Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left That Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Jacob Collume. Yes, the man who
Speaker 1: was nominated for Album of the Year. Jesse Volume three
Speaker 1: is the name of the record. Jacob. Good to have
Speaker 1: you here, Bob. It's such a pleasure to see you, sir. Okay,
Speaker 1: now we must say, most people or many people are
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with your music, so I must ask, can you
Speaker 1: please describe it? I know me your music is didn't
Speaker 1: describe it for but can you please describe it for
Speaker 1: the audience? Well, I will try my best. Um. I
Speaker 1: suppose I think of my music as joyous music in
Speaker 1: a sense. It's a mixture of all sorts of different
Speaker 1: musical styles, musical spaces. I've loved music as a whole language,
Speaker 1: and so there's orchestral less in it, and there's rock
Speaker 1: and roll, and there's some jazz in terms of the
Speaker 1: harmonic language, and there's some electronic production too, and there's
Speaker 1: lots of acappelle. So I tend to think and work
Speaker 1: in layers a lot of the time, and so I
Speaker 1: tend to play a lot of instruments myself on on
Speaker 1: my albums and also my life performances. I'm I'm talking
Speaker 1: to you now from a room filled with many different
Speaker 1: things that make different kinds of sound, and I've loved
Speaker 1: the process of learing those on top of each other,
Speaker 1: for I guess the duration of my life, and so
Speaker 1: I guess my music is an expression of all the
Speaker 1: things I love, and that's a whole mixture different things.
Speaker 1: But it's a sort of tentabulum of of eclectic ingredients.
Speaker 1: I suppose that is a mortgage board of descriptions. What
Speaker 1: track should someone start with if they want to know
Speaker 1: Jacob car your Oh, that's a different question. Um, I
Speaker 1: would say start with All I Need. And All I
Speaker 1: Need is a song on Jesse Volian three, the album
Speaker 1: that you mentioned, which is the third part of a
Speaker 1: four part album series that I've been creating from this chair.
Speaker 1: And All I Need is is. Yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 1: um a testament to a few things I love. I
Speaker 1: guess there's there's some harmony in there, and there's some
Speaker 1: there's some dance nus in there, and it's a collaboration
Speaker 1: with with Mehalia and ty Dolla Sign and I love
Speaker 1: both those musicians so much. Okay, let's go back to
Speaker 1: the beginning. So you were born in you were raised
Speaker 1: essentially by your mother? True? Absolutely, true? Is your father
Speaker 1: in the picture at all? My father has not been
Speaker 1: in the picture for about fifteen years or so. So
Speaker 1: I was very much brought up by by women. I suppose.
Speaker 1: I've got two little sisters who brought me up to
Speaker 1: So it was me and my sisters and and my
Speaker 1: mom in this exact house actually here in in in
Speaker 1: North London. Okay. But your mother was in the music field.
Speaker 1: What the did and does she do? She is a
Speaker 1: violinist in the in the classical world and outside. And
Speaker 1: also she's a conductor as so some of my earliest
Speaker 1: memories of music making a music consumption, we're sitting in
Speaker 1: a big hall called called the Duke's Hall in the
Speaker 1: Royal Academy Music in London and watching her conductor room.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of my kind of education started there. Okay,
Speaker 1: your two sisters are younger than you are, yes, sir, absolutely, okay.
Speaker 1: Their ages are let's see, I'm twenty x and then
Speaker 1: twenty four and twenty okay. And are they in the
Speaker 1: music field. They both play and they both sing, but
Speaker 1: they're not professionally musicians. They do other things. But when
Speaker 1: whenever we're home together as a four, we make a rule,
Speaker 1: and the rule is we always sing in four part harmony.
Speaker 1: We sing a part korral, or we'll sing a barbershop
Speaker 1: quartet or something like that, just because it's a nice
Speaker 1: way to to spend time. That's very interesting. Okay, So
Speaker 1: from the moment you have memories, was their music in
Speaker 1: your household totally? Absolutely every corner of every room, either
Speaker 1: something was playing or something was being spoken about that
Speaker 1: was playing. And so I remember Stevie, I remember Sting,
Speaker 1: I remember Bobby McFerrin, remember birth when and fire Um,
Speaker 1: and then I remember discovering Flying Lotus. That was a
Speaker 1: big moment for me when I was about thirteen years
Speaker 1: old or so. And then that unlocked j Diller, and
Speaker 1: that unlocked d' angelo and then the whole the whole
Speaker 1: thing kind of opened up. But I was also very
Speaker 1: much brought up on Martok and Stravinsky, and I sang
Speaker 1: in some operas composed by Benjamin Britten as a boy.
Speaker 1: I say, an opera called The Turn of the Screw.
Speaker 1: There's a boy in that. In that Chimbrop recored Miles
Speaker 1: and so my musical education was this massive mixture of
Speaker 1: on the one hand, like dancing to a to a
Speaker 1: group like a Prince group, for example, and on the
Speaker 1: other hand, standing on stage in Auviedo, Spain and singing
Speaker 1: the harmony of Benjamin Britain, which is completely an early
Speaker 1: you know, twelve turns structures and dissonant things and a
Speaker 1: really sensitive emotional language that he had going on, and
Speaker 1: a real Britishness too, And I saw no reason to
Speaker 1: kind of reject any of it. It was all part
Speaker 1: of my part, part of my language. I suppose, you know,
Speaker 1: casual observation would say that most people in the classical
Speaker 1: musical field sneering pop music. So your mother was interested
Speaker 1: in playing pop music in the house, I guess you
Speaker 1: could say, so, yeah. And I wouldn't say that she
Speaker 1: would have thought of it as pop music. I don't
Speaker 1: think she would have said, well, you know, his classic
Speaker 1: of music, and then and then this is pop, and
Speaker 1: then over here this jazz and this is folk, I
Speaker 1: think in her eyes, and therefore in my eyes it
Speaker 1: was more this is music I love. And there's actually
Speaker 1: a lot that class music has in common with with
Speaker 1: you know, you could say pop music when you when
Speaker 1: you stop and think about it. But I think I
Speaker 1: really welcomed that approach, and I'm very grateful for it
Speaker 1: because I think it it stopped me as a creative
Speaker 1: person thinking too much about sort of boxes and boundaries
Speaker 1: and this is appropriate for this, and this is appropriate
Speaker 1: for this and more a sense that there was this
Speaker 1: massive language that people were learning and discovering within each other,
Speaker 1: within the kind of musicians community of the world. And
Speaker 1: a lot of my favorite things that I heard, especially
Speaker 1: when I was young, were people who were sort of
Speaker 1: taking risks of it and and trying things out and
Speaker 1: twisting rules that that maybe had existed. Can you give
Speaker 1: us a couple of examples of that, I can, so
Speaker 1: excuse me. One one construct that I've been made aware
Speaker 1: of recently is that you have twelve twelve half steps
Speaker 1: in an octave, or in UK was a twelve semi
Speaker 1: tones and an octave um. And I've heard a couple
Speaker 1: of pieces of music that really blew my mind with
Speaker 1: people who were thinking outside of that um in the
Speaker 1: sense that you know from from bar to bar. Traditionally
Speaker 1: you would divide that into the twelve semi tones that
Speaker 1: we see on the piano um. But I became very
Speaker 1: interested in just intonation systems, by which I mean, um,
Speaker 1: tuning to to physics, but essentially the laws of physics,
Speaker 1: rather than tuning too and to the more traditional idea
Speaker 1: of harmony. And so you know, I heard composers like,
Speaker 1: for example, Leghetti exploring this, and I heard that, and
Speaker 1: I thought, that's that's interesting to me because I think
Speaker 1: it could apply to things beyond what it what it
Speaker 1: currently represents. I think that that is tool that could
Speaker 1: be used in all sorts of other situations. And so
Speaker 1: I've I've sought out things that get my ears excited
Speaker 1: or tie my brain and or not, and I've I've
Speaker 1: been interested. I supposed to find ways of building bridges
Speaker 1: between these different musical worlds and find a way to
Speaker 1: get all these ingredients to kind of make some kind
Speaker 1: of sense. Okay though, but wouldn't we also say that
Speaker 1: the average listener has problems with scales and other types
Speaker 1: of music outside that traditional twelve towns. Um. I think
Speaker 1: you're right. I think I'd say that people who um,
Speaker 1: people who listen to a lot of a particular kind
Speaker 1: of music get used to it. And so that, to
Speaker 1: me is is interesting. And so, for example, if you
Speaker 1: if you listen to the radio, then you hear a
Speaker 1: lot of a particular kind of thing, And to be honest,
Speaker 1: I'm always so interested to do that. I turned on
Speaker 1: the radis and I think, Oh, what's the thing that's
Speaker 1: kind of filling people's imaginations at this time, and what
Speaker 1: is people's idea of acceptable? And for example, if you
Speaker 1: grow up in say Africa, and your music is entirely
Speaker 1: based in pentatonic structures, which is sort of far simpler
Speaker 1: than then I guess what what Europeans have have creative,
Speaker 1: which is is almost like a sort of a chromatic
Speaker 1: system of harmony within classical music. Then all of that
Speaker 1: chromatic stuff sounds totally bizarre, and at first people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's strange. I'm not sure I understand that. And then gradually,
Speaker 1: as those kinds of rules seep into what feels normal
Speaker 1: to people, then people kind of embrace those elements, I think,
Speaker 1: And so you know, I would definitely say that there
Speaker 1: are things that I hear that take my breath away
Speaker 1: and that surprised me, that are pretty abnormal and pretty weird,
Speaker 1: and those things always kind of intrigue me to to
Speaker 1: dig a bit deeper, because I feel like, in some
Speaker 1: ways the thing that needs to bend in that experience
Speaker 1: is not necessarily the thing I'm listening to you, but
Speaker 1: it's more me as a listener. How can I bend
Speaker 1: myself into a shape that where that makes some kind
Speaker 1: of sense. Okay, so you're listening to music in the house.
Speaker 1: At what point do you pick up an instrument? Oh? Um?
Speaker 1: I suppose I was about two or three when I
Speaker 1: was handed a violin and that made sense to my
Speaker 1: mom as a violinist. It was like, we'll try this
Speaker 1: one out for size. And I remember I played for
Speaker 1: a couple of years and I gave up when I
Speaker 1: was four because I was quite an impatient musician, I think,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be able to hit something and
Speaker 1: for it to make a sound that was satisfying. And
Speaker 1: the thing what the violin is that you kind of
Speaker 1: need to play for five years until it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like that. And so I gravitated more towards the piano
Speaker 1: because it was kind of like a layout that I
Speaker 1: could digs like. Okay, so they kind of makes some
Speaker 1: kind of sense. And I can clearly remember being asked
Speaker 1: as clearly of musically interested eight year old you know,
Speaker 1: would piano lessons be something that you'd like, And I
Speaker 1: can clearly remember saying, no, I don't want that. I
Speaker 1: want to kind of do this in my own way.
Speaker 1: And luckily for me, my mom's philosophy has always been
Speaker 1: too kind of allow that space to happen, and so
Speaker 1: I was kind of allowed to be just a free
Speaker 1: a free spirit in this space, in this music room
Speaker 1: and just sort of go wherever my fancy took me
Speaker 1: from from from one day to the next. Was your
Speaker 1: mother disappointed that you gave up the violin, not in
Speaker 1: the slightest, No, I think I think she was excited
Speaker 1: that it was a part of my journey in some way.
Speaker 1: You know, it was like, well, okay, cool, so the
Speaker 1: violin was that, and now let's go onto something else
Speaker 1: and whatever. But my mom is very specially in the
Speaker 1: sense that she's never sort of imposed a sense of
Speaker 1: this is how I'd like you to be, or unless
Speaker 1: you're the way that I want you to be, then
Speaker 1: you're going to let me down. You know. It's always
Speaker 1: been like your job as a human is to find
Speaker 1: out what you are, and here are some materials that
Speaker 1: may help you figure that out. But but other than
Speaker 1: that it's it's kind of up to you, and I'm
Speaker 1: always sort of speaking as her now. I'm always open
Speaker 1: to any kind of dialogue and I'll always be be interested,
Speaker 1: I guess. Okay, So you start playing at the piano
Speaker 1: for years old, totally self taught. Yes, yeah, I was
Speaker 1: just exploring on my own, okay, And certainly it's not
Speaker 1: like being bad. I'm a violin, but there's a certain
Speaker 1: skill to making listenable music on the keys. How did
Speaker 1: you figure it out? Um, it's a good question. I'm
Speaker 1: still figuring out. I think I started with things that
Speaker 1: I knew, um, and I went from there. You know,
Speaker 1: I think there's there was a bit of a myth
Speaker 1: that I saw in in the musical education world that
Speaker 1: what I experienced of it, you know, at school and
Speaker 1: things like that, where it was kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're a beginner, and there's this huge, great, big
Speaker 1: mountain need to climb. At the top of the mountain,
Speaker 1: you know you will be good enough, but you have
Speaker 1: to start in this uncomfortable place and sort of work
Speaker 1: and work at the the uncomfortable place until you feel comfortable,
Speaker 1: which for me is I can see how it happened,
Speaker 1: but it's a little inefficient. You know. There are sounds
Speaker 1: that I kind of understood as a as a musician,
Speaker 1: as a boy um that I would work out on
Speaker 1: the piano. You know, I'd hear I'd hear a song.
Speaker 1: I'd say, I'd hear a Stevie song, and I think, so,
Speaker 1: what's going on there? It sounds like there's there's this chord.
Speaker 1: And then I would just take that chord and I said,
Speaker 1: what does this chord do? And I didn't really understand it,
Speaker 1: but I followed my ears. It would be like, well,
Speaker 1: what's this card like if I try and move it
Speaker 1: up one semiter or down, or if I if this
Speaker 1: chord leads to this chord, and and then what does
Speaker 1: what is adding this particularly what make that chord want
Speaker 1: to do? You know? And this this was a kind
Speaker 1: of intuitive process that I went through that that was
Speaker 1: very little about what was right and wrong, you know.
Speaker 1: It was very little about like, well, these this is
Speaker 1: how it's done, and it was more what what is
Speaker 1: exciting to do? And so, yeah, I I iterated that process.
Speaker 1: I suppose, yeah, I iterated that process at the piano
Speaker 1: um and I can clearly remember being very thrilled, indeed
Speaker 1: on my fourteenth birthday to get this double bass. And
Speaker 1: it was a funny thing because I had not a
Speaker 1: clue how to play it, but I could. I could
Speaker 1: play the bass in my head. I could go good,
Speaker 1: you know, because I knew basselines and I could sing them,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't play them. And so I think for me,
Speaker 1: I kind of assumed that there there must be a
Speaker 1: way to extract the basselines from the base, and I
Speaker 1: just sort of died. I don't dove into it with
Speaker 1: a sense of trust. It was like, well, there must
Speaker 1: be where I can get this to feel natural, and
Speaker 1: and I guess it's it's a matter of patients. And
Speaker 1: and also I think it was a matter of me
Speaker 1: setting myself challenges, sometimes outrageous creative challenges, like you know,
Speaker 1: you will find a way to figure this outward, let's
Speaker 1: try and incorporate this element in this And by solving
Speaker 1: those problems, I kind of discovered this sense of synergy
Speaker 1: between all the different instruments that I was falling in
Speaker 1: love with, to the voice, to the drums. And I
Speaker 1: never thought of myself as a as an instrumentalist per se.
