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Jont
Startling singer-songwriter gets to grips with our questions…
Every young singer-songwriter claims a uniqueness, something that differentiates them from the tide of lone travellers armed solely with an acoustic and a headful of memories, and yet no other singer-songwriter can lay claim to music as an artform quite so vividly as London’s Jont. Inspired by the visual literature of the American beat poets as a teen, an intrigued young Jont sought to meet the major living poets of that generation in person, and set off to America, interviewing 23 of them and even having dinner with Allen Ginsberg in his New York apartment. “Do you like sex?” Allen said after dinner, but Jont escaped just in time. Returning to the UK and inspired by his conversations with the poets, Jont began writing his own fables and sketched his first lovelorn songcraft. Influenced by the Beats and also the vibe of the ‘70s Laurel Canyon songwriter community, Jont devised a a way to get his music out there but also to build a community of like-minded artists, and a space for them to play. Unlit was born. Starting as a regular night in a venue, Jont’s brainchild has evolved in recent years to be a completely unique and inspiring venture. Plugging into the network of fans he attracted with his appearance on the soundtrack to The Wedding Crashers, in 2006 Jont took Unlit across America through the houses of MySpacers he’d never met and captured the magical aura of these nights in an online TV series called, “The State We’re In” which he posted on Youtube as he went. On his return, the BBC asked him to curate a special Unlit for The BBC’s Electric Proms and this year he has just completed the first ever Unlit tour of UK MySpace users’ houses, the new online TV series of which - aptly named “The House We’re In” - will be launched on Youtube on March 31st. The magical little episodes, shot by film maker Dave Depares (Long Way Down, Hairy Bikers Cookbook) capture the raw combination of joyous, uplifting songcraft with the audience of outsider artists, party kids and the merely curious, that is Unlit. Jont interviews his audience and speaks to the motivation behind his fellow artists. This is the Skins generation with a twist, fronted by music’s very own Louis Theroux. Jont is a British treasure; an artist that empathises with the purity of art, and welcomes anyone to join him on this journey of musical discovery. Supernatural is his opus. What’s yours?
How are you? Where does this Q&A find you? I’m feeling buzzed and excited about tonights UNLIT (a mixture of a gig and party, free and open to anyone that I have put on for the last ten years) which we are holding in the amazing house of a friend of mine in Clapham. It will be free and open to anyone who hears about it, as long as they come with a bottle and respect for the house and the set of live music which we do about half way through the party. So I’m excited about that, especially as it’s a special house, there will be lots of friends there, and also lots of people I’ve never met, and I will get to hear one of my fave songwriters - Sharon Lewis - and also play some of my own tunes.
This Q&A finds me at the computer of my friends Barbara and Emma, where I stayed on the sofa during the making of “Supernatural”. I woke up there again this morning, for the first time in a while, which was nice and kind of reminds me of this time last year when I started making the album.
How did the recording sessions for Supernatural go? Well, they were unlike any I’d done on any previous album, in the sense that I went in thinking I was just making acoustic demos of some new songs and at the end of the day when I heard the rough mixes thought, these aren’t demos, these are album tracks. I was about to go to France to do some Unlits there, but did another two days recording, until I had about 17 takes I was happy with of songs I might put on the album. Then when I was in France at an Unlit I met Bent Van Looy of Das-Pop, who is an incredible keyboard player and he and I had a rehearsal, then found Deborah Walker, a wonderful cellist living in Paris, and we decided to do three days there, overdubbing arrangements on to these takes I’d done in London. I figured that would be that, but the thing didn’t sound finished. My friend Simon Eugene suggested I put drums and bass on 6 of the tracks. I explained that there was a lot of bleed between the guitar and the vocal, cos they were done live, and that there was no click but he still thought it was a good idea to give it a go. And it was! So the album has a very organic, live sound, but quite full arrangements in some parts.
What goals did you set yourself before you started recording? To make something I really liked.
What do you feel are your own limitations when it comes to creating/writing music? Depends how I’m feeling. Sometimes I feel very limited and rubbish, with nothing to say about anything, like a shell. And sometimes I feel the opposite of that.
Tell us 3 of your favourite songs from your career and the inspiration behind them? “Ellen Macarthur”
I think this is the first time I wrote a song when it really felt like it had come from some melodic place that I wouldn’t normally have written from…ie it had a good tune!! A lot of stuff of mine up to this point had been much more wordy without a big chorus. The song is the story of someone (not me!) who went to school with Ellen Macarthur (the sailor who sailed single-handedly around the world) and never really spoke to her, and then suddenly he’s sitting on his sofa at home watching the ten o’clock news and sees her on the news and is really moved and starts crying, wondering about what the hell he has done with his life. Kind of a universal feeling we all have sometimes when we feel time is slipping away from us and we are not doing anything worthwhile with our lives.
