Jont
Total fans: 229
Bulletins
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Apr 21, 05:38 AMCandlelit Single Out Today! -
Apr 01, 02:18 AMThe House We're In launched today!Hey everyone
Just to let you know that as well as the usual weekly free download and the residency gig at the Soho Revue Bar this Wednesday, the new online TV series The House We’re In can now be watched on my website, Myspace and Facebook profiles!
The House We’re In is the UK sequel to The State We’re In - a weekly ten-part video blog series following me and film-maker Dave Depares as we put on UNLIT in Myspace users’ houses that I’ve never met before.
Watch the first episode below, and stay tuned to my sites each week for the next one!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AnXEOx6GgrU
xJont
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Mar 18, 11:58 AMCONFESSIONS...CHATPER TWO: The Other SideCHAPTER TWO: The Other Side
So, from that gig at the Soho Revue Bar, feeling like I had no single song I could play to anyone, wishing I could leave the performing duties to the others, to the other night in Paris, playing for three hours to a small family of a crowd at Studio Melodium (the studio where I’d recorded "Supernatural" http://www.myspace.com/melodiumparis), to just 15 hand picked friends of Nicolas (the owner of the studio), recording the whole thing on separate tracks so it could be mixed later and made in to a live album and feeling like I had never played better. This is the world of extremes I live in. Ok, so he’d expected a few more people to come but those were the music industry types, who I hadn’t expected to turn up anyway. As it was, the people who were there were people who loved my music and had travelled from all parts of Paris to this basement studio on the outskirts to see me and Ben (who had come for the trip to play piano) do our thing.
I wrote down a bunch of songs I wanted to play on a piece of paper and when we’d all had a couple of glasses of wine and I’d showed them the first couple of episodes of The House We’re In (the online tv series my friend Dave and I are making of the Unlit tour this January we did around the UK, which launches on Youtube April 1st), we moved through to the main live room of the studio where there were chairs, and stools and armchairs, a Wurlitzer, a piano, my guitar and a mike. I gave them the paper and they took it in turns to choose which song I would play next…which was great! I’d never done it before but it was nice to have these choices taken out of my hands….instead of having to think whether it was the right time to do a song with ben, or to do one solo, or to do one upbeat, or quiet….i didn’t have to think at all! They said a title, and I had to play it….so I didn’t have a chance to think “do I really want to play that one?” or indulge in any of the usual songwriterly insecurities (“oh, but so and so said they didn’t like that three years ago and maybe that means its not any good”). They chose and then I had to make it as good as I could. And it was great! I gave long ridiculous surreal half French half English introductions to each song, trying to help them in to the meaning of it before I sang…occasionally drifting in to some candid confessional narrative which slips out so easy when you’re speaking in a different language! And yes, there was a good deal of mention of the universe and other quasi spiritual banter which I wibble on about when I’m feeling buzzed and in the flow and I can feel that everyone is with me and feeling the songs as much as me.
We had a break…then went back and played some more….I ended up playing three hours, and 23 songs and by the end was so exhausted I could hardly stand up. But we had a new album in the can! JONT LIVE AT MELODIUM…..Nicolas is mixing it now and I guess I will put it out later in the year. And the guy filming me playing “Supernatural” who had shown a keen interest in the short films…apparently he was the vice chairman of EMI France…
We headed out with a couple of friends back in to Paris, found a creperie, did a good deal of hysterical laughing, a sort of exhausted euphoria after the intensity of the concert, and then found a bar. Ten minutes til closing time. Can I play a song? Yes…and so I sang new song Sea Of Stars…(.the new Supernatural!) to the assembled six locals, and then New World War III and then handed over to Ben who played a 20 minute bowie medley while I chatted to the landlord about a potential future gig. When its flowing, its flowing, and it seems a shame to stop it, even if I can hardly stand up… ….
