Jaid Joice

Alva, Wisconsin, and a guitar at nine

The biography Lost Highway issued with her first single is unusually thin on Nashville scaffolding. It gives two home towns rather than one — Alva, in Florida, and Wisconsin — and one formative figure, a grandfather who served in Vietnam and played the blues. The term Joice uses for what came out of that is "swamp rock", which the label's copy glosses as a blend of indie-rock grit, Americana storytelling and country soul. It is a self-coined genre, and worth taking at face value, because the alternative label on ticketing pages is simply "country", which does not account for much of what is on the records.

The listening she describes from that house runs across Janis Joplin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Patsy Cline, the Allman Brothers and Nirvana; later press adds Waylon Jennings, Led Zeppelin and Chris Stapleton. She started on guitar at nine, in Wisconsin, and was performing not long after. That spread of reference points matters more than it usually would, because with only two singles released under her own name, the influences are still doing a lot of the explanatory work for anyone trying to anticipate what the set sounds like.

Two deals before a record of her own

Joice signed a label development deal at thirteen and a publishing agreement at eighteen. By the time her own debut arrived in August 2026 she had therefore spent a long stretch as a working writer rather than an artist, which is the ordinary route in Nashville but produces an unusual starting position: a catalogue and a set of collaborators already in place before the first release.

Her earliest credit to surface in the streaming catalogue under her own name is not a lead release at all but a guest turn — "A Condolence", on the 2025 EP The Poet and the Prisoner. The writer-first background also shows in how the 2026 singles were made. Rather than being handed material, Joice wrote both inside a small circle, with Izzy Mahoubi and Laela Dasher on each, and that trio has since become the recognisable unit behind the work.

Cigarettes, Devil Won't, and a song built from a line of Tolkien

"Cigarettes" came out on 14 August 2026 through Lost Highway Records, marked the same night with a release show at The Underdog in Nashville. It is the record the "swamp rock" framing was built to introduce, and it arrived with no prior single to lean on.

A month later came a collaboration. "Hound of the Strays", released 16 September 2026 on 3686 Records, is credited to Izzy Mahoubi featuring Joice, written by Mahoubi, Joice and Dasher, and built around a line of J.R.R. Tolkien's about wandering. Its subject is the drift of one's twenties — uncertainty and belonging, set against roots instrumentation. The video followed on 18 September.

Her second single as a lead artist, "Devil Won't", landed on 29 September 2026, again written with Mahoubi and Dasher, both of whom appear in the accompanying video. The song began as a commission for a film and turned into something more personal: restlessness, and the absence of a fixed home recast as a badge rather than a lack. The Dutch outlet Blues Magazine reviewed it on 2 October 2026 and placed her among the more consequential young singer-songwriters working in soulful indie swamp rock — the first substantial piece of outside criticism on the catalogue, and a notably warm one. Taken together the three releases pull in an outlaw-country direction, with a rough finish preferred to a clean one.

An agency four days after the debut

On 18 August 2026 — four days after "Cigarettes" — Joice signed with WME for worldwide representation in live music and touring. The agent is Jon Folk, who described a voice that is not forgotten, instincts as a musician, and an authenticity that connects immediately. Management stays with Keith Hoffman at F13 Music Group, with Lost Highway handling label services.

The sequence is the useful detail. The agency deal did not follow a streaming result; there had not been time for one. It followed a decade of writing and a reputation built in rooms, and Folk's stated plan was to construct an expanded schedule of headline and support dates running through the autumn of 2026 and into 2027. The autumn half of that plan is now visible on sale; the 2027 half is not yet public.

The autumn run, and a benefit at Cannery Hall

Avery Anna announced the Blood Runs Thicker Tour on 29 July 2026, with presale and VIP on 30 July and general sale on 31 July, in support of the EP forgive, forget. Joice is the opener across the run, which starts on 16 October 2026 at The Ritz in Raleigh and continues into mid-December. The announced dates include the Joseph S. Daning Amphitheater in Goose Creek on 17 October, Georgia Theatre in Athens on 23 October, The National in Richmond on 25 October, The Sylvee in Madison on 7 November — a Wisconsin homecoming of sorts — the Fillmore in Charlotte on 12 November, FIVE in Jacksonville on 13 November and the House of Blues in Orlando on 14 November.

Around that spine sit other bills. Joice has support dates with Muscadine Bloodline, a Tulsa appearance alongside Evan Felker and Charley Crockett, a 6 October date at HI-FI in Indianapolis on a Laci Kaye Booth bill, and Soul Kitchen in Mobile on 4 December.

The most unusual night of the run is 27 October at Cannery Hall in Nashville. Justice Jam, announced on 8 September 2026 and on general sale from 11 September, is a benefit for the Tennessee Innocence Project and the Washington Innocence Project, co-headlined by Mike McCready of Pearl Jam and Dierks Bentley, with Terri Clark, the McCrary Sisters, Angie K, Bobby Messano and Joice on the bill. Doors are at 6.30pm with music running from 7pm to 9pm — a short, shared, multi-artist format rather than a conventional support slot.