Jay Stott

Where are we from? Where am I from?

What does that even mean?

My mother's side of the family is from Delaware and Pennsylvania. My father's side is from Virginia and North Carolina. I grew up all over the place. I was born in Pennsylvania, lived overseas as a kid, spent my adolescence in the midwest, and have lived in Colorado on and off for thirty-five years now. In my family history are plantation owners, confederate soldiers, Quakers and abolitionists. Thats quite a mix. 

I'm a fifty-seven year old white…

Episode Eight of The Story Behind The Song!

Get in the damn van. 

This song, Econoline Van, pretty much wrote itself except for one part. The prompt in my songwriting group was ‘econoline van,’ and I was off and running from the get go. Really I just listed out a bunch of musician stories, and wrote a chorus. The ford E350 was a staple of the music world for a really long time. Basically a can with a motor, it was cheap, reliable (sort of), simple, and functional. It was not unusual to have six or seven…

Episode Seven of Story Behind The Song

In the winter of 2021, we were all mid-pandemic. I was working from home at my then day-job, my kid was going to school from home, we were all hanging around an awful lot. 

My friend and colleague David Coile, a terrific songwriter and raconteur over in Longmont, had a podcast called Raw Songwriting. The podcast really focused on the nuts and bolts of songwriting- David would send the guest a prompt, both David and the guest would write a song to the prompt, and the…

Episode Six of The Story Behind The Song

Have you ever had it with all the advetising? The constant vomit stream of bullshit? Yeah, me too. In the fall of 2020 (incedentally in the middle of an election cycle when the bullshit was at peak bull), I had one of those moments. I find the political bull especially nauseating. The idea that it's all 'messaging' kinda makes me want to puck or riot, dempinding on the day. 

So I wa splaying with this little blusey guitar riff in A. Nothing ground breaking, sounded…

Welcome to Episode 5 of the story behind the song!

This week I'm looking at 'Mostly What We Ain't' which was released as a single about a year and a half ago. I wrote this song as a part of my songwriting group (shout out group!) several years ago. The prompt that day was 'selfless loving saints.'

Yeah. I saw that and thought ‘nope.’ We aint' that. And the song was off from there. It's fun to lean into a very misanthropic point of view sometime, though I'm mostly a pretty positive guy. But sometimes people…

Story Behind the Song: Ep 4

Ah, trains, and blues, And trains. What a great combo. 

Sometimes you just get messing around with a riff on the guitar and come up with a song to go with it. That's pretty much what happened here. Blues as a form is deeply embedded in my thinking as a player and a writer. I'm not saying I'm great, but blues and blues influenced rock have always been something I really loved. 

The speaker of this little narrative, is, of course, a classic unreliable narrator. It isn't the train that…

Story Behind The Song: Episode 3

Sometimes you start at the end and work to the beginning. There was this phrase rolling around in my head about leaving too soon or too late. And I got to wondering who would say this and what would lead them to say it? What circumstances would have to happen? Also, I really like stories where that bad thing is coming no matter what you do (I'm a big fan of Cormac McCarthy's novels). And, I do love a classic western. 

So I ended up with a song about a guy who falls in love…

Well here's episode 2 of the story behind the song. 

This song isn't released- you can only hear the studio version when the record comes out, so pre-order now and you'll get it first! 

I wrote last episode about the online songwriting group I participate in. The challenge weeks start on Sunday- the first prompt goes up Saturday night. The goal is to write a song every day for a week. Some weeks that gets hard. Maybe I'm not feeling it, maybe I'm busy, maybe I'm just lazy. Who knows. 

In 2024 I was doing a…

I though I'd do a little writing about the songs on the upcoming album, so here's episode 1! This isn't the first song on the record, but it's the title song, so that's what I'm starting with. 

I'm a member of a songwriting group that gets together online every other month or so. We do a challenge week in which we write a song a day for a week. There really aren't any rules, it's just a mechanism to get the work in motion. The trick is to write the song and post it to the group, and not worry too much…

Finally, something is happening. 

Yup, a new record is finally coming- July 18 One Angel Wing will be out in the world! It will include the singles released over the past few years as well as new songs.

When you're a completely indy, one-man shop like me, projects like this can really feel like an endless grind sometimes. So it's really fun to get to the point where we can celebrate a bit. Starting today you can pre-order physical copies of the record on CD and vinyl (yes vinyl!) and you can get tickets to…