Exclusive Jont Interview

5 months ago 29th Apr 16:41

So I ended up recording with them, some arrangements, then I came back to London and I was thinking 'Oh god it's not quite finished yet what am I going to do?' And this record, which I thought was going to be this sparse acoustic thing, I then added bass and drums too and then full arrangements. It's quite an old style album there is no click it's all recorded live and it's honest, open hearted, emotional songs that in a way celebrate our existence on the planet.

This is your third album how does the recording process differ as you become more experienced?

Basically, that's a very good question, to begin with one goes into the studio and you use the fairly traditional ways of recording which would be getting a click track set up, doing a guide guitar and vocal, getting the drums down and getting everything down track by track, and in a lot of ways that can actually change what you actually sound like when you are doing a gig.

With this album I really wanted us to do it exactly as I wanted to do it, I was producing it I didn't have record company involved, and I just wanted to make a record that I was really proud of, and you know when you are playing that game late at night and people are putting on the tracks that they love to hear? I wanted it to be full of tracks that you would put on in that environment, I wasn't trying to make hit radio records, I just wanted something that I would put on late at night and think wow this is beautiful.

So I ended up recording it in reverse to the usual process. I think as you go on you do stuff that is more comfortable for you and that you are happiest doing so in a lot of ways I made it in a very untraditional way by just doing all these live takes and over dubbing on top of them with no click and I'm quite happy with how it sounds because it sounds different to anything else that is out there.

You recorded and released Supernatural independently how have you found that?

I fond it very liberating. I have essentially used the same model that you'd use if you were a small indie label putting something out. I have really good team around me helping get word of the album out and helping me get some slots on radio and I have got a designer who has made a really beautiful that goes with the album.

So it's been good really because I haven't had to phone people up all the time asking what is going on I have known exactly what is going on because I have been organising it all.

And I read that you went to America to talk to living poets can you tell me a bit about that?

When I was seventeen, basically I was a poet first before I did music, I was massively into poetry especially American poetry. So when I was seventeen I wrote to all the living American poets in the Penguin Anthology of Modern Poetry that I had, and had been pouring over for years, and I said 'have you got an hour spare between October and March?' And twenty of them wrote back saying yes.

So I went to interview and I travelled across the country for six months and ended up meeting Allen Ginsberg, who was my hero because he was part of the beat generation, and having dinner with him in his apartment.

And meeting all the other poets was a really formative experience for me because at that age you are sort of not sure if you have anything interesting or worthwhile to say, you tend to feel intimidated by other people's intelligence and experience, and so going and meeting them and talking about what it was to be a poet and realising that you could hold your own in a conversation with them built a lot of confidence in me.

Why did you make the transition from poet to musician?

Well I was living in this house in Manchester with lots of people having just finished being a student and I was spending a lot of time in this tiny little room writing these little blocks of words, and friends would come up and read these little blocks of words and going 'oh, yeah nice one'. And this is only response I would get to all the creative stuff that I was doing.

And meanwhile I had just taken up the guitar and I was writing the odd song and I would be sitting around in the room of twenty people at the end of a party and you would have to get across to these people what you were saying in three or four minutes.

Basically if it was good they would like it and if it wasn't good they wouldn't like it so there was something about that that made me more excited and inspired creatively and I was able to perform, which i really enjoyed, and that was a side of stuff that wasn't coming out in my poetry. So it was quite a natural thing, my poems ended up being my songs, and people would say 'are you still writing poetry' and I was like 'well what do you think this is?'

How does the song writing process work for you?

Well just before you called I was standing the kitchen with my guitar and a cigarette and working at something that came through yesterday and in that case I was just leaving an answer machine message yesterday and I said: (sings) 'Birds at the sky I don't know why it's such a beautiful lie' and when I got off the phone I thought that that was actually quite nice maybe I can do something with that and I wrote this little song (sings) 'Birds at the sky I don't know why it's such a beautiful lie and all these thing that hurt we bury in the dirt will rise up and blossom in time.'