Gigs apart…and there’ve been a few in the last couple of weeks – I’ve been mainly spending time working on organising the release of my album, single and online tv series. There’s a lot to do but fortunately I have found a brilliant team of people to help me with everything….previous Unlit devotee Lee is now onboard as my right hand man at Unlit Records, and I also now have the full complement of radio plugger, online pr, print pr, radio plugger and booking agent who are going to do their best to get word out of my first officially released full-length album, not to mention the incredible good fortune to have my friend Dave editing these little films we shot as I toured the UK this January and February, putting on Unlit in the homes of people I had met through myspace. And so with the work comes new developments each day…Gideo Coe was the first DJ to play my single “Candlelit” on his show last week (http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/gideon_coe/), The Purcell Rooms will host my big London gig on Sunday June 1st, the guys out in france want me to go back and do a weeks residency in a venue there in May, Radio Four want me to come and play on Loose Ends on April 12th, and gigs have just come in for me this summer at Glastonbury, The Secret Garden and the Small World festival, as well as there being a whole UK tour being booked for June…
So, things are getting going…soon I will be looking for someone else to get involved to help me take things to a bigger audience, but at the moment its me and the team trying to get word out there..so if you want to help, do tell your friends about the album, put supernatural on your myspace profile, come down to a gig or an Unlit…all that really makes a difference…
Tomorrow I return to the revue bar, where I hope to banish forever last time’s demons! and maybe see some of your smiling faces! More soon… xjont
“This little world that we’re on, a grain of sand in a sea of stars, and when they say that you’ve lost, just look up and take a look at where ya really are…in a sea of stars
That goes on and on!” -
Mar 15, 07:25 AMJONT spring update - New album out now on download!hey y’all! Jont here...just a note to remind you about next wednesday’s JONT AND FRIENDS night at the Soho Revue Bar. The bill is great - my old friend Derek Meins - www.myspace.com/derekmeins
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Mar 06, 02:46 PMCONFESSIONS OF A WHITE MALE SINGER-SONGWRITER
Chapter One: Bad Light Stops Play.
I guess it didn't feel right to start a blog before. Not when I felt great and felt I was playing really well and that the pure light one wants to channel and help others channel was coming through sweet and pure. Who wants to read about that? Or how can you even write it down, except from the vantage of having lost that connection? I've read things I've written when i was ecstatic and they just sound like preposterously arrogant declamations from someone lost in the pleasant birdsong of their own flattered and fluttering ego. But last night...man...what happened? Complete meltdown, that's what. And from there, maybe one can write something worthwhile.
It was the third "Jont and friends" residency at Soho Revue Bar last night...a night I'd set up at the beginning of the year to give me a chance to play regularly in a venue and also to create an event with some of the magic of the Unlit nights I put on in people's houses...a few different people play who I've met or been put in contact with, a varied bill, and I try to create an atmosphere in the room where the artists get the respect for the performance they deserve, where they feel able to open up and play at their best. Guy J Jackson – an incredible surreal short story teller / stand up guy from the 'states who'd played the last Unlit at my flat (www.myspace.com/storytellinguyjj)- and Owen Duff (a myspacer i'd met online the day before who had a beautiful piano song about finsbury Park, www.myspace.com/owenduff) did short sets and then it was down to the main acts I'd asked down to play. Louis Brennan, singer and writer in the band Semaphore (www.myspace.com/semaphore2007) has an incredibly low, weathered voice. His recordings had made me think I was going to meet some grizzled 40-year old, but he was young, bearded, intense and had it going on, drawing us all in to his tales of drink, drugs, love and loss. We know the time honoured tales, but when it feels real, the subject matter doesn't matter, it's just there, in front of you, unfolding itself. Top guy too. He has a residency gig at The Cross Kings coming up (www.thecrosskings.co.uk) soon, so I would go check him out.
