In 1992, shortly after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Jackson moved from Richmond to Los Angeles.[4] He performed in the group Hotel X, which released its album Engendered Species with SST Records in 1994; he also toured with the Useless Playboys around this time, alongside Mike Geier.[9] In 1995, Jackson collaborated with musician Bill Elm, who introduced him to the band Friends of Dean Martinez.[8] Jackson eventually acted as a fill-in for an absent guitar player before remaining with the band as a full member for some time.[8] He also worked for McCabe's Guitar Shop for several years,[4] where he learned how to play chromatic harmonica in one lesson from Dave Gage.[8] Jackson co-composed the scores for the films Men Cry Bullets (1998) with Ivan Knight and Forest Dunn,[10] and The Last Man (2000) with Knight.[11] He later became a session musician, working on the soundtracks of films like Ocean's Twelve (2004) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006).[4] Jackson appears in the documentary film Moog (2004), performing alongside Money Mark.[12] As part of Friends of Dean Martinez, Jackson worked with Elm on the score for the film Fast Food Nation (2006).[13]
Jackson spent around six years "searching for a new sound that no one ever had heard"; he crafted his own guitorgan by connecting a Chamberlin keyboard to a guitar, an instrument he later used on films such as Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen (2007).[8] Jackson's musical style has been described as a "smooth blend of Krautrock, funk, ambient and brick-smashing instrumental rap".[4] In 2008, Jackson and Petra Haden released the album Ten Years, titled after the length of time it was in production.[14] Around 2009, Jackson took over Melrose Avenue-based Electro-Vox Recording Studios, which was established in 1931 and is said to be the oldest privately-held recording studio in the United States.[4][15] Jackson is an avid collector of vintage instruments and recording equipment for the studio.[13][16] Around 2010, Jackson was working on instrument restoration with the family of Harry Chamberlin, inventor of the Chamberlin keyboard.[17] Jackson is featured in Melodrama: The Mellotron Movie (2010), a documentary directed by Dianna Dilworth about the Chamberlin.[17][18]
In 2008, video game company Rockstar Games signed Jackson to co-compose the music for Red Dead Redemption (2010),[19][20] together with Elm.[4] They composed approximately 200 tracks for the game over 15 months,[8][13] partly at Electro-Vox, the first project Jackson worked on as owner of the studio.[16] When researching music for inspiration, Jackson found there was no contemporaneous "Western sound"; he felt the soundtracks of 1960s Western films, such as Ennio Morricone's work on the Dollars Trilogy, was more representative of Western music.[8] Shortly after finding a German guitar in Los Angeles with the appropriate sound and "a perfect tremolo", Jackson returned home and wrote the game's main theme.[8] While experimenting for the game's northern region, Jackson recorded the heartbeat of his unborn daughter using his iPhone.[13] Jackson collaborated with Tommy Morgan, whom he had met while working on Ocean's Thirteen, on the soundtrack's harmonica tracks. Jackson worked with David Holmes—with whom he had worked on films like Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen—to produce the soundtrack.[8] The game's score was praised by critics,[21][22][23] receiving favorable comparisons to Morricone's work;[13][20][24] it won awards from GameSpot,[25] the Game Audio Network Guild Awards,[26] and the Spike Video Game Awards.[27]
Jackson and Elm returned to compose the score for Undead Nightmare (2010), a downloadable content campaign for Red Dead Redemption. For Undead Nightmare, he sampled several of the tracks from the original game using E-mu SP-1200, which he discovered from Money Mark. Jackson provided the reassembled music to Elm before going on tour with Vincent Gallo; when he returned from tour, the score was finalized.[8] The soundtrack was generally well-received in the context of the game.[28][29] Jackson continued working with Rockstar by providing additional incidental music and sounds for L.A. Noire (2011),[30] and additional production and studio provision for Max Payne 3 (2012).[31] For L.A. Noire, Jackson re-orchestrated one of the themes and wrote much of the in-game music. While the game's score largely uses a live orchestra, Jackson found this led to difficulties with interactive music as the player can hear the loop; inspired by film noir and the works of musicians like Bernard Herrmann, Jackson departed from the existing music and wrote original tracks in about a month.[15]L.A. Noire's music was ultimately awarded at the British Academy Games Awards[32] and the Game Audio Network Guild Awards.[33]
In 2011, Jackson contributed the song "Moshi Moshi", recorded at Electro-Vox, to the charity album Play for Japan: The Album; the title was inspired by the manner in which Masa Tsuzuki—Jackson's audio engineer for L.A. Noire—would answer the telephone. Proceeds from the album went to the Japanese Red Cross Society following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami; Jackson had recently spent some time in the country, where he met the album's producer Akira Yamaoka.[15] Jayson Napolitano of Original Sound Version described Jackson's song as "a contemplative, lumbering piece of music that says a lot with few notes".[34] He also composed the music for The Real Rocky (2011), a television film broadcast as part of the series 30 for 30.[35] In 2012, Jackson provided a song for the soundtrack of ModNation Racers: Road Trip (2012),[36] and provided additional music for the first season of Nashville, with T Bone Burnett.[4]Jason Schwartzman engaged Jackson to co-compose the scores for the short film Here and feature film Goats (both 2012) with him;[37][38] they had been close friends for about fifteen years, having bonded over their mutual love of music since Schwartzman was around 17 years old.[38][39] Jackson released an original album, Dos Manos, in Italy in July 2012, produced by Holmes and published by Interbang Records and Brutture Moderne.[40][41][42][43]
Jackson later worked in a team of producers for the music of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V (2013), collaborating with the Alchemist, Oh No, and Tangerine Dream.[44] Jackson's initial role was to provide the score for Trevor Philips's missions, and he took influence from artists such as The Mars Volta and Queens of the Stone Age. When he learnt the team would be building off each other's work, he voiced concern that the finished product could be disjointed. After sharing his work with the team, he was particularly impressed by the contributions by Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream's founding member. Froese had interpolated funk sounds with Jackson's hip-hop influences. Froese and Jackson then sent their work between The Alchemist and Oh No, who heavily sampled it.[44] To compose his part of the score, Jackson created a supergroup called Jaws, featuring himself, Keefus Ciancia, Deantoni Parks, Gus Seyffert, and Michael Shuman.[45] The score was well-received in the context of the game.[46][47][48] For the soundtrack release, Jackson filtered through the six terabytes of material before transferring it to DJ Shadow for mixing.[45] Alongside The Alchemist, Oh No, and Tangerine Dream, Jackson co-presented a 70-minute live concert featuring the game's original score at the New York Film Festival in September 2013.[49]
In June 2020, Jackson released his first original solo album, Tres Flores, alongside a digital re-release of Dos Manos.[68] On August 23, 2024, he released an instrumental album, Cowboy Yoga, performing alongside Jay Bellerose, Jennifer Condos, and Bill Frisell. It is the first in a planned trilogy.[9][69][70]
^ abJackson, Woody (July 22, 2012). "Dos Manos". Archived from the original on May 7, 2021. Retrieved August 7, 2022.
^Amendola, Enrico (July 16, 2012). "Woody Jackson - Dos Manos". IndieForBunnies (in Italian). Archived from the original on July 18, 2012. Retrieved August 7, 2022.
.jpg)
,_1969_(cropped).jpg)
.jpg)
