“You could be one spin away from something cool. I like that chase”: Strat-toting blues-rocker Jax Hollow sees songwriting as a throw of the dice – and she lives for the thrill

The Jax Hollow who opens Only the Wild Ones, her 2023 debut album, with the Hendrixian hammer-ons of Wolf in Sheepskin sounds markedly subdued compared to the one who seared speakers with High Class Bitch, the barnstorming opener on her 2021 EP, Underdog Anthems. But then the chorus hits and there she is, singing about watching the sunrise with her .45 pistol by her side. 

With Only the Wild Ones, Jax is back with an album stacked with hummable riffs and memorable lyrics, and she’s determined to be the complete package. “I come from two worlds,” she says on a call from a springtime gig aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean. “I like to merge lyricism and songwriting with the more exciting elements of rock, like the energy and the sexiness and the power.”

What she can’t get across with song titles like Whores and Heathens and Runnin’ Like a Gypsy, Hollow channels through her Fender Strat. Ride or Die is a gruff blues rocker, while the wicked concoction of tricky hammer-ons and pull-offs on the main riff of Ethereal Diamond undergird her radio-ready melody. She mastered the acrobatics of singing over odd meters and riffs by learning songs like the Police’s Message in a Bottle, whose finger-stretching riff has beguiled players for decades.

“For two weeks straight, all I did was put the metronome on until one day I could do it,” she says. “Luckily that spills out into the original music, so I’ve got so many more options of writing. It just opens up a whole ‘nother door when you can play and sing stuff at the same time.”

Shades of Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen, two of her guitar heroes, emerge elsewhere amid her Americana-rock blend, and the smoky jazz of Ventriloquist reveals yet another dimension to her playing. “I was in New Orleans exploring and busking in Jackson Square, having fun,” she says. “That night, I wrote that little descending thing and I was like, ‘Damn, this is spooky and kind of sexy.’ That’s the vibe I got.”

No matter where she roams, though, she’s always gunning for the rush of writing a great song. “Every day you try for it, and you get maybe one out of 500 songs,” she says. “You’re just gambling, but you could be one spin away from something cool. I like that chase.”

• Only the Wild Ones is out now.