Speaker 1: I didn't think, well, I'm a I'm a piano player,
Speaker 1: or I'm a bass player, whatever. But I always felt,
Speaker 1: I guess I thought of myself as exploring music at
Speaker 1: large and being a musician as much as I could,
Speaker 1: and trying to establish what what the intention might be
Speaker 1: with a particular sound and how the how how that
Speaker 1: could fit into this the sensibility that I had, you know,
Speaker 1: being all the members of my own band, how how
Speaker 1: would it feel to be the base, How it feels
Speaker 1: to be the drum? How do they interact with each other?
Speaker 1: And you know, most of my learning happened by listening.
Speaker 1: You know, I sat and listened to everything I could
Speaker 1: possibly find, you know, And at that point, the Internet
Speaker 1: was quite young and YouTube was being born and growing,
Speaker 1: but it was kind of at the right moment where
Speaker 1: if I was interested in, you know, who played base
Speaker 1: on a Keith Jarrett record, then I could find out
Speaker 1: and then I could figure out what that person's story was,
Speaker 1: and I could listen to on other records, and and
Speaker 1: and so a lot of that kind of process of
Speaker 1: filling up my periphery with things that I trusted just
Speaker 1: happened through consuming as much music, you know, as much
Speaker 1: music as I could from home, things that were in
Speaker 1: the house, two things that were online, and to things
Speaker 1: recommended by friends and all that stuff. Okay, do you
Speaker 1: read music relatively poorly? But I do read it like
Speaker 1: I can sing. If you have me a part to sing,
Speaker 1: I can sing it. But honestly, I find myself a
Speaker 1: little at a loss if you if you put, say,
Speaker 1: for example, a human piano sonata in front of me,
Speaker 1: I would have a very hard time playing I could honestly,
Speaker 1: I could probably hear it in my head more easily
Speaker 1: than I could play it with my hands, because I haven't.
Speaker 1: I never really opened up those channels of reading and
Speaker 1: playing because it just kind of wasn't the way that
Speaker 1: I learned. So, but how did you learn to the
Speaker 1: rudimentary level you have the skill? I think it was
Speaker 1: it was a mixture of things. But my mom would
Speaker 1: would sit down and show me things, and it'd be like,
Speaker 1: this is how you write this, or you know, with
Speaker 1: a with a school assignment. And I remember being asked
Speaker 1: to harmonize a bark corral part when I was in school.
Speaker 1: This is like one of the activities that you do
Speaker 1: as a music student. And I was so I was
Speaker 1: so kind of I mean, I was interested to a point,
Speaker 1: but also I was quite impatient, and it was like yeah,
Speaker 1: bark alright, cool, yeah, but can we like can we
Speaker 1: just do something that makes us dance? Like can we
Speaker 1: can we have drums to this? Or like can we
Speaker 1: have basis? That's why I would do this at my
Speaker 1: own time, but at school they were these kind of
Speaker 1: established rules. So I bring them home and I would
Speaker 1: work it out, and you know, I learned. I learned
Speaker 1: how to read music a little bit enough to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's an airport, that's an a natural or whatever. But um,
Speaker 1: I think what I found exciting was sort of extrapped
Speaker 1: sing parts of that that I did like, and then
Speaker 1: just sort of assimilating them a bit like osmosis, and
Speaker 1: then and then just playing with them, like messing around
Speaker 1: and seeing how far I could stretch these things in
Speaker 1: the creative space. Uh, and how much I could I
Speaker 1: could learn from that? Okay, you talk about music school.
Speaker 1: Traditionally one goes to school at age five or six.
Speaker 1: Did you go to a regular school and then transfer
Speaker 1: was a musical school From day one. I was in
Speaker 1: a very regular schooling environment until I was I think
Speaker 1: about sixteen years old. I went to like a box
Speaker 1: standard primary school quite in my house. And I went
Speaker 1: to a box standard secondary school filled with every different
Speaker 1: kind of person you can imagine, which was actually, I
Speaker 1: think brilliant. I really enjoyed it. A sense of normalcy,
Speaker 1: I suppose. And then okay, but well, let's slow down
Speaker 1: there for a second. Good student, bad student? In general,
Speaker 1: I was a pretty good student, and I had the
Speaker 1: kind of mind that if I was interested in something,
Speaker 1: I would just go as deep as you could possibly
Speaker 1: go in a flash. And I was fast and I
Speaker 1: could pick things up quickly. Um. And if I wasn't interested,
Speaker 1: and I just wouldn't engage very much, you know. So
Speaker 1: I guess I had this sense of either falling in
Speaker 1: love with the concept or kind of disregarding it a
Speaker 1: little bit. But I was attentive, and I was interested
Speaker 1: in education in general, and I liked to bend whatever
Speaker 1: rules I could find, but never in a particularly disrespectful way. Okay,
Speaker 1: and were you a popular kid, were you a loner?
Speaker 1: What kind of kid were you? I suppose I was
Speaker 1: somewhere between the two. I wouldn't I wouldn't say I
Speaker 1: was embraced by the by the popular kids as such,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I don't speak alone there. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people and musicians I've spoken to too, has
Speaker 1: had trouble fitting in in that kind of a way.
Speaker 1: And I think I had such a vivid in a
Speaker 1: world and that was kind of like my priority in
Speaker 1: some ways, and I would spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: kind of designing things in my mind and building things
Speaker 1: and thinking about language and words. I would make little
Speaker 1: diagrams and I would draw a little pictures and things
Speaker 1: like that. But I think in a certain kind of
Speaker 1: way I was I was fairly content to not be
Speaker 1: fully understood, and I kind of got got used to
Speaker 1: the thing of, you know what, Jacobs off doing his
Speaker 1: own thing and he's in his own world. But but
Speaker 1: that's okay. And I think at home, my environment was
Speaker 1: very conducive with that, you know, and obviously that there
Speaker 1: is always a bit of dissonance when you've been given
Speaker 1: a lot of freedom in your own space and time
Speaker 1: and then step into an institution where the expectations you
Speaker 1: will absolutely conform. You know, you will do it the
Speaker 1: way that we want you to do it, and if
Speaker 1: you don't do it like that, then you know you're
Speaker 1: you're not going to make the cart you know, you
Speaker 1: won't get the grades. And and so there was this
Speaker 1: this funny dance that I kind of began to do,
Speaker 1: which honestly, I think that was quite good training for
Speaker 1: for the music industry in a certain respect and building
Speaker 1: a career, um because I think there's there's a certain
Speaker 1: amount of of kind of listening that you need to
Speaker 1: do when you're learning something, learning how something is done,
Speaker 1: and and a certain amount of I suppose I could say,
Speaker 1: conforming to what that means and what's right and wrong.
Speaker 1: And then there's also a certain amount of of adventuring
Speaker 1: and kind of willingness to to to be to be
Speaker 1: wrong or willingness to be unaccepted, which is which is
Speaker 1: thrilling as a child, and I think crucial as a musician. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I think that I try to strike a
Speaker 1: balance at school between the kind of yeah, I can
Speaker 1: talk to the popular kids and also like, I'm very
Speaker 1: comfortable to be on my own, and I think I was.
Speaker 1: I would I would say I was. I was more
Speaker 1: towards the kind of loaner side, if there's a spectrum
Speaker 1: of that, I was. I was more the person who
Speaker 1: was on his own or had a few key friends
Speaker 1: of few key people. Um, and I think when I
Speaker 1: left school, and I really when I left education in general,
Speaker 1: that was the first time where I could really kind
Speaker 1: of ride the right this this ship that I was building,
Speaker 1: this cathedral or whatever you want to call it, that
Speaker 1: I was making musically, and that kind of unlocked a
Speaker 1: lot of my energy and a lot of my kind
Speaker 1: of social confidence. I would say too, because it was
Speaker 1: like I could speak my own language. I didn't have
Speaker 1: to access people by trying to speak theres so much.
Speaker 1: And so that the time I spent with my own
Speaker 1: space and in my own time and started to tour,
Speaker 1: started to travel meeting incredible inspiring people and started to
Speaker 1: collaborate to like that whole process for me was almost
Speaker 1: like my my mind was given permission to just kind
Speaker 1: of be itself. And that was a major relief to me. Okay,
Speaker 1: so when you're going to school before musicals school, the
Speaker 1: music school, excuse me, before you come home from school
Speaker 1: you immediately get into music or did you have a
Speaker 1: life with sports and television and friends came over? Um, well,
Speaker 1: I guess it was a mixture, Like like every child,
Speaker 1: I had a few different things, you know, there was
Speaker 1: a while where I loved playing video games, and there
Speaker 1: was a while where I was super super into football
Speaker 1: or as USA soccer um. And I guess my favorite
Speaker 1: thing would be when interests converged, you know. So I
Speaker 1: remember I started a band in school and it was
Speaker 1: called the Improvisation Group, and you'd come in and you
Speaker 1: would improvise, and it was really cool when it was
Speaker 1: something I look forward to every weekend and I would
Speaker 1: bring those guys over and we jam in this room
Speaker 1: and we'd hang out and we'd you know, at that time,
Speaker 1: I was experimenting with with recording, and when I was
Speaker 1: seven years old, I got cubas and four years later
Speaker 1: I was given logic for my eleventh birthday, and man,
Speaker 1: that was exciting, and that really dominated my imagination and
Speaker 1: a lot of my after school time between the ages
Speaker 1: of about eleven to sixteen. I was obviously beyond that,
Speaker 1: but you know, it was such a such a canvas,
Speaker 1: such a wicked canvas. It was like, okay, so you know,
Speaker 1: I go to school, That's fine, I'll do the stuff,
Speaker 1: jump through the hoops in in whatever way it makes sense. Um.
Speaker 1: But then I would listen to this music and I
Speaker 1: would try and put the things together on my own
Speaker 1: and and I guess I almost saw myself as as
Speaker 1: much a producer as a musician. I didn't think about
Speaker 1: the difference between tho two things at that point. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize there really was one. It was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm musick ing, you know, I'm creating music, and I'm
Speaker 1: doing it in the way that makes sense with the
Speaker 1: materials I had around me. And I didn't have a
Speaker 1: great deal honestly. I had a one SM fifty eight microphone,
Speaker 1: and I had logic, and I have a little to
Speaker 1: input audio interface and and a computer and that was
Speaker 1: it basically until I was about nineteen, and so I
Speaker 1: wanted to find a way to to bring things to
Speaker 1: life that I was hearing in my mind. I wanted
Speaker 1: to play, and so what that kind of home studio
Speaker 1: canvas gave me was an opportunity to do just that. Okay,
Speaker 1: the improv group was in primary school, high school or
Speaker 1: was that once you were in music school? That that
Speaker 1: is I suppose you would say middle school, but we
Speaker 1: would say like ninth grades of year nine, year ten s. Okay,
Speaker 1: but you do have this public life where you're in
Speaker 1: the opera and there are a couple of other things.
Speaker 1: How does that happen? And what is that like? It
Speaker 1: was really interesting, honestly, because I would go to these
Speaker 1: auditions for things. And I guess it all started because
Speaker 1: I sang in a in a local choir when I
Speaker 1: was about eight years old. I sang um in a choir,
Speaker 1: which I loved. I just loved the feeling. It was like, man,
Speaker 1: this feels at home, surrounded by voices, you know, gorgeous
Speaker 1: harmonies like this is great. It's like a bit of
Speaker 1: a social it's it was cool. And so I think
Speaker 1: that in those kinds of camps, especially at that age,
Speaker 1: there there are people on the lookout for people who
Speaker 1: maybe like have have a special something that would apply
Speaker 1: to film and musicals and operas and things like that.
Speaker 1: And so there are a few different things that I
Speaker 1: was I was asked to do. And one thing I
Speaker 1: did I played the roll of tiny team in a
Speaker 1: in a musical film production of Christmas Carol with Kelsey Grammer.
Speaker 1: And it was super fun and I lived in Budapest
Speaker 1: for six months or so and it was great fun.
Speaker 1: I had had a crutch and I got to play
Speaker 1: the part. And I missed about a year of school
Speaker 1: and had a two term and that that was interesting.
Speaker 1: And what was What was I guess interesting looking back
Speaker 1: now is that it's sort of normalized the idea to
Speaker 1: me that I had this other world that was almost
Speaker 1: like my world that was different from the world that
Speaker 1: I was in when I was at school, and I
Speaker 1: was interesting with the others, and and that kind of duality.
Speaker 1: I mean, now now I think about it, that duality,
Speaker 1: I guess became quite important to me. But I never
Speaker 1: really felt like I really fitted into that world either,
Speaker 1: to be completely honest with you, like I I wasn't
Speaker 1: a theater kid, I wasn't a film kid. I found
Speaker 1: a lot of the kind of mentalities of that very
Speaker 1: very jarring. Indeed, you know, like, Wow, we're going to
Speaker 1: make you a star, and oh, you're gonna be so famous,
Speaker 1: and know it's lots of money and all, you know,
Speaker 1: and that stuff just wasn't That wasn't it for me.
Speaker 1: It wasn't exciting at all. I wanted to do stuff
Speaker 1: that I that I was engaged by. You were basically
Speaker 1: the first generation where these tools are natural. Okay, many
Speaker 1: people the music business they were doing analog recording. Maybe
Speaker 1: they had a digital recorder, but moving to pro tools,
Speaker 1: moving to logic was a big up and they took
Speaker 1: the mentality that they had from the analog imported it
Speaker 1: to digital. Whereas this is natural, a great percentage of
Speaker 1: this audience has never been in a recording studio, which
Speaker 1: at this point, into a great degree is at home.
Speaker 1: Can you explain a little bit to them how logic
Speaker 1: works and what that enabled you to do? Definitely, that's
Speaker 1: a great question. Um logic is a canvas for sounds,
Speaker 1: and it's a two D environment where you can place
Speaker 1: elements onto a canvas where one access is time and
Speaker 1: the other access is is your list of ingredients. And
Speaker 1: so say, for example, I have a logic session with
Speaker 1: ten tracks in it. And when I say a track,
Speaker 1: it's like a vertical row of sound or something that
Speaker 1: represents sounds. So I might have one track which is
Speaker 1: based guitar, and another track which is electric guitar, and
Speaker 1: another track which is um, you know, snare, and a
Speaker 1: track which is kicked, and maybe two tracks which are
Speaker 1: my my left and right overhead mike friends for the drums,
Speaker 1: and then maybe I'll have say five or six tracks
Speaker 1: of vocals where ones a lead vocal track, and then
Speaker 1: the others there are anyones are backing vocal tracks or
Speaker 1: other things, and I might have like a sort of
Speaker 1: SFX track, like a for you know, when all these
Speaker 1: kinds of sounds or whatever whatever, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: comes into my head. And so I guess in that respect,
Speaker 1: it's quite similar to what you could say is like
Speaker 1: an analog approach to building things up, you know, step
Speaker 1: by step by step. But what logic does, which I
Speaker 1: guess that doesn't do, is, first of all, it works
Speaker 1: at great speed. Well, it works at add as fast.
