But if I'm just this child star, they like burst out laughing. They're like curly. Nobody knows who you.
Are, evening everyone. Greg here bringing you the second episode in this brand new series. Thanks for all your kind comments about the podcast kicking off again. We started major with Kevin Parker from Tame in Parlor last week and we're staying major for tonight's guest Carlie ray Jepson. We'll get into the chat in just a moment. But the past decade, well more than the past decade, has been
quite a ride for the Canadian artist. I'm massively skimming over this quickly, but from appearing on Canadian Idol back in the early days to the release of Call Me Maybe You'll Definitely Know That one, a worldwide number one too, collaborating with Justin Bieber all the way through to Jack Antonof and then in Motion, the album released in summer twenty fifteen, hugely critically acclaimed an amazing record, It ended up on a bunch of the recent Best of the
Decade lists in some very notable places, and then Onto dedicated her fourth album, which was out last year twenty nineteen. She followed that up with a huge headline tour. As for myself, I had a total moment watching Carli for the first time at a festival last summer. As you're about to hear, I met up with Carlie in London
in February, just before Valentine's Day. That's relevant because she was just about to share her latest single, Let's Be Friends, a sort of anti Valentine's Day anthem, as she puts it. At that point, she was part way through a bunch of shows happening throughout Europe and loads of topics covered.
We talked about her position as an artist who brings together fans of all types of music, how she whittles two hundred odd songs that she writes down to a dozen or so for each new project she releases, and we talked about her parallel work in musical theater. She starred in Cinderella and in Greece in the and maybe she'll write her own. Who knows interesting to hear her talk about her plans on that So here it is. This is Carlie Ray Jebson on episode eighty seven of
Midnight Chats. I remember if you like what you hear, do subscribe wherever you're listening to this and if you do want to support the podcast, we also make a monthly independent music magazine. It's called Loud and Quiet, and you can subscribe to that. Head to Loud and Quiet dot com slash subscribe if that sounds like your kind of thing. We ship worldwide, and supporting that helps us make this podcast. Carlie, welcome to Midnight Chats. It's a pleasure to have you on our podcast.
There is my pleasure. Thank you so much.
How are you doing today?
I'm good, I'm good. I'm a little like jet legged, but that's not unusual for me.
How if you found any tricks to sort of cope with that over the years, because obviously you'd have kind of been criscrossing the world doing touring and everything else. So like, are there any little hints or things that have like picked up along the way that just help you ever overcome that? Or is it just like no, you just succme to the jack.
Yeah. No, me and sleep just aren't friends lately. I don't know what to I have tried.
I have like read books on it, Like, how do you what are some sleep tricks apparently have to have like the right temperature in the room, it's good to have a shower and not too hot of a shower.
I've tried it all.
I just come to terms with the fact that I'm a little bit of an enzomiac.
On their tips along the lines of what to do when you're actually flying, like don't eat meals when you're flying in the air, and then when you get to the place where you're going, you should automatically try and sort of fit into the Say, if you land at breakfast, the first thing you should have is breakfast and then try and resume your routine or whatever.
There are tricks to that.
I think my theory on the travel side of the eating sleeping stuff, because of the inzomia sometimes is just sleep when you can eat when you're hungry.
Try to get on board for the city that you're.
In as soon as you can acclimate yourself. Great, but you know, it's never unmanageable. I think the worst I can go is like three days where I'm having trouble sleeping in and then the worst case scenarios that I get really giggly, or you might say something that I think is like going to make me cry.
It's one of what emotion or the other it's.
Certain to happen, and also it happens whilst you're traveling as well. Like I think Paddington I had me in floods of tears.
You can't watch email movies or cute ones, no, no dead dogs, exactly.
Stay away from all of the above.
Yeah, exactly. Just stick with a kind of just a Marvel action film, just like let's keep.
Things, you know, you know, something like that.
Nothing that's not going to take you on too much an emotional yeah, exactly. I want to start this podcast by taking it back to a particularly joyful moment for me, which came at the start of last summer. I was at the Premium Ery Sound festival in Barcelona. You were there too, and I was with a group of friends. We were watching you play. That was the first time
I've ever seen you play live. It was just a particularly amazing moment for that weekend because for people that haven't visited that festival, it's kind of held on the outskirts of Barcelona. On one side of the stage, you've got this Barcelona skyline and on the other you've got
the Mediterranean Sea. It's very idyllic, you know, when you go to a festival and there's usually kind of one moment that just becomes like this indelible thing that you will kind of talk about for the ages and months afterwards. And it was your set up in Riviera Sound Really do you remember that show? Was it?
Was? It?
Yeah?
I remember that show for lots of reasons. I feel like we had had an incredible time in Barcelona to begin with, and then getting to arrive at that stage, Like you said, that venue, if you can call it a venue, it was just like outdoor and you can see sort of from my perspective, just seeing this crowd of people in the ocean and the sunset was just like a very very magical day. And on top of it, they gave me free sunglasses. So I'm pretty stoked I'm going to.
