For episode 33 of the podcast, we caught up with Jess and the Bandits’ front woman Jess Clemmons to chat all about their second album, ‘Smoke and Mirrors,’ growing up in Texas, coming to the UK and much more… For the full interview, check out the podcast.
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me, I know you’re crazy busy all the time.
No problem.
I know obviously you come from the South, so what were your musical experiences like growing up, have you always grown up with music in your blood?
Oh yeah, I mean my family is a fairly musically-inclined family, my brothers were always really good at learning to play instruments and my dad has a really nice voice and so, music was always a really big deal in my home, and of course, it was always my go-to from the time I was little. Growing up in Texas and going over to my grandparents’ house, they always had country music playing and it was all the old classics, like proper country and western, but then my parents listened to a lot of Motown, Aretha Franklin, Patty Lovell, you know those people, so both of those genres were such a big thing for me growing up.
So obviously you had a very musical childhood, but when was it that you decided to pursue music full time?
Well, it was probably about 12/13 years ago now when I realised that if I was going to give this is a shot, I really had to do it full time, I really had to put my all into it, I couldn’t, you know, have a day job and then somehow try and do this as well. So I just had to start figuring out ways to make this work, so that I could really focus on it. I mean from the time I was a little girl I was always pursuing a career in music, but I would say it was about 12/13 years ago that I just said ‘Alright, I’m just going to risk it and just go for it.’
How many years was it before you met the guys and formed Jess and the Bandits?
Yeah I was at a solo career for most of that, I would say 7/8 years of that 13 year period, I was going toward a solo career. I was desperately trying to not to be the stereotype of the girl from Texas who sings country music. Every time I got in a cab in London, when I first started coming over here – you know, they make conversation – and they would say, ‘Oh what do you do?’ and i would say ‘oh I’m a singer.’ ‘Well where you from?’ ‘Texas..’ ‘Oh do you do country music?’ And I was like ‘ugh, no no I dont do country music.’ So I fought against it for so long, and, needless to say, sometimes, when you fight against what you should be doing it never quite works out right.
When you finally acknowledged this is the music that you loved and were made for, was it like coming home a little bit?
It was, it’s not that what I was doing before I wasn’t doing it well, it was just a piece of the puzzle missing. As soon as I did the whole getting back to my roots thing, and doing, really what I did best that’s when it all started to come together…
And you met the guys at an Overtones gig, is that right?
Yeah so we’ve worked with a lot of different musicians. Jess and the Bandits has kind of undergone a transformation, but we’ve never always had the same exact players, even from the beginning, we’ve always had a different drummer in, a different guitar player in, we’ve tried to keep core people, you know in the group, because it just adds to that chemistry on stage, and it’s always easier than having loads of different people in. The group of guys that we started Jess and the Bandits with, I met when I was opening for the Overtones and they were the backing band, and they were my backing band for the longest time.
If you hadn’t met the guys, and spent time with British artists, do you think your career would have had such a UK focus?
Well to be completely honest I spent the first 8 years of my career over here, primarily because that’s where the contacts that I made were, so it didn’t make a lot of sense, once I went back to my roots and we decided to form Jess and the Bandits, to abandon a place we’d worked so hard in. We just worked with the contacts we made and just went with it. It’s always been an important place for us, and for me obviously I’ve always loved to head over to North America and do things over there as well and in other parts of Europe, but in terms of the band and Jess and the Bandits, our home is always going to be here.
Do you think that’s given something to your music, because obviously you’ve talked about fighting the Texas girl country-music stereotype, but do you think that spending so much time in the UK has shaped your music?
I think so, I think I’ve got a greater sense of people that don’t know country music – your usual radio 2 listener – I’ve learned a lot about how different the markets are, I’ve had to step outside of my American country way of thinking and open myself up to a slightly different sound to what we do in America when it comes to country. So, I think it’s given me quite an advantage over other American artists who want to come over here and do things here, but don’t necessarily know how to do it, or what to do to the music to make a wider audience accept it.
Did it surprise you at all, the fact that it became big over, or does it surprise your friends and family back home?
Yeah I think Americans, especially Southerners, we’re quite territorial of country music, so I think a lot of people love that I’m doing it, but then they’ll see the Shires or Ward Thomas and they’re immediately like, ‘What are they doing? What are they doing to our music?’ I suppose it’s the same thing as if an American artist was singing Adele or Ed Sheeran and singing in a British accent…
Moving on to ‘Smoke and Mirrors’… I know you try and spend time with each album rather than rushing through them to release the next, so how was that process between ‘Here We Go Again’ and ‘Smoke and Mirrors’?