Speaker 1: It works as fast as as as you can go
Speaker 1: as a person, pretty much always fast as your your
Speaker 1: CPU allowed. Um. And so you know, if I imagine,
Speaker 1: for example, right now, I think, oh, I can hear
Speaker 1: in my mind, or if I'm working on a song,
Speaker 1: might I think, you know what I want to I
Speaker 1: want to hear like a gospel choir. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well then I'll make it sixty tracks and I'll seeing
Speaker 1: all the voices of the gospel choir. And at the
Speaker 1: first time I tried that, it sounded horrendous, and then
Speaker 1: I figured out, okay, so I need to turn the
Speaker 1: game down a bit because it's distorting, or need to
Speaker 1: put a compressor on it so that it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: over the top, and I can control it. And so
Speaker 1: with logic you can do things like put a number
Speaker 1: of tracks inside a group of tracks, and and so
Speaker 1: almost like make it into a folder like a a subgroup,
Speaker 1: and then you can apply to that subgroup all sorts
Speaker 1: of audio effects. So, for example, you can edit the
Speaker 1: EQ of the track. And when I say EQ, I
Speaker 1: sort of mean like a frequency graph where the high
Speaker 1: frequencies are on the right and the low frequencies are
Speaker 1: on the left. And so say I'm recording a vocal,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to sound really like sparkly, you know,
Speaker 1: like like an area on a grande lead, Then I
Speaker 1: would crank right up the high end of that vocal
Speaker 1: and it would sound really sparkly. Or if I wanted
Speaker 1: it to be like have how much of low and
Speaker 1: I would turn up the lowan And so you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, when I was a teenager,
Speaker 1: I was touching this stuff. At the first time, I
Speaker 1: didn't have a clue what compressed was. It never clue
Speaker 1: what a limited was, or what knee or threshold or ratio.
Speaker 1: All this stuff but I was messing around with them
Speaker 1: and just kind of tangibly finding my way through. And
Speaker 1: you learn what what reverb does, and then you learn
Speaker 1: what delay does and the differentiation between those two, and
Speaker 1: then you learn about sending a track to a bus,
Speaker 1: and then the bus can, say, for example, be a
Speaker 1: set of plug ins. And and so I guess it
Speaker 1: almost encouraged me to think in a in a musical sense,
Speaker 1: it encouraged me to think in layers, encouraged me to
Speaker 1: to visualize my music in this kind of as a
Speaker 1: as these these vertical structures of sound with no limits.
Speaker 1: And then another amazing thing about logic is that it's
Speaker 1: got a bunch of stock sounds which are actually pretty
Speaker 1: pretty killing. You know. So if I if I want
Speaker 1: to hear like a timpany, if it's like did you
Speaker 1: and I think like, oh, timpany, probably cool. You know.
Speaker 1: I listened to pet sounds and I think, oh, slave bells,
Speaker 1: what what let's pull, you know, pull pull the material
Speaker 1: from my imagination. There will be a timpany. There will
Speaker 1: be a slave in logic. That might sound a little
Speaker 1: bit middy, but it would it will probably sound pretty realistic.
Speaker 1: And what it gave me as a teenager, and what
Speaker 1: it still gives me today is the opportunity to deeply
Speaker 1: explore what's possible, completely regardless of what's normal. And so
Speaker 1: I would be combining all sorts of unusual sounds, you know,
Speaker 1: like banjo, but I'll put boundo through a guitar amp
Speaker 1: or kick drum, but I had an infinite reverb to it,
Speaker 1: and then I side chain that to us you know,
Speaker 1: all these other things. And I didn't think it was
Speaker 1: particularly odd at the time. I thought, well, this is
Speaker 1: what I've got, and I'm going to start playing with it,
Speaker 1: in the same way that if you give a child
Speaker 1: lean or a piano, they go, okay, what does this
Speaker 1: thing do? Bing bing bing? Okay, I kind of understand
Speaker 1: the materials. I'm bored or I'm not bored, you know.
Speaker 1: And so what logic was was good for for me
Speaker 1: was thinking it was it was so infinite and so
Speaker 1: encouraging to me in the sense that pretty much, if
Speaker 1: I imagine something in my mind and whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: in whatever degree of resolution I was familiar with at
Speaker 1: that point, you know how how much resolution my understanding had,
Speaker 1: you know, how much depth it had or whatever, I
Speaker 1: could pretty much bring it to life. You know, I
Speaker 1: want to be in a big space, want to be
Speaker 1: in a small space. That's reither. I want to hit
Speaker 1: really hard on the on the stub, that's EQ. Or
Speaker 1: I want to sparkle, that's eq or you know, add
Speaker 1: a decoration or make it sound weird or distort it
Speaker 1: or whatever. And these words were kind of completely unfamiliar
Speaker 1: at first. But through playing, just playing with logic with
Speaker 1: no expectations, no guidance, no particular assignments, it was just
Speaker 1: a sense of learning how exciting it was to just
Speaker 1: to create, just for the sake of purely creation. One
Speaker 1: of the great things about these computer platforms is editing
Speaker 1: in loops are so much easier than on analog. You
Speaker 1: don't have to literally slice the tape and figure out
Speaker 1: where on the tape. To what degree did you take
Speaker 1: advantage of that process? Um a lot. I would say
Speaker 1: looping was a particular thing that existed that I saw online.
Speaker 1: People would do live looping gigs, you know, and it
Speaker 1: would be like, oh, you know, play four bars on
Speaker 1: the guitar and now I'm can add drums or whatever.
Speaker 1: That always that to me always felt slightly limited. But
Speaker 1: but I love to be able to copy and paste
Speaker 1: and cut. You know. It's like you think about Microsoft
Speaker 1: Word and you think, Okay, I'll sketch out an idea
Speaker 1: here for a paragraph and move on to the next paragraph,
Speaker 1: and then I'll realize that I need a bit of
Speaker 1: the first idea for the second and you go, you know,
Speaker 1: you you cut and paste, and oh it's just brilliant.
Speaker 1: I loved it. I loved the ease of it. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: first the standard was pro Tools, then Apple purchase Logic.
Speaker 1: What is really the difference, and why would you prefer
Speaker 1: one or the other. That's a good question. Um, Well,
Speaker 1: pro Tools is slight. I would probably say pro Tools
Speaker 1: is slightly more powerful if you're editing purely audio, but
Speaker 1: Logic is powerful for most other things. So Logic is
Speaker 1: much more customizable. For example, So one thing I love
Speaker 1: about Logic is that you can change the keyboard shortcuts
Speaker 1: to do whatever you want. And so I, for example,
Speaker 1: have along the numbers all of the tools that I
Speaker 1: use most often, so cart and fade and splice and whatever,
Speaker 1: and I like I like being able to to to
Speaker 1: customize that. I think that's a fantastic feature. Um. Logic
Speaker 1: is also pretty good for MIDI. And when I say middy,
Speaker 1: I mean you know I mentioned the timpani and the
Speaker 1: and the sleigh bells and these instruments that aren't real
Speaker 1: I can play those things in into logic in a
Speaker 1: way that's I think far easier than my experience with
Speaker 1: pro tools has been. You can do it in pro Tools,
Speaker 1: but essentially they're they're pretty similar. You know, there are
Speaker 1: two different outlets of the same idea, which is, how
Speaker 1: do you give someone a set of tools to record
Speaker 1: and sculpt audio in a digital environment? So how do
Speaker 1: you end up going to music school? Huh? Um? I was.
Speaker 1: I was a little doubtful about going to musicool at all.
Speaker 1: I mean I was. I got to the age of
Speaker 1: fifteen and I did my g c s c s,
Speaker 1: which are the major high school exams in in in Britain,
Speaker 1: and I was a bit tall, and I didn't know
Speaker 1: whether to stay at that school or to move away,
Speaker 1: and part of me kind of felt, I think it's
Speaker 1: actually time to move away, um, And so there were
Speaker 1: a few different options and I went. I ended up
Speaker 1: going to the school called the Purcell School, which is
Speaker 1: a school basically for classical musicians. And I really had
Speaker 1: my hesitations because I wasn't classical musician. I wasn't really
Speaker 1: thinking I would particularly fit in, but there was a
Speaker 1: lot of appeal, particularly around like what was acceptable to
Speaker 1: spend time doing and you know when when you were
Speaker 1: sick for more. In Britain you have free periods and
Speaker 1: you have time off and whatever. And at the Perseel
Speaker 1: School there were rooms filled with computers with logic on them,
Speaker 1: can you imagine? So I could go right straight from
Speaker 1: you know, straight from my English literature class, straight onto
Speaker 1: logic and skept something out. And the other thing that
Speaker 1: was cool by that school, whether there were a few things,
Speaker 1: but one was that there were always musicians around to
Speaker 1: to try stuff out. So if I wanted to try
Speaker 1: my hand at right in a piece for violin and
Speaker 1: piano or I could do that. Or if I wanted
Speaker 1: to write pro right piece for choir, which is really
Speaker 1: like the thing I was most interested in was writing
Speaker 1: for voices, I could give it a shot and there
Speaker 1: it was all. There would always be a choir there
Speaker 1: to be like, yeah, we'll give it a go, like
Speaker 1: we haven't got anything else to do. And so I
Speaker 1: enjoyed the ease of that. I found the kind of that.
Speaker 1: I found the lack of focus on academia difficult to
Speaker 1: make the transition to because I loved using my mind, um,
Speaker 1: you know, with languages especially. I loved I studied German.
Speaker 1: I loved that so much. I loved English, and I
Speaker 1: love stretching my understanding and analyzing things and talking about things,
Speaker 1: and and so I found that the psychology at the
Speaker 1: Personal School was was far removed from that. It wasn't
Speaker 1: an academic place, and so that the sort of intellectual
Speaker 1: speed of my mind found it a little bit kind
Speaker 1: of just a little dry. But I loved just the
Speaker 1: space and time that I was gifted just to explore,
Speaker 1: you know. It was like more space to explore, more
Speaker 1: time to explore, more outlets to explore. And that was
Speaker 1: also the moment that I first kind of became interested
Speaker 1: in jazz. And I heard jazz before, but but I
Speaker 1: at that point I was crushing on harmony, like big time,
Speaker 1: like musical harmony, like chords, and what cause could do?
Speaker 1: I just I was losing my mind over acapella groups
Speaker 1: like Take six and Singers Unlimited and all these amazing
Speaker 1: you know, high lows and and all that stuff. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking man, this is this is amazing. And
Speaker 1: I listened to groups like you know, Steely Dan and
Speaker 1: and and people like that, you know, using these vocal
Speaker 1: stacks and stuff, and it was acceptable to me. I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: so that must be acceptable to write pop songs, to
Speaker 1: write you know, groovy song like the songwriting including this language.
Speaker 1: But I I was drawn into into the excuse me,
Speaker 1: into the jazz world through my kind of thirst to
Speaker 1: learn more about musical harmony and what I learned about
Speaker 1: about jazz coming into it really from from cold, like
Speaker 1: I didn't know any tunes. I had no technique on
Speaker 1: the piano at all. When you when you play the piano,
Speaker 1: it turns out it's actually helpful too. So when you're
Speaker 1: when you're playing a scale, to move your thumb underneath
Speaker 1: your fingers instead of just hopping up and down with
Speaker 1: your hand. You actually it's a fluid motion. I've never
Speaker 1: been shown that because I've never went to went to school,
Speaker 1: I never learned. So there a few a few kind
Speaker 1: of key moments for me, some some lessons, like one
Speaker 1: off lessons I had with piano players who said like, hey, Jacob,
Speaker 1: you know it's possible to do this, don't you or like,
Speaker 1: have you ever considered this particular thing? And I was
Speaker 1: so thirsty, I was so excited, and so jazz was
Speaker 1: a place that was very mysterious to me. But the
Speaker 1: cool thing about it was that people were improvising, which
Speaker 1: I loved the idea of people were playing chords, which
Speaker 1: I love the idea, but they were playing the chords
Speaker 1: in a in a melodic way. So it wasn't like
Speaker 1: cord cord chord. It was you know, a better better
Speaker 1: if they haven't never did, and that's the chord. But
Speaker 1: you have to understand that in a kind of vertical
Speaker 1: way rather than a horizontal way. And so you had
Speaker 1: these musicians who were improvising chords over time and space.
Speaker 1: And then obviously I realized that this language has been
Speaker 1: is about a hundred years old, and people have been
Speaker 1: you know, exploring and expanding this for yeah, for literally
Speaker 1: a hundred years, you know, from sort of Scott job
Speaker 1: playing all the way up to miles and the way
Speaker 1: up to you know, to to to the present day.
Speaker 1: And that there's so many kind of eras and so
Speaker 1: many magical spaces that that language has has operated. And
Speaker 1: I was I was kind of hooked for a couple
Speaker 1: of years. So when I joined the Personal School, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think. I think it was the first study composer,
Speaker 1: which which I really felt out of place because everyone
Speaker 1: was talking about counterpoint and bark and notation and I
Speaker 1: was talking about logic and mixing and songwriting. And then
Speaker 1: I was the second study jazz piano player, and again
Speaker 1: it was like, I don't know if I'm really a
Speaker 1: jazz piano player. I sure like the idea of playing
Speaker 1: the piano in a cool way, and I thought I
Speaker 1: was the third study singer and a fourth study double
Speaker 1: bass player. And so I had this great, big tiered
Speaker 1: system where I would go to these lessons and some
Speaker 1: of them I I just didn't get at all, and
Speaker 1: I was very bored, and some of them were really
Speaker 1: changed my life. And I was just given a chance
Speaker 1: to to kind of explore. And what it felt like
Speaker 1: to me was that I was already chasing stuff. I
Speaker 1: was already fascinated by a language. So what that space
Speaker 1: named me to do was just to extract the things
Speaker 1: that I liked. It was like, Okay, I get that
Speaker 1: I'm in school. I get that there are certain box
Speaker 1: have to take, but aside from that, in Jacob Land.
Speaker 1: I think I'll use this chord and this called inn,
Speaker 1: this agorithm, and I like the idea of polarizing of
Speaker 1: whatever here, and I like this piece of and I
Speaker 1: was just I just collected, you know, I collected it
Speaker 1: in in a conscious way, things that I was enjoying. Okay,
Speaker 1: people would say, and many do, the jazz is dead.
Speaker 1: They say rock is dead. To someone who is a
Speaker 1: relatively young consumer under the age of thirty, how do
Speaker 1: you sell jazz to them? I'm talking about Jacob, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about literally in the store. How do you
Speaker 1: get them excited about this sound? I've got two answers
Speaker 1: to that question. I guess the first would be that
Speaker 1: in jazz more is possible than in any other genre
Speaker 1: you could say genre, because I think that what jazz
Speaker 1: celebrates is a sense of freedom. It celebrates freedom thematically,
Speaker 1: it celebrates freedom musically, that celebrates music. It's freedom cerebrally,
Speaker 1: celebrates freedom spiritually if you really listen to the music
Speaker 1: and listen to the stories behind it. Um And I
Speaker 1: think that for anyone who's wanting to learn what music
Speaker 1: is about, out and understand a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the kind of the art of of what these forces
Speaker 1: can do. I think you start with jazz, and my
Speaker 1: dear friend Quincy Jones often says jazz is the classical
Speaker 1: music of pop, which I like, and I often use
Speaker 1: that because I think that in a certain kind of way.
Speaker 1: You know, if you learn class music, you grow up
Speaker 1: in classical music. It kind of ends in class of music.
Speaker 1: But if you learn, if you learn about pop music
Speaker 1: and you want to go deep, you want to go thorough,
Speaker 1: jazz is the place to be because that's the umbrella
Speaker 1: underwe all of those forces make sense. In jazz. You
Speaker 1: learn about pocket, you learn about groove, you learn about time,
Speaker 1: you learn about improvisation and stretching things, you learn about
Speaker 1: chords and melody, you learn about integrity and taste and
Speaker 1: and patients and all all this all the tools that
Speaker 1: you need to be a to be a musician kind
Speaker 1: of in many different respects. You can take that training
Speaker 1: out that's on the playing side. On the listening side,
Speaker 1: many people will say this is discord and I don't
Speaker 1: understand it. How does a listener gain knowledge and find
Speaker 1: this music appealing? Well, I think perhaps it's about letting
Speaker 1: go of the idea that you need to understand it
Speaker 1: to enjoy it. Um. I think if if people are
Speaker 1: used to understanding music on face value, which would make sense.