Come back and do this. Yeah, it was. It was just sort of like the perfect moment because it was at sunset cool, and so that the first half of the set was in daylight and then the kind of sun came down. What's going through your mind when you're on stage? Do you just in the moment, like did you mind go blank? Or do you have things run into your mind?
Oh? Good question.
I don't know if it's the exact same formula for every show, but in this particular one, if I'm jogging my memory, right, I can, I just remember it being really one of those sort of like pinch yourself moments, because I mean, as much as I've performed in Barcelona before, I hadn't really done the festival of this nature, and I feel like I still have those like insecurities right before you go on stage of like is anyone going to be digging in any of this?
Like I don't know.
So to kind of get to perform to a crowd and to see everyone kind of dancing and singing along that with that blew my mind and then I think I just got to and enjoyed the euphoria of the moment.
You kind of reference it there that a festival like Prema Various Sound, like going back a few years would have been considered like a kind of old rock festival. That would have been the sort of stuff that they booked.
They're a lot more diverse now. But there was a beautiful moment during your set where I turned around and not that I have a kind of tight cast view of what a Kylie Ray Jebson fan necessarily looks like, but there was a guy wearing a Slayer T shirt who was absolutely going nuts, and I just thought this is perfect. Over the years, have you noticed the type of people that come to your shows or the type of people that you see out there and enjoying your music?
Has that evolved? Has that changed in any way?
Strangely enough?
If I were to say, like one sort of description is its always just been beautifully diverse. Like I when somebody has asked me a like, what is your fan base?
Like what is it? This age? Is it? You know, it's it's kind of just it's.
Always surprised me that I don't know how to answer that, And I think that's what I really have found I love about kind of getting to perform to these crowds, is you feel like none of these people might have.
Come together otherwise, So I just get to be.
Kind of like, I don't know the conductor of the thing in a fun way, and it just it becomes a party, which I never thought I would be able to be in this position.
To say, but it's kind of takes me. I know, you have the room sometimes just like.
Takes over in a way that I that I love and I'm just kind of caught.
Up in There are many artists that I can think of that could go from playing Premaerio sound to I don't know, playing like like I could easily see playing like Manchester, Bright and Pride or something like that the next day.
Do you know what I mean?
It's just, yeah, it's diverse. There are not many artists that can do that. So do you how do you feel about that position of being able to adopt these different not tribes because people, like I say, I think it feels a lot more diverse these days, and people are a little bit less tribalistic about the music they like. But you can slot into these different modes almost, can't you.
I think at some point, like the main goal from me was about really embracing what it was that I loved about pop because whenever people say pop in the past that there was always like hand in hand with that that's saying guilty pleasure, And I'm like, if it actually makes you feel happy, way you feel weird about it? Like where is the guilt coming from? I think there's something.
That I like that I find kind of feeds my soul about it.
It's a really communal kind of form of music, so yeah, I don't know if I'm answering your question right, but I think when I'm getting to kind of jump from like one room to a different room, and it feels like the people who are just have embraced the pop that they love and that I get to be a part of that, and it makes me really very lucky.
That evening as well, I've seen something at a gig that I've never seen before, probably will never see since somebody in the crowd was waving like a French baguet in the sky and I was rewatching the clip recently and I thought, that's a that's a French burget. Somebody's
waving in the crowd. I thought all the things that you've never seen somebody at a festival with, you know, like yes, like flags, yes, inflatable swords like everything like yeah, And I just thought, well, I don't know, I don't know that how any significance the bagett.
I have missed the baggett. I wish I hadn't. I love random weird shit like that, but yeah, No, I feel.
Like there's been so many laughs along this journey, just with like their fans are so inventive and really engaged and from memes to just like the sword thing you mentioned.
It's just it feels like every couple of.
Weeks there's a new thing that it has me in the Bandboy, it's just like chuckling of like this is so bizarre and I love it and it makes it makes you.
You have to smile.
Have you ever been handed anything else on stage where you've just been like, oh, I'm surprised you've given me that, but thanks very much.
Yeah, I'm sure.
I mean I've been given like ladies bras before, which is always a little.
Bit like it's not like more like for like rockstars, but like, sure, I'll take it. It's a double D. Not gonna fit me, but thank you.
Sometimes people like like, we've had some strange ones. Sometimes in the middle of the show, people will like hand you their phone because they want you to like take this selfie.
That's not I guess that unusual. But yeah, I think I had one guy hand me his CD demo. Really take a little It was like, this is my show settled out?
Ending to that story is I listened to it. I thought it was great. We signed him and.
Now he's yeah, yeah exactly. That's how.
