Jamestown Revival

The early 2010s brought forward Jamestown Revival, a Lone Star State duo whose output centers on harmony-rich Americana-folk compositions carrying a distinct Western flavor and sharing ground with acts such as the Lone Bellow, Shovels & Rope, and the Lumineers. Their first release, the pastoral Utah, appeared in 2014, after which the pair became regular fixtures on the Americana charts through a string of praised albums that includes The Education of a Wandering Man in 2016, San Isabel in 2019, and Young Man in 2022.

Willie Nelson, John Prine, and Western author Louis L’Amour number among the touchstones that led childhood friends Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance to establish the group in 2011. Raised together in the small Texas town of Magnolia, the two absorbed the sounds of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Willie Nelson, the Everly Brothers, and Guy Clark while developing separate identities as solo artists. Their debut long-player, an autobiographical set of indie folk songs, was captured on tape inside a log cabin in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains and issued by Republic Records in 2014.

The follow-up was tracked closer to home in Austin; the resulting roots-oriented Education of a Wandering Man, which tilts toward rock and pop textures, reached listeners in October 2016. Jamie Mefford, whose prior credits include Nathaniel Rateliff and Gregory Alan Isakov, co-produced the third album, San Isabel, released in 2019 and featuring the singles “This Too Shall Pass” and “Crazy World (Judgment Day)” plus a version of the Mamas & the Papas’ “California Dreaming.”

A Field Guide to Loneliness, an EP, arrived in 2020, while the Old West-themed Fireside with Louis L’Amour: A Collection of Songs Inspired by Tales from the American West came out in early 2021. Later that year the duo issued the singles “These Days” and “Working on Love,” both of which later appeared on their fourth studio album, Young Man, in 2022.