Interview

with

JAMIE LAWSON

Jamie Lawson

UK artist Jamie Lawson has a new record Happy Accidents out TOMORROW via his good mate Ed Sheeran’s record label, Gingerbread Man Records. The talented musician spoke to Amnplify’s Pauli Dee about the record, feeling the ghost of Jim Morrison’s presence in the sound booth and much more…

Hi, Jamie thanks for chatting with us today. Your new Album HAPPY ACCIDENTS is out tomorrow.
How are you feeling leading up to the release?

Excited, nervous, apprehensive, all of them and a mixture of things, not quite knowing how to feel. Wondering how people are going to react to the album if they’re going to like it or not and how big the react might be.

Have you had any feedback from friends & family that might have heard it?

No! I haven’t played it for anyone! I don’t play it for anyone until it’s out! I don’t know why it’s just a nervous thing. Ed Sheeran’s heard it, you know because he’s involved in it, the record company and my management have heard it because they’re all part of the team and they’re all very happy with it & very excited about it, we all think it’s a great record so I’ve only had positive feedback from those in the biz! No family or friends though.

What do YOU think of the album?

I’m really proud of it. I’m very happy with it. I think it’s a real step up from the last one. It’s a bigger sounding record, it’s a more textured album than the last one mainly because we had more time to work on it. We only had 2 weeks last time & this time I had 7, which is still a relatively short time to make a record, but you just tend to get to work, crack on with it and it comes out how it comes out!

That 7 weeks you have to make the album, is that the 7 weeks that you worked at Sunset Studios in L.A?

Yeah.

So when you go into the studio like that for a 7-week stint, do you not have all the songs written and ready to record? Do they change once you start recording?

Well all the songs were already written and I sort of had an idea of what direction to take them in, but all musicians are different and they play differently so for this record, we used a couple of guys that live in L.A that the producer brought in that I was very aware of & very a very big fan of, Matt Chamberlain on drums and Roger Manning Jnr & they bring in their own sense of ideas, so the songs tend to take form slightly different to the way you might have thought & that’s the beauty of it.
You can go in with a certain idea and something will happen to take you into a different direction. There was only one song that didn’t work very well at first and that was the first single.
We had a different version of Cant’s See Straight In November we recorded 15 songs while I was at the studios, then I went back in February with a song that I wrote specifically for the album, I thought the album needed it, which was more driving and moves forward a bit more & that was Fall into Me and at that time we thought Can’t See Straight” didn’t quite work with the rest of the album, you know we didn’t quite capture the magic of the song, so we did a different version of that & that’s the version you hear now.

Had you worked at Sunset Studios before? It’s a pretty iconic studio.

No, I hadn’t. Yeah, it was a big thrill. I was a huge Doors fan when I was a teenager, so to be in the same studio and literally the same sound booth as Jim Morrison felt kind of weird, you could feel his ghost and the ghosts of others that had been there

We’ve had a small taste of the album with the first single, “Can’t see straight.”
We’re told it’s co-written by Ed Sheeran; does Ed actually have much input into the writing or does he just have some sort of copyright CLAIM to be co-writer of EVERY song that comes out these days?

Hahaha, that’s the exact question I asked him in the video Tea with Ed & Jamie I don’t know if you’ve seen the video.

I have! So does one person come up with the concept and then the other jumps in and you write it together? What’s the process there?

Exactly that! I went out to Ed’s place and Johnny McDaid was there as well. He’s the drummer from Snow Patrol. The three of us were there and we’d already written another song in the morning & after we’d gone out and eaten some lunch, we came back and Ed started strumming some chords and said “I think we should write a song like this”, and I could see where he was coming from because it was a very similar rhythm to “Wasn’t expecting that.” I think he wanted some sort of connection between the two records, so he started singing the first chorus line of Can’t see straight, and then I just jumped on and moved the music around a little bit. I remember making some funny chord changes in the second half of the chorus & Johnny really liked that. Johnny sort of played referee between Ed and myself & these ideas going back & forward.

I was watching the video today. That’s a really cool clip. I heard there was something about a spelling mistake in the clip, so you had to remove it from YouTube & re-upload it… What happened there?

Thanks… yeah, I’m a stickler for spelling & grammar & I don’t always get it right myself, but the guys had spelt something wrong & I wasn’t having any of that in my clip! What’s weird is, you get these things sent to you before they go live and I didn’t pick up on it, so it got published and then I noticed it and had to pull it down.

