In the 1989 film Field of Dreams, an Iowa farmer hears a voice in his cornfield promising that if he builds a baseball diamond, someone will come. The whole movie rests on building a place before anyone has a reason to show up. Dom Jones, an Oakland native now based in Los Angeles, has made that her stated mission as both an artist and a music executive: building the kind of support system for artists that she always wanted for herself. “Field of Dreams” closes her EP 2.0, and it sounds like opening day.
The chorus spends its whole length announcing itself, telling the listener that this is what dreams coming true sound like. Arnetta Johnson, a trumpeter who has played for Beyoncé, supplies the fanfare over Kasey Phillips’ production, so the brass shows up as proof of the claim.
The verses talk like an athlete at the postgame podium. Jones broke a glass ceiling after many tries, keeps her skill turned up to ten, plays to win and calls herself a game changer. Then, in the middle of the trash talk, she asks God for serenity, borrowing the opening of the Serenity Prayer, the plea for calm acceptance that recovery groups recite at meetings. The confidence comes with a request for steady nerves attached.
The second verse switches sports and raises the stakes. Jones laces up for a marathon whose only finish line is her last breath, and she explains who benefits from all that distance: “Everybody gon’ always eat / ’Cause I’m still hungry.” Her appetite keeps the table full for everyone else, which is the executive half of her job set to music.
The farmer in the film builds his field and waits. Jones builds hers and keeps running, and those trumpets suggest the crowd is already filing in.
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