On October 18th, 2024, the acclaimed blues singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jerron Paxton will release his next album, Things Done Changed on Smithsonian Folkways. Once described as "virtually the only music-maker of his generation—playing guitar, banjo, piano, and violin, among other implements—to fully assimilate the blues idiom of the 1920s and '30s” by the Wall Street Journal, the thirty-five-year-old’s latest collection is his first of all original songs. 

 Pairing Paxton’s lived-in voice and California drawl underpins a stripped-down concoction of blues, ragtime, folk, and old-time Black music styles that originated nearly a century ago. Each track on the album invites listeners to experience the world as Paxton sees it. As Hugo Award finalist and former LA Times staff writer Lynell George puts it in the liner notes: “Etched within Jerron Paxton’s voice you can hear the wind, feel the hot prickle of the high-noon sun, smell the exhaust from an automobile on its last-gasp miles. It’s all there … [in his songs] you’ll discover context and background: the history of people and place and the come-what-may gamble of life-altering journeys.” In Jerron’s own words, “I write and sing about the culture I come from. It seems a bit neglected.”

 On Things Done Changed, Paxton preserves and revitalizes those historical sounds, using his deeply personal and sharp-witted storytelling to reflect the ongoing experiences of Black people in America. His music, rooted in community traditions, resonates with timeless observations that bring the past vividly into the present, continuing these legacies. Listen to the first single “What's Gonna Become of Me” to feel the album's transportive sound HERE.

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.