“These days I’m pretty stoked on wellness stuff. I try to do an infrared sauna in almost every town, I do yoga backstage, a lot of meditation, and I got into tapping, this new thing,” says Jaime Wyatt, which has me a little taken aback, considering that Wyatt first stepped onto the scene in 2017 with Felony Blues, an outlaw country record revolving around tales of the singer/songwriter’s battles with addiction and her experience with the criminal justice system… However, amongst all of their grit, Felony Blues and 2020 follow-up Neon Cross ultimately chronicle Wyatt’s journey to recovery, so it’s nice to hear that she’s sticking with the wellness thing…
Jaime Wyatt – who resembles a honky-tonk pin-up girl, and whose style she explains to me as a combination of Jane Birkin and Keith Richards (She’s been all about fashion ever since her mom, a tailor who makes all of Jaime’s suits, introduced her to Italian Vogue as a kid.) – has been on the road more less nonstop since mid-2022, finding herself on tours as diverse as Sierra Ferrell, Dropkick Murphys acoustic (She features on their “Bring It Home,” off of 2023’s Okemah Rising.), and the recent double-headlining run from The Head and The Heart and The Revivalists. She was supposed to open The Mann for the two acts in July, but couldn’t make it last-minute. However, we did get a chance to catch Wyatt’s live show last September at the Music Hall at World Café Live on opening night of ZZ Ward’s One Hell of A Night Tour, for which she provided support.
Less than six months later, Jaime Wyatt is already scheduled to return to the Music Hall at World Café Live next Thursday, February 8th, as part of The Feel Good Tour, which she has casually dubbed, “[her] first real headline tour.” I’m chatting with Wyatt via phone, about a week into the tour, which kicked off January 17th. “They’ve gone really well. We started off in LA at The Troubadour and moved up the coast. We had a sold-out show in Seattle at Tractor Tavern!” she tells me when I ask her about the first handful of dates. I’m curious if the crowds for these headlining shows are as eclectic as the artists Wyatt’s recently toured with, and she confirms that they definitely are: “The audience is kind of diverse, I’d say. It’s pretty well split between men and women, and it’s nice to see queer people at the shows. It’s a pretty vast array of people who maybe wouldn’t come together otherwise.”
These current dates are in support of Feel Good, Wyatt’s third studio LP, which dropped in November of last year courtesy of New West Records, Jaime’s home since Neon Cross, which she tells me she’s been a fan of for quite some time: “It’s cool, because I grew up buying records that were pressed by those people and put out by those people — records from Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams – and now my albums get to be pressed by those people!” Although it’s been well-received by longtime fans, Feel Good – recorded with Black Pumas’ Adrian Quesada – sees Wyatt exploring a slightly different side of her sound than her first two full-lengths: “It’s different from the previous record, because the previous record I was even more in the bounds of classic country and folk.” Upon release, she said of the album, “I wanted to make music you could move to, but I still wanted it to have heart and integrity.” She also tells me that Feel Good had her branching out in chord progressions, collaborating more with instrumentalists, and writing a lot more on keyboard.
Later this year, Jaime Wyatt will be playing a number of festivals (including Hangout Music Festival, Fort Desolation Fest, Floyd Fest, and some more to be announced), in addition to working on new music for a record that she’s hoping to cut by the year’s end. However, she tells me she’s currently really enjoying playing full-length sets for her own fanbase. And she tells me that her regional dates will feature an extra special show: “We’ll be with a full band, a five-piece! We have a special guest keyboardist coming out just for the East Coast… So, you’ll get to see the full band, and the album really comes to life that way.” She also says that fans will get to hear Feel Good in its entirety, which apparently audiences have really been having fun with: “Something people always say surprises them is that live it’s more powerful than even on the record… It’ll melt your face! [Laughs] It’ll blow your hair back!”
*Get your tickets here.