Dawn Kinnard (www.myspace.com/dawnkinnard) was up next. A Pennsylvanian, with pink streaks in her strawberry blonde hair, an emotive and untrammeled stage presence, a superlative voice and mike technique (she uses a special neumann condenser mike which she thinks of as her "instrument", and can change the tone of everything she does by how and where she sings in to it), and extraordinarily emotionally precise tunes, sung on a guitar with beautiful accompaniment on piano, led to everyone in the room being transported utterly in to her universe. Martin Terefe, her producer (www.myspace.com/martinterefe) and one of the top producers around at the moment, came down with the band he'd been recording with, and you could sense there were several very supportive souls there, very happy to witness her naturalness and confidence on stage and to be part of what must be an almost unstoppable rise to wider acclaim once her record comes out in a couple of months on Kensaltown Records (www.kensaltownrecords.com). I for one was blown away....it had been a stressful day anyway, second day of giving up smoking, spending all day texting and emailing people about the night, trying to find a stand-in dj, complete the forms for a bank account for Unlit Records and for a pay pal account, and to track down my booking agent and see what progress had been made on the tour he was organising for me in the summer....no time just to play a little, get in the zone, ground myself a bit in MY musical universe so that I could dive in to it when it was my turn to play. My new friend Amanda Extra (www.myspace.com/amandaextra) who had come to the Unlit last Friday and who makes films as well about up and coming bands and puts them up on the 6music site said "Jont, you seem different tonight, a bit stressed, whats wrong?" which I didn't appreciate, cos she was right, but I didn't feel I could do anything about it. I went backstage. The trannies – who perform downstairs on the same night and we share a dressing room with, were getting changed, putting on the make-up and the hotpants. "Hello darling! Lovely to see you...you look gorgeous...", one said, eyebrow raised, face to the mirror. "thanks yeah, good to see you" but my mind was somewhere else. .... My compering job over, it was now my time to play. But how was I gonna play after that? I wanted a cigarette. Louis obliged, laughing at the pathetic end to my two day attempt to give up, and I scrabbled around, putting my jacket on, taking it off, pacing about wishing I didn't feel how I did, but remembering the sensation from times before when I had totally lost my confidence and could hardly get up on stage. Oh christ. Another drink? A cigarette? A spliff? What did I need to get in the zone and do my thing? She'd been the real thing. She'd done what I'd wanted to happen for everyone...that we would all be taken somewhere else, lifted up and spun around. What was there for me to do?
Occasionally I felt like the real thing, occasionally I would feel like the real thing for days and weeks at a time. And now I couldn't think of a single song of mine that I wanted to sing, that would allow me to leave all my doubts and this strange feeling of misery that had arrived like a large cloud over The Oval, as I was facing Glenn McGrath and about to hit the winning runs in the Ashes. He runs in to bowl. The Umpire stops him...."Sorry gentlemen, that is time please, Bad light stops play". No! Not now! Not here....I threw the cigarette out the window, picked up my guitar, and headed out in to the noise of the bar and plugged my guitar in.
And that was that. Couldn't sing great. A sort of croak came out for the first couple of songs. I couldn't move naturally, felt strangely displaced, like a nightmare or a dream where you are performing. Tried as much as I could to get in the zone, tried to do some songs I could completely inhabit, and it worked sporadically. Thought maybe I would be able find the golden thread hold on and let it swing me this way and that like it had last friday, like it had last time I'd played here. But it kept slipping out of my grasp. And I know how transparent you are up there...I watch it in others the whole time. And I know everyone could see me, having a tough time. The crowd, as opposed to becoming galvanised and entranced as would happen when I was ON, just dissipated. Some loyal sweethearts continued to listen but I was a shell of what I could be. When the end came it was a relief. I went backstage and tried to search out the last beer of the rider but someone had nabbed it, so just stole another of Louis' cigarettes and smoked it, glazed over, sweating, essentially traumatised.
Is that a good place to start? I don't know. But it's real. And I know there will be good things to confess too, maybe even by tomorrow. I don't make a habit of putting myself through pain, or at least, no more than the next man. But I know I can learn from it and that it might give you a better idea of what me and my music are about than another blog saying "That was the best gig I've ever done, I am fucking on fire".
Til something else comes up worth relating, I wish you a merry day. I have to go to soundcheck right now for a gig in Stockwell, supporting a guy called David Goo (www.myspace.com/davidgoo). And you know what? I reckon I'm gonna blow them all away!
Love and rollercoasters
