Jason Scott knows that he and his band, the High Heat, aren’t part of the mainstream. And they’re just fine with that. “We’re outside the norm of radio country,” Scott says. “We’re sort of fringe, and that’s where we like it.”
That may change soon, however. The Oklahoma City-based five-piece is quickly outgrowing the same Red Dirt club circuit that gave rise to Wyatt Flores, Southall, and Josh Meloy in recent years. Already in 2025, the High Heat played a high-profile opening slot on Blackberry Smoke’s tour in February, and this spring, they’ll open for Dwight Yoakam and the Mavericks on a string of shows that will also include 49 Winchester. One of the stops on that tour is the Beacon Theater in New York.
On Friday, the band furthered their blow-up with the release of the 13-track American Grin, their second studio album, and first for Leo33 — the same label as Zach Top. But labels alone are not enough to be starmakers, and the High Heat bring a different vibe than Top’s traditional country sound, even if some songs on American Grin evoke it.
The High Heat is Scott on guitar and lead vocals, Gabriel Mor on guitar, Garrison Brown on guitar and keys, Ryan Magnani on bass, and Tremaine “Bobby” Wade on drums. They recorded American Grin in multiple places with producer Taylor Johnson, a one-time member of the band whom Brown calls their “sonic architect.” Scott credits Johnson with challenging the band to find its range on American Grin, a record whose melodic influences range from arena rock in “If We Make It to the Mornin’” to mariachi in “Interstate State of Mind” to high-energy new country in “Me and the Bottle (Hungover You).”
The latter was released as a single in 2023 and has gone on to become the group’s signature live cut. “Me and the Bottle” is a drinking song and a lament of lost love, delivered with a wink and a howl: “My baby left me for a Democrat,” Scott sings, “I bet she’s giving him a heart attack.”
Editor’s picks
“It’s fun every single time we play it,” Brown says. “I love that it’s at the end of the set, because I’m looking forward to it every time. It’s got a really nice groove. It’s money. It’s badass.”
Fans in Americana and country circles who may not be familiar with Jason Scott & the High Heat are likely already familiar with most members of the band — all of whom work secondary jobs in the industry. Scott played the role of the damned main character in the music video for Jason Isbell’s “King of Oklahoma.” Mor and his partner, Jessi Chapman, are the stylists for Flatland Cavalry. Magnani is a creative director and has produced such music videos as “Little Town” by Wyatt Flores and “Generational Dust” by John Moreland. Wade films most of the High Heat’s lyric videos himself.
“If I can’t be playing music,” Mor says, “I want to be, at least, touching it.”
At its heart, American Grin is a snapshot of what brought the band to this point. Castle Rock, their 2022 debut, was originally slated to arrive in March 2020, with a release party set for the same night that is now remembered as the opening salvo of Covid-19 in the United States: when the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder canceled their home game against the Utah Jazz after a player tested positive. Castle Rock was shelved for more than a year.
“Honestly, we waited to release Castle Rock, and that’s actually what ended up propelling us into what became this American Grin season,” Scott tells Rolling Stone. “We waited a year, and we met some people who came on. We charted pretty decently with Castle Rock, and from that came a lot more touring opportunities, plus fests like Mile 0 Fest and Born and Raised.
Related Content
Around that time is when Jason Scott’s band officially became the High Heat.
Mor says the group decided during the 2021 Mile 0 Fest — held in April instead of January in the wake of the pandemic — that it needed a name. The group went through a list that usually centered around an elevated notion. “Big City” was one Mor recalls liking. The temperature in Key West for the April festival brought “heat” into play during the brainstorming. Eventually, they settled on “The High Heat.”
“That’s a baseball reference,” Mor says. “You’re throwing that stinky cheddar. You’re throwing the high heat. I feel like our music just has that feel to it.”
Mor is more direct than Scott about the long-term impact of the first album on the band. Scott lived and worked in Castle Rock, Colorado, and recording the album let the rest of the band understand who their front man was, and in turn, how to play alongside him.
“Castle Rock started in Jason’s backyard studio. We weren’t the High Heat yet. We weren’t a band,” he says. “We were just trying to figure out how we could take Jason’s songs and elevate them. There’s a connection in Castle Rock from Jason’s personal life to the town and the name. But the experience of recording it sort of became our own personal Castle Rock. We were discovering things like, ‘Who is this band? What do we want to sound like?’”
American Grin is as much the result of that soul-searching as it is the whiplash pace that American politics and society have devolved into over the same time. “These songs are a snapshot of American life. They’re not all autobiographical. Just like John Prine wasn’t an old woman,” Mor says, citing “Angel from Montgomery,” one of Prine’s defining tunes.
That’s not to say the record is completely abstract. To a person, the band agreed that one song on American Grin — ”High Country” — is the song that new fans should play first to learn about the group. It was inspired by a series of day-long drives Scott routinely took from Oklahoma City to Colorado.
“I’d have to drive back and forth between here and there a lot. I’d regularly use substances,” Scott says. “When I’d go through Raton, the New Mexico route, I’d often car camp. I’m not saying I was driving under heavy substances, but the stars certainly were a little lighter. The scenery changes from Oklahoma to Colorado in the most unique way. And whether it’s God or drugs, you’re looking for that feeling, that connection to your surroundings. Every time I left home along that route, I’d just get this incredible feeling of possibility. ‘High Country’ is a rambling narrative of chasing what either inspires you or makes you feel good.”
Even if Scott doesn’t make that particular drive anymore, his pursuit of that feeling is what drives High Heat as a band.
Trending Stories
“If people want one song that encapsulates us, it’s that one,” Magnani says. “It’s a little rock & roll, a little Americana, a little country & western.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose third book, Red Dirt Unplugged, was released in December 2024 via Back Lounge Publishing.
