Jake Flint, a country singer-songwriter based in Oklahoma, died Sunday hours after his wedding. He was 37.
Flint exchanged wedding vows with Brenda Flint Saturday during a rainy ceremony in Oklahoma. His longtime publicist Clif Doyal confirmed to The Oklahoman, part of the USA TODAY network, that the Red Dirt musician died in his sleep hours after the nuptials. The cause of death has not yet been determined.
“He was not only a client, he was a dear friend and just a super nice guy. As you can see from the outpouring on social media, he was loved by everybody,” Doyal said. “I think a lot of it was just that he was a people person, and he had an amazing sense of humor. He made everybody laugh, and he made everybody feel welcome.”
“He was an ambassador for Oklahoma Red Dirt music.”
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Based in Tulsa, Flint grew up in Holdenville, Oklahoma, the son of a wildcat oilman and a hard-working mother of two.
He started playing music after his father, an avid music lover, was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Since he wouldn’t be able to participate in sports with his son, Flint’s father commissioned a couple of friends to teach his son to play guitar and take him to regional bluegrass festivals.
Along with his affection for bluegrass, Flint’s musical influences ranged from 1990s rockers like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Texas singer-songwriters like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt to jam bands like Phish and String Cheese Incident to Red Dirt standouts like Tom Skinner and The Great Divide.
Flint recorded his first album in 2016, “I’m Not Okay.”
He went on to record and release three more albums — 2018’s “Live and Not OK at Cain’s Ballroom,” 2020’s “Jake Flint” and 2021’s “Live and Socially Distanced at Mercury Lounge.”
He charted three singles on the Texas Regional Radio Report with 2017’s “Cowtown,” 2018’s “Long Road Back Home” and 2020’s “What’s Your Name” and was named Breakout Artist of the Year at the We Are Tulsa Music Awards in 2019.
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Flint played with his band and as a solo acoustic act at venues all over Oklahoma, Texas and surrounding states.
Numerous Oklahoma musicians have taken to Facebook to pay homage to Flint in the past two days.
Blake Lankford, who is part of the VIIDR – Seventh Day Rebellion songwriter group that counted Flint among its members, wrote, “If there’s a heaven and they let me in, I know it’ll be because you went to bat for me, Jake.” Buffalo Rogers posted that “The world has a dimmer sparkle without you in it,” while Travis Kidd deemed Flint “a true legend that will never be forgotten.”
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Flint’s wife, Brenda Wilson Flint, posted to Facebook a video clip from their wedding with the heart-rending message “I don’t understand.”
Mike Hosty, who played at Flint’s Saturday wedding, posted Monday his own video snippet from the wedding that captures Flint as he hopes to remember him: happily serenading his new bride.
“When I got done, we all just went out to the barn, and someone had an acoustic guitar and people were passing it around. People were just singing around the campfire … and Jake sang to Brenda. And as he was singing, I go, ‘I better record this,'” Hosty said.
“He was a great lyricist, he had a distinctive voice … and I think he’d just want his music to be heard and his legacy to be remembered that way. And I think it will be.”
Plans for his funeral services have not been announced yet.
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