Speaker 1: You know, you listen to the radio and it's like
Speaker 1: someone will be singing about something that you can probably
Speaker 1: relate to and and doing it in a way musically
Speaker 1: that where there are kind of primary colors or I
Speaker 1: think things are clear. That's one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: love pot music so much because it's so clear, and
Speaker 1: jazz is almost like the opposite of that. But I
Speaker 1: think that there's a real liberation in letting go of
Speaker 1: needing to follow it and just kind of feeling it,
Speaker 1: which is important. And I think that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of catharsis that exists within the world of jazz um
Speaker 1: you know, from from really kind of completely free jazz
Speaker 1: with no time two quite quite organized structure jazz within
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately defined spaces, which is which is glorious
Speaker 1: and I think which can teach you more about humanity
Speaker 1: and the human condition and what it really means to
Speaker 1: be a person than than listening to a kind of
Speaker 1: manufactured storytelling style, even though that's also importan and I
Speaker 1: just think it's a it's an important part of the
Speaker 1: of the musical world to understand, and I think it's
Speaker 1: wonderful when you kind of let go of it a bit. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how long do you go to school? How does
Speaker 1: school end? Well? I was at the Post School for
Speaker 1: two years um and the sort of natural progression of
Speaker 1: events from there was I went to the Royal Academy Music,
Speaker 1: which is where my mom did that conducting when I
Speaker 1: was two years old. And actually her father, Derek Colin,
Speaker 1: my my grandfather, he taught there too. He was the
Speaker 1: youngest ever professor at the Academy. So I was super
Speaker 1: excited to go there. It's like, wow, this feels like
Speaker 1: I'm continuing a lineage or a legacy of sorts. And
Speaker 1: I went there as a as a jazz piano student,
Speaker 1: and I had again, I had a dicostomy. Do I
Speaker 1: want to study composition or do I want to study jazz?
Speaker 1: And composition felt kind of quite high high, kind of
Speaker 1: highbrow and not very tangible, but it was interesting to me.
Speaker 1: But jazz felt like I was going to do something physical,
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna play, I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna meet,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna jam. So jazz was what I decided to do.
Speaker 1: And it was a four year degree. It's a tiny
Speaker 1: course there was I mean, there were eight people in
Speaker 1: my year and that was a big gear. So I
Speaker 1: was the only piano player in the whole year. And
Speaker 1: we learned standards, and we learned about improvising. We learned
Speaker 1: a little bit about arranging, and we learned about rhythm
Speaker 1: and stuff. And at this point, I was, I was
Speaker 1: so engaged in my own world that I was. I
Speaker 1: guess I was caught between these two different psychologies because
Speaker 1: on the one hand, I was so thirsty and ready
Speaker 1: to learn. But I found a lot of the harmony
Speaker 1: that I was being taught to be not particularly inspiring.
Speaker 1: And I found a lot of the structures that existed,
Speaker 1: like the jazz structures, Like we learned the two and
Speaker 1: then we improvised, then we come back. I thought, like,
Speaker 1: why does this language need to apply to only jazz?
Speaker 1: You know, why can't I take a chord, like a
Speaker 1: spicy chord and apply that to something else? And that
Speaker 1: my mind has always worked like that. But I was,
Speaker 1: I was interested in it, and it was it was
Speaker 1: cool to meet people and to play with people, and
Speaker 1: you know, it was just a fascinating time in my life.
Speaker 1: And halfway through that degree, things got kind of much
Speaker 1: crazier with with the videos I was up learned to YouTube,
Speaker 1: and kind of throughout the last I suppose three years
Speaker 1: of the story where we've got to in the story,
Speaker 1: I was I was uploading, you know, YouTube videos from home. Things,
Speaker 1: I was making, things I was interested in I would like,
Speaker 1: I want. What I love to do most was to
Speaker 1: was to take someone's song that I liked to just
Speaker 1: twist it and reinvent it and and and you know,
Speaker 1: arrange it, really cover it. And so I did that
Speaker 1: with a few different songs, and one of those was
Speaker 1: Stevie Wonders Don't You Worry About a Thing, which I
Speaker 1: love that tune, and I did this this you know
Speaker 1: Jacobean twist on it and and the chords were all
Speaker 1: all funny and twisted and complex and deepen and an
Speaker 1: unusual and then I played a few different instruments too,
Speaker 1: and and things, and it was it was a real
Speaker 1: challenge for me because I've never done anything remotely like
Speaker 1: that before. But I thought, this is gonna be fun.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna learn something from doing this. And I filmed
Speaker 1: it too, and this that was another thing I was
Speaker 1: just starting to do, was I put film each instrument.
Speaker 1: I filmed the base, and I filmed the guitar and
Speaker 1: the percussion, all the different Jacob voice faces, and I
Speaker 1: put them in this mosaic and and then I pressed upload.
Speaker 1: The day after I uploaded, don't worry about a thing.
Speaker 1: Was just it's just crazy because I woke up and
Speaker 1: it was like a hundred thousand people have senior video Jacob,
Speaker 1: and you know, I went into Gmail and it was
Speaker 1: like Quincy Jones, you know, an email from Quincy Jones.
Speaker 1: I thought, God, that's just is that even real? You know?
Speaker 1: Is someone is someone messing with me deeply? Or is
Speaker 1: this actually Quincy Jones? And I wrote back and it
Speaker 1: was Quincy Jones and we got on Skype and we
Speaker 1: hung out a little bit, which is which is super cool.
Speaker 1: And I got an email from Herbie Hancock and email
Speaker 1: from from Tick six. So I mentioned and a few
Speaker 1: a few people that were just very important figures for me,
Speaker 1: especially with it that jazz moment of my life. But
Speaker 1: someone like Quincy had defined, you know, basically at that
Speaker 1: point up to up to two decades of musical education
Speaker 1: from his work with arranging for Frank Sinatra to you know,
Speaker 1: producing m J. And I mean, it's just so many
Speaker 1: different things that that he had had his hand him
Speaker 1: and so it was amazing to meet Quincy. And that
Speaker 1: was all happening in my second year at the Academy.
Speaker 1: And so at the end of my second year at
Speaker 1: the Academy, I had this kind of decision to make
Speaker 1: because this career of mine was kind of taking off
Speaker 1: and I hadn't planned the career. I hadn't planned to
Speaker 1: have a big career anything. I just thought I was
Speaker 1: making stuff I liked and and suddenly it was like
Speaker 1: there was this great, big adventure to be had, and
Speaker 1: it was like come over to La because there's this
Speaker 1: thing that we like you to do, or come over here.
Speaker 1: I'd like took you to work with me. And so
Speaker 1: at the end of my second year, I bowed out
Speaker 1: of the Academy and I started to full time tackle
Speaker 1: this this thing. And from that moment on, man, it's
Speaker 1: it's been pretty pretty NonStop. Okay, when you did this,
Speaker 1: when you shot the initial video for Don't You Worry
Speaker 1: About a Thing, did you literally was at a one
Speaker 1: man b and you both shot it and played it
Speaker 1: or do you have anybody else helping you? It was me, okay,
Speaker 1: it was you know, you're of the generation prior to
Speaker 1: uploading that. Were you uploading in your life other videos?
Speaker 1: Were you a social media guy? Not at all. No,
Speaker 1: I really didn't like social media at all. Um, And yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole thing was was was funny because on the
Speaker 1: one hand, like I've never really I've had a little
Speaker 1: bit of of a of an a version of sorts
Speaker 1: to people who just try and sell themselves all the time.
Speaker 1: It's just like, ah, I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I really like that. And I felt that when
Speaker 1: I was eight years old going to audition for these
Speaker 1: films and operas and it would be like these these
Speaker 1: kids with their mothers and they'll be like, oh my
Speaker 1: son's this and that, and oh we is big and important.
Speaker 1: I you just done this. It's just like, wow, I
Speaker 1: don't care, Like I don't want to know. I don't
Speaker 1: that's not my currency at all. Like it's great, but
Speaker 1: but like what is it? What's the thing? Like the
Speaker 1: thing is what I'm interested in. And so social media
Speaker 1: for me was odd because on the one hand, I've
Speaker 1: always loved connecting with people and it's something that brings
Speaker 1: me a great amount of joy and a great amount
Speaker 1: of purpose. But I never really liked the sense of
Speaker 1: kind of like YouTubers, you know, the currency of YouTube.
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, you know, I'm me and I'm living
Speaker 1: my life and you're a part of it. And so
Speaker 1: I kind of kept a lot of my world completely
Speaker 1: private from social media. And it was more just kind
Speaker 1: of like, here's the thing I made, and here's another
Speaker 1: thing I made, and there's another thing I made. And
Speaker 1: I didn't really I didn't feel the need to unpack
Speaker 1: it or talk about it or sell it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I posted these things once on Facebook and that was it,
Speaker 1: you know, and between I know that, between don't you
Speaker 1: know about a thing? And that my next video was
Speaker 1: snating rhythm, it was I think eight months and I
Speaker 1: didn't post once once at all, and I just thought,
Speaker 1: I don't need to. I've got nothing, there's nothing particularly
Speaker 1: to say, you know, I don't feel they need to
Speaker 1: engage people. I just I want to focus on what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. Okay, how many times you do you you uploaded
Speaker 1: to YouTube anything, whether it be you making a joke,
Speaker 1: you're playing football. Before were you YouTube savvy? Before you
Speaker 1: put up don't you Worry about a thing? I think
Speaker 1: I was about eight videos deep, or so eight or
Speaker 1: nine videos deep, and there were each iterations of a
Speaker 1: of a similar concept. But you know that. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: did a couple of kind of interesting, odd electronic things
Speaker 1: at first, and then I started doing the multiple face thing.
Speaker 1: And I arranged I've told every Little Start, which is
Speaker 1: a Jerome Current tune, And then I arranged Isn't She Lovely?
Speaker 1: Which is a Stevie tune, and and I arranged I
Speaker 1: saw three ships, and I arranged um over a beautiful morning,
Speaker 1: and and and a few of the things that but
Speaker 1: don't You Worry was the first time it kind of
Speaker 1: struck a chord. I suppose, Okay, do you have any
Speaker 1: idea what caused a hundred thousand people to watch it
Speaker 1: was just purely viral or did someone famous pick up
Speaker 1: on it? Or was it listed as you know, video
Speaker 1: of the day somewhere. Um well, I'm still not exactly sure,
Speaker 1: but I think that what I sensed, very keenly was
Speaker 1: that this wasn't just kind of like random people. It
Speaker 1: was musicians who are listening to it. It felt I
Speaker 1: felt like I tapped into some kind of musicians community worldwide,
Speaker 1: where something about the way that I was sharing the
Speaker 1: ideas and the musical choices I was making, that was
Speaker 1: the thing that I think took people by surprise. And
Speaker 1: I didn't really plan that, and I didn't think too
Speaker 1: much of it myself, because it was, as far as
Speaker 1: I was concerned, it was, you know, a fully up
Speaker 1: to date Jacob understanding of music, like this is my
Speaker 1: understanding music. This is just this is where I'm at.
Speaker 1: This is nothing spectacular other than what I'm thinking. But
Speaker 1: I think that specifically the harmony in that particular arrangement
Speaker 1: was was quite bold. And I know for I know
Speaker 1: for example that when I spoke to Intae, his first
Speaker 1: question where his first question was how many girlfriends you've got?
Speaker 1: And I said twenty seven and he was like, oh
Speaker 1: really man. And then the second question was where'd you
Speaker 1: get those chords? And I sort of, you know, it's Quincy.
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't know Benjamin Britain because I kind
Speaker 1: of got the from Bendorm of Britain in some ways.
Speaker 1: And I said, oh, take six five, and I checked
Speaker 1: out a couple of names, and he like laughed and
Speaker 1: he was like, man, I don't. I don't know how
Speaker 1: you did it. I don't. I don't know how you
Speaker 1: got to those conclusions like it's just mind blowing, man,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. And and that was really validating for me because,
Speaker 1: as I said, harmony was so important to me, and
Speaker 1: I really really loved it, and I loved pushing it
Speaker 1: and it felt like the musicians of the world sensed
Speaker 1: something in that video. But but and part of it
Speaker 1: was a musical thing. I think maybe part of it
Speaker 1: was also just a style of communication, which at that
Speaker 1: time it wasn't particularly rife. You know, like you had
Speaker 1: people doing split screen videos sometimes, but they were kind
Speaker 1: of comedy people or or they were you know, it
Speaker 1: was it was like a different a different currency, whereas
Speaker 1: I think I was doing something that was sort of
Speaker 1: purely musical. It wasn't trying to be anything more than
Speaker 1: just musical. And my feeling is, and I'm probably not
Speaker 1: right past to ask, but my feeling is that something
Speaker 1: about that as a statement, as a pure statement, struck
Speaker 1: some kind of chord with with people. Okay, how long
Speaker 1: after that initial time you're hearing from Q before you
Speaker 1: put out your first album in my room? Mm hm,
Speaker 1: three years? I suppose. So what happens in their three
Speaker 1: year period. Well, um, I went over to Montrose, Switzerland
Speaker 1: to the Jazz Festival, and I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: been there, that's just beautiful, beautiful place. And Quincy kind
Speaker 1: of rules the roost. He is kind of like king
Speaker 1: of montro And so I went over there to meet
Speaker 1: to to meet the great man, and I met Herbie too,
Speaker 1: and Quincy, you know, Quincy what was just so excited
Speaker 1: about what I was doing, and he kind of offered
Speaker 1: to be my my manager and to represent in terms
Speaker 1: of management. And I was extremely flattered and and really thrilled.
Speaker 1: And I was also a little uncertain because I've always
Speaker 1: done things kind of in my own time and on
Speaker 1: my own terms, and I I really was not about
Speaker 1: to say like, yeah, I'm going to go and be
Speaker 1: a big star. I knew that I needed to just
Speaker 1: do what I wanted to do. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: I met Quincy's team, who were just amazing people, and
Speaker 1: I got to know them a little bit more, and
Speaker 1: the kind of consensus that we came to was like,
Speaker 1: let's just be friends for a year before we sign
Speaker 1: any contracts, before we do anything. I just want to
Speaker 1: I just want to explore the thing. I want to
Speaker 1: take time, I want to get I want to I
Speaker 1: want to refine what I'm doing and and they were,
Speaker 1: they were amazing about that, and they really gave me
Speaker 1: a space. But you know, things started to come in,
Speaker 1: like I scored a commercial for Beats, which was really
Speaker 1: exciting at that time, and um, I I started to
Speaker 1: think about how I would tour um and even before
Speaker 1: in my room, I was thinking about at a tour
Speaker 1: and I was, I was gifted this concert, this gig
Speaker 1: that that Quincy kind of orchestrated for me. That was
Speaker 1: I was. I opened up much of justice will for
Speaker 1: Herbie Handcock and Chick Career two just giants, legends and
Speaker 1: heroes of mine. And I had this thirty minute window
Speaker 1: and it was like, Jake, if you want to come
Speaker 1: to montro and open up for these guys in some way,
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, I'd love to, but I have
Speaker 1: not a clue I'm going to do this. And you know,
Speaker 1: we we we spoke as a team like what what
Speaker 1: could we do it? I could bring a band over,
Speaker 1: I did not. I did not want to bring a
Speaker 1: jazz band. I didn't want to be a jazz kid.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do do the jazz thing. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to to do that, and I thought I
Speaker 1: could play on my own on the piano, but I
Speaker 1: thought there must be something more dynamic I can do
Speaker 1: that could that could kind of reflect more of my process,
Speaker 1: you know, one man band type process. And out of
Speaker 1: the blue drops a Facebook message from an m I
Speaker 1: T PhD student whose name is Ben Bloomberg, and Ben says,
Speaker 1: hey just saw your video. Don't you worry about a thing?