Is there anywhere that you've ever played where you kind of thought, oh no, this isn't like I'm the sort of wrong fit for this moment, or i just feel like out of step with what's going on. Does that still does that happen as well?
Yeah? Absolutely?
I think that happened recently at a festival. I'm trying to picture where it was exactly, but it was a festival and it was like midday and there's a lot of college students and they had done a ton of drugs and they were marsh pudding.
They were marsh pudding, and I was looking at my team.
Like, how are they going to digest this? Like how are they going to digest my music right now? Like I feel like they want something completely different, and they're like.
Well, like, just give it a girl.
It's like, all right, guys, we're just gonna pretend like they love it even if they don't.
Let's go. And sure enough we ran out there and.
They like were so out of it that they just embraced anything you gave them, Thank god. But it was still like a moment of like, I'm pretty sure one of us is not like the others right now, Like, yeah, they were just having a way too good of a time.
They're like circle pits during your set.
And they were doing I don't know what it is where you like spin and certain an old lady.
Like a slipnoll game.
Yeah.
There it was like like if.
You were to put the camera on the audience and to guess who is playing right now, no one would have panned left to me, no one. And yet there we were singing I Really like you and they were marching hard.
I feel that like this should have been a viral.
We had some laughs afterwards, for sure.
I'm just glad that like nothing just landed on stage like that doesn't seem to be a thing anymore. Like when I first started going to festivals when I was like a teenager, but if there was somebody booked to play a festival, that festivals were much less diverse than it was, like you know, you're going to a rock festival or you were going to a metal festival. I don't, I don't know what your first experiences are going to festivals was like, but that felt like it had like
one type of music. I don't think it really happens like that anymore, or not so much. At least some poor artists certainly that I've been in the crowd for that have taken you know, all sorts of stuff is landing on stage. Yeah, yeah, oh they are like particularly famous incidents that like, particularly like the Reading Festival in the UK has had that a few times. And yeah,
people getting like pretty unpleasant stuff thrown at them. But I'm glad to say that I don't think that really happens anymore, so like.
The old school, like tomato now, I hope not.
Worse than a tomato.
I don't want to know. Do you want to know?
You have to tell you just likes of unidentified liquid shore we say, yeah, And like deck chairs, I've seen a deck chair land on stage with a Reading festival somebody through like anything that you would go camping with that you could maybe take into the arena, and then when the band is playing or the artist.
Is playing that they try to take them out pretty much.
Yeah, yeah, Like there's one particularly famous example of an artist called Daphine Celeste, who were a pop duo British who played the Reading Vessel in the early two thousands, and they were on a bill with regigainst the Machine and Blink One It too, And I think maybe you slip not the headline in that night, and they performed this set as kind of a dare because they were like, no, no, we'll do this, and like then the audience took that as a challenge and they ended up throwing stuff at them,
and there's a really famous.
Of this show.
Wow.
But I totally stand by Daphine celest but turning up and doing the gig and being there and doing it.
I was show up with one of those like you know, those like police screen guards, and I would just like sing the whole thing from behind it just looking, you know.
He was like one of those Perspec screens they put in front of the drum kit, but just like a really big one. So when they throw anything.
Back can become like modern art.
You can just have like the splash video idea idea right there.
So we talk a little bit in a minute about the new music that you've got out and also the European tour and your plans for twenty twenty. But before we do that, I'm interested to know, like talked a bit about Premiera in twenty nineteen. It's like that decade came to an end. Did you take a bit of a reflective moment to think about everything that had happened that decade, because it was quite a rollercoaster from you.
Yeah, I think we must all be kind of doing that right.
I don't know if this is like a New Year's that seems bigger than the rest of the ones in my life, but it's really been like an awakening, one of just like, holy shit, I'm flies and it's been wild, and I even think with like the kind of Instagram and all of a sudden being in your world, you can sometimes go back and be like, I'm forgetting half the things that I did, and the pace of stuff is so crazy. But I'm really proud of where we've landed. I mean that for my whole team, not just for myself.
It's just been such a journey and so many lessons and kind of in my own kind of personal life, just so so many just different experiences that have led me to i think, a stronger place and a more confident place than I've ever been before. And in turn, I feel like I'm more excited than i've been maybe ever to just kind of take a sigh of relief.
I feel like I've ended my feet on some solid ground and now let's create without the pressure or the panic or the what happens if I can't stay clad to this thing?
Did you just take a kind of deep breath?
Was it was? It was?
It quite as literally as like New Year's Eve. You're just like, wow, Okay, No, No, it was drunk. I was drunk and I was dancing on New I'm imagining like tequila in hand in one hand, tequila.
That's a beautiful thought. No, we did have a lovely New Year's Eve. Actually, my family and I we all kind of we made the most bit. We went on the rooftop at night.
It was great. But no, to answer your question, it's been it's been more.
