Jason Scott & The High Heat

Caught halfway between amplified Americana and heartland roots-rock, Jason Scott & the High Heat create a sweeping, dynamic sound that reaches far beyond the traditions of their Oklahoma City home. Too loud for folk music and too textured for Red Dirt, this is the sound of a genuine band rooted in groove, grit, and its own singular spirit, led by a songwriter whose unique past — a Pentecostal upbringing, years logged as a preacher-in-training, and an eventual crisis of faith — has instilled both a storyteller’s delivery and an unique perspective about life, love, and listlessness in the modern world. Case in point, in 2018 Scott earned critical acclaim as a songwriter when the second track “She Good To Me” off his DIY EP Living Rooms (2017 landed on NPR World Cafe’s Heavy Rotation: 10 Songs Public Radio Can’t Stop Playing alongside songs by MGMT, Moby, and Jade Bird. It was only the beginning of a new life on a new kind of stage.

A multi-instrumentalist, producer, engineer, and session musician, Scott spent a year balancing life on the road and life in the studio, where he produced albums for Americana artists like Carter Sampson, Ken Pomeroy, and Nellie Clay. Things began to expand as he assembled the High Heat, a band of multi-faceted musicians and roots-rock Renaissance men who, like their frontman, juggled multiple artistic pursuits. Together, Jason Scott & the High Heat have since become a self-contained creative collective whose talents include songwriting, music production, photography, video direction, and more.

In 2022 the band made a pronounced impact with their debut album Castle Rock, a melting pot of sounds from the heartland sweep of Tom Petty to the story-driven Americana of Jason Isbell, the nostalgic hooks of ’90s country music to the sharp songwriting of James Taylor mixed with John Prine’s lyrical blend of cutting insight and laugh-out-loud humor. The album also spent two months in the Top 50 of the Americana chart reaching all the way to #36 and outlets across the globe started taking notice of this groove oriented, rock-infused band with crazy brilliant songs. NPR, The Boot, Holler, BBC Radio Scotland, Wide Open Country, Bluegrass Situation, Farce The Music, Ditty TV, Americana Music Show and Gimme Country all applauded the band’s first full length effort with emphasis on the bright future to come. During this time their live show was catching equal recognition branding them as “the band to see” pretty much anywhere they played. In short order they were on the road performing at some of the most renowned music festivals includong the Stagecoach festival, Born and Raised Fest, Mile 0 Fest, Norman Music Festival and the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, and supported a variety of bands including Band of Heathens, Eli Young Band, Gin Blossoms, Josh Abbott, Vandoliers, The Damn Quails, MIPSO, Parker Millsap, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Kaitlin Butts.