Speaker 1: And I think it's beautiful. And I make stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: I work with the Orc, I've worked with Image and Heap,
Speaker 1: I work with okay Go, and I built I built
Speaker 1: a robot opera for a composer called Todd Mcover. And
Speaker 1: you know, I like building stuff. And have you ever
Speaker 1: thought a boy building stuff? And if you have, like,
Speaker 1: give me a call. Let's jump on Skype. And it
Speaker 1: was one of those crazy moments where it's like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is exactly what I need to be doing right now.
Speaker 1: So Ben, when I jumped on Skype, we had like
Speaker 1: a five hour marathon thing, and I had lists and
Speaker 1: lists and lists of stuff I had always wanted to
Speaker 1: build from, you know, intelligent harmonic systems, to tiered rhythmic
Speaker 1: manipulation tools, to a one man's show with the circle
Speaker 1: of instruments, to a vocal harmonizer where I could sing
Speaker 1: harmonies and play notes and out would come the harmonies.
Speaker 1: And Ben was Ben was really amazing, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's just start with the harmonizer and
Speaker 1: see how it feels. So I flew over to Boston
Speaker 1: a few months later, and a few things happened in
Speaker 1: that trip. One was I did my first ever master
Speaker 1: class at Berkeley, which is a school of music in Boston,
Speaker 1: and it was it was the first time I've ever
Speaker 1: seen anyone ever in the real world who was a
Speaker 1: fan of mine. I've never seen anything like it because
Speaker 1: it was all invisible from here from London. It was
Speaker 1: like this random thing that was happening in a different universe.
Speaker 1: And and the day before I went to Boston, I
Speaker 1: got a call from someone at Berkeley said, I heard
Speaker 1: you're coming to Boston, that you want to come to
Speaker 1: a class and be like guessing people together. And I
Speaker 1: got in that room and like the entire room was
Speaker 1: packed so full that none could breathe, and it's spilled
Speaker 1: out into the corridor and all along the thing, and
Speaker 1: I was completely unexpected. I mean, you have to understand,
Speaker 1: I had no I had no reference point for what
Speaker 1: the real world was like. I'd never even traveled abroad
Speaker 1: on my own, Like, this is my first flight alone
Speaker 1: away from home. And I did this class and it
Speaker 1: felt crazy to have people that kind of spoke my
Speaker 1: language that were interested in I went to see them.
Speaker 1: We built this vocal harmonizer. It was amazing. He's a brilliant,
Speaker 1: brilliant minded guy. M We then sort of graduated that
Speaker 1: idea into this one man show which we started to build.
Speaker 1: And essentially what that was was a circle musical instruments
Speaker 1: with with loopers that connected them, so you had a
Speaker 1: double bass of grand piano, you had percussion, keyboards, melodica, guitar,
Speaker 1: Me and my vocal harmonies are at the center. And
Speaker 1: that that show was kind of sketched out for this
Speaker 1: Montro gig. And that was in July of two thousand
Speaker 1: and fifteen, I believe, And so I went over to Montro.
Speaker 1: That's only five years ago, I suppose, but I went
Speaker 1: over over there and I did the gig. I did
Speaker 1: that the thirty minute gig, and we've never even run
Speaker 1: the show through. It was such a last minute thing,
Speaker 1: and it was really really really exciting and completely new.
Speaker 1: I haven't even really done gigs before. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like my first gig, you know. And so I went
Speaker 1: there and I experienced that feeling of like three thousand people,
Speaker 1: no one knew who I was, and and and it
Speaker 1: was it was crazy. And there was Quincy Jones her
Speaker 1: handcocked chick career, and Rashida Jones just sitting on the
Speaker 1: side of the stage just kind of looking and it
Speaker 1: was just a crazy moment, you know, really really crazy moment.
Speaker 1: And from that moment onwards, it kind of flipped and
Speaker 1: suddenly I think I felt like I had something to do,
Speaker 1: and so I did. I did some gigs, I did
Speaker 1: more gigs, I traveled just in different places, and we
Speaker 1: put together a little bit of a touring crew for
Speaker 1: the one man show. We we designed a visual element
Speaker 1: to it too, where there were these two connect cameras
Speaker 1: xbox cameras which captured my three D skeletal movements and
Speaker 1: so when I looped something, I would step away from
Speaker 1: an instrument and you'd have a Jacob incarnation on stage
Speaker 1: playing that instrument in visual loop to go with what
Speaker 1: you were hearing. So it's this kind of audio visual thing,
Speaker 1: and it was it was super fun. And one year
Speaker 1: later I released Him in My Room, the album which
Speaker 1: I made over the course of about three months between
Speaker 1: those two summers, and those are kind of like my
Speaker 1: first songs, and it was really gratifying and really exciting,
Speaker 1: and I learned times from it, and and so it
Speaker 1: was this thing where it's like, well, I guess I've
Speaker 1: got fans, I guess I've got an album. I guess
Speaker 1: I've got a show. I may as well be I
Speaker 1: may as well be having a career. And so I
Speaker 1: went on tour, and I toured from July one, which
Speaker 1: was the Daily album, dropped to the end of What
Speaker 1: I Guess with the One Man Show, and about mid
Speaker 1: teen I I was kind of excited about what I
Speaker 1: might do next, what I might create next, um, and
Speaker 1: there all sorts of things that happened kind of between,
Speaker 1: but between these times I'm mentioning, but I had this
Speaker 1: idea that whatever I did next, I wanted to be
Speaker 1: in some way collaborative, because this was fun and everything,
Speaker 1: the one man show thing. But after a while it
Speaker 1: was a little bit exhausting because it was like I
Speaker 1: couldn't really play. I couldn't really be a musician too much.
Speaker 1: I could be a I kind of you know. I
Speaker 1: ran around playing all the stuff and nailing it. And
Speaker 1: I was most excited by the audiences because I started
Speaker 1: to play the audiences a little bit and learn what
Speaker 1: what that felt like and learn what kind of people
Speaker 1: they were musicians they were. But I think after a
Speaker 1: couple of years, I was a bit exhausted by it.
Speaker 1: So I came back and I thought, whatever I do next,
Speaker 1: it's got to be something collaborative, and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: something big. And then that's what led me into the
Speaker 1: whole realm of the kind of quadruple album which became
Speaker 1: Jesse Okay. A couple of things. Adam Fell, who runs
Speaker 1: the label you're on, he would tell me, oh, Jacob's
Speaker 1: fans are really passionate. This is even you know before
Speaker 1: Jesse Okay, how did you gain the fan base or
Speaker 1: did you just you know, show up Because normally, unless
Speaker 1: you have radio play whatever you you could say you
Speaker 1: want to go into it, but no one comes. Um
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to say. I think I think there
Speaker 1: was probably something, and again I'm probably the wrong post
Speaker 1: to us, but I think there was something in what
Speaker 1: I was doing in spirit which connected with people in
Speaker 1: a sense that I wasn't trying to be a pop star.
Speaker 1: I wasn't trying to gain fans. I wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: sell records. I was kind of just committed to getting
Speaker 1: as good as I get doing the thing I was doing,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to deepen it. And so I feel
Speaker 1: like the musician community trusted that in a certain kind
Speaker 1: of way because they knew that it was quite something
Speaker 1: about it was real and quite pure in a sense
Speaker 1: like it wasn't I wasn't. I wasn't trying to sell myself.
Speaker 1: I kind of never have tried to sell myself too much.
Speaker 1: It was just a sense of I want to do
Speaker 1: something that feels right, and something about that I think
Speaker 1: gradually started to connect with people. And you know, I
Speaker 1: look back now and I think my first fans were musicians,
Speaker 1: and I would do gigs and it would be like
Speaker 1: musicians and be like, well, this is this is kind
Speaker 1: of niche and cool and for me great fun because
Speaker 1: they speak the language, so I can make jokes and
Speaker 1: they're laugh musical jokes, and I can take them places,
Speaker 1: I can defy their expectations, and there's this unspoken understanding.
Speaker 1: And then after my room came out, I sensed this
Speaker 1: kind of widening circle, which I thinks. I guess it's
Speaker 1: always had musicians at the center of it in in
Speaker 1: a sense, but I think something about the kind of
Speaker 1: the spirit of it and and the fact that it
Speaker 1: was just that I've always do. I've always been committed
Speaker 1: to being myself and that's been the most important thing
Speaker 1: um and I've always been willing to share part of
Speaker 1: that process with the world. I think part of that
Speaker 1: connected to people. One thing that I think was a
Speaker 1: turning point for my fan base was one moment after
Speaker 1: a gig in Chicago on February the Febuen for recall,
Speaker 1: two days after the grammar is the first time I
Speaker 1: want two Grammars, which is crazy, and a fan of
Speaker 1: mine took me aside after the gig and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I transcribed all of your arrangements and I said, wow,
Speaker 1: that's crazy, and he showed me the transcriptions. They were
Speaker 1: like ridiculously accurate, and I thought something, this guy's this
Speaker 1: guy is really amazing, And I said Hey, can I
Speaker 1: ask you like ten minutes worth questions just about music?
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, sure, it's like can I film
Speaker 1: it setually? Sure? And he says, hey, Jacob, what's um
Speaker 1: what super ultra hyper mega meta lidian and I've made
Speaker 1: this art. It's like a concept I've made up. I thought,
Speaker 1: like I made up the concept. I said, well, June,
Speaker 1: it's it's the concept of superimposing multiple lidian modes on
Speaker 1: top of others. And it feels really bright and it
Speaker 1: feels really alien, but it makes sense because it's grounded
Speaker 1: and the fundamental and so what's the fundamental? Said? The
Speaker 1: fundamental is this and said, hey, Jacob, was negative harmony?
Speaker 1: I said, well, negative harmony is It's a principle that
Speaker 1: I come across when I was at school, and it
Speaker 1: was the idea that you could invert all harmony across
Speaker 1: an axis and it would become a like an alternate
Speaker 1: way of of of hearing and staying the harmony. That
Speaker 1: was a foreign thing. And I explained these things to him,
Speaker 1: and I kind of, I guess in human terms, it
Speaker 1: was like, this is not rocket science, this is not
Speaker 1: physics and crazy. This is just human stuff. It's just
Speaker 1: like high resolution emotional stuff. And so we spoke about
Speaker 1: all these kind of nerdy concepts and I felt great.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was cool to have someone who asked
Speaker 1: me the questions. That video made a big impact on
Speaker 1: the musicians community around the world. It seemed it had
Speaker 1: a million views within a couple of months, and and
Speaker 1: I think that people connected. Not the thing that I
Speaker 1: was interested in seeing the comment to that video that
Speaker 1: made me think was that it wasn't musicians who are
Speaker 1: connecting to it, just it was also people who are
Speaker 1: who are listening to the things I was saying as
Speaker 1: well as the things I was playing. And off the
Speaker 1: back of that video, I got a call from Ted
Speaker 1: to come and do a Ted talk, and I also
Speaker 1: got a call from Wired magazine to come and do it.
Speaker 1: They were doing a series about this. You know, you
Speaker 1: might have seen some of these five Tiers five five
Speaker 1: Levels of Understanding videos. So would be someone will come in,
Speaker 1: like an astrophysics expert and say, okay, this is astro
Speaker 1: physics but explained to a six year old, thirteen year old,
Speaker 1: eighteen year old PhD student and like master. And so
Speaker 1: they asked me to do this with Harmony, which obviously
Speaker 1: I was very excited to do. So I came in
Speaker 1: and did that, and and that video that very brought
Speaker 1: in a lot of people, which is which is very
Speaker 1: very cool. And I think that what I realized was
Speaker 1: that I was building a sense of trust between me
Speaker 1: and my audience where people would trust me in my
Speaker 1: creations more than they would trust how much they liked
Speaker 1: or understood the music I was making, because there was
Speaker 1: a dialogue that I was interested in and opening up
Speaker 1: four people about what music is and how it fits
Speaker 1: together and and and what drives it and why the
Speaker 1: concept why these kind of like heady concepts, theory concepts
Speaker 1: which means nothing without musicality behind them, why and how
Speaker 1: they can be applied in ways that are cool and
Speaker 1: makes sense and a groovy and kind of hip. And
Speaker 1: so there was this rush, this influx of people who
Speaker 1: had always been thirsty to kind of get interested in music.
Speaker 1: And obviously primarily this is musicians, but it really energized
Speaker 1: that community when I started to talk. And I think
Speaker 1: that the moment I started to talk, it stopped being
Speaker 1: about the music. It started being about the person in
Speaker 1: a certain kind of way. And so I would tour,
Speaker 1: I would travel, and I would and I would talk
Speaker 1: and I would play, and in a certain kind of
Speaker 1: a way, there was a sort of freedom that I
Speaker 1: was operating within where I wasn't planning much. I wasn't thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, what, what would be great is if I
Speaker 1: if I build a campaign, I make an album that's
Speaker 1: just like this, and it fits into this nation, We'll
Speaker 1: get players in here, and then this person. It was
Speaker 1: more kind of like, let's just you know, let's let's
Speaker 1: imagine that genres just don't exist for a second, and
Speaker 1: let's imagine that the music industry doesn't exist for a second.
Speaker 1: Let's just do something that is real and and that
Speaker 1: is meaningful to me. Because in my mind, if I
Speaker 1: think about what successes for me, success is just sustainability. Really,
Speaker 1: it's being able to do what I want to do
Speaker 1: for a long period of time and have people you know,
Speaker 1: be there for that and and and help guide it.
Speaker 1: And so I think that to answer it's a long
Speaker 1: rambling answer, but to answer you a question, I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: I think that I've noticed a trust that exists around
Speaker 1: the way I think about music, which permeates the music
Speaker 1: I make and the music that I talk about, and
Speaker 1: the music that I learn from um and I think
Speaker 1: that with the with the Jesse project, what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do was to stretch as much as I could
Speaker 1: open my my kind of genre space, to encompass whatever
Speaker 1: kind of music you were into, Like, there will be
Speaker 1: something you might like that that might encourage you to
Speaker 1: jump on the train that is that the you know,
Speaker 1: the Jesse train. So Volume one was a very orchestral
Speaker 1: album and it wasn't remotely classical. Well it was, I
Speaker 1: supposed remotely classical, but there were so many other things
Speaker 1: going on, but it felt like an orchestral album. Volume
Speaker 1: two was more of a folk album, and Volume three,
Speaker 1: I guess you could says it's an R and B
Speaker 1: album or a little bit more of a pop apum
Speaker 1: or electronic album. And I guess maybe maybe the thing
Speaker 1: that's been a value to people, and certainly I would
Speaker 1: say musicians, is the is the kind of fearless approach
Speaker 1: to making something just for the sake of making it
Speaker 1: rather than for the sake of anything else, and just
Speaker 1: kind of writing that out and seeing where it ends up.
Speaker 1: And I don't know where I was going to end
Speaker 1: up at all, but that that's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that I've been committing to Okay, a couple of things. Uh,
Speaker 1: someone who goes to your show would be stunned by
Speaker 1: the then participation. You're you direct the audience to do
Speaker 1: certain things. How did you develop that? I will never
Speaker 1: forget two YouTube videos that really inspired me to do that. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess three things. First of me, my mom conducting
Speaker 1: because that was my first understanding that of what music
Speaker 1: should be. So I think that stayed with me. Two
Speaker 1: is Bobby McFerrin in the eighties did these spontaneous inventions
Speaker 1: gigs with just on his own with the mic and
Speaker 1: he would just do crazy stuff and it just be
Speaker 1: be weird and wacko and get the audience to be
Speaker 1: his accompanying figure, or he would accompany the audience. And
Speaker 1: that to me was like, Wow, I can't believe that's possible.