Of a gradual reflection over the last kind of I think over this past month of just like I think I have like a couple of changes in like new management teamind of clearing the decks for this album and getting ready for like what's next musically and kind of rethinking how I've released stuff, and just even within my personal life my family, that just feels like we've all kind of had a good.
Reconnect over Christmas.
So it's just kind of that fresh energy to like, Okay, let's go take on our worlds, you know.
Staying on that point of the end of twenty nineteen, Lots of different places published there like best of the decade albums and tracks and everything everything else. An Emotion appeared in quite a few of those. I noticed that Time magazine put Emotion in their top ten best albums of the twenty tens, and so Emotions seemed to be one of those albums that exited that decade. Is really being considered something that encapsulated that period of music. That's
the resonance that people were giving it. So how did you feel about that?
I don't know.
Even hearing you say that, I still feel like, really, wow, that's amazing. Who I It's tricky for me because the fine balance to walk of really warranting of that sentence that you just said, feeling really good and that's so nice, But that can ever be like the full motivation in my mind, otherwise you start like creating for the wrong reason. So I think even before anyone had heard Emotion, I had to kind of figure out how I felt about
it and let that be the truth. And it landed for me as just something really honest that I felt passionate about, and I was really proud of it and and happy to share it, and but I felt like whatever happens now could go either way, and I don't know, I just don't want to feel like it couldn't have gone the other way and that would have changed my feeling out of it.
So I don't know if that's a proper answer.
If I was you, I'd be printing out those web pages and everything else, and I'd be like turning it into that customized wallpaper.
And I always actually try not to read stuff.
There's there's moments where you get like a weak moment and you're like, but I'll get fueled through like filters where Laura will kind of let me know, hey, are you ready to kind of see with the I'm was like, I don't know where am I? But my mom is cute. She'll just send me. She'll send me stuff and.
Keep on being like, Mom, I don't want to read this. I'm sorry.
But she's a really good filter system because she'll only sound like the really good stuff.
So it's like in the meantime, she's just like emailing like journalists has written anything negative is being.
Like you guys suck, Yeah, trouble my mom, right, that's the thing that.
Like, that's what hey, mums have got your back. That's the whole point of good.
Make great publicists, you know who knows or terrible ones.
Let's be honest.
Could you imagine working day to day with actually having like members of your family and team?
No, I can't. I cannot.
I mean in terms of just your formative stages of getting into music and writing your first songs. In my preparations for the research of just looking at stuff for today, I came across a couple of things, a couple of early stories which I wanted to ask about. One of them was that you wrote your first song when you were at aged nine? Is that right? And it was called They're cutting Down the Big Trees or was that was nine?
Yeah? Around that time. Yeah, it was a protest song.
I mean you were like, hang on, you were like twenty five thirty years ahead of just of like the climate crisis. You're out there making it any important statement.
I grew up in Canada and Mission BC. My mom that was quite in the most beautiful sense of.
The word, sort of a hippie and like was really talking to me about some of these events. And I think my aunt has been famously known for like chaining herself like naked to.
A tree that they like it's tastes well, the more so my aunt.
But my mom was kind of just informing me about things, and there was this opportunity to like print a poem in the local paper, and I I wrote a song.
I think I had some help with like figuring out the chords.
To it from a guy named David, And yeah, but I wrote all the lyrics, very emo song about how the trees were all going to go and how I'm just a child and everyone has to help me fight this kind of thing.
It's very prophetic because like it's a terrible song.
The message is great, but this song is bad. Don't get too excited.
Is it looked in a safe some way?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah?
Is that something still that kind of given that the climate crisis and how it's kind of rightfully kind of dominating the agenda and national conversation, now something you feel passionate about.
I absolutely am passionate about it.
I think when I looked to my music, though, I found a real escapist on and sort of fantasticalizing sort of my feelings about the things that are a little bit more cut and jive versus like the world issues, but it doesn't mean that that's not down the line for me in some ways.
In fact, I can remember calling Tavish Crow.
My guitarist late one night, being like, what if we did an entire album not about love?
Like what a challenge that would be. Do you think that's something we could take on together?
And he's like, yeah, good luck, go for it, And sure enough I picked up my guitar like all mad at him that night, being like watch this. Like with him, I started the songs about something completely different.
By the end of it was just like, oh, sucker feelings.
So I was just like, they keep pulling me back, But now I hear what you're saying. It is something that I it's not not important in my life and in my family's world as well, and we definitely are doing what we can, but it's it's important to realize that that's something that I could maybe be brave enough to take a stab at.
In music too, it's also important to acknowledge that some people get criticized for kind of not say, having a political view in their art, when maybe that's just not the stuff that they want to be doing or that they're not naturally inclined to do, doesn't mean they don't
care about those things exactly. The other story that I was going to ask about was just about how that is still at that very young age, you wanted to see success for yourself in the future, and you do you write contracts to your parents saying that you were going to hopefully one day buy them a house by the sea or something like that.
