You'd be hard pressed to find a successful country musician who hasn't done their time in Nashville. However, when it comes to building a life -- sometimes you have to move away from the bright lights.
Country musician JD Clayton built his career in Music City. Just last year alone he played more than 150 shows and on stages across the country and at large music festivals like Bonnaroo and Rebels & Renegades. He's opened for Old Crow Medicine Show, Dwight Yoakam, Ashley McBryde and others.
Clayton takes a little bit of Fort Smith to every stage.
"There's a great quote about how we often sing about the things we love the most," he said. "I think that's why this [became] a reoccurring theme in my first record -- Arkansas and my home and my family -- these are the things that I love the most."
While Nashville is still an important part of his life, the Fort Smith native now brings a little bit of Nashville to his home in the River Valley while still maintaining his connections in Music City.
"We've kind of figured out how to slowly put all the pieces together and and make it work," he said during a Zoom interview from his studio in Fort Smith where he now writes and records music only a little differently from the way he started.
ALL AMERICAN CHILDHOOD
Clayton's interest in music started with his grandfather, who played banjo. Clayton spent nearly every Friday night listening to his grandfather jam with friends. Eventually grandpa showed JD a few chords on guitar so he could play along.
"He was a missionary, and the band would go around to prisons in Arkansas and fix them a barbecue dinner and then play a bluegrass show," Clayton remembered. He never got to tag along for those shows.
Clayton describes that time as a typical "all-American childhood." He played football for Southside High School and swam on the team with the Fort Smith Tideriders. His mom is a painter and decorator in Fort Smith. His father worked in real estate before joining the ministry at Covenant Presbyterian Church when JD was in high school.
The young Clayton had to step in at the church when the music leader left for another job.
"There was nobody (who) knew how to play music or lead, so I just fell into that position because no one else could do it," Clayton said. "I had to get out of my comfort zone and start learning to sing in front of people."
He was also learning to play piano when no one was looking.
"My parents had given my sister a piano hoping that she would learn piano and kind of develop music skills as well, and I would end up just sneaking into her room and playing the piano -- learning how chords worked and everything," he said. "They ended up moving the piano to my room. I kind of stole that from her."
As his talent progressed, he was asked to perform with a friend during their high school graduation ceremony. It was the biggest crowd he'd ever faced with more than 300 students and their families.
"That was the first time playing music that wasn't for leading worship," he said. "It was first time playing in front of an audience. And I really kind of caught the bug after that."
As soon as he graduated, Clayton started busking four hours every Saturday at the Fort Smith Farmers' Market, belting out cover songs by John Mayer, Tracy Chapman and assorted hits from the early 2000s.
"I really wasn't raised on country," he said. "My dad didn't like country music, and so I was raised on just all the early 2000 singer/songwriters, so that was all I knew."
Clayton started listening to country music with his friends.
"It really probably started in like my senior year of high school," he said. "I would eat lunch with a bunch of the baseball players, and they were fans of George Strait and different stuff that was popular on the radio -- things I had never heard before."
Then seeing a performance of Chris Stapleton playing "Amanda" by Bob McDill changed him.
He remembers thinking, "If this is country music, then this is exactly what I want to do -- a blend of blues and rock 'n' roll and storytelling," which he now uses to write songs that feel like Arkansas to him.
MUSIC APPRECIATION
After that summer, Clayton started taking classes at the University of Arkansas in Fort Smith, where a music appreciation class seemed like kismet.
"He was just always really excited about the material," said Tommy Dobbs, a former instructor at UAFS. "He was the first person to raise his hand and ask questions. And he did it in a way that made me feel comfortable and also allowed other people to have a second to think about what he was asking and maybe formulate their own questions."
Now at Oklahoma City University, where he is the assistant professor of percussion, Dobbs remembers Clayton's ability to make everyone feel like an old friend.
"It was nice to have someone in the class that was excited about music and excited about the things we were discussing, even if he thought it was boring. He was able to make it fun for a lot of people. He was able to get people engaged and excited. I have always been really appreciative of that.
"Watching his career take off has been pretty amazing. I just remember this kid that was excited about music, and now he's (with) these huge artists and traveling the world. It's just kind of cool to see that."
In that same class, Clayton met one of his first bandmates on the first day.
"We went around the room and said if we play an instrument, and there was a guy in the back that raised his hand, saying that he played guitar," he said.
That student was Grayson Stewart, who lived in the same dorm as Clayton. Stewart, who is from Van Buren, is now the guitarist for metal band Norma Jean.