Speaker 1: I company you can get away of doing that. And
Speaker 1: then and then I saw Freddie Mercury at Live Aid
Speaker 1: with his corner response thing, and I think it's after
Speaker 1: the first song he just said he was like what
Speaker 1: and then the audience goes because he puts the microphone
Speaker 1: their face and he goes who blaa, and he was
Speaker 1: going and I thought like Wow, that's crazy. That's so crazy,
Speaker 1: you know, that's so cathartic. And I'd love to try that,
Speaker 1: you know. So last year when I went on the road, Um,
Speaker 1: I did it. I started my show with that wo
Speaker 1: wow wow, you know. And I guess that there are
Speaker 1: there are blessings and curses to having a musician heavy
Speaker 1: firm base, but one of the blessings is that those
Speaker 1: guys can hold a key. And so when I realized this,
Speaker 1: that it was more than just like a corner response
Speaker 1: with one line. It became much more of a thing
Speaker 1: of like at the end of each concept, after the encore,
Speaker 1: I would stand at the front of the stage with
Speaker 1: no instruments, and I would sing, and I would give
Speaker 1: people notes and I would say okay, and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say a word, but I say, I point to say,
Speaker 1: one third of the room, and I go and there
Speaker 1: we go. And I point to another, you know, another third,
Speaker 1: and I say, and they go, and I pointed this
Speaker 1: god room. And then I wouldn't I wouldn't saying anything.
Speaker 1: I would use my fingers up and down and the
Speaker 1: notes would move and the harmonies would change, and people
Speaker 1: I think people really really kind of responded to that,
Speaker 1: and for me, it was like, I give me such
Speaker 1: such a crazy feeling, and it's like a you know,
Speaker 1: I felt massive and tiny at the same time because
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing anything, but they were doing everything. But
Speaker 1: somehow I was kind of I was guiding them there.
Speaker 1: So I was hooked. I was completely hooked on that.
Speaker 1: And since then, I've done all sorts of crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: I've got people doing some rhythms and I've got people
Speaker 1: seeing a different stuff. And and honestly, I think the
Speaker 1: important thing with that is is far less the musicianship.
Speaker 1: It's more just that it's like a sais of humor.
Speaker 1: I guess that that people that people respond to and
Speaker 1: a sense of ease. It's like it's almost like I'm
Speaker 1: giving people license to be who they are rather than
Speaker 1: who they need to be by saying just just saying
Speaker 1: just just go there, just like just step across the line.
Speaker 1: You're welcome, like you're welcome in my space. And and
Speaker 1: and that to me is if there's anything I guess
Speaker 1: I guess I hope to inspire by by the show.
Speaker 1: It's like it's that feeling that you're invited. It's like
Speaker 1: this is not an exclusive thing. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be anything, you don't have to feel or like anything.
Speaker 1: You just need to be present and will make music together.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, when I saw the last tour in
Speaker 1: l a uh, and I saw the things you're talking about.
Speaker 1: The people didn't look like musicians. There were musicians there,
Speaker 1: Herbie was there, you know, Steve I, etcetera. But the
Speaker 1: people that on the floor, they were fans of you,
Speaker 1: just like they would be fans of somebody else. So
Speaker 1: this is the thing, this is the this is the
Speaker 1: magical thing. I think. It's like I think everyone's a musician,
Speaker 1: that that's the thing, because I think music is just
Speaker 1: completely fundamental to being a person. And so all you
Speaker 1: need is to give someone license. You don't need to
Speaker 1: give someone skill. And I think that if you give
Speaker 1: someone license to be a part of something that they
Speaker 1: will And so yeah, I've I've definitely noticed that it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be musicians who sing. But it's it's
Speaker 1: the energy that's the special thing. It's not oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you're out of tune. No no you're not. You're not
Speaker 1: you're not welcome here. It's more like, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're a musician, then then you'll carry the the non musicians.
Speaker 1: If you're a non musician, then you'll carry the people
Speaker 1: who aren't singing. And there's a sense of community about
Speaker 1: it and a sense of unearthing a a primal energy
Speaker 1: which I've I've loved and I honestly I've been bowled
Speaker 1: over by by by how far it's come away from
Speaker 1: the musicians thing and how much it just becomes more
Speaker 1: of a kind of experience that anyone can have. Okay,
Speaker 1: so why the name Jesse? Why four albums? Because music
Speaker 1: history is littered with people say, oh, this is a series,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do X number and they never complete it.
Speaker 1: And you're also kind of boxing yourself into the concept.
Speaker 1: So can you talk about that? Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: A lot of my friends call me j C. It's
Speaker 1: just like a nickname I've had for a decade or so,
Speaker 1: and I quite like it, so I've I've adopted it
Speaker 1: a little bit, like Hey Jay, see this, Jay, see that?
Speaker 1: And this album. It's a kind of it's a kind
Speaker 1: of self titled exploration, I suppose, but it's not really Jacob.
Speaker 1: It's not like Jacob Collio or anything like that. I
Speaker 1: wanted to found a sort of spirit at the center
Speaker 1: of it, which encapsulated some of the values I've been mentioning.
Speaker 1: But it's like, you know, you set someone free in
Speaker 1: a world where everything, anything is possible. It's like the
Speaker 1: infinite child embodied in a character. Jesse is the character
Speaker 1: really so so you know, at first I thought I
Speaker 1: could call it, you know, worlds or ecosystems or and
Speaker 1: all this stime. I was like, that's not it, that's
Speaker 1: not something else is going on here. I'm bringing something
Speaker 1: to life here that's a part of me in some ways,
Speaker 1: and it's also something I don't yet understand. So so
Speaker 1: Jesse became that that figure for me. Essentially, Um started
Speaker 1: as one album, a massive album, spilled over into a
Speaker 1: double album when I realized that I actually had more
Speaker 1: to say, and then I realized that a double album
Speaker 1: would be so compressed in terms of like everything I
Speaker 1: was trying to say with it, which is so much.
Speaker 1: So it became three albums. It was three albums for
Speaker 1: a quite a long time. So you've got the big
Speaker 1: acoustic space for in one, small acouse space Forlume two,
Speaker 1: and then the kind of negative space Volume three and
Speaker 1: four that is great, terrific. I've got a concept, and
Speaker 1: I realized that that's not complete, because you need to
Speaker 1: come back to where you started to be a good storyteller,
Speaker 1: and so it's borning. Before I've always kind of held
Speaker 1: as the space which would somehow bring the concepts and
Speaker 1: the flavors together with which it is doing. And it's
Speaker 1: not finished yet, but it's it's quite crazily exciting, so
Speaker 1: I guess it. It evolved slowly but surely, and I
Speaker 1: planned out not what the music would sound like, but
Speaker 1: what the music would feel like. And I knew the
Speaker 1: Volume three would get weird, and I knew it would
Speaker 1: get dancing and poppy, and I knew the Volume two
Speaker 1: would be a bit lighter to the touch, and it
Speaker 1: would be a bit more sensitive, and it would, you know,
Speaker 1: it would feel a certain way. And I knew Volume
Speaker 1: one would need to be expansive and broad, and I
Speaker 1: knew I wanted to call up some musicians I respect
Speaker 1: them and get their help on this because I couldn't
Speaker 1: do it alone. And so littered across the albums are
Speaker 1: so many musicians that I love and respect, from the
Speaker 1: metropol Orchest and and and Lauren Vola to Steve Via
Speaker 1: to Liella Havas and Dody and Austin Gari sam amed
Speaker 1: On and then with Volume three, you've got you know,
Speaker 1: Keyana La Day and Mahalia Tyed Dolla Sign and you've
Speaker 1: got Tory Kelly and Jesse Rays and t Pain and
Speaker 1: and and Daniel Caesar And I think for me, these
Speaker 1: are all different. There's so many different kinds of flavors.
Speaker 1: And that was always the goal. As I mentioned, that
Speaker 1: was always the goal was to do something that was
Speaker 1: somehow collaborative. But you know, I'm producing the album on
Speaker 1: my own. I'm sitting in the same chair I've kind
Speaker 1: of always sat in, and so something about that for me,
Speaker 1: it's nice. It feels like I'm stretching something that I
Speaker 1: understand already, a bit like how I learned the piano.
Speaker 1: So I'll take something I kind of know a bit
Speaker 1: and I'll drop myself in the deep end of what
Speaker 1: that is, and I'll just try and get as deep
Speaker 1: into it as I can and and just like have
Speaker 1: have a bunch of fun and just so see where
Speaker 1: it ends up. Okay, But the albums are recorded sequentially, yeah,
Speaker 1: to a point. I mean when I was getting started,
Speaker 1: I would jump between them all the time. You'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling of vol in three. Day to day, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do something weird, or I'm feeling a gentle day.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna vollowing two song today, but voling one. I
Speaker 1: did fast because I had a flight, a book to flight.
Speaker 1: It's always the best way to set a deadline. I
Speaker 1: find this book of Flight. I had a flight to
Speaker 1: Holland to record the thing, and so I had four
Speaker 1: weeks to write and like write an orchestra and arrange
Speaker 1: all of the orchestra parts for an entire album, And
Speaker 1: so I did it. In January, flew over recorded the album,
Speaker 1: and after that I hoped between two and three for
Speaker 1: a while. I did a bunch of work on three,
Speaker 1: and then I said it came back to two, and
Speaker 1: then I finished two and released that one last year,
Speaker 1: and then Volume three. At that point it was like
Speaker 1: forty demos or something like those, and those of different ideas,
Speaker 1: lots of little seeds of experiments and things, and and
Speaker 1: even right up until about about a week before I
Speaker 1: delivered the album, the album was a lot longer than
Speaker 1: it than it is now. The album now has twelve songs,
Speaker 1: but up until a few days before it was about eighteen,
Speaker 1: um but I realized that I think it was important
Speaker 1: for me to learn how to call that statement into
Speaker 1: something that felt a little bit more cohesive. Um And
Speaker 1: so yeah, now what I've got to work on his
Speaker 1: volume four, which is a bit weird, but I guess
Speaker 1: you know, Volume four in some ways is the combination
Speaker 1: of all the different flavors. But yeah, I've hot between
Speaker 1: the universes a bunch throughout the creation process. Okay, some
Speaker 1: of these people are household names, certainly in the Spotify world,
Speaker 1: Spotify top fifty, etcetera. Did you call these people call?
Speaker 1: Did you have a previous relationship? I mean some people
Speaker 1: are jazz rap, Tori Kelly's, you know, pop singer. How
Speaker 1: do you established relationships with all these people such as
Speaker 1: they'll work with you? Well, I guess being a musician
Speaker 1: in the twenty one century, um me, it has has
Speaker 1: its benefits. And one of those is that it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to to reach other musicians. And I guess I've
Speaker 1: always felt that to an extent that the majority of
Speaker 1: the people I reached out to, you know, I had
Speaker 1: some kind of relationship, whether it's like you know, we
Speaker 1: just we we follow each other, or we've messaged a
Speaker 1: little bit, or we've had a session or two together before.
Speaker 1: So someone like Tied all a sign for example, you know,
Speaker 1: Tie hit me up on maybe it's on Twitter or
Speaker 1: on Instagram about three years ago, and it was just
Speaker 1: it was just, you know, really excited about but working
Speaker 1: together on something. And so I've done a bunch of
Speaker 1: work for him, and I've I've been on a few
Speaker 1: songs of his and I always knew I wanted to
Speaker 1: get him on something, but I didn't know when that
Speaker 1: would be. And so you know, I sent him a
Speaker 1: message or I faced time with him or something. I said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a song and Majley is singing
Speaker 1: on it and it's pretty much finished, but it's it's
Speaker 1: missing some some secret source. It's it's missing some dollar
Speaker 1: sign magic. And he he that's This particular example was
Speaker 1: it was very gratifying because he he had a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff planned, but he moved everything out of his calendar.
Speaker 1: He sat for a whole day and sang all this
Speaker 1: crazy stuff and and he was so excited. I think
Speaker 1: it was very energized by by the music because I think,
Speaker 1: you know, he's such a dominating force tire. You know,
Speaker 1: he's featured on everyone's albums. He's just a massive, dominating,
Speaker 1: kind of influential voice that's instantly recognizable a list guy.
Speaker 1: And I think that maybe what he found refreshing, at
Speaker 1: least what he said he found refreshing about all I
Speaker 1: need was that it wasn't trying to be any of
Speaker 1: those things. It was just a song. And also he
Speaker 1: could use his ears because his ears are crazy. Actually,
Speaker 1: he can hear all sorts of crazy stuff and has
Speaker 1: all sorts of musical intuitions and ideas which I think
Speaker 1: are amazing, and I think he he often feels like
Speaker 1: he can't use them, and so I think he got
Speaker 1: very excited, almost overly excited, and he sent me so
Speaker 1: many tracks of him doing crazy you know, auto tune
Speaker 1: riffs and stuff, and it was it was profoundly amazing.
Speaker 1: And so I use a small percentage of that um
Speaker 1: in the song. But most people were like that, you know,
Speaker 1: we've had we've had a connection. I'll send a d M.
Speaker 1: Occasional I would call out to someone called, like I
Speaker 1: did that with with Kiana, for example. I've never I've
Speaker 1: never met Kiana, had contact with her, but you know,
Speaker 1: I sent I sent her a song. I sent her
Speaker 1: the song on on a d M. And management then
Speaker 1: reached out to and and she said, God, I love this,
Speaker 1: Let's do it. And that was really that was really
Speaker 1: gratifying foot for me. And I've been giving a list
Speaker 1: of people that I respect the heck out of and
Speaker 1: I've wanted to work with for for a long long time.
Speaker 1: And so I think part of this project was thinking,
Speaker 1: how how can I make this person a part of
Speaker 1: this project? And at what point in the journey should
Speaker 1: would they most apply? You know? And then how do
Speaker 1: I build a bridge from my world into their world
Speaker 1: and kind of make it makes sense? And I like,
Speaker 1: you know what, what what can I learn from that? Okay?
Speaker 1: The coverage your famous for are from a different era,
Speaker 1: you know, it's you're you're pulling from Stevie Wonders albums
Speaker 1: in the seventies, you know, the early eighties Lion or
Speaker 1: Richie All Night, Long Moon River, which is older than that.
Speaker 1: Uh A, how do you decide what songs to cover?
Speaker 1: B What do you think about those songs which are
Speaker 1: all visa V what is popular today? Great question? Well
Speaker 1: as far as what's my criteria? For how do I
Speaker 1: decide it song to arrange. It's kind of simple. I
Speaker 1: just need to love it. I think I need to
Speaker 1: get excited about it and love it and think that
Speaker 1: there's something I can add to it in some way
Speaker 1: or the or the it would survive my reinvention. I
Speaker 1: guess I could say, um, And in answer to your
Speaker 1: latter question, I think that a lot of the music
Speaker 1: that was written, yeah, from seventies and back was was
Speaker 1: harmonically substantial. And it's it's a funny thing to say,
Speaker 1: but you know, you have someone like Stevie and his
Speaker 1: songwriting style was so rich musically, it was so much
Speaker 1: going on in the songs, but he was able to
Speaker 1: do it in such a way where like no one
Speaker 1: kind of batted an eyelid. It was like, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: welcome to just dance to the song. It's a great
Speaker 1: to you, but actually check out this modulate you know. So,
Speaker 1: so there's there was this multiple levels of his music.