My mom and my stepdad, Yeah, I did. I said that I I was going to one day help them.
Well, I think with when I.
Was little, I said I was going to buy them a house, but a cabin. It was a joke my mom was making me. I was saying that I was going to do all stuff and I was little. She's like, well, write it on paper. It was a wonderful later in life to be able to help in any small way.
But they do have that.
They've retired now, they live by the ocean and in comacs, and they're happier than I've ever seen two people be. So it's just been wild the way life has turned out. And those are the moments that you kind of just pinch yourself right.
Ultimate gift in a way, isn't it to be able.
To help out your family in any way?
Yeah, And I mean my family's all doing really great on their own anyways. They're very accomplished people, and I'm very family rich. I've come from a great bunch of them, and we're big.
They're more mighty. But yeah, you're right anytime.
That there's like a little loving to be dished out in some way and it can make a difference, it really, I mean, what else is it for?
Imagine in that contract up in the rule up on the wall with like Kylie a.
Yeah, they should have framed it.
Come on, yeah, exactly. To bring things up to the prisent you recently shared Let's Be Friends, which is the new track. Yes, it was that track part of the writing session, part of the kind of similar era to Dedicated that you released in twenty nineteen, and just tell me a little bit of the background around that.
Yes, it was, and it was a close cut from making it on the album, but.
I wasn't quite sure yet.
It's such like almost like a bratty song, and I kind of felt like I had that with you in my room already, so I was kind of picking and choosy about it, but I was Valentine's Day around the corner. I made sense in my mind, like, oh my gosh, this is the song.
Lauren. We started talking.
About it just because I classically historically have a horrible time of Valentine's Day.
I think a lot of people do. It's this great expectation.
So I loved the concept of having like an anti Valentine Valentine's Day song of just like for those who actually are suffering, this one's for you. And I also loved the concept of it's usually the idea that the there's a breaker offer and the breaky and like who is going to be the one that's heartbroken? But sometimes it's like both of you just know it's not clicking. And how great to be able to have an adult enough conversation to be like, let's let's call it, let's
have a friendship. Only the fact that the lie that we all have society tell each other, just like soften that blow, is that this friendship will continue.
But of course it never does.
So I enjoyed the idea of just being able to put it on out there of like, let's be friends and never speak again, because that's what's going to really happen here.
Yeah, Valensoline's stea just oh that the pressure of it just.
Makes me, I know, And I would love to say that I'm one of those women who doesn't have that pressure because it's like this hallmark thing and it's this extra But then you see all the people around you being showered with it, and then there's this other feeling of like, ugh, don't do anything.
But then ooh, you got me Roses, red Roses. You think I'm a red Roses girl. There's so typical, and it's.
Like everyone likes I'm a more unique flower, like girls are crazy, but there's just there's no winning on that.
If you ever been in a rest on Valentine's Day where it's just like exclusively couples all trying to do the same like.
Valentine, know, that's just gross, right, It's just it's it's such a show of love and such a phony manner. But I mean to for the real romantics out there who have planned this and love this day.
I'm not knocking it.
It's just it sounds like you and me are on the same path that it's not been working for us.
Yeah, we should say that anybody who did celebrate Valentine's Day. I hope you a really really great time, but.
We hope you got from Red Roses exactly.
And not all the other click stuff that you were hoping for. You're a notoriously prolific writer. You write a lot of songs in the run up to emotion. How many songs was it and then then the run up to dedicate it? I mean it was like hundreds of songs, right.
Yeah, it was about two hundred both rounds.
Okay, So that means that somewhere there's about three hundred and eighty Kylie way Jepson songs.
I think about that a lot. It makes me sad really.
Yeah, yeah, tell me a bit about that. Like those songs are, they're there, They've been kind of demo perhaps or like.
Well, we produce some of them, sometimes multiple versions, sometimes multiple vocal cuts.
Yeah.
I workshop a lot of them simultaneously until it gets to a place where I feel like I can definitely make a vote and that other people can have an opinion.
But some of them are like full on done, Like.
I think I have this poster up in my house and it says I think I think too much. And they came after I bought it off this artist after the song too Much came out that I met in Amsterdam, And it's true, I really do love the process of songwriting, so that makes it really easy to really delve in and dive and want to travel to the places and meet that one person that I felt like I would connect with because their production was perfect for what I
was trying to make. And that took me down a spiral of just both times, just having such a collection of material and so much of it was experimental that it went to that side, and then the other side was just started, like the cream started to float to the top, and I started to have a bit of an image of what I was making.
And honestly, I.
Wish I was one of those writers that could just go in write eight songs and be like here you go and hand it in. But I've learned to not judge my process because in all of the traveling, in all of the sessions, I always feel like I'm becoming a better writer because I'm taking away from even how other people look at music and even trying on when you're not in that prolific place of like what resources can I use here to like figure out what this melody needs or what's wrong with this song? I think
it's a great passion of mine. And as you can see, I can talk tireusly about it and I just I yeah, whether that makes me nuts, I don't know.
I don't know if you're familiar with her work, But we had an artist called Kate Tempest on the podcast not too long ago, and we were talking about a similar, similar thing, and her viewpoint on it was that she writes a lot of songs when it comes to creating a new body of work, but if it doesn't make the final cut, if it doesn't make those final ten or twelve tracks, even though those pieces of art have been made, she will never release them because looking back,
she's always basically trying to capture whatever's going on in her mind right then. So she then goes to make a new album in sort of two or three years time, she's thinking, I just need to concentrate on writing something that I feel now, and I don't want to kind of pull something from the archive of you know, ten years ago to put on it. Her point was that maybe it would feel a bit out of context.
I thought that way with the with the B sides of emotion, Like the night before I was going to print or whatever you want to call it, I remember calling Johnnyman my A and R at the time and saying.
Abort mission, like I can't do it.
The songs I've been so stale in my mind, and I'd been living with them for so long, and I was just really terrified of doing anything that was like less than my absolute best and these felt like a different period of my life.
And he was like, please, Carly.
We've we've done so much work, We've mixed them, like you've spent forever on this artwork, like please trust me, it will be okay, and it's B sides like no one's expecting.
I was like, okay, And then I did it, and I'm so glad I did.
And I really I had this real, great, like intense sort of anxiety fear about sharing something that wasn't exactly everything I might have wanted it to be. And in making the dedicated album already from the beginning, I was hoping that I would be able to have a B side eventually down the road too. So I feel like the B sides this time that I will be hopefully one day sharing.
I love it.
Equally to the first one. I love it because I've given it the same value knowing that it was going to maybe becoming. So it's almost like a side be rather than a side two, rather than like a B sides. And I'm not so scared to share them of anything. I have the opposite feeling to her of like I will be gutted if I don't get to give these babies some life.
From what you've described in the idea that maybe sometimes you're not that decisive or find it difficult to be decisive. Is that the most painful part of the process, given that, like you said, you write and you record such a volume of material and then it's like, okay, due to the format, like I'm going to have to basically choose the twelve or the fourteen or for each individual project.
Yeah, I have a hard time that, Like not hard where I'm like tormented and the night not sleeping over that. It's more that I really go around in circles on it, and I look at it from different angles, and I ask a lot of people, which kind of messes me
up to because everyone has different boddy opinions. But I think even from that process, there's like a little med science to the fact that the same six to eight start to show themselves with people who are really different in their styles of music, and that was really helpful for me. I kind of like secretly use them as my a and rs to be like, oh my gosh, my stepmother who's like only into like Tina Turner and stuff, is into the same song that like my.
Hipster bass player loves.
Like that's telling to me. Let's pay attention means recent It helps.
When I'm going when I think I think I'm overthinking.
Yeah, it must be really overwhelming, definitely at that point in the process. To talk about next steps. You talked about a little bit about new music, but in the past what you've done, Like when you've made a new record and you've gone and you've played shows and you've toured, and you've also deliberately done other projects in between, people know you're working kind of musical theater, like you start on Broadway in Cinderella a few years ago, you did
the Greece live production in twenty sixteen. First off, before we talk a little bit about that, your love of musical theater that goes back a long time to school days, right, Yes, is that where it all started.
Yes, I grew up in Mission, BC, where there was a beautiful theater built attached to one of the high schools. So I was attending a different high school actually at the time and day where the other school with the theater was putting on the production of Annie. And this was in my grade eighth year. I went an auditioned, even though I didn't belong to the school, and I got it, and.
I was so stoked. I was so hyped.
But it meant that I had to like kind of be going from one school to the other. And I can remember the night of closing night of Annie. I was crying to my parents and I was.
Like, what if I'm just this child star?
They like burst out laughing, They're like, currently, nobody knows who you are.
Like it was a high school production area I thought I was. I thought it was like the peak of my life, and maybe it was.
But yeah, now I felt really in love with how comfortable I felt being on stage, which surprised everyone.
I mean the most of all, because my.
Father loves music, my all my family are very musical, but they're all a little like stage fright is a real thing for us. So yeah, I actually instead, I felt a real confidence that I might not have anywhere else in my life as soon as I hit the stage.
And which are you more relaxed with when you go on tour? Now, So you take, for example, the European tour, You'll be playing shows pretty much consecutive in different cities, but for say two or three weeks performing on Broadway, you're in the same theater and you're doing maybe like a three month run and it's what seven shows a week or something like that, or six seven shows a
week like matinees and everything else. How do you approach how do you feel about those two disciplines of performance like.
