(Short) Biography
Jordan Sokel is multi-instrumentalist singer songwriter and founding member of Pressing Strings. For over a decade he has been performing, touring, and releasing music under the PS moniker while calling Annapolis, Maryland home. Sokel began playing guitar around the age of thirteen although music wasn’t his focus until he began writing songs in his early twenties. His musical style has roots in various genres including early folk and blues, classic 60’s & 70’s rock, soul, reggae, and golden era hip-hop and R&B.
He spent his early child hood growing up in in Kendall Park, New Jersey. At the age of ten his family moved to a suburb south of Phoenix, Arizona called Awatukee Foothills bordering the Gila River Native American reservation. At the age of thirteen his family moved to Arnold, Maryland located just outside of the state capital of Annapolis. “I think moving to Maryland was one of the main catalysts that set me on the path of being a songwriter and working musician. It was the first time I had lived somewhere where the radio stations were tied so closely to the local culture and did a great job spinning interesting music that wasn’t just top 40. Even better they spun and supported local bands and it inspired myself lot of people around me. Everything was accessible and it was the time of burning and sharing personalized mixes with your friends and I was the right age to soak it all in.”
Around this time Sokel’s parents gifted him a gold dusted Squire electric and he began to teach himself how to read tablature and spent his downtime picking it whenever he wasn’t playing sports. A three sport athlete, he spent the majority of his time between the whistles until a shoulder injury stifled his desire to continue. With the new found time on his hands he turned to music and a lyric book and began penning his first songs and has continued to do so releasing a trove of material since 2008.