Recording Connection student Jones Nelson Releases Hard Rock Album

Sometimes you just need a little push to get you going in the right direction. You need to take the talent you’ve been given, cultivate it, and develop the skillset it takes to see you forward to that next step on the road to success. Recording Connection student Jones Nelson has done just that. He’s taken the information and skills that he’s sharpened under mentor Sean Giovanni at the Record Shop in Nashville, TN and he’s created a full-length album entitled The Pain That Makes You which he’s released under his band name Million Whispers.

When asked about his new album and how it came about Jones says, “So I started working on the record—it would have been January this year— I already had written like a Southern Rock blues record, but then just had been wanting to put out like a harder rock album for years and years. So I just kind of made the decision to table the Southern rock deal and to really just kind of pour my energy into working on a harder rock record… Originally, I had planned on having it all done by the summer, for summer release, but I kept learning so much through the school or just through my own training, and then kept acquiring new gear and new gadgets, and this, that, and the other. So I ended up having to go back and redo and re-record and tweak a bunch of songs that were already there, just making them better and better.”

When asked about the inspiration behind the album, Jones says his debut concept album attempts to showcase the pain everyone encounters in life and how the experience of pain can shape and mold them. In such a mindset, pain and and of itself isn’t intrinscally bad. Jones has wanted to make music full-time job for as long as he can remember. During the creation of his album he channeled the pain and frustration of nearly being there into fuel for the album, placing it on-parallel with any hard-won labor of love or life ambition.

Making the full-length album was no small feat for Jones who spent hundreds of hours on the project and received input from his mentor from time to time, but helmed the project himself. As he was nearing the end of the mixing process, Jones revisited a couple tracks and unexpectedly found himself inspired to make some different creative choices, thanks to Chris Lord-Alge, whom he had met just days earlier at Gear Expo Nashville 2016: “Because I had met him and I had him on my mind, I went and mixed the last two tracks for the record, actually, and mixed it differently… I had forgotten that I had bought some plug-ins before that he used, or some of his plug-ins, that actually ended up changing the sound of the mix because I had actually got to meet him. So that was kind of cool.”

Still working hard at perfecting his craft while also working a full-time job at the radio station, Jones is nevertheless appreciative of the opportunities he has to do good work as an artist and elevate his chops day by day, and says,  “As far as the connection goes, I mean, I think that it’s a really good opportunity for a lot of different people. It gives folks that really want to do this the chance to see how it’s done in the real world as opposed to being locked to a desk and seeing everything in a sterile environment. So I think that’s been really cool.”

Hear The Pain That Makes You by Million Whispers on iTunes
on Spotify