Glenis Jackson knew her son Lester enjoyed music. How could she not? When he was a young boy, they would sing songs by the Temptations, Marvin Gaye and a host of others around the house or in the car.
They would also sing faith-based music together. And Lester had just started learning to play a guitar that someone had given him.
But Jackson never grasped just how much her son had been consumed by music until the magical day that Lester, then 15, invited her down to the basement of their house in Charlottesville.
He had just finished writing his first-ever song, and now he wanted to sing it for his mother and older sister, Kerlie.
The song, entitled “Hey You,” was about everything he and his family had been through, and how his mother had always been there for him.
I wrote this to show I love you, and I’m always, always thinking of you
“When he sang that, I just cried and cried and cried,” Glenis Jackson said. “He has such a beautiful voice. It’s just so melodious and smooth.
“I had no idea that he could do it. It just blew me away.”
Lester Jackson has been singing and writing songs ever since.
In the last four years alone, the 37-year-old – who works as an elevator technician in the University of Virginia’s Division of Facilities Management – has created 12 full-length albums under the stage name Nathaniel Star.
“For me, music is like breathing,” Jackson said. “If you don’t breathe, you die, and it’s that way with me. I feel like it’s as real to me as breathing, so I have to do it. Even if I’m not putting it out for others or nobody ever hears it, even if it’s just me in my studio, I have to create or I’ll die. I don’t know how else to explain, but I have to do it.”