"We started a band called Small Town Symphony and played our first gig at Starbucks," Clayton remembered. "I tried out writing some songs and slowly started to figure out how songwriting worked. My first songs were terrible."
NASHVILLE BOUND
A friend in Fort Smith had access to recording equipment, so Clayton started making demos during his sophomore year of college.
"I figured out that it wasn't gonna go anywhere unless I started writing better songs and learning to record with professionals," he said. He said he would leave Fort Smith for Nashville at 5 a.m. each Friday to record demos there and then come back to Fort Smith for class on Monday.
The result was his 2018 EP "Smoke out of the Fire," produced by one of his Nashville connections, Thomas Dulin, who would later produce JD's first country album, "A Long Way Home" (2023).
His EP release show, which sold out the former venue Harry's in Fort Smith, was a signal to his family that he was going to pursue music full time.
"It started to become real for everybody else that I was going to probably do this," he said. Even though Clayton had done so much to further his career in music, the thought of being a professional musician still seemed unsustainable -- "something you do around the campfire but not something that you turn into a business and have a family to support with."
Clayton married his high school sweetheart, Claire Stovall, and the two packed up their Fort Smith home and headed to Nashville after graduation. He said he was constantly reading about business and starting little side hustles while living there.
"To understand how to make money in music, really, you've got to just start asking questions," he said. "Nowadays, it's all online, but there's a lot of people that if you're curious and genuine about asking for help -- Nashville is great. There's so many great people that will take you aside and teach you how to how to get started. They're not going to do it for you, but they'll teach you how to get started."
As Clayton worked the streets of Nashville and started to play bigger gigs, the pandemic began and shut down live music. While in isolation, Clayton wrote the songs on his first album, "Long Way Home," while working odd jobs and studying albums by Lynyrd Skynyrd and others. He found his own way to a sound authentic to his roots.
"I came out of covid with a fully finished record and basically sent it to anybody I could in Nashville," he said. "I ended up getting the attention of a really good booking company and mass management company. And so I felt really comfortable in that I put my team together finally."
Clayton had started touring with a band, which included his high school buddy Kirby Bland and other musicians whom he met in Nashville.
Then he and his wife found out they were expecting a daughter.
"Touring was starting to pick up in a big way, so the easy solution was to move back to Fort Smith and get help from family," he said. "I think we'd still be in Nashville, if we had family [there], but our whole family is in Arkansas and it just made sense to have the support system."
HOME AGAIN
Now his team in Nashville makes the trek to Fort Smith if tours are heading west, and JD heads east to Nashville for tours going out that way. While he still heads up there once or twice a month, he's also self-producing his next album, "Blue Sky Sundays," with the same band he tours with to bring the momentum of his live shows to his album.
The first single "High Hopes and Low Expectations," released in March, is a nod to his journey so far.
"It talks about a young man that is leaving home to try to go find himself," Clayton said. "He's probably a little bit cocky, a little bit arrogant, and thinks that he's got things figured out and has built up a lot of pressure in his mind and on himself to become somebody."
In the song, the singer meets an older gentleman who "gives him sage advice to live with high hopes and low expectations," and helped the singer realize that there will be ups and downs, highs and lows; good days, bad days, but you just have to keep on going.
For Clayton that means keeping connections to his family and writing songs that are true to himself. And as always, singing about home.
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FYI
JD Clayton
The Fort Smith native recently released, "High Hopes and Low Expectations," and will perform May 4 for Best Night of the Year and May 17 at FreshGrass Festival in Bentonville next month. Keep up with Clayton at jdclaytonofficial.com and watch out for his next album, "Blue Sky Sundays," later this year.
"My parents had given my sister a piano hoping that she would learn piano and kind of develop music skills as well, and I would end up just sneaking into her room and playing the piano and learning how chords worked and everything, and they ended up moving the piano to my room. I kind of stole that from her," Clayton said. (Courtesy Photo)
"My grandfather was a banjo player in a bluegrass band. And I would spend almost every Friday night over at their house," Clayton said. "We'd just sit and pick." (Courtesy Photo)
After performing for his high school graduation, Clayton said he got the bug for performing and spent the summer between high school and college busking at the Fort Smith Farmers' Market for four hours each Saturday. (Courtesy Photo)
"Watching his career take off has been pretty amazing. I just remember this kid that was excited about music and now he's this huge artist and like traveling the world. It's just kind of cool to see that," remembered JD Clayton's former professor Tommy Dobbs. (Courtesy Photo)