Then I just get the guitar and think ok what's going on? I just try to let it out as unconsciously as possible really.

Basically there are lots of ways sometimes the words come first, like that, other times you will just be playing around on the guitar and come up with some kind of melody that you can record into your phone to remember it later. When you listen to it later you discover that the melody has a certain emotion to it that feels like there is something that will go along to it.

You wanted to bring together like minded musicians and Unlit was born can you tell me a bit about that?

Well basically I organised, it actually has a lot to do with one of the poets that I met when I went around America at seventeen called Jonathan Williams. His ethos was if you want to be a poet then you should also publish poets as well you should also be interested in the nature of poetry it's not just about getting your stuff out there.

So I started a night in 1997 called Unlit which was basically a venue and was a mixture of songwriters, poets and classical musicians, and it was a way of having a regular gig for myself, and that just evolved.

When I went out to LA I finally had a place to live for the first time, I had my own flat, and I thought what would I want to do with my own flat? And I was like well I would want to make it an venue that is open and free for everyone one night of the week and put on a mixture of a party and a gig.

So in my flat I would have a little set of live music for about an hour with two or three people doing two or three songs then we will just go back to the party with a DJ and we will all have shared this beautiful thing in the middle of the party and it will make it richer somehow than what a party would be if you just turned up and everyone is having a drink and a dance.

So it started there really it was just when I was about to get chucked out of my apartment, because my neighbour wasn't very happy with me making my room into a venue once a week that's how it became something I did in other people's houses because I stopped doing it. And that's when the journey began.

Some acts like Sam Sparro and Tom Baxter are now enjoying mainstream success

Yeah there have been loads of people who have been through Unlit that are doing well. Sam was at almost all of the LA Unlits, he was my mate out there, and he would come down and sing at almost all of them. And Tom Baxter was one of the best people to come down and do Unlit in the early days, when it was at the Twelve Bar Club. I think have just been really lucky to have met some really really good artists along the way.

You have also started a documentary series The House We're In on YouTube how did all that come about?

Well when I came out of the apartment and stopped doing Unlit there and started doing it in other people's houses then I moved back to England and I started to do it in people's houses there. There was a MySpace user called Suzie Q who was really jealous, she lived in Boston, and all these Unlits were going on in London and she couldn't' come. She said 'Jont why don't you do a tour across American houses?'

And I thought it was a brilliant idea so I did a tour across American houses and did about twenty different MySpace users houses from New York to LA. We filmed it and put it up as a video blog series called The State We're In and The House We Are In is just an extension of that, it's just a second series, and we have gone around the UK doing Unlit in MySpace People's houses, who I have never met before, who are just into the Unlit vibe and want to help me create this really beautiful night that's open and free to anyone.

And what has the response been?

The response has been amazing this time around because I have got that many more MySpace friends and mailing list, perhaps people are intrigued and interested more a couple of years of later by the nature of house concerts, we have had thousand and thousand of views of the TV series all around the world.

And how have you found the Internet and sites like MySpace in promoting your music?

I like MySpace is interesting because it had that dip a year or two ago where everyone was like 'Yeah this is MySpace whatever lets move on to Facebook or something else. MySpace actually is just like Google it's a tool, an incredible useful and liberating tool, that sets this time that we are now in a completely unique setting because it means that if you want to do something positive and brilliant, in terms of connecting people and creating unique events that celebrate our existence, you can do it.

What's next for you?

I think that we will definitely do another Unlit tour sometime soon around the UK and I'm talking to some people about getting some funding to do it properly and get it out to a wider audience on the Internet. Then I'm looking forward to my gig at the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre, it's my big London gig, I'm going to carry on promoting the album. Then I'm lookig forward to doing another album, it's already written and ready to record, and I'm probably going to record it with a band called Artanker Convoy in Brooklyn.

Supernatural is released 5th May

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

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