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Photo by Olaf Growald
Jasmine Tate
2 of 2
Photo by Olaf Growald
Jasmine Tate
Usually, things work the opposite from how Jasmine Tate grew up. Kids, in all their idealism, dream of becoming rock stars — taking the stage in their respective fields and awing a crowd on their metaphorical guitars. They want to be on MTV, not work behind the scenes in MTV’s corporate office. Only later does reality kick in — for most — and a 9-to-5 becomes somewhat desirable. But, for Tate, a gig playing the suit at MTV was everything she ever wanted.
“People in my life started having dreams that I was on stage, playing a guitar and singing,” Tate says. “But my dream was to be in corporate America.”
Tate, as fate would have it, is now a singer/songwriter and Fort Worth transplant who spends her time away from the guitar helping build a church called Mercy Culture, which currently does Sunday services in the Paschal High School auditorium.
Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, Tate eventually made her way to Pittsburgh by way of a scholarship to play basketball at Robert Morris University. In Columbus, her music plays second fiddle to her stint as a point guard for her high school and college basketball squads; even today, she’s still known in her hometown for her exploits on the basketball court. Never plucking a guitar before her move to Pennsylvania, it was in Philadelphia where friends, family and even church pastors would tell Tate of dreams they had of her playing music.
Tate spoke with conviction when she reminisced of feeling this great power twisting her arm to go a certain route and the moment she eventually gave in.
“It’s still a crazy story to me, to this day, to tell, but it was like God taught me how to play the guitar,” Tate says. “My roommate walked into our dorm room, and she was like, ‘You play the guitar now?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t really know what’s going on.’
“To this day, I’ve never taken guitar lessons.”
The course was corrected, and Tate committed herself to music full time.
“I started singing and writing songs, and doors started opening,” she says. “I remember playing at this open mic on this college campus, and I was singing with my eyes closed. When I opened my eyes after I finished, a majority of the people in the room were crying. And I was like, ‘Man, I must have been just bad.’”
Tate would find out, when people approached her after the show, the audience was awestruck by her music — a common occurrence at her live shows.
Tate’s songs are personal and sung in earnest. Her guitar playing reveals not a hint of a novice at work. Her songs are also epic in a sense — rarely staying under the four-minute mark and oftentimes exceed a not-so-bubble-gum-pop-like seven minutes.
Since first picking up a guitar just a few years ago, Tate’s recorded a full-length album — which she managed to get off the ground, thanks to a Kickstarter project — an extended play, and a live album from a performance at the Pittsburgh Winery. She even went on a small tour that saw her hit 10 cities between Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
Having a tendency to work in opposites, Tate went against the logical next step in a potential career as a recording artist and answered a second calling after getting word some friends of hers were planting a church in Fort Worth. She made the decision to uproot her life in Pennsylvania — and the Midwest region where she was gaining popularity — to come to Texas. Any music manager would have resisted such a choice, but Tate couldn’t be more at peace.
“People have different standards of success,” Tate says. “Some people just want their face to be seen; they just want to be famous. For me? If I get 10 messages a week from people saying they got chills listening to my music or impacted their life in a positive way, I’m all in.”
Tate’s latest single, “Better Days,” is available on all your streaming services, and you can check out her live schedule on her website, jasminetate.com. You can also see her perform most Sundays at Mercy Culture, which congregates at Paschal High School.
