Interview with Jaybee

So, the new album, Found on Putney Bridge, is it a concept album?

Very much so. You need to hear the whole album in sequence to grasp what's going on. I think it's sad that we've lost that to a large extent because we mostly listen to single tracks, as MP3s, these days.

And what is the concept?

One of my oldest friends, Karen, died this year. In her last months she wanted to look back at her time, and started sending me these mad midnight emails, recounting incidents from her life. These ranged from how her dad used to tell her bedtime stories in cockney rhyming slang, to being chatted up as a teenager by David Essex, to fighting cancer in the present. Not forgetting her extreme love of, um.... nipples! She thought it might make a book. I thought it would make an album, albeit a very unusual one.

Why so unusual?

It’s extremely informal and conversational; I’ve never actually heard songs with lyrics like this, full of “by the ways’ and “anyways”. I love a challenge, and it was tough, but ultimately interesting and rewarding, to turn them into songs. Although I do speak the lyrics quite a lot on this album, I was pleased at the percentage of melody I managed to find too.

It’s also an unusual album because all these songs are in the first person, adapted as they are from Karen's emails: so you have a man singing "I", telling the stories of a woman!

Isn't that confusing?

It needn't be. If fiction writers can channel themselves through narrators of a different gender, why shouldn't singer/songwriters? Rufus Wainwright did it on The Art Teacher, and Kate Bush sings from a male perspective on many of her songs. Two of my favourite artists...

What other musicians do you admire?

David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, PJ Harvey. All those great solo mavericks, I suppose. Of more recent people, I think John Grant is terrific - great voice, sensational melodies.

Why do you write songs?

That’s simple: I write the songs I wish existed but which don’t. I’ve always felt driven to write. There are tunes and words going round in my head all the time. That’s the way I’m made.

Do you consider yourself a good singer?
Absolutely not. I’m aware that my voice is weak by many standards but that’s not the point. If it was all about power and pitch and all the conventional standards, we wouldn’t have artists like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, for example. It’s about phrasing and timing and conveying shades of emotion and meaning with your voice, and that I can do; it’s the difference between “singer” and “vocalist”. The invention of the microphone changed everything: a drawl, a croak, a whisper, a howl – all those things can work in music.

Do you play live?
I have done, but not for years. Because I’m no singer, and no instrumentalist either, I’m happiest in the studio, building up three-minute cameos with combinations of sound.

Many musicians insist that they never listen to their own music. Do you?

All the time. I mean, someone has to!

So you’ve not had much commercial success: is that important to you?

All I want is an audience, even a small one. The internet has changed the whole game, and it’s enough for me to know that someone in Houston or Hong Kong or Haywards Heath is listening to me every now and again. And they are. I call that success...