Oh wow! Do you feel like an ass hole doing something like that after so much work has gone into a video like that?

No, not at all!

Because it’s your work and you want it displayed properly, right?

Exactly! You have to spell correctly! You can’t be putting stuff out there that has a spelling error in it!

It’s quite an artistic clip & I know you studied art after school, did you have much input into the making of the video?

Not really! The art direction of the video came from the artwork itself. I sort of chanced it with an artist named Hollie Chastain. I took pictures of her work into the record label and told them I really liked her work & I’d like the album to be a lot like this and asked if we could get in touch with her. I had no idea if she was alive or not, because you know, sometimes when you discover art, it can be a long time after the event of someone so, fortunately, Hollie is alive and well and also happened to have my last record, so she knew about it and knew about me so she jumped on board and we went back & forth. I found this old photo of myself and that really suited the work that he does, which has a very retro collage effect & because of the art that she created from that, it just fed into the video for Can’t see straight It was all done by stop-motion photography, so for me, it was all photographer as opposed to filming, it was done really well and I think it came out brilliantly.

Is art something you’re still interested in? Do you still get a chance to play within your spare time?

Only in the sense of Instagram really! I do love photography and I take a lot of photos and post them up… I should probably post more music actually! If you’re in a band, it’s all supposed to be about the band or if you’re a singer you’re supposed to post photos on stage or in different places and then there’s me who takes photos of skylines or a crane or what did I post this week? Some sort of pizza & I’m no foodie, it was just because it looked weird!

Well, no-one can tell you what you should or shouldn’t be posting!

They probably can actually! Hahaha but that’s another matter!

Jamie Lawson

We’ve also heard another track from the album Miracle of Love It’s a beautiful song, but I wanted to ask you, what is it about?

Thank you firstly. It’s actually a song that’s been around the longest. I actually wanted it on a previous record & it just didn’t work. I think it mainly works now because of Roger Manning’s keyboard playing and the sounds that he makes to help me sing over it and I just think it’s really beautiful & strange at the same time, it creates a lot of space, so I was really happy with how that came out. In terms of what it’s about, if it’s ok, I’d rather not say, because the great thing about songs is people relate to them in their own way, they take on what they need to hear from a song & I think with a song like this, in particular, that’s quite useful, so if I tell people what the song’s about, they can’t have their feelings on it. Does that make sense? Or is it a real cop-out!?!

No, it makes perfect sense!
Can’t See Straight is about falling in love, you do write a great love song.
Are there songs on the album that AREN’T about love?

Well… let me look at the track listing!…
Ummm… I’m going to probably say no! The reason I say no is I think most songs are about love in general. Whoever it is and whatever they’re writing about, it usually comes from love in some direction. There’s a song on the album called He’s reading Helena & I wrote it on my 40^th birthday when I was on a plane travelling from Amsterdam to L.A & I’m sitting next to an older couple that are holding hands and he’s reading this book called “Helena” and I thought “Oh, he’s reading Helena, that has a nice ring to it” and she fell asleep and I started writing about it. There’s no mention of love in the song, it’s just about the flight from taking off to landing, but it is a love song, so I think they all come from love, personally. I seem to get accused of writing love songs as if it’s a bad thing & I don’t think I should feel embarrassed about it.

Well, you recently got married. Would I be correct if I said it’s a reflection of where you are in your life and celebrating that love?

Yeah so the record was made in November and February and I got married in between in December, so love was all around.

You’ve got some upcoming European shows with James Blunt –
Do you have plans to come back to Australia?

I’d love to! I really enjoyed myself last time I was there, so fingers crossed the record does well and I get a chance to come back out there. I think it’s being talked about, which always means it’s a possibility.

Jamie
describes his new album
Happy Accidents
as his best work yet.
It’s out in all your usual music shops TOMORROW.

Random Q’s

with Jamie

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

Granola – cereal

Tea or coffee?

Tea

Beer, Wine or Spirit?

Spirit

Who are your top 3 musicians of all time?

Oh hell! …Musicians or bands?

Either!

Michael Jackson, R.E.M & Mark Eitzel

Favourite thing to have on a sandwich?

Peanut butter and jam

Boxers or Briefs?

Briefs

Apples or bananas?

Apples

If you were a spice girl, what spice would you be?

Probably quiet Spice!

& do you ever get sick of talking about Ed Sheeran?

No! Never!