Sons of Legion: Authenticity in the Eye of the Storm

Viral buzz might’ve lit the fuse, but Sons of Legion’s fire was already burning – fueled by years of grind and a sound that hits hard and stays with you.

There’s no smoke, no mirrors and no pretending with Sons of Legion.

What you see is what you get: unfiltered grit, soul-deep truth, and music that doesn’t flinch.

That honest intensity is front and centre on Stripped – a newly released album (available on their website) that takes a handful of their chart-climbing songs and peels them back to their essence.

“What’s left is the heart. The soul. The truth behind every lyric and note,” they say.

Stripped Album - Sons of Legion — Stripped Album – Sons of Legion

The album follows on the heels of their recent viral success, offering a more raw take on the songs that put them on the map, including “Fire Starter,” “Remember My Name,” and “Power.”

The Nashville-based duo – Adam McInnis and Daddy Jack – saw things shift overnight when they went viral a few weeks back. It hit fast, but they were ready with the kind of confidence that comes from years of doing the work before anyone was watching.

“We’re kind of in the eye of the storm,” says McInnis. “Everything’s swirling around us, but we’re calm. We’re just doing what we’ve always done.”

That “always” includes relentless preparation – years of songwriting, deep study of musical greats, hours spent refining lyrics, vocals and production. When the moment came, they were ready not just with one good song, but with a whole catalog of work that spoke from the same soul-deep place.

Their stripped-down videos – two guitars, sometimes a tambourine – have resonated with listeners precisely because they cut through the noise.

“There’s no filter on it,” says Daddy Jack. “No branding, no gloss. It’s just us, giving what’s real.”

That authenticity is their signature. It’s what keeps fans listening beyond the first viral clip. It’s why, seemingly overnight, a lot of their songs hit global viral charts. And it’s why major labels, publishers and industry veterans are now knocking on their door.

But these guys aren’t rushing into anything.

“We’re not looking to just sign a deal,” says McInnis. “We’re building a legacy. Whatever partnership we take on has to respect the soul of what we’re doing.”

Their sound isn’t hard to pin down – it’s just rare. A gritty blend of rock and soul that has a way of stopping people in their tracks. In their own words, it’s “unfiltered and full of soul.” Some songs are born from personal conversations. Others seem to arrive out of nowhere.

“We don’t always know where it comes from,” says McInnis. “But when the hairs stand up, we follow it.”

They both bring unconventional backstories – years of life experience, self-taught artistry and hard-earned music business insight. But they’d rather listeners focus on the music than the biography.

For now, they’re focused on building their team, planning their first tour, and looking to meet fans face-to-face; not chasing the spotlight, just following the music and letting it lead them somewhere meaningful. Atwood Magazine caught up with Adam McInnis and Daddy Jack to dive into their rise, their no-filter approach to music, and how they’re staying grounded amid the whirlwind of sudden fame.

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:: stream/purchase Stripped Album here ::

:: connect with Sons of Legion here ::

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“Walking on the Edge” – Sons of Legion

A CONVERSATION WITH SONS OF LEGION

Atwood Magazine: I am so excited to talk to you guys. I feel like I’m late to this party. I found you guys about a month ago when I was doomscrolling on TikTok and “Walking on the Edge” stopped me in my tracks.

Adam McInnis: I don’t think you’re late – I think everyone’s doing the same thing, where it’s like they show up to the party and realize there’s actually a party going on here.

Is that what it feels like? So much has happened for you in the last month. Have you had time to process it?

Adam McInnis: No, it’s just kind of happening in the best way. We’re in the middle of the storm, but it’s a good storm. Kind of like when a storm is circling around you, you don’t really feel the effects of it because you’re in the eye of it.

What do you think caused the shift? I know it’s never an overnight thing.

Adam McInnis: It’s a mixture of things; we’ve been building things in the back end for a while and then on the front side we started posting more content of us just sitting down and playing songs, stripping them back.

Looking at the social media part, we thought about how we could give people enough content that they can hear a lot of our catalog and not just one song. So going through and filming six, seven or eight songs a day and just giving a bunch of different varieties of them.

And I think what happened is people probably thought, “oh, this is a catchy song.” And then what’s the next song? They’re like, “oh, this is a good song, too.” The next thing you know, they’ve heard eight or ten songs and they are thinking “I actually like this band.”

What I think really resonates with people is you seem very authentic; there's no BS.

Adam McInnis: Yeah, I think a big part of it is everything we do comes from a very honest and genuine place. We have no ulterior motive. There’s no driving factors or motivators outside of literally putting music into the world that we think is actually helping people. So, because there’s nothing outside of that to create a distraction or to have a filtration process. Everything that we say and do comes from a very real place.

Why do you think people are craving that now?

Daddy Jack: Because everything’s so fake. The swing of the pendulum goes so far to this side where everything’s fake and branded and bright and shiny, but it’s missing substance. And then someone like us comes along, and we don’t care about any of that stuff. We’re just giving you what we feel is coming from the heart and soul.

Can you take me through everything that’s happened, from the first phone call when things started blowing up?

Adam McInnis: There’s a lot of preparation meets opportunity. I think a lot of artists may put out a song and maybe have a viral moment, but they haven’t necessarily been prepared to back that up or to be able to even know how to say or what their art form really is. But I think for us you know we’ve definitely been developing it over time and we both honed our skills to a sense to where when we do have a moment like this, we have a lot of songs that people haven’t heard yet, we have a lot of videos and content and stuff that people haven’t heard yet. So honestly, we’re just getting started – we’ve barely scratched the surface on the amount of subject matter we can write about and the inspiration.

