Friends and fellow musicians marvel at the extraordinary number of songs — around 350 — that Springfield troubadour Dallas Jones has churned out during the past two decades.
And they find it remarkable that Jones finds time to play several gigs a week while also running the family’s large farm.
Turns out those two pursuits are linked.
“I write most of my songs while driving a tractor,” says the 47-year-old Jones, who has followed his grandfather (Rex) and dad (Doug) into running the cattle and hay operation on 1,000 acres adjacent to Springfield-Branson National Airport.
“When I’m on a tractor for 10 or 12 hours a day, I’ll sing stuff into my phone to record it. Sometimes just one line here and one line there, maybe a chorus or something. Once in a while I’ll start humming something, and babble what we call ‘dummy lyrics,’ to get a melody out. But almost always lyrics come first.
“Then when I get home, I’ll pick up an instrument and see what comes of it.”
As if those activities weren’t enough to fill days well into night, Jones also reserves quality time with wife Melanie, who teaches at Willard Central Elementary School, and their sons, Grant, 16, and Noah, 14.
Making music without leaving home behind
Although he has attracted loyal fans as a musical performer and admiration from colleagues as a prolific music composer (“He just keeps pumping them out — all the local songwriters love him and hate him for that,” jokes occasional stage mate Brandon Moore), Jones says it’s only in recent years that he’s felt comfortable introducing himself as a musician.
“It used to be when somebody would ask what I do for a living, I would always just say ‘I’m a farmer.’ Now I finally will say ‘I’m a farmer-slash-musician.’ Or maybe ‘musician-slash-farmer,’ depending.”
Jones pauses, then clarifies: “I actually don’t consider myself as being in the music business. I think of myself as being in the entertainment business.
“Because in the music business you’ve got to be ‘out there’ always promoting yourself, willing to get into a van and drive across the country to gigs, neglect your wife and kids for several years — and even then, nothing may happen career-wise. The music business is rough, it’s cruel. You’ve got to give up everything; you’ve got to really commit.
“But I like to be home at night. I like seeing and being with my family every day.
“And fortunately, we have several places around here that will pay someone to sit in the corner for a couple of hours and play music that people want to hear and be entertained.”
Learning music by ear, not by the book
Neither farmer nor musician, let alone a combination, were job titles that Jones aimed for while growing up.
He’d worked on the farm from an early age, of course. By the time he entered college, he had designs on getting into the advertising profession.
However, Jones had been intrigued by the musical activities of his older brother Jeff. “When Jeff was a freshman in high school, he was in a musical,” Jones recalls. “I was in the 5th or 6th grade, and I remember watching him on the stage and just being transfixed, thinking, ‘That’s amazing!’”
Jeff got a guitar a couple of years later. “When Jeff was gone, I’d sneak into his room and try to figure out how to play it. But there came a point when he told me, ‘Get your own guitar!’ So my grandpa bought me one of my own for my 14th birthday.”
Jones never received formal lessons in how to play guitar. But, again following his older brother’s lead, he applied his self-described “very high tenor” singing voice to choirs in junior high and high school (Willard High, Class of 1996). And, like Jeff, his singing ability won him a vocal music scholarship to Drury University, where he majored in communication.
“As things turned out, I wish I would’ve majored in music — that would’ve made a lot more sense. I never took a music theory class; obviously I wish I would’ve.
“I did take one piano class, from an organist at Drury who was the accompanist for the choir. Her name was Dr. Earline Moulder, and she was a legend. She taught me some stuff, but I never could read music. So I would learn pieces by ear. I would look at the page when I played for her, but she would say, ‘You’re not reading the music, Mr. Jones.’ And I’d say, ‘No, but I’m playing it.’
“For my final presentation, she made me do one song from sheet music, but then she allowed me to play one — I think it was an Elton John song — just the way I wanted to play it.”
Jones performed with two choirs, concert and chamber, at Drury. “But if you’re just in choir, after you get out of school, what do you do? Which is sad…”
After receiving his diploma in communication in the spring of 2000, Jones interviewed for jobs in the advertising field. “But it quickly became clear to me that I can’t work in an office. I thought, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this!’ So I went to Europe for three or four months of backpacking. Got a Eurail pass and went to something like 15 countries. And it just kind of changed my perspective.”
By Christmas of 2000, Jones had returned to the Ozarks and the family farm. “We never had a big, serious conversation about, ‘This is what I’m going to do with my life,’ but I just asked my dad, ‘Is it OK if I keep working here?’ And he said, ‘Sure.’ We also had a house-building business for a while, too.
