Musical Lairs House Concerts

Jesse Terry

November 1, 2025

Jesse Terry’s path to being a touring singer-songwriter has taken many turns. His song, "In Spite of You" recalls his stay in a residential facility for behavior modification that traumatized him as a young teenager: "The sermons that you sold me all were fakes."

Yet he emerged to earn a degree from Berklee College of Music, spent five years as a staff writer on Nashville's Music Row penning material for major TV networks, and won prestigious songwriting awards.

Jesse met his wife Jess working on a cruise ship in the South Pacific. "As soon as we got back to the states, I proposed to her at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe in July 2010 and we packed up the car for the first tour right after that. Now, with two young children, he has new experiences to inform his musings. "If I were the moon, I’d light all of your back roads," he sings in "If I Were The Moon", a song that has also been turned into a children's book.

In the words of Music News Nashville, Jesse "bring[s] to mind iconic artist/poets like Paul Simon and Jackson Browne... [with] a performance that touches the heart like only a whisper can.:

The stage had been Jesse's home for a decade. He plays around 150 shows a year, from Bonnaroo to the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the 30A Songwriters Festival to AmericanaFest. When the pandemic canceled concerts and delayed an album release, he pivoted to performing online and found a strong new connection to his fans, who had helped fund his albums all along. "My musical tribe has always been there for me," he says with gratitude.