Tell us about your worst live show yet? Well, there was a guy who flew me to his house in Portland, Oregon to do an UNLIT in his house, and when I got there, there was a photo of me on the door, tealights lit, washing up in the sink, loads of booze on the sideboard, and NO-ONE THERE! I’d explained that an Unlit was a party and a gig, and that he had to provide the other acts and the audience, but I guess he’d had a tough time organising it….so yep, that was pretty weird.
What are your plans for the rest of the year? Well I have a big gig at The Purcell Room, this sort of theatre that is part of the South Bank Centre where they do a lot of classical music gigs…on Sunday June 1st…and then I have a UK tour during June. After I will be playing Glastonbury, Small World Festival and Secret Garden and other festivals and hopefully will be putting on another tour of people’s houses and then, with my mate dave depares, making it in to an online tv series on youtube or online somewhere. I also have my next album ready to record, which I’m hoping to record in Brooklyn with the band Artanker Convoy.
How would you describe your own sound, or what do you hate being labelled as? Well, I guess people hate being told what they do actually sound like. People say I sound like Damian Rice, Coldplay, Jeff Buckley, Neil Young, Jack Johnson etc etc and I guess if loads of people say it, then to some extent, in a general way they must be right, and that’s fine with me. I don’t really see myself like that much at all, and don’t spend much time thinking about what is “my sound”. I just play and try to make my songs quite varied…they tend to have a pretty similar over-riding, positive message….but they can go from quasi-rap, to songs that borrow a lot from the huge genres that are folk, pop and rock.
Who is currently moving you musically at the moment? M Ward, Sharon Lewis, Artanker Convoy, Leona Naess, Polly Paulusma, Derek Meins, Dawn Kinnard, Sam Sparro.
What album changed your life and why? The rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from Mars. By Bowie. It was my first. I only listened to it because the cool kids in the back of the bus to scout camp, toby and alexis, were listening to it. I just wanted to be cool like them so I said I liked it. Then I bought it and made myself like it. But Bowie turned out to be an intuitively good choice! He became my man for my whole teenage years, I had posters all round my room of him, and I still would love to meet him.
Your proudest achievement so far? Difficult, as a lot of things aren’t really your own achievement….you’re a witness to something, or part of something. But it has been really rewarding and often thrilling to be involved in putting on my night UNLIT, and seen it go through its evolution from just a normal monthly night in a club to being this extraordinary mixture of gig and party, free and open to anyone, put on in the houses of people I meet on myspace across the world. This week the online tv series Dave Depares and I made about it and posted on Youtube was getting thousands of hits and that felt pretty gratifying that something so pure and about the essence of music was getting out there to so many people.
If you could erase one single/album from history (your own or someone else's) which would it be and why? I did a song called “In Your Eyes” which was pretty fucking awful. But I learnt from it. So I guess I wouldn’t erase it. Erase nothing, accept everything.
How do you see yourself altering your sound in the future? Is there anything you wish to attempt in the future that's inspiring you right now? Well yeah, as I said, I am really excited about making my next album with Brooklyn based avant garde fusion outfit Artanker Convoy (check em out, they are in my top friends on my Myspace). I’m hoping the combo of our styles will be pretty mind-blowing. And they’re my friends anyway. I think I just really want to record with friends from now on.
A rumour you'd like to start about yourself, or one you'd like stopped? I lost my virginity to Julie Christie. It’s not true.
What drives you & What are your fears? A desire to be as happy and fulfilled as possible. Fears? That I will never be able to truly love or be loved by someone in a one on one, committed relationship.
The revolution comes, who would you like to be first against the wall (and if you're feeling particularly bitchy, a second, third, fourth and so on...)? If the revolution has really come, we can just put a ladder against the wall, and those that know they should go, will get up and leave.
Best piece of advice you'd give to aspiring musicians, or the best piece of advice you were given when you started? Don’t wait for permission….just get on with it. Be wary of people who try to control you and try to evolve and become the strongest most aware version of yourself you can possibly be.
If you're in a car going at the speed of light, and someone turns the headlamps on, would they do anything? They would fill the sky with love
Jont Single: Candlelit Date: 21 April 2008 Album: Supernatural Date: 5th May 2008 Released On: Unlit Records
Jont releases his third album ‘Supernatural”, through Unlit Records on the 5th of May.
Thanks to Charlotte @ Hyperlaunch
Jeremy Chick
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