Durand Jones on His New Album, Transparency and a Time America Got It Right

The songs on Durand Jones’ debut solo album Wait Til I Get Over have been incubating for close to a decade, as the frontman (along with his band The Indications) rose to prominence while embracing jazz, soul and disco sounds from decades past. Jones even pitched tracks to the group from the solo debut – out May 5 on Dead Oceans – like the swinging “See It Through,” which he envisioned as a Christmas track.

“The Christmas song wasn’t vibing at all. That was a straight-up chop,” Jones laughs. “I wanted to keep it in my back pocket. I didn’t consider that song to be a failure.” 

Instead of forcing the track to be a holiday tune, Jones harvested it as one of 10 tracks on his highly personal new album. Tied together by Jones’ stirring vocals, the genre-eclectic album sprouted from penultimate track “Letter to My 17 Year Old Self” — a jazz trip that contemplates “this thing called life.” At 17, Jones was playing in a punk rock band, singing gospel in church on Sundays and performing classic and jazz pieces in the school marching band, all while growing up in a rural Southern town founded with reparations paid out to eight former slaves. “I wanted it to envelop all of those things and show that everything I learned musically and everything that I experienced after leaving [hometown] Hillaryville lead me to this record,” he tells Billboard.

Hillaryville, La., was something out of a historical fiction novel — a town built by and for the Black community, where folks like Jones’ grandmother didn’t have to enter back doors or sit in separate sections of restaurants. As his grandmother tells the history, the first thing the founders did was build a school — since reading had been illegal for Black people — followed by churches, restaurants, a general store and hotels, to create a self-sustaining community that didn’t discriminate based on a person’s skin color.

“Here’s an example of America getting it right for eight men, and here’s what they did with that,” says Jones. “I realized when I moved away just how special my upbringing was and how unique it was.”

He captures the generational struggle of his grandmother’s generation attempting to instill those original values in their children, and the need for those children to leave home, in the foot-stomping “Have Mercy on Me.” The song is launched by a poetic interlude quoting Jones’ grandmother, who called Hillaryville “the place you’d most want to live,” before it ascends into a swampy groove that helps capture the tale of an idyllic town lost to time and gentrification.

Wait Til I Get Over is rich in burdens Jones has had to overcome in life, from underappreciating his hometown to the guilt of infidelity on the gospel-inspired “Sadie,” and the “taboo” love he felt for another man on “That Feeling.” “That Feeling” is a contemplative track (practically a whisper compared to Jones’ muscular vocals on other songs) that brings tenderness to the frustration, sadness and nostalgia felt after the end of an inmate relationship, and marks the first time Jones has openly expressed his sexuality. “I was worried about fans receiving it in a very negative way, but it’s been absolutely opposite,” says Jones of coming out. “I told myself this year would be a year of transparency for me. I don’t want to hide myself.”

For the album’s titular track, Jones set up a microphone in his bedroom and did his best to emulate the voices he heard in church to deliver the thesis of his first solo collection: “Wait Til I Get Over.” It’s a phrase he uses to illustrate crossing a river — like the Mississippi, which he grew up near and considers a huge influence in his art. For him, each song tackles a burden or an issue he feels the need to address.

“I wanted to think of this record as a trial of sorts… and as each song is done, the burden’s washed down; it is leaving my body,” he says. “Hopefully, by the end of the record, I can make it to the other side and I reach this state of elevation or mystic transformation.”