That was a very long process of, thinking and planning, trying to decide, ‘ok we have to go somewhere with this, we can’t give people the same thing, we can’t make Here We Go Again Number Two…’ One of the things that kept coming back to me was my gospel roots; growing up in church, and singing gospel music in choir and things like that. I knew I wanted to somehow tie that in there, but just having to be very careful of not getting too far away from what we did prior, so that way we didn’t alienate any of our fans, but we also could become a bit more accessible to new fans. It was a very long process.
I think for me, you get those core songs, usually about 5 songs that you know are definites. Once you have those, it’s really easy to start to put songs in, that way you can actually build a bit of a story, build something slightly different, so that way when the listener listens it’s a different feel with each song.
People sometimes think of gospel as a bit of a risk, when you drew those elements into the album, were you ever a little bit afraid of that?
Erm a little bit, I think because we’ve kind of been in the UK country scene from the beginning, we essentially have been able to introduce a genre to a lot of people who never knew country music. What a lot of people who love country music, even though they love it, they don’t understand how many other influences country music has, and gospel has always been huge in the country music community, under that umbrella of country music. You’ve always had a country gospel, I mean that’s Southern music. So, I thought when doing it – even though it felt like a little bit of a risk, – that this is a sound that needs to be introduced in the UK and, you know, it’s slowly beginning to be introduced, you’ve got like Rag and Bone man who has that unmistakeable gospel feel to his music, and even what we’re trying to do, it’s just slowly getting there.
I feel like that sums you up and the image that you’re promoting with, and you have – strong vulnerability – you’ve talked about a lot of different issues with your songs, and just generally. Is that something that’s always important to you, both with your music and your image?
Yeah definitely, it’s taken me a long time to get to a point when I was ok with being vulnerable and honest, but there’s a lot of strength in being vulnerable I think, and you can help a lot of people when you let your guard down. The song ‘Alone’ is one of those that is just this release of a song, so I just love it.
And you’ve just released, ‘Kiss Me Quiet,’ obviously you’re recently married – has that affected your music and do you think it will mark a shift in your songwriting going forward?
I think it will affect the things I write about, but at the same time I’m one of those people, because I’m a bit of an actress at heart, I find it easy to put myself in someone else’s shoes, and there’s even songs that I’ve written that were not about my experiences at all – they were about a friend’s experiences – but you know I was able to take that and write a great song with it. And so I think there’s definitely a place for a great song, but I think, at the end of the day, people love the heartbreak, and they love those sort of songs so I think t’s about the journey when making music, it’s about having those ups and downs, which is what life is all about at the end of the day.
Obviously you’ve got the Long Road coming up, how excited are you for that?
Yeah I’m really looking forward to it. We’re doing two days for Long Road which is awesome because we’re going to play the after party on the Saturday and then we’re going to do another set on the Sunday. It’s so great, that we’re getting the opportunity to do two sets. It’s going to be such an incredible festival, and I love that Carrie Underwood is going to be there on the Saturday. I should be able to go and see her, and I just love the fact that she’s going on before us, so then I can say that Carrie opened for Jess and the Bandits, just kidding, I wish… I’m going to tweet her at some point and say ‘Thanks so much for opening for us Carrie…!’
Final 10
- White wine or whisky? White wine
- Is there a record you couldn’t live without if you were stuck on a desert island? Probably Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller.’
- Is there a song you wish you’d written that speaks to your soul? ‘I Will Always Love You,’ that song is such a classic, so to be able to write a song that people will karaoke to forever, it doesn’t get any better than that…
- If you weren’t a singer, what would you be? That’s so hard because I’ve never had a Plan B, but in all honesty I’d probably be like an artist manager, still something musical, I’d like to mentor young talent.
- What’s been your favourite UK gig? It would have to be playing the O2 when we supported Boyzone.
- Do you have a pre-show ritual? We do, it’s ridiculous but basically we have a chant and it changes every single gig. We find something on the wall that’s words and we chant it, sometimes it’s the most random thing…
- Who is your dream duet partner? That’s a difficult one, but I’m going to go with Justin Timberlake, he’s got a bit of that Southern soul…
- What’s your beauty essential? My eyelash extensions, I can’t live without them. I’ve seen myself without them, and I’m like this is not how it’s supposed to be…
- What are you binge watching right now? Honestly I never have time to binge watch… Not too long ago I went back and binge-watched the entirety of Dawson’s Creek.
- Complete the sentence…
Music is… everything
Country music is… everything
Jess is… happy
Get your tickets to see Jess at the Long Road festival in September here.
Check out Jess and the Bandits’ album here.
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