Kaitlyn Renee
Audio By Carbonatix
Folk singer-songwriter John Vincent III spends a lot of time in his head. By his own admission, he often gets “a little existential.” If he’s not thinking about the next record, he’s thinking about his career trajectory. “Where will I be a year from now?” he wonders, let alone 10 years. He knows these thoughts can be unhealthy if he spends too much time on them, but here’s the thing: Most days, he doesn’t mind.
“It helps me plan things,” he says. “I’ll be freaking out about this next album for a while, and that’ll push me to keep exploring.”
Vincent has a Feb. 21 show at the Granada Theater, part of his “Roadtrip” tour that’ll take him and his band to more than a dozen cities over the next couple of months. He’s excited to visit small towns he’s never seen, but he’s also looking forward to headlining shows in his home state for the first time since before the pandemic. Vincent is a Houston native, and when he opened for Noah Kahan in mid-2024, which I reviewed for the Observer, a strong family contingent filled one of the front rows.
“So, what’d you think?” his dad asked me after Vincent set’s ended. Then, when Vincent came down to see his family in the middle of Kahan’s performance, he was promptly swarmed by adoring fans eager for photographs.
These two moments – the excited family, the eager fans – perfectly describe the state of Vincent’s career: His popularity is rising, yet at least for now, his performances feel intimate, personal. He says that he tries not to think too much about popularity, even if it is largely unavoidable.
“It’s just human to feel good when something streams well,” he says (as of this writing, he’s clocking well over 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify.) “It all means something,” he adds, “but it all means nothing at the same time.”
In other words, while he may find his mind drifting to numbers, metrics and measures of his rising star, he’d rather focus on the craft of songwriting. Or his band.
Before 2024, Vincent only played solo shows. The experience was lonely, he says, and infinitely more intimidating. Now, mid-set, he can look over at one of his lifelong friends, crack a joke and ease whatever tension any of them were feeling.
Plus, when he plays live, Vincent loves those moments when the song deviates, even slightly, from the recorded version. For instance, a few months ago, Vincent and his band played New York’s Webster Hall – “a venue I always wanted to play,” he says. The recorded version of his song “That’s Just The Way It Is, Babe” features a jangly piano and prioritizes Vincent’s echoey vocals, but at Webster Hall, the song was more of a family affair. Two members of the band joined in on background vocals, giving the track the same feeling you might get from a jam session – friends dipping in and out of the chorus or one of the verses, finding ways to complement each other.
Even still, it’s the lyrics that are most memorable from any tune by Vincent. On that particular song, he hits you hard with lines such as, “A fall from heaven or a fall from grace, I don’t know / Either way, kid, it’s gonna hurt the whole way down.”
His subjects may vary – a road trip here, a busted love there – but almost every one of his songs is shot through with a feeling of acceptance. Answers are elusive, he seems to be saying, so you just have to roll with the punches and find what peace you can.
Vincent echoed these same thoughts in the interview days before his Granada Theater concert.
“I’m trying to enjoy the writing process as much as possible, rather than pushing myself,” he says. “I want people to like my music, and I want it to do decent, so I put a little pressure on myself. That can be healthy, but it can also be a little unhealthy.”
“If it’s not there,” he continues, “I don’t have to force it.”
These songs he’s talking about will appear on his next album, the follow-up to his well-received sophomore effort, “Songs for the Canyon.” That record was a quintessential road album, but for his third act, Vincent teases something a little different. He’s been listening to a lot of Oasis, he says, and experimenting with electric guitar. He wants to bend and flex his sound while making a foray into other genres.
And more than anything, he wants to keep playing with great people. That includes his band, of course, but it also includes a new iteration of his Blue June Music Fest, a “touring festival” of folk and Americana music he launched last year.
The first fest was in Nashville and featured Billie Marten Willow Avalon; this summer, Vincent and a slate of yet-to-be-announced friends are heading to Brooklyn for a one-day event at The Music Hall of Williamsburg.
But first, he’ll run through Texas, where he may once again see some familiar faces in the crowd: family, friends, people from high school.
“Playing in front of people I know is always a different thing,” he says. “It adds a little pressure, and I wonder if it’s a slightly more analytical crowd.” He pauses before adding: “But maybe these are all things I make up in my head.”
