\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIt might not seem like a glitzy Grammy afterparty \u2014 one where Jess Williamson<\/a> drank champagne with Taylor Swift, no less \u2014 and a gem and mineral show in small-town Texas have much in common. But for Williamson, they both somehow ended up representing the same thing: a feeling of being welcomed yet transient, with a foot in multiple worlds but never quite settling in.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI thought, \u2018I\u2019m a tourist,\u2019\u201d Williamson says, calling on Zoom from her living room in Marfa<\/a> with her hair in loose braids, the desert sun pouring into the airy home. \u201cThat I\u2019m this visitor stopping in, and I don\u2019t really belong in either one. But somehow, I\u2019m kind of allowed to go to both.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat feeling, and that wild night at the Chateau Marmont, made its way on to \u201cThe Gem and Mineral Show,\u201d the closing track on Williamson\u2019s gorgeous new LP, A Mile South of Heaven<\/em>, out Oct. 8 on New West. It\u2019s the album\u2019s core tension, too: There lyrically, on the first single \u201cGoodbye to All That<\/a>,\u201d where Williamson tries to commit to Texas full-time but can\u2019t shake the pull of Los Angeles, or on \u201cBattle Scar,\u201d where she remembers trying to fit in with the rich kids at the private school her mom worked overtime to afford. And it\u2019s there sonically, on songs like \u201cTracking the Tropics,\u201d out today, that builds its palette from pedal steel and acoustic guitar but also sounds, as she remembers her producer Shooter Jennings<\/a> putting it, \u201ca little like Nine Inch Nails.\u201d<\/p>\n \n