Speaker 1: So if I if I kind of set my imagination
Speaker 1: loose on a song song of his, the possibilities are
Speaker 1: just endless because of all the choices he's made. The
Speaker 1: more kind of material there is in that to start
Speaker 1: with the more I can run with as a as
Speaker 1: an arranger of a song, so you know, and something
Speaker 1: like moon River. You know, it's not the mirror is
Speaker 1: crazily complex. It's actually a very simple tune. But something
Speaker 1: about the melody I've always loved and and you know,
Speaker 1: it's got a sense of structure, it's got a little
Speaker 1: ark to it, which I wanted to really kind of encapsulate.
Speaker 1: I wanted to stretch that. And it just has a
Speaker 1: lovely spirit to it, you know that that original, that
Speaker 1: original Mancini version. It's it's something really really lovely about it. Now,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of songs that are hip and popular right now,
Speaker 1: which I absolutely adore, kind of for other reasons because
Speaker 1: actually it's not often you hear a song on the
Speaker 1: radio nowadays that has chords in it, like, you know,
Speaker 1: like more than just kind of like Gore or or
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, actually, the harmony tells a story,
Speaker 1: and obviously I love that stuff. So I tend to
Speaker 1: be drawn to songs that tell those kinds of stories
Speaker 1: because I think that it inspires me to tell a
Speaker 1: bit more of my own. And what give us a
Speaker 1: couple of examples, Oh wow, um, you take someone like
Speaker 1: fascinating rhythm, uh, and that's a song that again it's
Speaker 1: quite simple, it's very repetitive. Um. But you know you've
Speaker 1: got you've got this thing that kind of twists and
Speaker 1: turns and it moves around these different these different spaces harmonically,
Speaker 1: and and it's catchy and it kind of stays in
Speaker 1: your mind. It has lots of energy built into it
Speaker 1: has a sense of humor. And I love that too
Speaker 1: because it really means you can play with it. And
Speaker 1: lots of words. So I take words and I put
Speaker 1: them in weird places and I flip them over and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, And that that's all really
Speaker 1: good from because, as I say, when you're arranging, it's
Speaker 1: just about like what do I have to work with it? Like,
Speaker 1: what are my materials? What can I what can I
Speaker 1: what can I add here? Um? And you know there
Speaker 1: there are there are people who are doing this today.
Speaker 1: But I think that in general today some of the
Speaker 1: some of my favorite music that's coming up today is
Speaker 1: appealing to me in terms of production above all else,
Speaker 1: Like the production shops of people these days is absolutely astounding, UM.
Speaker 1: And I think it can be a little detrimental to
Speaker 1: the music at times. We have a society at large,
Speaker 1: in my mind, which is very used to compression. And
Speaker 1: I say compression in a musical sense and a non
Speaker 1: musical sense. And I'll explain that when I say musical sense,
Speaker 1: compression just means that you decrease the dynamic range. So
Speaker 1: when a song goes on the radio, for example, it's
Speaker 1: very compressed, and you have all the quietest sounds made
Speaker 1: a lot louder so you can hear them, and all
Speaker 1: the louder sounds are made much quieter so that they
Speaker 1: are reasonable. And so you get these really flat wave forms,
Speaker 1: which is just and it comes out the radio and
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, okay, I get it. I can listen
Speaker 1: to that background. It's not going to necessarily pull me in.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna pull me out or push me away
Speaker 1: or whatever. It's just it's like a flat wave form. Now,
Speaker 1: I think people, I think people do this. I think
Speaker 1: education does this to people. I think it's like you
Speaker 1: go into an educational system uncompressed flak, you know, completely
Speaker 1: uncontained raw, and it's very easy to be worn down
Speaker 1: by the voices around us that say, actually it would
Speaker 1: be it would be much more reasonable if you just
Speaker 1: conformed here, or if you did it my way or
Speaker 1: this is the way it should be done, or or whatever,
Speaker 1: And I get it. You know, it's scary to have
Speaker 1: someone who's very creative in the world. It's like it's
Speaker 1: unruly and it's unpredictable and it's hard to control. But
Speaker 1: I think that what we're used to as a society,
Speaker 1: especially with in age of social media, is is compressing
Speaker 1: ourselves too into oblivion. You know, you think life is
Speaker 1: about extremes, it's not about it's not about what's on
Speaker 1: the surface all the time. Sometimes it is, but but
Speaker 1: life is about going all the way up and all
Speaker 1: the way down. And for me in my life anyway,
Speaker 1: those are the moments that are most colorful for me,
Speaker 1: and the moment I draw from as a creator the
Speaker 1: most too, you know, really low, really high, really big,
Speaker 1: and then the middle ground can be soft. It doesn't
Speaker 1: need to be everything. It's not like everything has to
Speaker 1: be in the middle distance. It's like that you can
Speaker 1: be foreground and you can be background. And and so
Speaker 1: what what overcompression does to our lives is it kind
Speaker 1: of defeats any kind of currency of threshold. You know,
Speaker 1: so all of our our worst impulses, our loudest thoughts,
Speaker 1: our biggest fears, are quickest, easiest shots of endorphins. Those
Speaker 1: rule us in that world, because those are the only
Speaker 1: things that even cut through their insane compression that that
Speaker 1: we've that we've come to do. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of us don't really know about stillness. I certainly don't
Speaker 1: know about stillness. I think that there's so much to
Speaker 1: learn from being dynamic and all that to say that,
Speaker 1: I think what music is becoming now is thrilling and
Speaker 1: infinite in some ways. And I think that's what's cool,
Speaker 1: is to seeing people mix hounds together, mix flavors together,
Speaker 1: collaborate across disciplines, you know, which is amazing. But it
Speaker 1: has the danger of losing a kind of delicacy, a humanity,
Speaker 1: um of of letting you in rather than kind of
Speaker 1: stressing you out. And I think that we live in
Speaker 1: quite stressed out space. And so I guess what I'd
Speaker 1: hope for is a world where music can be sensitive,
Speaker 1: like deeply sensitive. And that's not to say it has
Speaker 1: to be simple, but you can have sensitive, rich complex
Speaker 1: music as much as you can have sensitive, simple, open music,
Speaker 1: and I think both have a very important role to
Speaker 1: play in the world. Okay, in today's streaming world, the
Speaker 1: history of music is available on the streaming services. So
Speaker 1: you have all these genres, the acolytes of those genres
Speaker 1: can be listening to that just that, But there is
Speaker 1: a top fifty which is really dominated by hip hop.
Speaker 1: So I have two questions for you. One, to what
Speaker 1: degree are you a fan of hip hop? Too? To
Speaker 1: what degree are you a student of the charts, the
Speaker 1: radio and what people are listening to? Great great questions.
Speaker 1: I am indeed a fine of hip hop. I listened
Speaker 1: to hip hop, probably in a different way to the
Speaker 1: way that someone who wasn't a musician would listen to it.
Speaker 1: You know, I listened to it for for for for
Speaker 1: groove a lot of the time. Like you know, you
Speaker 1: take Dealer for example, and you think, yeah, like you
Speaker 1: Dilla didn't really chart particularly and he didn't really he
Speaker 1: wasn't really at a household name, but he completely kind
Speaker 1: of he completely unbuilt hip hop and rebuilt it single handedly,
Speaker 1: like he granually re reimagined what that could be. And
Speaker 1: you know what he did that made that possible was
Speaker 1: he turned the quantized button off on his NPC three thousand,
Speaker 1: which is like revolutionary, and the quantize button is what
Speaker 1: had been switched on in the popular music since basically,
Speaker 1: which is the thing that drum machines inspired, which is
Speaker 1: like everything's grid based. Do do do do do? Everything
Speaker 1: is in a row, everything's the same size, And Diler
Speaker 1: was like, no, no, turn the contents button off and
Speaker 1: you get these sloppy grooves that go not like do
Speaker 1: but like there's like a science to that of like
Speaker 1: how to get that to feel the best. So when
Speaker 1: I listened to hip hop a lot of time, I'm
Speaker 1: really excited by that. But just because I'm a I'm
Speaker 1: a musician, but I also think that hip hop has
Speaker 1: has a kind of an ability to reach people in
Speaker 1: their power and to appeal to people's power and energy
Speaker 1: in a way that other kinds of music just kind
Speaker 1: of don't like it. It It kind of takes space in
Speaker 1: a way that I find really inspiring. It's like it's
Speaker 1: it's almost like a it's like a light. It's like
Speaker 1: I've got something to say, I've got something to show,
Speaker 1: and I can I can do that in so many
Speaker 1: different ways that for me as a musician kind of
Speaker 1: often blow my mind because I think I think about,
Speaker 1: you know, how do I tell a story in terms
Speaker 1: of music? But these the story the story is telling.
Speaker 1: Styles are much broader in hip hop. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got people being poets and and using ryme for reason,
Speaker 1: and you've got someone like Kendrick who's who's combining all
Speaker 1: these forces. And as you can imagine, I'm a huge
Speaker 1: Kendrick fan, and I love what he did with Butterfly,
Speaker 1: and and I love how he how he transformed just
Speaker 1: what that could be like, what what that could really
Speaker 1: what that could really do for the world. As far
Speaker 1: as whether I'm a student of the charts or not,
Speaker 1: I don't think I described myself as a student of
Speaker 1: the of the charts. I think it's interesting to hear
Speaker 1: what's on them, partly because I I it helps me
Speaker 1: learn what is acceptable, whether or not I choose to
Speaker 1: act on that um. And also I think it shows
Speaker 1: what's important at a particular time. And the charts always
Speaker 1: tend to show what kind of themes are dominating, what
Speaker 1: kind of style is dominating. And you know, one thing
Speaker 1: I've noticed dipping into the charts and often I guess
Speaker 1: it's a side point that my main experience of the
Speaker 1: charts is like taking Uber's, which obviously haven't done much
Speaker 1: this year. But I don't sit here at home I
Speaker 1: listened to to Top fifty ever, I I just don't.
Speaker 1: I don't just don't do it unless someone says, have
Speaker 1: you checked out this new song, and I'll say, oh,
Speaker 1: I haven't. Let me listen to it, see what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. But when I jump in an uber, I'm
Speaker 1: always like, Okay, this is this is how it is
Speaker 1: not right now, and I think that it's it's very interesting,
Speaker 1: but often quite joyless. That's what I've noticed. There's there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of optimism. It seems of genuine joy
Speaker 1: and things that just shine, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: you you take a band like like cold Play, for example,
Speaker 1: who What Who I Love, and you think something about
Speaker 1: company is actually very joyous, it's very hope giving, and
Speaker 1: I think I respond to that in a non musical level.
Speaker 1: I think I shape that and I respond to the
Speaker 1: fact that that has a place in the world. And
Speaker 1: so I guess when I listened to the charts, I'm
Speaker 1: listening on on on on a few different levels. And
Speaker 1: it's always interesting to know who's who's in the charts.
Speaker 1: But I think for me, I'm always excited when I
Speaker 1: feel like something shines through, when something has has an
Speaker 1: impact on me. And and sometimes those things are like
Speaker 1: the grime ist, poppyist, hardest hitting things ever, because those
Speaker 1: things are badass, and sometimes it's something that's kind of
Speaker 1: unexpected that makes it up. Then you think, wow, that
Speaker 1: really tells a story. But I don't have any particular criteria,
Speaker 1: like I don't. I don't see reason to expect to
Speaker 1: be moved more by what's on the charts, say then
Speaker 1: what's on some other list of music. But it's always
Speaker 1: interesting to know, like what what's in people's conscious and
Speaker 1: heart hearts and minds. Okay, so you were nominated for
Speaker 1: Album of the Year needles to say many people were
Speaker 1: unaware of you. What has been your experience of denomination
Speaker 1: m Um, Well, after the sort of flabbergastedness which you
Speaker 1: could probably imagine, which which is still going and it's
Speaker 1: taken to weeks for me to even see it really
Speaker 1: because it's it was just it's it's overwhelming and crazy
Speaker 1: and immensely gratifying and strange. Um. I think it's been
Speaker 1: interesting seeing the dialogue around it from a distance, and
Speaker 1: I haven't engaged massively with it because in some ways
Speaker 1: it's like not my business, because my business is to
Speaker 1: make the music. But um, you know, I I completely
Speaker 1: understand the people are very surprised and very confused, and
Speaker 1: and I also I also understand that there are people,
Speaker 1: for example, like The Weekend and like Garga who absolute
Speaker 1: giants and people I massively respect who people would have
Speaker 1: expected to get that nomination or that you know, the
Speaker 1: to to be to be acknowledged in that sense because
Speaker 1: of what they represent in the music industry. Um, I've
Speaker 1: also experienced a kind of a real deep surge of
Speaker 1: support from from the musicians community, you know, friends of
Speaker 1: mine and people I've made connections with over the last
Speaker 1: five years. And I think that there's a real excitement
Speaker 1: that that it's possible to to kind of create for
Speaker 1: the sake of creation, but to be held in whatever
Speaker 1: esteem you know, that particular nomination means. And it's crazy
Speaker 1: to sit, you know, next to Taylor and next to
Speaker 1: Dour and next the Post and Chris Martin and the
Speaker 1: Gang and everyone in that in that category and to
Speaker 1: feel like I don't maybe need to apologize for who
Speaker 1: I am and what I'm what I'm doing, and that's
Speaker 1: a kind of interesting feeling. But you know, I guess
Speaker 1: I've been I've been taking it day by day and
Speaker 1: and I think what strikes me about the Grammys, which
Speaker 1: I which I really love, is that it was founded
Speaker 1: by musicians and it's voted on by musicians, and that
Speaker 1: sets it apart, I guess from a lot of other awards,
Speaker 1: take the am As for example. You know the Grammy,
Speaker 1: you have to have a I think it's two credits
Speaker 1: on in a creative sense, on you know, a piece
Speaker 1: of recorded music that's been published to have a voice
Speaker 1: in the Grammys. And so I think something about the
Speaker 1: Grammys it is quite pure in a sense that you know,
Speaker 1: it should feel like whatever the music is should be
Speaker 1: pitted equally against whatever the other music is, not because
Speaker 1: of what the music represents, but just because of what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. And man, I just didn't see it
Speaker 1: coming at all. But I'm immensely gratified that somehow, you know,
Speaker 1: this part of my my musical journey, as it's continuing,
Speaker 1: as it's growing, can be can be recognized and can
Speaker 1: can get that nod. Okay, It's one thing to labor
Speaker 1: in obscurity or off away from the spotlight. Many people,
Speaker 1: once the spotlight is upon them, they become inhibited. Uh,
Speaker 1: they try to live up a standard there. You know,
Speaker 1: the landscape is littered with people did something great, they
Speaker 1: got universal acceptance. Could never equal that again. So to
Speaker 1: what degree do you believe already or is it in
Speaker 1: your mind use a negative word that this might be crippling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I've thought about this very much. Actually, I'm not
Speaker 1: worried because I think that I've been very clear with
Speaker 1: myself about why I'm doing this, and I think it
Speaker 1: would be crippling. It will be crippling. The expectations at
Speaker 1: this point in my careup crippling if I planned it,
Speaker 1: you know, if i'd have if I had a campaign,
Speaker 1: if I spent millions of dollars on every music video
Speaker 1: because I knew that what I really needed was an
Speaker 1: Album of the Year nomination or Album of the Year
Speaker 1: win or whatever. I think if I'd set out to
Speaker 1: do that. Honestly, it's completely valid to to want that
Speaker 1: and to strive or something like that, but it's it's
Speaker 1: never been my thing, and so I think the reason
Speaker 1: I feel safe in a sense creatively is because I've
Speaker 1: got more ideas than I have time for, and I
Speaker 1: think if there's anything this might kind of buy me,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's time in a sense. It's like time
Speaker 1: where I can be I can do things on my
Speaker 1: own terms for longer, and that hasn't led me wrong
Speaker 1: thus far, and so I think that I think I'll
Speaker 1: only really know what it feels like over the course
Speaker 1: of over the next few months. And I can't say
Speaker 1: anything for sure, but I think that it's it feels
Speaker 1: like a spotlight is on something which is not it's
Speaker 1: it's almost like it's on something that's outside my control.
