Jaime Wyatt is an outlier in the country industry as her new album ‘Neon Cross’ demonstrates. Not afraid to shy away from real and hard truths, Wyatt has carved her own path in the genre and it is finally paying off. We interview Jaime about her new album Neon Cross, her pursuit of country music and working with Shooter Jennings.
How are you holding up? It’s probably been a pretty crazy few months for you with the release of ‘Neon Cross?’
Oh it’s been fantastic, I mean I’m really proud of this album and it’s been very well received by folks that I didn’t think would enjoy it, it’s been well received by non-country fans which is super cool too. I’m just really proud of it. It’s a weird time to release an album but at the same time it’s perfect because I’m so grateful to have had a body of work to release at this time.
It’s such a unique sounding album, you can really hear all these different influences in there. You’ve talked about it being an ode to the ‘gritty underbelly of LA,’ can you talk a bit about what you mean by that?
Yeah that’s funny, not a lot of people have asked me about this quote I think it scares them. You know, I’ve lived a very particular life, not super common and I don’t think I look like the type of person that is an addict but who does right? I feel like people just picture a drunk on the street, but really it affects everyone, myself included. The ‘dark underbelly of Los Angeles’ is probably something that not a lot of people and not a lot of young, white women would see. I’ve interacted with a lot of different types of folks and seen some dark places, but even the Los Angeles when you go out to party as a young person, it’s easy to get caught in the dark underbelly after hours. There’s a very seedy aspect to LA, as I can imagine there is in New York and even London.
Well there’s the side that people imagine and then there’s the ‘real side.’ I know you were in LA for about twelve years and you wrote a lot of the songs for ‘Neon Cross’ there but you’ve recently moved to Nashville. How has being in Nashville changed you as an artist?
It’s a very different city, if anything it’s been helping me study classic country more, but I’m so eclectic in my taste. I’ve been studying for the last couple of years, classic crooners and you can kind of hear that in the performance of Neon Cross. I’m still evolving, I’m trying to study real and classic singers. Modern singers don’t interest me like the classics do, because I feel like singers from another generation were indoctrinated to their craft by jazz and soul and blues and sounds you don’t hear a lot anymore.
I feel like you’ve got so many different influences in your music. People have a very particular view of country as a genre and it has been traditionally so conservative, so I feel like it was almost the braver decision to pursue country, but did you ever consider going down another route?
Oh for sure, I always wanted to do country music even since I was a little kid, when I started dressing myself at four or five years old, I only wore Wranglers and country boots, often with chaps and a cowboy hat. I wanted to be a cowboy. My middle name is Wyatt, my folks named me after Wyatt Earp, we had horses and so I was obsessed with country music since I was a little girl. My first record on the West Coast, it was much harder to communicate the sound that I wanted and then of course, I’m an openminded artist so I did explore pop and rock and roll. Really, it’s been so freeing to just embody my own style which is eclectic.
It’s carving your own path in the genre, which we really need and I love that.
Thank you so much, honestly sometimes it feels a little lonely, just because I didn’t live a traditional life, I’ve lived in LA and I didn’t have a totally quaint childhood, my adulthood has not been quaint or sheltered at all.
I think it’s so important though to embody that diversity and to have that in the genre – to have queer artists, black artists…
Right, I think they were always there because they talk about it, but were they authentically themselves? That’s what was more rare and that’s what’s changing today which is so awesome.
That’s ever present in this record, which is a powerful and bigger record than previously. Do you feel like partnering with Shooter Jennings enabled you to go to places you hadn’t gone before with this record?
Oh absolutely, what’s so brilliant about him is that the outlaw spirit exists within him, he’s a rebel. He wants to challenge people and that’s what a beautiful artist does, his influence inspired me and there were times when he was very encouraging and supportive of a more raw and spontaneous approach. He celebrated my uniqueness. It was the perfect storm honestly, because Shooter had seen me so much on the road and he knew who I was and we had toured so much together, he had got to know my voice so well and it was just a really beautiful thing to work with him after that time we had spent together.
One of my favourite tracks on the record I think is ‘Rattlesnake Girl,’ just because of the message and the vibe of it. Can you talk a bit about that song and writing and recording it?
Oh yeah, I mean writing has been my process of self-discovery and how I embody my own identity, coming out and just really discovering who I was and not trying to conform to who I thought everyone wanted me to be. I was dismantling that belief system within me and finding out who I was. Not only am I a gay woman, but I’ve been an addict and I find trusting people very difficult, I’ve been in the music business since I was seventeen and I’ve dealt with a lot of untrustworthy people or been taken advantage of. That ‘don’t get too close’ aspect of that song felt really gratifying to express, therefore when we were in the studio writing that song, Shooter understood that the minor intros needed to have grit.
It’s an incredible project and just congratulations, we hope to see you in the UK before too long!
Right!