Daddy Jack: We haven’t really changed anything other than we’re going to more meetings and have a whole lot more emails to go through. Other than that, the day-to-day is the same.

Adam McInnis: It’s all about being in the present, and what’s in front of you. I think like the main difference, because we just have a lot more emails and a lot of meetings we have to deal with, so we haven’t been doing as much writing.

Other than that, as soon as stuff started going on TikTok, then then we started getting labels reaching out, management, agents and all that sort of stuff. And then, yeah, and then we fairly quickly started taking meetings and I guess the past seven to ten days, we’ve seen like other sort of spikes going up on other platforms and especially on streaming.

I’m glad that this is something that comes very natural to me in terms of the musicianship of it and the writing and the creative part of it. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if you accidentally had a boom on something and you didn’t know how you did that. So that feels good to just know that there’s a foundation there and that we’re prepared for that. So yeah, I guess that’s just what it’s just a hell of a lot of emails.

Do you think you'll sign with a label? Because part of your appeal is that you've done this all on your own, but it would probably help to have a label invest some money.

Adam McInnis: I think it’s a picture of building what’s best for us to get into the world. At some point you need some sort of trajectory that’s bigger than yourself. We have to infuse some sort of capital into this. So right now we’re talking to everyone and most likely whatever deal we structure is going to be something that works for our creativity and also our speed and efficiency. Whatever deal we do end up in has to understand that we’re spearheading this and we might be doing things a little bit differently, but it’s because we’re trying to make a different kind of impact. This is about actually building a community and having longevity rather than just a hit song. We’re trying to help make sure that we become a legacy artist and that might be a different kind of deal. Whatever we do is going to be a unique negotiation process.

You kind of answered the next question – how do you plan to maintain the integrity, because I’ve talked to a lot of artists who were in similar positions who get forced to become something that they don't want to be, or become content creators.

Adam McInnis: Let’s be honest, if you can make music for a living, we’re living the dream, we’re the dreamers and we’re doing something that a lot of people probably wish they could do. I would say in most households there’s someone who plays instruments or sings or something, plays piano or guitar, so you can turn that into a way to provide for your life.

We’re in a different part of the music industry now – before you had to go through different channels, you had to go with a major, you had to sign away a lot of things. So now the only real trade-off when it comes to content is actually not a trade-off to me, it’s the fact that we get to be a media company and we get to run it the way we want with our own brand and the things that we want to say and do. And we have direct contact with our fan base.

Adam, in one of your blog posts you mentioned something about a nagging feeling that you were meant for something more. Can you tell me more about that and what that means to you now?

Adam McInnis: Writing, studying the craft and really diving deep into musicians of the past and what made them great. We’ve been preparing for this based on our years of learning songwriting and studying the craft and really diving deep into musicians of the past and what made them great. It’s deeper than just a catchy lyric, but like, what kind of guitar was used? What kind of microphone was used? How did they write this song? I think a lot of people take granted or don’t even study, and we’ve taken the time to do that as practitioners. Every single thing is done with intention and integrity. Every piece of equipment that’s in the studio, every lyric we put in, every harmony – all those things are doing something sonically in an art form.

And so when I think about being ready for it, it was just a natural progression of where this music wants to go and how it wants to hit people. And that’s sort of like the lineage that’s been carried through. So if someone went back and did a documentary on us, they looked at how many hours we spent even individually, the things we’ve done, they’d be like, “oh, this starts to make a lot of sense.” We’ve individually lived, you know, five to ten lives, in a sense, in our own different ways. And now we’re just telling stories.

Let's pretend we're doing the documentary now. What would you want people to know about you and your music?

Daddy Jack: I think what I want people to get from me is a feeling that they can’t get anywhere else from the music that they hear. To me it’s like when I listen to some of the icons, the inspirations over the years, great artists and I don’t really necessarily feel a need to know facts about their life in order to connect to them. I’ve been a musician for my whole life. I go off of leading with feeling intuition and emotion.

Adam McInnis: We’re just here to make the music and we’re gonna be like the messengers. Whatever people want to find out and what they connect with or they resonate with, it’s completely up to them.

Musically speaking, my mom was a singer, she played a lot of Paul Simon and Bob Marley and Mamas and Papas and my dad, lots of soul music. I wanted to become a singer when I was in college, but I didn’t know I was tone deaf. I took lessons from vocal coaches and when I sang for my mother for the first time, they were like “Oh yeah, you’re tone deaf.” So I created this sort of method where I would go into the bedroom that had blackout curtains, shut the windows, shut the lights off and play on the keyboard and then learn how to pass the vibration in my body when I’m singing. I did that like every Sunday for two hours for maybe like three years and it allowed me to understand relative pitch to a certain degree to where I was able to then start to sing.

And, I guess you could say, I had a very interesting introduction to the music industry because my girlfriend at the time – I was a bouncer at a nightclub and she was the Gogo dancer and she had an amazing voice. She signed this massive record deal with Motown, and she became one of the first white female artists that they’ve had since Taylor Dayne. She was working with Diane Warren and Max Martin, all these big producers.

She asked me to be a security guard, and I was able to go on the road and be in these fantastic rooms with the best writers and producers. And I didn’t even know how to sing, but I got to watch the creation of music firsthand. And I remember going to the Grammys with her one year and looking at all the people that were walking the red carpet and thinking, “I want to be here one time for what I have something to offer and not just because I’m just someone else’s name or someone’s boyfriend.” There’s something here in this music that I want to be a part of.

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