. It all started on that park bench. I had no idea. It was a “close call” since I let my future wife walk by me…and didn’t pay attention. I got lucky that she stayed interested.
That’s a great story. So tell us a little bit about how you first got into making music.
That goes back to the Guthrie’s. I was in living in North Carolina. I lived there for 10 years till we moved to Massachusetts. I was working at my family’s pizza restaurant delivering pizzas, had no bills, and was making pretty good money on tips. And so I had nothing to do but go to concerts, just one after another. I saw everybody. I saw Eric Clapton, BB King, Tom Petty, and Prince. I just went to everything.
I went to a Black Eyed Peas concert, and my mom was like, “We gotta get this kid into something else.” She was worried about that for some reason. She saw that Arlo [Guthrie] was going to be playing in Boone, North Carolina, which is about four hours from where we lived. I didn’t play an instrument at the time. We went there and saw the show. Arlo was sitting on a stool, he’s telling stories and playing music. And Abe and Sarah Lee were there. I think Terry Al A Berry was on the drums.
So we sit through the show – it’s a bunch of older people in tie-dye shirts at the Arts Center at the college. We got in the car to go home, and on the way home, my Mom said, “What do you think?” I was thinking about this guy sitting on a stool playing guitar, and I said, “That’s what I want to do.” She says, “What do you mean?” I said, “That’s what I want to do.” She says, “Well, can you sing?” And I said, “I think so.” She says, “Can you play guitar?” I said, “I can learn.” And so the next day, when we got home, I went to a pawn shop, and I bought a $150 Fender acoustic guitar.
And then, for the next six months, I just got obsessed – I’m still obsessed with it. I would sit on YouTube, and I’d watch videos of Ben Harper and Arlo and Pete Seeger, and I just watched their fingers, looked up chords, and figured it out. And then, once I learned enough and realized that I could write something and play it, I just stopped. I figured I knew enough to be able to write. And so I kind of quit – I’ve learned a lot since then, but I kind of quit learning and just started playing.
The first song I ever wrote, I was on a golf course with my Dad, and I was looking over at this log, and there’s this turtle sitting in the sun. I started singing the song in the golf cart to myself, making sure nobody heard me because I was afraid it might sound stupid. I got home, and I put some chords to it and went downstairs and sat on a stool in the kitchen where my Mom was and played the song. And she says, “Who wrote that?” And I said, “I did.” And she said, “Bullshit.” I said, “Nope, I did.” And to this day, that [“The Turtle Song”] is my most popular song. Yeah. 20,000 plays on Spotify.
I was playing it the other day! And you played it that night we spoke at The Lion’s Den.
Yeah. I’ve got to do it.
And when did the Feathers get together?
I was asked to put on a show at Club Helsinki in Hudson back in 2011. I said, “Yeah, sure.” And he [the booking person] says, “Okay, great. Do you have a band?” And I was like, “Uh-huh.’ And, No, I didn’t have a band [Jordan laughs]. So I booked the show, and I’m like, “Hey, I gotta get a band.” So I called one of the people that I knew could play, and that was Rob Sanzone. He was interested. He calls Mile Lally, who is one of the best bass players in the Berkshires.
And so Miles, Rob, and I get together. And somebody knew this drummer, Jason Schultheis from Pittsfield, and he then came. We played the show at Helsinki, and it went really well. And then we ended up playing again at Helsinki, and then we played a Thanksgiving benefit concert in Pittsfield that Bobby Sweet organized. He had 300 people in there and we played on this big old stage that he had put together. That was awesome – really, really cool. So we started playing this kind of country-folk stuff, and it was going well.
We added a couple of rock and roll tunes to kind of spice up the folk and country stuff. And then one day, Miles and I are getting together in the morning to write music. I started playing this kind of reggae riff. He said, “What are you doing?” I was like, “I just wanted to play this.” And he goes, “Are you kidding me?” I hadn’t known that Miles was a big reggae fan. We listened to reggae all morning and started writing songs. Then The Feathers started transitioning into this other thing – it just kind of flipped. The song that did it was Toots and the Maytals “54-46 Is My Number.” We started playing that song, and the band just went, “Okay.” We were a full-on reggae band for a couple of months. Then in comes the funk stuff, and the rock’n’roll stuff – it just became this fun thing. It went almost a complete 360 from what we were playing to what we play now.