“I never really planned on being a farmer. But I thought, ‘Well, maybe this isn’t so bad. I’ll do it for a little while. But I’ve just kept doing it, and I still am, 25 years later.”
From open mic nights to original songs
On weekends, Jones joined friends for rock-climbing adventures in Arkansas and floating Ozarks streams. And, as young men are wont to do, Jones and his buddies frequented local clubs in the evenings, especially those featuring live music.
By this time Jones had developed a taste for the music of recording artists who were singer-songwriters — Bob Dylan, John Prine, the Beatles, John Denver, etc. (Recently, Jones has incorporated several Taylor Swift songs into his repertoire, and is learning songs by Chappell Roan, who, although they share Willard roots, Jones has never met. “I like their songwriting, I like who they are as artists and what they stand for,” he says.)
He also followed local musicians. The family band Big Smith was a big favorite, featuring local musician Jody Bilyeu, his brother Mark and three cousins.
Jim Staley, literally a lifelong pal from infancy through college and beyond, remembers a significant night at the former Outland nightclub in downtown Springfield in spring of 2001:
“Mark Bilyeu was playing a solo show. We were giving Dallas a hard time, saying, ‘Why don’t you go up there and sing one of Mark’s songs?’ And Dallas said, ‘No, no, that’s not how this works.’ But we created kind of a commotion, and Mark noticed. He finally said, ‘Dallas, do you want to come up here and sing a song?’
“So Dallas got up there and sang one, and sang it great. And Mark said, ‘Well, I guess you shouldn’t let other people sing your song if they’re going to do it better than you do…’”
Staley adds: “My impression was that Dallas really enjoyed being up there on that stage, and that was a big part of him deciding, ‘Well, maybe I really can do this…’”
Jones agrees. He began returning for “open mic night” opportunities to gain experience before audiences. At first, he only covered others’ songs. But a friend suggested he try writing some of his own. “So when I came back the next week, I’d written a couple,” he says. “I don’t remember what they were, but they got me started, and I haven’t stopped.”
By the end of that summer Jones had written enough songs to fill a compact disc. So, with assistance from Mark Bilyeu, he booked studio time to record his first album.
“The model I grew up on was: Write 10 songs, go into a studio and make a CD, sell the CD and hope you make your money back and maybe a little bit extra,” he explains. “Now nobody makes money off of recorded music anymore. But it was the thing to do back then.”
The date of his first day in the recording studio was September 11, 2001. As that morning’s news reports began arriving with word of terrorists crashing jetliners into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, there was debate over whether to continue with the recording session.
“But we decided to go ahead,” Jones says, “because we wanted to make something beautiful in the world on a day that was so terrible.”
Jody Bilyeu says that first album that Jones recorded with Mark Bilyeu “is a household favorite. I love to hear Dallas sing.” (Jody now fronts a band that includes some members of Big Smith and is slyly named Little Jones. A running gag at some Little Jones gigs is to joke that Dallas is a band member. Meanwhile, Mark Bilyeu now performs with his wife, Cindy Woolf, as the folk music duo The Creek Rocks.)
When music stopped being just a hobby
Over the years, Jones has recorded a total of 10 albums. CD sales are not a big thing anymore, but his music is downloadable from internet services and can be found on YouTube.
However, to make appreciable income as a local musician, live gigs are the best bet now. For the first few years, Jones treated music mostly as a hobby, booking only occasional gigs, many of which didn’t pay. He also tried playing in bands for a while, but it was difficult to balance group practice schedules and a far-ranging concert dates with his responsibilities at the farm.
He credits teaming up with local virtuoso Molly Healey for convincing him to consider music as more than hobby.
The two had met in the early 2000s when Healey began lending her violin talents to Big Smith and Jones occasionally opened up shows for the band. Healey recalls: “I’d sit in with Dallas sometimes. I enjoyed that because he’s always had such an honest sound, simplicity in the best way possible. I really admire Dallas because he does something that I cannot do: He can sit down and carry an entire show with just him and his guitar.”
(In addition to the violin, Healey plays cello and guitar, and uses electronic “looping” gear to build and play multi-track songs in front of audiences. Along with solo performances, in recent years she has been a member of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils; half of The Lacewings duo with Liz Carney; and she heads her own Molly Healey String Project.)
Through the 20-teens until the COVID crisis crippled live music venues in the early 2020s, Healey spent Sunday evenings performing with Jones at Springfield Brewing Company. The experience was an eye-opener for Jones.
