Demun Jones Music

They call him Demun, that’s a fact. His tunes are as infectious as the musical bug that bit him decades ago, also, fact. But - forget most of what you’ve previously heard or read about the artist’s history and evolution. According to the man himself, it’s probably fake news anyway.

The third of six kids, David Jones grew up in central Georgia’s Jones County, a place he still proudly calls home. Although he doesn’t think he’s related to the county’s founder James Jones, he always felt a connection. “I like the people here. Being a member of the Jones county community and middle Georgia area makes this place truly woven into my fabric,” he says. “I do a lot of things in my community. I built my home here, which my dad I built, laying every brick and stone.” Being raised by hardworking and loving parents instilled a solid work ethic and appreciation for the simple things in life. These inherent qualities, have come in handy for his current and continued success in this rough and tumble music biz. “It made the challenges of making it in music not very scary to me.”

But long before he pursued an on-stage career, young David Jones put his efforts into sports. “As a kid, I would try everything everybody was trying,” he recalls never shying away from challenges. “Baseball was the thing I loved and worked at the hardest.” A few bad decisions during his high school years - “Doing some dumb things,” he admits - dashed Jones's future aspirations of playing outfield for the Atlanta Braves. The old adage proved true though, one door closed and another opened. “That is when I decided to focus on music.”

Looking back, his family played a tremendous role in ways he didn’t realize at the time, and continues to figure prominently into his life every day. “I grew up with much bigger brothers, so it wasn't something new to have to fight my way to the last piece of pizza,” he laughs, “I’m not that intimated by very much.” The age difference also provided Jones with inadvertent benefits of musical influences. “I guess you don’t really choose what influences you, you know, like If you’re walking past your brother’s room ten times a day and you're hearing Jimmy Page guitar solos, it’s not registering to you that it’s influencing what you’ll do twenty years later, but it does.” Besides the rock n’ roll, Jones credits an appreciation of soul music to his mom’s taste for Motown paired with his own regard for artists like Michael Jackson. Then, the hip-hop fever hit him. “The hip-hop music spoke to me,” says Jones. “It captivated me to hear their storytelling about living in Brooklyn or Compton.” He was particularly cognizant of the respective artists skills in lyrical picture-painting of their own places and experiences. Though these were far away, unfamiliar places to a kid from central Georgia, he quickly recognized the importance and authenticity of experiential storytelling. “At first, I would buy instrumental tapes at the record store and try to put my own words to it.” He noticed that with time came better understanding of various styles. “My stuff sounded like me writing a song like someone else, more a reflection of the music I listened to than the life I had experienced,” he recalls. “All I had to do is look back at the pictures in my mind and the stories I’ve heard. I had all kinds of experiences to pull from, good and bad.”

Transitioning from would-be artist to making a living as an artist was an exercise of patience and resilience. “We kind of moved up from hard work,” he reflects back to learning a trade from his father. “Laying bricks and stones was the only real job outside music I’ve had that moved dollars.”

“With music I was kind of late understanding what I had to do.” Jones learned by doing, trial by fire. “You don’t learn how to lay a brick by standing back and watching your dad lay all of them,” he insists, “You get up there and screw it up and screw it up til you don’t.”

Among the many lessons learned in the formative years of life were to ask one's self two questions: “Can you stick with something? Can you push and do whatever it takes for not just money but the reputation for doing a good job?” Life, not just music, requires dedication and decision, and these self-queries help set the course. “I approach it like that,” he says. When it came time to finding his voice, vibe and performance artistry, Demun Jones says, “Once I touched a guitar and learned how to strum 'Sitting on the Dock of the Bay' - I understood I could take those chords and twist them around and make them mine, putting my own words to it.”Jones took some lessons with a specific goal in mind - learn to play an extremely difficult song, the Mason William’s 1968 instrumental "Classical Gas". “I practiced six or seven hours a day, learned how to play it and wanted to test myself. His first public performance was in front of a church full of people. “I don’t use it as much now, but I knew I had this tool in my bag.”

Armed with blue collar experience, a do or die ideology and a well-rounded love for multiple musical styles - Demun Jones laid the foundation for earning a place in the entertainment industry. Then he got the big opportunity to join up with the band Rehab. “I’ve known Danny Boone since childhood and he was always a legend to me,” says Jones. As such, when the chance to tour with them presented itself, Jones was in awe, but also became heavily involved in the process. “We even went on tour with Kid Rock and several other cool bands making lots of friends along the way. I had already been handling a lot of the tour managing stuff for Rehab which served as an advantage for me when I went solo.” After years of work with Rebab, Jones was ready to venture out on his own. The transition was as fast paced as his energetic personality.
“The last show I did with them was on a Sunday,” he recalls, “and the first solo show was that Wednesday.” Jones literally packed his Toyota up with merch and drove off into the proverbial sunset. “I was a little nervous going onstage before the Lacs and Moonshine Bandits.” That’s some heavyweight pressure for an artist’s first big solo appearance, but the toughest challenge was seated in front of him. “I saw this dude with a big cowboy hat and a rodeo shirt and I’m thinking ‘he’s not gonna like this shit’. Jones admits being a little anxious, mostly based on preconceived notions of who or what his potential fan base would be. “After I did my set, he comes up and said ‘Man, I love that! That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.’ Demun Jones struck a chord and saw immediately that music does indeed break barriers. “I knew at that point that people don’t have to look like me or dress like me but they can relate.”