JT Daly

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JT Daly, born Justin Thomas Daly on January 2, 1981, in Wellington, Ohio, is an American musician, producer, songwriter, visual artist, and director. He is best known as the former frontman of the Nashville-based indie rock band Paper Route.

Daly started in music with the band For All the Drifters in 2000 while studying music and art at Greenville College. The group moved to Nashville in 2001 and released several EPs before disbanding in 2004. In 2006, Daly and Chad Howat formed Paper Route with Andy Smith joining later. Paper Route released an EP that year and another in 2006, then signed with Universal Motown in 2008 after releasing All We Are. Their debut full-length album, Absence, arrived in 2009. The band released The Peace of Wild Things in 2012 and Real Emotion in 2016, both of which charted on the Billboard Heatseekers list.

Outside of Paper Route, Daly explored solo and side projects. He formed the duo Mad Wave with Nikki Barber in 2018. His solo work includes the 2012 album Memory and a Christmas single cover of Silver Bells with Brandi Cyrus. In 2014, he released The Blackest Bird as JT Daly & The Blood Orchestra. He has also contributed to other artists’ projects and collaborated on songs like Tangled Up with Chanele McGuinness in 2019.

Daly is also a visual artist. He began at Teleprompt Records in 2004, designing artwork for acts such as Mutemath and later created visuals for Wilco, Paramore, Sufjan Stevens, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. He partnered on multimedia projects like SS Mechanics with Daniel James and produced the music video for Edison Glass’s This House, which appeared at several film festivals and earned him a Dove Award nomination in 2007. His other visual works include Bed Time Stories, MonstersINairports, KIDZ, Architechnopoly, and designs for Griffin Technology and Paramore.

As a producer and writer, Daly has worked with many artists. He contributed to K.Flay’s work, including the album Every Where Is Some Where, which earned Grammy nominations for Best Rock Song (Blood in the Cut) and Best Engineered Album. He continued collaborating with K.Flay on later releases and also produced Pvris’s Evergreen and its single Hallucinations, which Billboard named the No. 1 alternative/rock song of 2019. He has worked with Demi Lovato, Isaac Dunbar, and Quinn XCII, among others, and contributed to Sarah Macintosh’s 2011 album Current.

In film and television, Daly has scored ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary Chuck & Tito and created the score for the Amazon Prime Video series Coach Prime. He also co-wrote and produced The Big Game, a musical for The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz.