“I mean, it is a collaborative process anyway. I’ll write a verse and then a chorus, and then take it to Jay and Lucy; they will work with me, then I will go back, write another verse, and take it back for Jay and Lucy, and so on. It might seem fractious to some, but I think we all get to where we are going in different ways.
That’s just ours.” And
somewhere amid all this creative back and forthing, the Lancashire dialect material comes in?
“Yeah, I mean, I reckon at least half of my songs have either been directly or indirectly inspired by a reading session. And then, after all of that, it can take weeks or months to end up with anything like an actual song.”
It starts to become apparent then that there is more to Jaywalkers than meets the eye. Throw into the mix the genius stylings of Parker and Appalachian echoes of Molsky, along with Nickle Creek and a smattering of Lancashire Dialect poetry, and before long you see why they have come so far so relatively fast. With 21 festivals already booked for this summer and their second album set for a June release, it is hard to imagine how they find time to eat, let alone play the numerous bookings that also litter the Jaywalker’s diary.
“Yeah, we made a special effort last year to try and get festivals and we haven’t stopped since last September. We just send out thousands of emails and a tenth of them reply and only a tenth of that tenth are positive. From there another tenth turn into bookings, if you are lucky.”
Once again I am reminded of how much effort is involved in making a career in the music business. Gone are the days of banging out a few songs, recording a few tracks, and leaving the rest up to somebody else.
In the
age of the internet the competition is so much greater than it was in the far off days of the 1960’s, when just about anybody who could strum a guitar and make two lines rhyme could enjoy some level of success.
“When she was about six years old her schoolteachers thought she had a bladder problem because she was always running off to the toilet; one day her teacher followed her and found that she was going in there just to sing. She literally cannot stop singing.”
Now you are up against websites and Facebook pages and Twitter feeds and blogs, all leading to a near constant interaction with your audience. Your presence has to be holistic in every way and you are never off duty. Add to that the need to book gigs and then actually play them and you start to remember that this is a job, often as hard as any other and usually more stressful than bus driving or stacking shelves at Tesco.
“Well, yeah, and that’s why we brought in the agent, because you just get to the point where…you know...we want to play the music, instead of all the emailing and negotiating,” he says, with usual good humour.
“And she is only is adding to the gigs. We got 21 festivals on our own, so she is just augmenting that, which is no small task, don’t get me wrong. But she isn’t running the show; there is still a lot of work to do. “
So, when they are not making their presence felt online, negotiating with promoters, performing in schools (did I mention they also run music workshops for primary school kids?) or writing the songs, they are either practicing or performing.
Well, Mike and Lucy are practicing or performing. Jay just sings. By which I mean that is all she does and all she has ever done.
For somebody with a voice
so rich and soulful that she was drawing attention while still in her teens, the line between practicing and just doing what she does is almost non-existent.
“She never stops singing. Her uncle was a
professional country musician and her dad was semi-professional, so her dad used to take her to gigs at an early age. There is a funny story actually…” Mike begins, though I am not sure Lucy would think it funny.
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