As a kid, keyboardist Noah Jones grew up visiting his grandmother in rural North Carolina where there was no Wi-Fi or TV, only an old, out-of-tune upright piano. “I ended up writing little tunes in my head and playing them however badly,” Jones said, and later, he would experiment with a cheap little Radio Shack keyboard from his parents’ attic.
With a bare minimum in classical training and music reading, he kept writing and improvising on the piano throughout middle school. Playing in church also helped him solidify his understanding of the feelings and emotions behind music. “The term everyone used was ‘play by ear?’ And I never looked at it like that — I just always considered it as, ‘I can play,’ ” he said.
Jazz piano started taking over the frame of his musical thinking in high school, and he began writing original material with his friends in an instrumental fusion group, Man Child. He gigged with the group as he studied piano at College of Charleston, which landed him a spot in local alternative soul band Little Bird in 2018 after a chance encounter at the Music Farm led to a show at The Commodore.
Little Bird exposed him to a more complete picture of Charleston’s music scene. “They showed me what putting on a true show was like — playing music that you love to play, that you write and are passionate about, for people who want to be there and receive it.” These days, Jones and guitarist/vocalist Jay Hurtt drive the songwriting direction of the band in what they call “cook up sessions.”
Jones’ residency at Halls Chophouse downtown started the formula for another gritty soul outfit he plays and writes with currently, Psycodelics, a group spearheaded by bassist Cameron Westcott. Along with drummer Sean Bing and guitarist Whitt Burn, the group is ready to put out an album by the end of the year.
His complicated experience with consistently booking local venues in the past few years was given context by the social unrest during the George Floyd protests. “The whole period opened my eyes to how things are and how much we need to put an effort into bringing Black artists and underappreciated music as a whole to the forefront. Everyone, I don’t care who it is, draws something from Black music and Black history and Black pain.”
He believes that Charleston’s diversity within its local music industry could be utilized similarly to how Detroit’s Motown Records was developed. “It just takes a level of humility on everyone to work with each other to build this resource. There’s a lot of power that we have that we aren’t utilizing as artists.”
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