Speaker 1: It's not something I even care to control per se.
Speaker 1: I don't think that the next album might create needs
Speaker 1: to equal the success of Jesse Volham three. I think
Speaker 1: it may surpass it or it may not, and I
Speaker 1: don't I don't mind too much because I think that
Speaker 1: what's exciting for me is just being able to to
Speaker 1: to make connections with people, and obviously the main excitement
Speaker 1: for me about the Grammy is that it's it's just
Speaker 1: so cool to be to be able to kind of
Speaker 1: communicate on that scale and for my statements to stand
Speaker 1: in in in that in that scale. But I somehow
Speaker 1: feel like if I'd done things in a rush, or
Speaker 1: if I had, you know, signed with Quincy on the
Speaker 1: day that he asked me to, or if I had
Speaker 1: compromised really in any in any way along my journey,
Speaker 1: I feel like this was all for something, like I
Speaker 1: was investing in something, some goal. But I don't feel
Speaker 1: like that. I don't feel like I've compromised, and I
Speaker 1: don't feel like there's a reason for it all to happen.
Speaker 1: So it almost feels like a bit of a bonus
Speaker 1: to a healthy process which has been going for a
Speaker 1: long time. And sure, there's definitely pressure, and there's definitely
Speaker 1: I mean that there's there's there's time pressure, there's energy pressure,
Speaker 1: and there's expectations. But I think in a certain kind
Speaker 1: of a way, I just trust. I just kind of
Speaker 1: trust it. I trust myself in it, and and I
Speaker 1: trust the right thing will happen. Okay, people think that
Speaker 1: musicians are only in it for the money. Certainly, Gene
Speaker 1: Simmons says that, but I've found a true artist wants
Speaker 1: more people to experience their art. Now that a door
Speaker 1: has opened and people are aware of you, and theoretically
Speaker 1: you could have a bigger peak, but this is pretty
Speaker 1: high up. There is there any desire to say I
Speaker 1: want to make a piece of music that will spread
Speaker 1: to more people? Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. I that could
Speaker 1: take so many forms that I'm not sure. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how how I would answer that creatively. Yet I'll
Speaker 1: make it simple. Do you say, hey, I want to
Speaker 1: write a hit? Um? I did. I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: would say I want to write a hit. I'd love
Speaker 1: to write a song that reaches lots of people. I
Speaker 1: guess that maybe that's a hit, but I think that
Speaker 1: I'll know if it feels good to me when I
Speaker 1: listened to it. Um. And I think that if if
Speaker 1: there was ever a moment to consider what that would
Speaker 1: be is now and and hell yeah, like I'm I'm
Speaker 1: excited to consider what what place I would take in that,
Speaker 1: in whatever space has been made available for me at
Speaker 1: this point in my career. And yeah, I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm excited to figure that out. And I think I'm
Speaker 1: also excited to, in so doing, bring people into something
Speaker 1: which is bigger than a single moment. You know, because
Speaker 1: I've never been the kind of artist who is led
Speaker 1: by singles, campaigns, particularly or the idea that it always
Speaker 1: has everything is about this one moment. It's all about
Speaker 1: happening right now. And so rather than wanting to peak,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I want to bring people into
Speaker 1: something which is just moving, and I think the movements
Speaker 1: what's important. So what I would hope if I did, say,
Speaker 1: for example, write a hit which would be super cool, UM,
Speaker 1: would be that people would figure out that it's part
Speaker 1: of something bigger and then and then those other parts
Speaker 1: of of the operation would would get elevated to you know.
Speaker 1: And for me, somehow that feels like the most sustainable
Speaker 1: way of writing a hit, rather than thinking this is
Speaker 1: a chance for me to write one song that completely
Speaker 1: changes the and then I can feel like I've done
Speaker 1: my thing. I almost feel like, you know, there's absolutely
Speaker 1: no cap to the number of people I would love
Speaker 1: to reach. Um. But I think that I think that
Speaker 1: it needs to happen in in its own time, and
Speaker 1: I would be really excited to bring people into this
Speaker 1: like ever expanding world that I'm kind of operating in,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to I'd love to figure out like
Speaker 1: what what it all means in a in a global sense.
Speaker 1: I'd love for more people to come to my shows,
Speaker 1: for example, and experience them, and I'd love to to
Speaker 1: to reach more more people in that sense. But I'm
Speaker 1: not too fussed about having a hit, to be honest,
Speaker 1: in a in a pure sense, I think I'm I'm
Speaker 1: more interested in making music that there is right to
Speaker 1: make when it's right to make it. Okay, you were
Speaker 1: a young viril man on the road. Although your music
Speaker 1: may be unique, certain things stand true. The travel, the gig,
Speaker 1: the fans, the dope, the alcohol, the women. To what
Speaker 1: degree have you partaken of the perks of the road,
Speaker 1: great question? Um, I honestly, I've never been into drugs
Speaker 1: and alcohol particularly. I'll have a drink occasionally and that
Speaker 1: could be nice, but um, you know that. So I
Speaker 1: think that that part of things I've always tended to
Speaker 1: stay clear from. And I remember going on the road,
Speaker 1: and I remember having a drink after each show the
Speaker 1: first time on the road, and I remember doing the
Speaker 1: show the next day and thinking I just don't quite
Speaker 1: feel as sharp as I did yesterday, and thinking, you
Speaker 1: know what, then it's probably not worth it, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to stop. So I was actually quite pleased with
Speaker 1: myself for stopping that thing. Um, as far as adoring
Speaker 1: fans and and and girls and all sorts of things
Speaker 1: like that. Um, I mean, I guess I'm very early
Speaker 1: on in my journey and I've I've definitely seen that
Speaker 1: there's that there can be a particularly kind of attention.
Speaker 1: I'm quite a I have quite a vivisited in a space,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned before, and so I tend to be
Speaker 1: quite careful about who I who I share that with. UM,
Speaker 1: But I love interacting with people at large. And and
Speaker 1: one thing that's a feature of my particular shows that
Speaker 1: I've I've noticed that it seems to be a little
Speaker 1: unique is after the gig, I'll get like a queue
Speaker 1: of people two hundred on and it's like three hours
Speaker 1: of question and answers about like how do you think
Speaker 1: about this, Jacob, or how would you approach this? Can
Speaker 1: you give me some advice about? You know? And I
Speaker 1: actually I just love that. I mean, that's so cool.
Speaker 1: And I mean I did it every single one of
Speaker 1: my one man shows. I did like a second show
Speaker 1: after every show, which is just talking to people. That
Speaker 1: was a bit draining after a while, so I kind
Speaker 1: of stopped for this last year. But um, I love it.
Speaker 1: I love connecting with people. I think it's there's something magic.
Speaker 1: But this is a world that I'm familiar with. These people,
Speaker 1: you mean something into their in their life. They will
Speaker 1: then say, come to my house, let me make you dinner,
Speaker 1: stay at my house. It's all that off limits or
Speaker 1: if you, you know, dip your toe in some of that.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say anything is off limits, per se. I
Speaker 1: have a pretty good compass about who's genuine and who's
Speaker 1: cool and who's not um And obviously, you know, you
Speaker 1: learn that, you learn from experience, but you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: every every so often you'll think, like, wow, this is
Speaker 1: a fascinating group of people or a fascinating person, and
Speaker 1: I'll go and spend time with you. But but honestly, like,
Speaker 1: the road moves so far, and I know that the
Speaker 1: amount that I have to give every night on stage
Speaker 1: means I can't afford to spend too much amante on
Speaker 1: other people and things outside of that. So I tend
Speaker 1: to keep myself to myself on the road, to be
Speaker 1: honest with you, But obviously there's always a sense of
Speaker 1: adventure and that there's there's a joy in kind of
Speaker 1: being open to that Okay, now you have a long
Speaker 1: history playing music. Did people always say you were gifted
Speaker 1: and you believe you have some special skill or do
Speaker 1: you believe it's the old ten thousand hour rule and
Speaker 1: you've put so much time into it that you have
Speaker 1: a facility that you can then expand upon good question.
Speaker 1: I don't think anything is black and white like that.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's probably a mixture, you know. I know
Speaker 1: for a fact that people in my family have been musicians,
Speaker 1: and very good ones at that, and so I guess
Speaker 1: it would make sense that I have a particular predisposition
Speaker 1: to it. I've done at least ten thou hours, so
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's part of it too. I think that
Speaker 1: there's something there's a way that the ancient Greeks tend
Speaker 1: to talk about the word genius, which I like, which
Speaker 1: is that a genius is not something that you are
Speaker 1: so much as something that you have so you can
Speaker 1: have a genius. It's like, oh, I'm having a genius.
Speaker 1: I'm having a genius idea. I'm having I'm having a
Speaker 1: moment of ultra connection, you know, of transcendence. I know
Speaker 1: that feeling. I have had those in my time. I've
Speaker 1: had to learn how to court them, how to deal
Speaker 1: with them, how to manage them, how to separate myself
Speaker 1: from them to a certain extent, I think, I think
Speaker 1: everyone has the capacity to do that. But it's a
Speaker 1: particular combination of of circumstance, of of of luck, of
Speaker 1: sort of courage, I think, and willingness to to be yourself,
Speaker 1: and also willingness to listen and conform to others to
Speaker 1: a point to And I think that everyone strikes a
Speaker 1: different balance with that. You know, I'm I'm pretty good
Speaker 1: at being Jacob. I think I'd say that I'm pretty
Speaker 1: good at being myself. I'm pretty good at knowing my
Speaker 1: forces and understanding them and how to work with them.
Speaker 1: And I think I'm I'm good at drawing lines to
Speaker 1: a point creatively about how to organized, and I'm good
Speaker 1: at I think I'm quite good at having ideas. And
Speaker 1: so I think that actually that is what's maybe productive
Speaker 1: in a sense more than God, I'm a such a
Speaker 1: good piano player, or because I'm not that good at piano,
Speaker 1: but I'm not that good at any of the one
Speaker 1: off skills that you might say, Oh, Jacob is a
Speaker 1: great singer or bass player or drama. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think of myself as spectacular any of those things.
Speaker 1: But I think what an artist does is an artist
Speaker 1: combines forces in a way that is unique to that artist,
Speaker 1: because no idea is ever truly fully unique, right obviously,
Speaker 1: but the way that ideas can be combined can be
Speaker 1: just beautiful and so meaningful, and there's infinite potential for
Speaker 1: those idists to be combined. So I think for me,
Speaker 1: I almost think about my skills in that way, like
Speaker 1: I'm not a master at any of these skills. So
Speaker 1: the thing that I've tried to master and I think
Speaker 1: i'm I think I'm pretty good at it is is
Speaker 1: who's Jacob today? How can I use that in an
Speaker 1: open way? How can I bring people together using the
Speaker 1: forces that are in my world in my life? And
Speaker 1: how can I learn and dig deep into something that
Speaker 1: I love in this case music and just understand it.
Speaker 1: So I would I would sort of put as a
Speaker 1: testament to what I can do. I would say it's
Speaker 1: a combination of things. I would say, um, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: perhaps I have some kind of genetic thing that means
Speaker 1: that means I was going to be drawn towards music,
Speaker 1: But I've had a patient and love giving family who
Speaker 1: have always made space for me to be who I
Speaker 1: needed to be. That's probably the number one thing I
Speaker 1: would say. I've always had a space to play. Children
Speaker 1: tend to make as many ideas as there are ears
Speaker 1: to hear them, I think, and I was always always
Speaker 1: pased to hear my ideas, So that was a big one.
Speaker 1: I would say. I had and I had enough resources
Speaker 1: to get started. I had a microphone, had a piano,
Speaker 1: had had a logic, I had tools to work with
Speaker 1: um And I would say that I've although I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I don't think of myself as particularly hard working in
Speaker 1: a funny way, because I don't feel like I've ever
Speaker 1: slaved away at something for longer than I've been interested
Speaker 1: at it. But I've worked so super hard if I
Speaker 1: if I'm honest with what I want to say and
Speaker 1: how I want to say it, and like just equipping
Speaker 1: myself to do so. So I think that the mixture
Speaker 1: of time and luck, and resources and and and skill,
Speaker 1: and I think above all a sense of openness and
Speaker 1: a sense of determination to be Jacob in all situations. Okay,
Speaker 1: so needles to say Jesse four is the next one, Hey,
Speaker 1: what comes after that? Be? Do you have no idea?
Speaker 1: See do you just go along this path or you
Speaker 1: say there's a whole another avenue. I want to explore
Speaker 1: b to to to the largest extent. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's coming, man, I'm not sure. I set out to
Speaker 1: do Jesse almost with with the thought in mind of like,
Speaker 1: if I can do Jesse, then I can do anything.
Speaker 1: And so after Jesse, I can I can really get started,
Speaker 1: Like I can really decide what I what I want
Speaker 1: to do, because I want to. I want to figure
Speaker 1: out what it means to write for an orchestra. I
Speaker 1: want to figure out what it means to collaborate with
Speaker 1: a rapper. I want to figure out what it means
Speaker 1: to work with a banjo player, or what I want
Speaker 1: to I want to write for choirs. I want to
Speaker 1: stretch myself all this stuff. So I did that thinking
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm going to want to do,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to make sure I have all the
Speaker 1: skills and I'm equipted as far as I can to
Speaker 1: do whatever I want to do after this, And I
Speaker 1: don't know what that is yet. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: there's there's so many avenues that I've been exploring a
Speaker 1: bit in the last couple of years. You know. One
Speaker 1: of those is scoring for film, for example, which I've
Speaker 1: I've been drawn drawn towards, and I'm doing some of that,
Speaker 1: and that's exciting to me. UM. I think that I've
Speaker 1: barely scratched the surface of what's possible, UM in my
Speaker 1: in my creative life. I just it's it's it seems
Speaker 1: infinite for me, and I think I want that to
Speaker 1: continue to a point even tho affinity you can be healthy. UM.
Speaker 1: I think I've barely scratched the surface of what's possible
Speaker 1: in the live performance realm. And I think that for
Speaker 1: someone with the skills that I hold, I think I've
Speaker 1: barely scratched the surface of how connective, UM, the things
Speaker 1: I'm doing, the music I'm making, the experiences I'm building
Speaker 1: for people can be bringing people together. So I want
Speaker 1: to I want to be led by whatever I'm led by.
Speaker 1: I have those priorities pretty solid and and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: wide open. I don't have a clue, honestly, but I'm
Speaker 1: excited to find out. Well, you've done an excellent job
Speaker 1: of describing who you are, where you came from where
Speaker 1: you're going, and I think this will be very enlightening
Speaker 1: for those who are unfamiliar with you previously. So Jacob,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much for your time
Speaker 1: and for doing this. Thank you both. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me. This has been something I've been
Speaker 1: looking forward to for ages actually, and it's super super
Speaker 1: nice tab a chance to talk to you about this.
Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob left Sense