Culture
Jordan Smart – 2025 Nelsonville Music Festival Sycamore Session
By: Emily Votaw
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NELSONVILLE, Ohio (WOUB) – Singer-songwriter Jordan Smart has a reputation for using plainspoken songwriting and straightforward musicality to confront all varieties of contemporary injustice, inequality, and hypocrisy.
Smart opens his Sycamore Sessions set with Pickle Song, using playful pickle imagery as a potent political allegory. He then moves into the title track from his most recent full-length release, Confessions of a CEO, released in September, delivering a biting critique of the American healthcare system and the moral detachment of those who control it. He follows with Humanitarian Raid, a song centered on civilian suffering and perseverance in a war-torn landscape.
Smart then shifts gears, inviting the gathered audience into a full call-and-response as a part of his performance of Hearing Voices. He closes the session with another song from Confessions of a CEO, Who Would Jesus Bomb?
Setlist
0:15 – Pickle Song
3:04 – Confessions of a CEO
7:26 – Humanitarian Raid
12:20 – Hearing Voices
21:30 – Who Would Jesus Bomb?
Director – Andie Walla
Technical Director – Sydney Holl
Editors – Anna Aldis, Maddie Benedict, Wes Pai
Camera Operators
Brandon Boothe
Keagan O’brien
Matt Quinn
Chase Strebel
Gigi Twatchman
Audio Production Team
Martin Bradesca
Matthew Hilliard
Ben Stewart
Artist Relations Team
Luka Martin
Jillian Schatzley
Mia Voice
The Sycamore Sessions are presented by the Nelsonville Music Festival in collaboration with WOUB Public Media and the Ohio University Scripps College of Communication’s School of Media Arts and Studies. The videos are created by Media Arts and Studies students under the guidance of Producer and Host Josh Antonuccio, Audio Supervisor Adam Rich, WOUB Arts and Culture Editor Emily Votaw, and Director of Photography Andie Walla. All performances were filmed during the 2025 Nelsonville Music Festival, a production of Stuart’s Opera House.