By Julianna Clipson
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The New Mexico air was crisp and cold. A fresh dusting of white powder fell over the thick covering of snow already spread across the national park. Jared Henry and his buddies slowly drove his Jeep Wrangler into the forest in search of good snowboarding spots even though it had been closed off due to the weather conditions. After making it four or five miles the tires got stuck. Henry and his friends were in the middle of nowhere with no way to get the car pulled out so they began the trek through the freezing temperatures in search of help. The group was soaked to the bone and close to giving up hope when they ran into a couple of campers in the middle of the woods. They welcomed the guys to join them and offered up tacos and beers.
“It was a moment I will never forget,” Henry said. “It was like we stumbled across a bed and breakfast tucked away in the wilderness.”
The next morning the crew woke up and pulled out the jeep and everything was right in the world.
This was just one of the many adventures that inspired Henry’s album “Running Wild.”
Henry was raised on the great outdoors. His life has always revolved around loving, appreciating, and utilizing nature whether it be surfing in California where his family lives or skateboarding down the curved roads of the Natural State.
In all these moments he found an adoration for the rhythm of life. His passion for creating and sharing music with his people grew from his life on the west coast and his home in the woods of Arkansas. It was instinct for him to pick up a guitar and play. He started out playing quietly on his skate ramp in his backyard to now playing shows in front of crowds of people.
Henry remembers sitting in his room watching an AC/DC concert on tv. He was completely fixated on the way the band connected with the crowd and truly entertained each and every person in the building. The music was mesmerizing to him.
“I think that is where my love for music came from,” Henry said. “Just how it made me feel and I think what it did to my brain. It just calms me down.”
He began creating music of his own when he was about 16.
“I started writing songs, but they were terrible,” Henry said. “They were like ‘girl in the polka dot dress’ or something just super stereotypical songs I guess and it progressed from there. Wrote songs for as long as I could.”
Henry’s new album he released this month features 14 songs he said all highlight the places and people who have impacted his life in some way. The compilation expresses his personal roadmap and how it always falls back to home.
“The album itself was inspired by pretty much all my journeys and adventures in life and everything in between is kind of how I approached it,” Henry said. “It was a lot about relationships and stuff regardless if that was with a girlfriend or even just friends, mom, dad, family stuff, whatever. It’s kind of about my walk through life and how it fits into the bigger picture I guess. But I kept falling back on the idea of home because home is awesome.”
When I asked Henry when he first realized he had a talent, he laughed.
“When people started telling me,” he said. “Cause I still think I suck. I wouldn’t have recorded any of this music unless all my friends were telling me to record it. So that’s where all that kind of blossomed.”
Henry’s album is available for download on music streaming services. Looking ahead he said he hopes to travel around, crash on friends’ couches, and play his music all across the country.
He stressed that even though it wouldn’t be the most glamorous lifestyle he would be completely content with it all as long as he was sharing his music and seeing what the world has to offer. All he wants to do is spread the contagious joy and serenity the melodies have alway given him.
“I just think it expands the human emotion and conscious on a whole hippy level,” Henry said. “I see people who may not know themselves yet and hope to kind of inspire them in a way through my music to find themselves and take flight so to speak.”