Restless native

Chances are you may not have heard of Jason Downs. What is equally likely is that you will hear of him very soon. The 27-year-old’s debut single, ‘White Boy With A Feather’ is already picking up considerable airplay in the UK and looks like being a big hit.

The part-Cherokee Native American has been making music ever since he can remember, but his own brand of folk-rock didn’t garner the requisite record label interest until he hooked up with hip-hop producer, Milk, whose rhythms combine with Down’s own musical sensibilities to form an unusual but compelling mixture of rock, rap, hip-hip and hoe-down. First up, though, I wondered how his Cherokee heritage impacts on his music.

“My God, that’s deep,” he chuckles down a phoneline from London. “It influences everything I am. Specifically, all Native American cultures are directly linked to the beat of the drum – it is something spiritual that links our heartbeats and it links us to heartbeat of the mother earth. It is something that is in our blood, it is in our bodies and it’s ever-present.”

Jason’s homelife has always revolved around music. As long as he can remember, he’s been “making my brother and sister dress up and do shows”. He knew that this was his calling from the age of nine, as he recounts: “I did a play called Bye Bye Birdy where I had to play an Elvis Presley-type character, and there was never any question in my mind after that.”

In his late teens, Jason started writing his own songs and by the time he was 20, the young Downs was producing whole albums of demos and sending them round to anyone he felt might be interested in signing him. His big break, though, came in an unusual manner, when he was living in New York.

“I was Super[intendent] for the apartment block where Lauren Hill’s manager lived – I swept his steps,” he laughs. “They hired a florist for a party and we got talking. I played her my demo and she gave a copy of it to her cousin, who was Milk’s engineer.”

On such chance encounters are rock ‘n’ roll dreams founded. The addition of Milk’s hip-hop sensibilities to Downs’ more rootsy vibes brought them to the attention of Jive Records, which Jason describes as “the one and only perfect place for us and we were glad they thought so as well”.

The first fruit of this collaboration, ‘White Boy With A Feather’, Jason’s debut single, has our hero moving to New York, where he encounters all sorts of misadventures and prejudice, all underscored by a melting pot of musical cultures from modern-day USA. But is it a true story: was he the country boy trying to survive the rough and tumble of the Big Apple?

“There are elements that I have taken from my life,” he admits, “but I obviously enhance, embellish or just plain make things up to tell the story. It’s about a kid from the woods who has dreams, and is faced by all kinds of obstacles but makes it in the end – that part is a true story. As far as the specifics go, I’ve never been robbed. New York is not a place like that, at least for me. I have never felt unsafe there.”

How safe is he with the fact that he may just have a huge hit on his hands? Is he ready for fame and fortune?

“Are you ever really ready for something like that?” he muses with a wry chortle. “Yes, undoubtedly yes! This is what I’ve been dreaming of, working towards and preparing for for almost 20 years. I am absolutely ready for whatever comes: I welcome it. I look forward to it. Bring it on! Come on, man, I’ve been practicing.”

‘White Boy With A Feather’ is out now on Jive.