“It was the first regular gig I’d ever had,” he explains. “I started playing one or two other times a week, maybe 10 or so gigs a month. But after the pandemic hit, I did the math and it became clear that what I’d been making with music amounted to more than just nice ‘extra’ hobby money. We’d come to rely on that money, and we were going to continue to need it. I had to figure out how to get it back. Farming, at least in our situation, unfortunately can’t be our sole source of income.
“It was a scary time. We didn’t know if places would ever start hiring again. But I decided that if they did, I was going to be more intentional. Up to that point, I’d rarely contact venues looking for work; I’d just wait for them to contact me. But I decided to start taking the approach of ‘I’m going to reach out to four, five or 10 places and see if I can get some dates on the calendar.’
“That’s when I really started kicking it into high gear, while I still can. That’s another thing: As I’ve gotten older, I can feel the strain in my voice. Maybe I can’t quite hit that note like I used to. Maybe it takes me longer to recover from a gig than it used to.
“I’m terrible at taking care of my voice, but there are some tricks I’ve learned over the years, like not singing too hard or loud. I see younger singers who just belt it out with no microphone. But if I did that, I’d lose my voice in 30 seconds.”
Making hay while the sun shines, so to speak.
Healey says Jones has helped her out, both as a friend (“Dallas is always there for you if you need him; he shows up”) and as a fellow musician.
“When I decided to go out and do the solo thing, Dallas had already been doing it for a long time, and he taught me those ropes — which microphones to get, which mic stands to use, which amplifiers were best for solo artists. For my first several solo gigs, he let me borrow his gear and kind of set me up. He really has been one of my biggest influences and helped me get my solo thing off the ground.”
Like other colleagues, Healey is amazed at Jones’ output of original songs.
“When we were doing the BrewCo gigs, almost every week he’d come in with a new song. We never wrote songs together, but we often were the first to hear each other’s music. I just thought that was really cool.”
Another admiring musician (The Hillbenders) is Jimmy Rae, who is also an arts reporter and a host on public radio station KSMU. Like Jones, Rae is a product of Willard High School. “But Dallas and I didn’t hang out with each other back then because we were in different classes.” They did cross paths at Drury, and after graduation they played together in a Beatles cover band for a while.
“Dallas is salt of the earth, a true-blue friend who would help anyone with anything any time,” says Rae. “He’s a prolific songwriter, a family man, a hardworking farmer and a music professional. He’s also a master trader, he regularly brings people and items together.”
Between the tractor and the stage
When not on a tractor or on a stage, Jones focuses on family.
Melanie and their sons are very supportive of his music, he emphasizes, but music doesn’t play a big role around the house.
He has a home office outfitted with an electronic keyboard and a couple of guitars, including a treasured Takamine that he acquired in Isesaki, Japan, in 2023 when he represented Springfield in the Sister Cities cultural exchange program. “But I don’t practice much at home because I play so often,” he says.
There’s an upright standard piano in the living room. “My younger son, Noah, came to us about two years ago and said, ‘I want to take piano lessons.’ And I was like, ‘Whoa! OK!’ But I’m still waiting for that spark. He can play, but he doesn’t practice as much as he probably should. I know how that is. I learned to play just as a vehicle to accompany myself so I could sing. But he can sit down and play some stuff that I have to say, ‘Wow! I don’t know if I could play that.’”
Jones says that both sons have good singing voices, “whether they realize or admit it. Maybe they won’t be musicians, but I hope they’ll appreciate music. I hope they find some inspiration from somewhere or somebody, but it’s probably not going to be from me.”
Jones also is introducing the boys to farm life. He turns older son Grant loose on the tractor once in a while. “I don’t foresee my kids doing farming, but I don’t know. I didn’t think I’d be a farmer when I was their age, either.
“But for me, farming and music have worked well together, because I can usually be flexible with the farming. That flexibility is why I can book 25 gigs a month. Yes, there are times of the year when we work 80 hours a week. But I still get off at 7 or 8, and I can still go play a gig.
“It’s hard sometimes, but it’s just what I’ve got to do. It’s what I want to do, for another 10 years at least, and hopefully more.”
If that plan pans out, it’ll probably lead to more stories like one that Brandon Moore enjoyed telling recently:
“The other night Dallas and I were setting up for a gig, and then we had a little time to sit and visit before we started playing.
“I asked him how his day had been. He said he’d almost gotten killed by a cow.
“And I go ‘What the…!’ But then I remembered that he’s a farmer, too.
“Most of us aren’t likely to be killed by our jobs. Dallas is one of a kind….”
