Daily Discovery: Jasper Shelton Hollis, “The Devil’s Garden”

September 23, 2015 5:35 pm

Videos by American Songwriter

SONG: “The Devil’s Garden”

HOMETOWN: Nashville, Tennessee

CURRENT LOCATION: Melbourne, Australia

AMBITIONS: Abide.

TURN-OFFS: Weak showerhead pressure, dinner parties with no wine or whiskey, choosing between eating chips and hearing the TV.

TURN-ONS: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, chips & salsa, the articles in Playboy.

DREAM GIG: The ultimate is “The Mother Church of Country Music” followed by musical guest on Conan, Austin City Limits, and Music City Roots.

FAVORITE LYRIC: After a quick think, this question was made a bit easier once I took the “first line” approach. For instance: ”Well, I woke up Sunday morning / With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt” and ”The only two things in life that make it worth livin’ / Is guitars that tune good and firm-feelin’ women” and “There’s a road, in Oklahoma / Straighter than a preacher, longer than a memory” and “There’s a wordless moon that’s watching tonight / There’s a garden that’s left to grow wild.”

SONGS I WISH I WROTE: “Patchwork River ” by Jim Lauderdale and Robert Hunter, “My Own Kind of Hat” by Merle Haggard and Red Lane, and “Down the Road Tonight” by Hayes Carll.

5 PEOPLE I’D MOST LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH: I only need 3…The Three Amigos!

MY FAVORITE CONCERT EXPERIENCE: I saw Willie Nelson for the first time at The Ryman earlier this year. It was like being inside the soul of country music for a couple hours. Been there and got the Hatch poster.

I WROTE THIS SONG BECAUSE: My co-writer sent the idea over one day and from the very start “The Devil’s Garden” resonated with me as a songwriter/artist. It’s a battle all too familiar where breaking free is nigh on impossible as the silken chains keep drawing you back in again and again. We enter for individual reasons, at different times, and thus “The Devil’s Garden” is unique in form to everyone. The world is a manipulative, addicting, mad, mad place, and it’s rather hard to escape her web cause reveling in it is human nature.