Very different, very different?
Well, I think I learned when I finally did the Broadway situation. I fell in love with that too. Was obviously a big upgrade from the high school musicals. There were a whole bunch of different rules and a different
world to learn. But I was craving that at the time because I had just come from like a whirlwind of being catapulted into this like kind of fame game all of a sudden, and then I knew I wanted to like kind of like pop that la bubble check my head, like figure out what else I could kind of entertain myself with for a second. Well, I kind of also needed a break from fixating on like radio
and that's it. And so when this opportunity came around, I jumped at it and I just fell into the world of like all these new rules, these wonderful new people who it like thank God, embraced me, wanted to like teach me their ways, and I loved it. I think they were smart though, because they asked me on the like second month and or like.
You want to extend and I was like yes, yeah, And.
Then of course by like month five or sort of like this is so repetitive, like I can't. It was good because it meant that I was ready and refreshed to go back out into my own show where the spontane like the spontaneity is just like so alive, and I have all the rules and I run the show of like what I wear, what I say, what I change, not going to do this song today, going to.
Talk over here with with bad Way. It's all about blocking.
So you have to hit that note on that moment, on that X when the light goes like this, and as soon as you kind of feel like you've you don't have anything else to perfect, or you've gone as far as you can take it. It can become, at
least for me, a little bit repetitious and mundane. So I had to always be looking at how it could improve it to stay really present, because because if I ever started to feel satisfied or something like that, then I was just kind of like too much like clockwork and not fair to the audience that came.
I haven't played Annie at school and played Cinderella on Broadway and played Frenchy in Greece. Yes, what other dream roles are out there? If you were to do something like that again? Would you do something like that again? Or if do you feel like you've is that a box ticked? Or do you think no, I'd be interested in doing that again. It's the right thing came alone.
It depends. I mean, I think I don't want to say never.
I really feel like it's it was something that was a bucket list for me and that I did get the full blown New York experience of Broadway, which, like I can't believe.
I'm even saying it to you right now, that's crazy.
That's it's just as equal of a dream to me as any sort of other thing that I've done.
But I think I'd be more interested in.
Actually this is like five year down the road plan, but of being involved in like the writing of a pop musical or being one of the like the musical aspects of that team, just because I think I've learned so much from the own my own songwriting that I've done.
But I have such a history of like loving and watching and even being in musicals, not just Anny, but like throughout high school it was like Dorothy in the way like it's been a big part of who I am that I would I would love to look at storytelling and get to bring it into the world of music that I'm passionate about making.
The world of theater. I mean, we can only really speak for say like London's West End, but it feels like the same shows have been around for a long time, and so every couple of years something comes along that's that's brand new, like written originally. Would do you think you would like want to do something from scratch with its own narrative or would you adapt like a well known story of you What do you think you'd been.
In favor of We've been having those exact conversations, like recently with our team, and I think I almost don't want to speak too much on it because it's like, don't talk about the thing that you haven't done yet, Like it's just a kind of dreaming out loud. But knowing that this is sort of one of those things that maybe you bring it into fruition by putting it out there and just start the conversations. I don't have all the answers to those questions yet.
Though, fortunately Andrew Lloyd Webber is a regular listener to this podcast, so it would be absolutely fine.
There you go, perfect, Oh my dreams Country.
Consider that a commission. It's fun. It sounds like that would be the kind of main ambition outside of continue to make music, right, Like, I mean a little bit earlier you mentioned like you know, you've always got to kind of got projects in mind. Is there anything else that's kind of bubbling under that you're interested in exploring?
Yes? And no.
I feel like right now when I'm in like the terrain mode that I'm in right now, it's like to
survive that is sort of one track mindy. It's just about the performance and the travel and being present, and it's a really joyful time for me because I write a lot when I'm on the road, so that's kind of its own little protective world for me, which will kind of dissipate as soon as I get back into like kind of more chill home life, a festival home life a festival, and I think that's when my brain will start ticking off, like the answer to those questions
of what's next. Are we diving into this part of by project? Is it going to be the next album right away? My feeling is that I really have a hunger and my belly to get back into the studio soon, only because that thing that doesn't happen to me all the time has been happening lately where I'm waking up in the middle of the night with the urge to get something out and to write something down to record
it on my phone. And that's always a really exciting time to pay attention, because that's when the best stuff happens, when you're not trying and it's just kind of happening to you.
You hinted earlier that maybe it's like might experiment with doing something different in terms of just getting the music out there that sort of suggests that maybe you'll be like you want to be a bit more spontaneous with like if you have an idea, you want to kind of share it quicker, or.
I hope I can eventually become that way. I am definitely wanting to not take a four year break in between. I can say that for sure. But I am a lover of an album. I you know, it's old fashioned.
