ChitChat - With Jarrod Jeremiah
INTERVIEW BY: BEN LAMB
Hi Jarrod, thanks for joining us today, how have things been for you over the last few years? Have the lockdowns impacted your career so far?
Oh, not so much I had like I'm pretty sure that the biggest lockdown we had was this year was five days, I obviously made some music in lockdown, but there wasn’t a huge difference. In terms of lockdown, the live scene was still there, still live looking at live shows and going to gigs and stuff like that. So but a huge difference like obviously last year, like the big part where the big lockdown was. That was a different story. It was like I was impacted a slight amount, but not not a huge amount, I guess.
Before we get into your new track ‘Safe’ I’d love to dive in a bit about you - what kind of music was in the family household growing up? You can definitely hear a lot of old school vibes in your music.
What my parents would usually play in the house was very rock and roll/country/shuffle kind of thing.
Because my family had come from like a kind of Anglo Indian type background. So there really is l the country and rock kind of vibes. I didn’t really like it, and I still don't really like it. But that's what was playing. And the kind of the main thing was, I used to have to play that on the drums because I'm a drummer, right? So so when I when I was growing up my dad was like you’re a terrible drummer unless you can play like what they like (laughs). So I was playing like a country and stuff like that, so that's that's like, influenced my drumming. and that in turn that's influenced my rhythm and everything on my production and everything. So it's weird, right about that. That was kind of what I was growing up with.
Did you do much music through school? When did it click that this is what you want to do with your life?
Well, in school, I was pretty much doing music a lot, I did percussion, and I was in like eight ensembles. I was doing like percussion, orchestras. choirs. I was pretty sure I was the person in most ensembles working across the whole school. It was like some of my teachers did production too, some of them were producers too, and half the time my lessons would turn into them showing me their unreleased tracks and I thought I wanna try this. That was pretty much it, then I remember like Year 11 I started putting my stuff out after looking at all these people. Now I’m doing music at University. At University I’m studying classical stuff like Beethoven, Mozart, very different to what I make.
What’s it been like with your previous songs getting attention from the Spotify Fresh Finds? I imagine it just reinvigorates you and makes the hard work worth it?
Yeah, I remember I think was two or three years ago I had these goals like I want to get on these Spotify playlists, I wanna be doing this thing, I want to be featured here, I pushed for them. Then realised like man, it doesn't matter that much, sure get that, but then what am I going to do?
I was crazy happy when like I saw all these like kind of support, I was exploding with happiness but I was like oh yeah cool, it’s all part of the journey. I just try keep telling myself that because sometimes I get like I want to be on a1, I want to be on this playlist, I want to be featured on this blog. Then I'm like, What am I gonna do when they get featured in the blog? I'll celebrate for like three hours and then go back to whatever I’m doing. I try to ground myself.
Now diving into your awesome new song ‘SAFE’, how did it come about? Do you usually start songs with the lyrics first or being a multi-instrumentalist, do you start with instrumentals?
I'm a very like kind of production based person so I pretty much always start with the beats the chords especially start with the chords, I started with production myself by itself I was never a singer right so I started production. So I make beats and everything and then pretty much because no one's singing my beats I just think to myself I was never seen so I was like pretty mediocre at it and eventually I improved a bit. But pretty much it's always like beats for me now because like a production side is probably my most strong side and fluid side like I always love like writing or writing something on the guitar but I've never been the type of persons like you know write a song on the guitar and then fully write the lyrical poems and everything like as much as I want to be like that I just can't do that.
You’ve mentioned you’re a fan of really production heavy performers Tom Misch, Genesis Owusu and Dominic Fike, how much do their processes seep into your song production? Or do you aim to do it your way?
Well Tom Misch and Jacob Collier are my biggest two influences, I’ve watched every single video of theirs. The funny thing is, I’ll watch a video of theirs and a few days after I’ll try to make my own beats, and I pretty much copy their song (laughs). Watching all these breakdown videos, watching Jacob Collier breakdown videos, Tom Misch breakdown videos, I love them so much. Even like seeing where they got their samples from, I’m always on the internet trying to find what present he’s using on his guitar and stuff like that.
I know a lot of up and coming producers maybe grab beat elements off reddit and other sharing sites, have you gone down that path? Or do you like to keep it fully original?
At the start I was always like oh no, I don't want to do that, it’s stealing, I don't want to do that it’s so bad. I don’t use any samples, but like recently I’ve been experimenting with different sounds and different samples, and seeing how they can work in different atmospheres. I find that interesting now, before I never really experimented with that, but now I’m playing around with it a little bit. Pretty much with all my songs I like playing stuff myself.
How are you imagining ‘SAFE’ on the live stage? With a full band, or a backing track you recorded?
it's like a week or two weeks ago I had like I did have a live show it was a pretty small one but I did I played like safe I played it pre release and right now what I'm playing with I'm playing with a keyboard, guitar and the bass and I'm going to drum like my live show is heavily heavily influenced by Anderson paak.
After the release of ‘SAFE’, which I’m sure a bunch of people will love, where do you want to see yourself in the next 5 years?
I'm really hoping to do more shows because not not only that that will like help build like proper fans. But it’s also really good to develop my music, I remember one of my previous songs, I played it unreleased, and then I thought I can make this more funky, it improves your music a ton. [Text Wrapping Break]I’m possibly going to finish this year off with a single, and then in the future an EP, so I can have a body of work.
https://fanlink.to/safejarrodjeremiah
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