Jack Blocker got an education in college — but not the one you’re thinking of.
The singer-songwriter and Richardson native plays Oct. 24 at the Kessler Theater in Dallas. Blocker attended college in Arkansas, where he was first exposed to the artists who would help shape his future.
“I had a buddy who I lived with who had a huge record collection he’d inherited from his dad and started building on on his own,” the 27-year-old Blocker said during a recent conversation. “Just tons of Willie [Nelson] and Merle [Haggard] and Blaze Foley — all that stuff. All those records turned me onto ‘70s and ‘80s country. College was really when I got turned onto that, and that’s when I started thinking about writing music was when I heard Willie and Townes [Van Zandt] for the first time.”
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Blocker is a quick study: That spare, direct quality found in the catalogs of Willie, Blaze and Townes is evident throughout his debut album, the recently released The Land on Most High, and its superb singles, such as the gorgeous “If Heaven Looks Like Arkansas.”
Blocker had more to say about the value of being yourself, displaying vulnerability and what being a finalist on American Idol taught him. What follows is our conversation, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How do you feel being from Texas versus growing up in like, Maine or California, has helped shape and influence how you think about songwriting?
Blocker: I think it’s a huge influence in just the way that words come out. Sometimes, I have a hard time doing co-writes [scheduled co-writing sessions] in Nashville, because I’ll want to say something in a certain way that’s maybe not grammatically correct. But it feels right. It’s how I speak, and how I speak with my family and my friends — that’s always a little bit of a clash. That’s how it bleeds through is really … I write the same way that I speak and so it comes out a little Texan like that.
Something else that struck me about the record is how you sort of dance along the line of being stoic, but also acknowledging you have feelings — showing vulnerability and not necessarily just hinting at it.
I’m personally — I usually like to keep things light-hearted. I want there to be humor, and I want there to be a kind of hopefulness and a light-hearted nature to the songs that I sing, but I can’t really fake that. … I just lean to the more tender side of just being a dude, honestly … I’ve gotten more comfortable with that over the last five years or so, and honestly, that just comes with time.
I wanted to touch on the American Idol experience — that’s probably got to feel like jumping off a cliff.
They call it a diving board. [laughs]
What did that experience teach you? Because I can’t imagine you came out of it the same way you went into it.
It really taught me confidence, and trusting [that] what I love about music is what I should focus on. Early on in the process, I realized I wasn’t the best singer there and I wasn’t even gonna come close to some of these people I was sitting next to. So I was like, I’m just gonna have fun with this. I’m gonna go sing songs I love singing and take it day by day. … The further along that process went, I realized … if I’m loving this, then it’s a blast for me and that’s communicated to other people. That’s what connects with listeners more than me being able to sing this note and it being so impressive. It’s way more connecting to a group of people when they feel like they know me as a guy.
What are you hoping people take away from The Land on Most High?
I hope it’s a very centering experience for everybody who listens to it … that’s the goal … as I reminisce and tell these stories that people would see their own stories, and have some gratitude and some warmth connecting with it themselves. Hopefully, they have their own experience and they want to keep experiencing whatever it is that I’m throwing out there.
Jack Blocker at Kessler Theater, Dallas. 8 p.m. Oct. 24. Tickets are $22.70.
Preston Jones is a North Texas freelance writer and regular contributor to KXT. Email him at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky (@prestonjones.bsky.social).Our work is made possible by our generous, music-loving members. If you like how we lift up local music, consider becoming a KXT sustaining member right here.
