Jerron Paxton Announces New Album, Things Done Changed out October 18th on Smithsonian Folkways

Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, Paxton's music is steeped in the rich cultural heritage of the Great Migration. His family's journey from Shreveport, Louisiana, to the Athens neighborhood of South LA in the 1950s laid the foundation for his appreciation of Southern Black culture. As an only child, he spent much of his upbringing absorbing the culture his family had taken with them to California from the South. Paxton grew up very close with his grandmother, often shadowing her mannerisms and adopting them as his own. While Futurama or King of the Hill were on the family TV, he'd find himself sitting down with her, practicing banjo chords he'd heard on her favorite records. Since relocating from Los Angeles to New York City in 2007, Paxton has found an embracing audience within the city's diverse cultural communities and vibrant music scene. He discovered that New Yorkers are sensitive to the kind of authenticity in storytelling that he was exposed to as a child.

Paxton's previous work has drawn comparisons to blues legends like Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, and Mississippi John Hurt, yet his approach is distinctly his own. On songs like "Baby Days Blues" and "What's Gonna Become of Me," Paxton revisits early influences like DeFord Bailey, Sippie Wallace, and Stephen Foster, and makes use of traditional melody lines and throwback playing styles, such as the 12-bar blues structure and "hopping" fingerpicking technique. Lyrically, other songs on the album are drawn from his personal, everyday experiences, exploring the evolving mindsets within contemporary society while using the past to make sense of it. Of the song "So Much Weed," for example, Jerron explains: "[It's] an observation on the changing attitudes toward an herb that caused many a person, in my baby days as well as into my adulthood, to lose their liberty. The juxtaposition of the attitudes of today with those of 20 or even 10 years ago has some ironies and paradoxes that the blues is one of the best art forms to express."

"Things Done Changed is my way of honoring the culture I come from," says Paxton. "I grew up playing for the last generation of folks who grew up listening to Black banjo players … Born from the lives of the people who raised me, I hope these songs resonate with listeners as a continuation of our shared history."

In celebration of the upcoming album, Jerron Paxton and The Down Hill Strugglers will play the Jalopy Theater in NYC on September 21st, 2024. You can find more details about the show HEREand watch this space for more to come from Jerron Paxton.

About Smithsonian Folkways

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the "National Museum of Sound," makes available close to 60,000 tracks in physical and digital format as the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian, with a reach of 80 million people per year. A division of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the non-profit label is dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among people through the documentation, preservation, production and dissemination of sound. Its mission is the legacy of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1948 to document "people's music" from around the world. For more information about Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, visit folkways.si.edu

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