I had a really good night recently, I went to a CD launch … with a difference. It was a new Jessey Jackson CD, Carousel. I first met Jessey in 2010 at the Anglesea Music Festival, when she was coming out into the local scene, and I have really enjoyed watching (well, listening really) her skill and range mature over the years.
It’s also been instructive watching the number of guitars, pedals etc increase as “essential” to the music. She started with one guitar at the age of eight, and things have progressed since then. Her original influences included country musicians like Slim Dusty and Tammy Wynette, then discovering the blues turned her in that direction, but there is still a country foundation to the blues in some of her songs. Style is her style, a cliche usually, but right on the money in this case.
The Internet, and the opportunities it creates, placed a whole new wrinkle on this gig. Recording tracks separately and having complete control of their contribution to a song has been with us since Lester William Polsfuss invented and started using it in the 1950s. You probably know him as Les Paul, yes, just as you see on the Gibson guitar, but I digress! The whole point to this is that when you put multitracking together with our digital opportunities the possibilities are endless.
You can end up with different parts of an item being recorded all over the place. I know that Kate Meehan did that with one of her CDs back in 2008, and it’s what Jessey did with Carousel. Her and her bass player were in Victoria and her drummer, Andy “Bambam” Norden from Cleveland Blues, on the Sunshine Coast.
The fascinating thing is that the CD launch was the first time they had performed together as a band! This lead to some pretty funny banter as they worked through their sets, making the transition to a “one take” live performance.
It felt like an intimate house gig, rather than a marquee at the Inverleigh Hotel. It was the stories that attracted her, and her material strongly continues that perspective. The show was full of comments like “10 years ago I had a breakup, and mum told me to use it in a song.”
The immediate effect of writing the song was chasing the demons away, the long term effect was the introductions, the context, which attract interest and gives focus to your listening.
All of this creates a link between her and the audience. Getting an audience member, Ros, to tell a joke while she was tuning added to the lightness of the occasion, but then Ros had trouble thinking up another one for the next tuning. I drove back from Inverleigh listening to the CD.
So as Molly would say, “do yourself a favour!” Get a copy of Jessey Jackson’s new CD Carousel, but not off the web, do yourself a real favour and head out to her shows.
Written by John (Dr John) Lamp
Proudly presented by the Sleepy Hollow Blues Club