Austin, TX · blues · soul · r&b

Jackie Venson

1 upcoming festival

Austin guitar hero who came up as a classical pianist and switched to blues at 21; her solos run through soul, reggae and drum-machine loops without losing the groove.

Jackie Venson grew up in Austin as the youngest of nine siblings. Her father, Andrew Venson, worked as a professional musician for forty years, and her mother, Dr. Diane Brinkman, started her on piano at age eight. She attended Westwood High School before enrolling at Berklee College of Music, where she majored in composition and studio production.

Venson has described her time at Berklee as difficult and isolating, and it was only near the end of her studies, in 2011, watching a classmate play with obvious enjoyment, that she decided to take up guitar herself. Her background in piano and music theory carried over directly into how she approached the new instrument.

She released her debut album, The Light In Me, in 2014, the same year Austin City Hall declared a Jackie Venson Day in her honour and she opened shows for Jason Aldean, Tim McGraw and James Taylor. Since then she has put out five further studio albums, among them Joy, Love Transcends and The Love Anthology, alongside six live releases.

Venson also records electronic material under the alter ego jackie the robot, a separate outlet from her guitar-and-band work. Across formats, she has kept releasing independently and producing much of the material herself.

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