I love I love versus the world of like just singles that we live and I can I can embrace that to an extent, but I'm always going to want to have a body of work that just flows in a way that you can hold it in your hand and it was it's a present someone gave you, and it's an offering of a whole bunch of stories of life, and I think I love how they work together and
out like the songs of an album. So I can't promise that I'm going to be one of those artists that has this song out every month, because I care too much about the beauty of the project.
And also, you mentioned earlier when when you're out on the road, like I know that sometimes you try and see a bit of the places where you go like visit local art gallery or museum, or or go running or whatever. It is, like, what, yeah, what you're looking forward to doing over the next few weeks last in Europe? Is there anything that you've identified as stuff that you want to do.
Well.
I'm a real foodie.
I'm a rather food obsessed and I'm not I mean, I'm not ashamed. So wherever we go, like I swear, We'll be in the middle of eating lunch and I'll be talking about like what are we going to do for dinner?
They're like guys settled down, eat your past.
But no, I think that's one of the joys of traveling is getting to try all of the restaurants on your list, all the different kind of things. And we research ahead, like all of us kind of collectively of what where we want to go with when we get to Tokyo, where do we want to go when we get to Paris, and like and the same for here.
We had a great experience last night.
I also, I think, I think in terms of a tourist stuff, I've really learned the lesson. This has kind of been my first time touring so heavily as the headliner, and I've learned the lesson of just like how like health is wealth, Like you need to stay regiment And that sounds kind of a go boring thing on my list, but like.
Just look after your voice basically, do you mean just your.
Physical world, real life, like you will exercise, get that sleep because it is a gruelling situation. I don't think people can really understand until you've done a bus tour and our show is an energy pack.
So I've so far had a record.
Of never really having to miss one, and I want to keep that going. And then on top of it, I think, yeah, like you said, if we have days off, I'm going to do some shopping in Paris, I've got some friends to meet up with in a couple of different spots.
And yeah, yeah, that's that's the main goals.
What's your favorite moment in the set at the moment in terms of like a song or a handful of songs that sit together that where they just know, like I'm always just looking forward to that moment in the live set.
I mean I really love actually the opening in a way there's the bandboys kind of take the stage by themselves and really kind of get the energy going and there's this like dramatic walk I get to do up these stairs, and like there's like this feeling and every time I turn to my right and I lock eyes with my drummer and he always just kind of like winks at me, or we have that knowing look like
are you ready to have fun? And it's real and because we all are having fun, like it is a joyful experience for my guitarist, for my bassis, for Sophie and my backup singer, and for Nick and Jared, and we just we really love each other. We've been touring together for a very long time, some of us like up to ten years, and except for Sophie, she's just new this year. But because of that, I think we're kind of offering to the audience like we're all all
of us here. We're all gonna be like a family tonight, like let go of your inhibitions and like let's dance. The joy is when that works, And then I think the other answers I was really I spay this, but my favorite song to perform live out of all of them is probably want You in My Room, which is one of those songs I was even scared to put on the album because I'm like, it's a little cum hither, like it's not like holding anything back, and yet it's like, yeah,
so we'll see how this flies. And it's been really fun to see that. You know, anytime that I'm afraid that I've gotten too weird or too quirky for someone to maybe digest it, I'm always amazed that that's like the song that ends up being celebrated the most. And maybe that's that's a good lesson to mine.
I want you to watch out when you're playing. When I needed you to look out into the crowd and see the guy in the Slayer T shirt rocking out
first night. You got to keep you. It's going to happen. Okay, final question, So it's just about that thing that we talked a bit about at the top of the podcast, which is just about how you seem to have this ability to be able to bring people of different varieties and you know, backgrounds and everything together that it's kind of like your music and your your your personality is a sort of unifier and in that moment of like getting a room full of people from all different backgrounds
and ages and gender and everything else, do you feel proud of effectively bringing people from those different backgrounds together.
This is gonna be a complicated answer, but just as you were saying that, I was thinking, you know, in my childhood of living in two homes with four parents who are all extremely different, I think the one thing that and I switched every two days my whole life, so use a lot of like who am I now?
But in a beautiful way.
I think what I took away from that is just like they all looked at life differently. They all had their own really strong opinions, and there was something that I loved about each and every one of them, and when I was talking direct one on one, that person made the most sense, and vice versa. And I think that's something I've really taken away from when I left home of just like every person that I've come across has their story, and once you get to know what
you will love them. When we put on these shows, I think like a secret mission statement in my own head is just like, let's make a room that is just full of that feeling of like acceptance for like whoever you are.
Whatever you whatever you believe, whatever you feel.
Just come here tonight and just like be that same way with everyone that you meet. And the greatest joy is when I look down at the audience and I see strangers who are just embracing each other like their family, Like how cool to be in that room.
I'm again like I said, it's the gift of my life. Anyway, good night,