Jack Winders · Singer-Songwriter

About

Songs that travel.

Jack Winders is a singer-songwriter from New London, Minnesota, by way of Belle Plaine, and Frankton, New Zealand, where his earliest memories of music are his aunts and uncles passing guitars around on the shore of Lake Wakatipu. That image stuck. Music as the reason a room of people stays an hour longer than they planned.

He started Horseplay with high school friends at sixteen, cutting his teeth in the bars around home. The band followed him to South Dakota State University in Brookings, where the covers turned into originals, two albums, and a stretch of years criss-crossing the Midwest. Horseplay wrapped in 2018. The friendships didn't.

Now writing and recording under his own name, Jack chases the songwriting lineage he grew up on: Springsteen, Isbell, Jackson Browne, Houndmouth, John Prine, the Turnpike Troubadours. Roots rock, he calls it. Big melodies, big harmonies, guitar at the center, lyrics doing the heavy lifting.

His debut EP Call It Whatever You Want collects six tracks of that sound. Recent singles The Gutter, I'll Be Alright, and One Day pick up where the EP left off.

Jack New London, MN

Horseplay performing live, crowd packed in front of the stage

The Band Years Horseplay

Before the solo work, there was the band that started it all.

Horseplay started with high school friends in Belle Plaine, Minnesota. Fifteen and sixteen year olds covering songs in the local bars on weekends and meaning every word of it. The band followed Jack to college in Brookings, South Dakota, where the covers turned into originals.

Two albums, a stretch of years criss-crossing the Midwest, and a sound that's a louder, rawer cousin of the solo material. Alternative country, americana, telecaster rock. Same songwriter DNA, just with the rest of the guys hollering harmonies.

The band wrapped, but the friendships didn't. Jack still gets up with the guys when the calendar lines up.