My goal at the time was to be the best bar band we could possibly be. You want people to walk into the room and go, “Why the hell are these guys here?” Most bands kind of ease into a show and then pick it up towards the end. But I’d say, “No, we’re just gonna step on the gas. Let’s just go two and a half hours, boom!” I never liked taking breaks because when I used to run a venue, I realized that when the band stops, half the crowd leaves – every time. So I didn’t like taking breaks. And we got really good at that. And then I left. But it all started with me calling Rob and Rob calling Miles.
Who are some of the artists that influenced you? You mentioned Arlo Guthrie, Ben Harper, and Pete Seeger. Who were some of the others that had a big impact on you?
Probably one of the biggest was John Prine, once I started writing.
Oh, I love John Prine. I’m a huge fan.
Yes, John Prine, Cat Stevens. Obviously, Bob Marley and the Wailers – Catch a Fire is probably one of my favorite albums ever. Steel Pulse – we do a lot of reggae. I’m a huge George Clinton fan. Parliment-Funkadelic. [David] Bowie. Prince.
Who are you listening to these days?
I go kind of all over the place. If I look at my Spotify, it’s probably a lot of CCR – Yeah, I’m a big Credence [Clearwater Revival] fan. It just depends on the day, really, and the weather.
I also understand you’ve written two children’s books: “No Way to Defunk a Skunk” and “Rabbit in the City or Turtle in the Park.” Can you tell us how that came about?It sounds like you get together in person to do a lot of that work but then are also collaborating virtually in between times.
I always wanted to write a children’s book. And one day, I was sitting on my mom’s couch and kind of the same way I would write a song, I thought there really is no way to defunk a skunk. And so I started with this story about how these two brothers – little boys – bring home a pet. They’re all excited, but their mom is freaking out because it’s a skunk. And they try all these different ways to defunk the skunk. It’s cute.
I sent that into about 20 different publishers that took unsolicited manuscripts. And about six months later, I got about 15 No’s. And about a year later, I got one that said, “Hey, we like this.” So they published it. It’s on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And then I thought, well, I did it once, maybe they’ll do it again. And so I wrote “Rabbit in the City or Turtle in the Park,” which is a take on the tortoise and hare – two different lifestyles, you know?
Any plans to do more children’s books?
There are definitely plans to do more – I just haven’t even started yet. Life has been a little crazy lately. But I mean, it’s been crazy for everybody. I’ve just been not in that space.
Looking forward to 2024, what are your plans?
I’m sticking with the music as much as I can. I want to play with The Feathers as much as I possibly can. But I can’t do that all the time, so I’m looking at some sort of project with the new music that I’m writing. I have a few people in mind who might be interested in helping me get that stuff written and getting an album out. So that would be the main thing.
Should we expect to see you playing around in Berkshire County in 2024?
Yes. I probably need to get a band together and figure out where we can go and what we can do. Right now, It’s mostly just me at the Barn and places like The Lion’s Den every once in a while. I’m not sure about the size or the venues that fit me right now. I need to figure that out.
It’s always fun to see you at Egremont Barn.
Yeah. It’s a good place to be.
It always has such a good vibe. It’s always fun to see you there – even on nights you’re not playing, we sometimes see you and your brother up front dancing. It’s so much fun.
What do you do for enjoyment when you’re not making music?
I’m usually playing soccer or playing catch with my son. We just got a mammoth of a dog that’s supposed to be a puppy, but he’s huge. And then my wife and I like to hike and hang out. Nothing crazy. It’s winter time, otherwise I’d be playing golf.
Is there anything else that I did not ask that you’d like to share with our readers?
I hope they come for the New Year’s Eve show at Egremont Barn. And I’ll also be doing the Holiday Extravaganza show at Egremont Barn on December 17. There will be a lot of great people there, too.
You can find Jordan’s music on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and other streaming platforms. You can follow him on Instagram.