Meet Americana’s No. 1 Advocate, Jessie Scott of Music Fog and WMOT

One morning in early 2016, Jessie Scott was at work, seated on a sofa in a room behind the main stage at 3rd & Lindsley. The semi-darkness of this makeshift video production studio blunted the radio industry icon’s neon-red hair to a ruddy brown. About 10 feet in front of her, Americana standout Ward Davis tuned his Larrivée acoustic guitar under blindingly bright studio lights. Davis, a burly and impressively bearded man with long, straight hair and a well-deep voice, was about to perform “Unfair Weather Friend,” one of his best-known songs. Scott hadn’t said so, but she was hoping to get it in one take — Nashville duo Wild Ponies, onetime The Voice contestant Sarah Potenza, soulful Texan Bonnie Bishop, Guitar Army (featuring Robben Ford, Lee Roy Parnell and Joe Robinson) and more were waiting in the wings for their turn in front of the hi-def video cameras and state-of-the-art audio equipment. The busy day finally came to an end when a late-afternoon sound check on the venue’s main stage rendered further filming pointless. 

This was a production session for Music Fog, the live-performance video production company that Scott co-founded, and the videos are part of an impressive archive hosted on YouTube. Over the past nine years, Scott and her partners have produced more than 900 videos featuring established performers and rising stars alike, primarily in Americana and roots music. In a recent interview, Scott said Music Fog’s YouTube channel drew almost 1 million clicks per month in 2017, a notable success. It has some 69,000 subscribers — more than Nissan Stadium has seats.

“It’s all about music discovery,” says Scott. “I wanted to have a megaphone for the artists and to shine a light on them. [YouTube] has served us really, really well.”

Before she got involved with online music outlets, Scott had decades of experience as a radio DJ and program director. Her success at getting airplay for talented artists who might not fit the prescribed formula for most radio stations has made it easy for her to get her calls returned by those who shape today’s music industry.

“Jessie is a great advocate for musicians and songs and records,” says Aaron Lee Tasjan, a Nashville songwriter and guitarist whose third album is tentatively slated for release in August. “And she’s a great interviewer too. She really cares about who she’s talking to. I’ve sat there in that Bonnaroo [media tent] and watched her interview people. She just asks great questions about music that she loves.”

The love affair is a long one. When she was a child, Scott says, she could separate meaningful songs and inspired performances from the catchy filler of what was on the radio airwaves. She knew the real thing when she heard it.

“When I was 5 or 6, my mother brought home a record of Pat Boone’s version of ‘Tutti Frutti,’ ” Scott says. “I asked her to go back to the store to replace it with Little Richard’s. Even back then, the songs that really spoke to me talked about life, such as ‘16 Tons,’ as opposed to ‘How Much is that Doggie in the Window?’ ”

Scott spent much of the 1970s through the 1990s working at influential terrestrial radio stations in major markets, including New York City’s WNBC. In several cases, she was the first woman hired for the position she held. She remembers realizing as early as the mid-’70s that a new format (which would eventually be called Americana) was beginning to emerge. It took time for these sounds to find their niche.

“Later, in 1994, when I was working at WMMO in Orlando, I had a stack of 40 or 50 new CDs and hit a bunch in a row that didn’t fit into any of the [existing formats],” Scott says. “Artists like Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett, the Bottle Rockets, Robert Earl Keen were too country for rock, and too rock for country.”

Scott has worked in several capacities to create a home for these artists. She has served as a board member of the Americana Music Association since its founding in 1999. In the early 2000s, she programmed the Americana-leaning X Country channel (pronounced “Cross Country”) on XM Satellite Radio, and built a substantial and devoted audience who lamented the switch to the more definitively “country” Outlaw Country format in 2008, after the merger of XM and its competitor Sirius.

But perhaps Scott is doing the most influential work of her career now that she’s based in Nashville. In addition to her work with Music Fog, she’s also the program director and weekday afternoon drive-time DJ at WMOT Roots Radio 89.5-FM, the 100,000-watt member-supported public radio station that broadcasts (and streams) Americana from the campus of Middle Tennessee State University. Amazingly, it’s the only radio station in the area with a full-time Americana format at a time when standard-bearers of the big-umbrella genre — like Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson — are winning multiple Grammys and landing impressive chart performances. 

Still, Scott is doing at WMOT what she’s always done: spotting talent and providing a megaphone. She often airs established pillars of Nashville’s Americana community like Buddy and Julie Miller and Webb Wilder, as well as newer artists such as Tasjan and Margo Price. And she’s always got a new up-and-comer in mind. During our conversation, she shouted out East Nashvillian Devon Gilfillian, soon to be a favorite for fans of soulful blues, R&B and funk.

“You need to catch him,” Scott says. “He’s one of those guys that Willie [Nelson] has showcased, and Willie has his ear to the ground.”

Scott has plenty of other suggestions too. They include bluegrass supergroup I’m With Her (Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan); Molly Tuttle, who in 2017 became the first woman to receive the IBMA’s Guitarist of the Year award; and multi-instrumental wizard Sierra Hull. 

“These artists are people who are just crazy good,” Scott says. “And their music is inspired. That’s the North Star of music discovery.”