ESJAY (JONES?)

Note: this was the first interview-type-thing I ever did with an artist. Esjay is one of the coolest people I know and she's always been a good friend. Her life and sacrifice for her music were one of the reasons I eventually decided to pursue my own dreams. I wish her all the success in the world. This article was written in 2008......

Taking a meanderous route through the winding streets of Westville, past the prison, round the bend and down the lane I arrive at Face Studios to meet up with Esjay, lead singer and front person for the Durban-band Stealing Love Jones. The band has been recording a new album with American producer Bjorn Thorsrud, who’s done work with the likes of The Smashing Pumpkins, Shania Twain and The Dandy Worhols, tentatively titled “Bleed To Bloom” and due for release in South Africa and North America in late September.

Sitting on my fuzzy, studio stool, I’m doing my best to stay in the background as Esjay does some tra-la-las, warming up in the vocal booth in the background and Bjorn fiddles with buttons and knobs in the control room. “Can, can you here me? Awright, one for level…”. Cue music and there’s Esjay, suddenly in the zone, feeling her way through “Hospital”. Outside in the garage-come-foyer, Jason Every, guitarist for Stealing Love Jones, is napping on the sofa. He’s waiting to record the final guitar tracks for the album.

“Take a break.” Says Bjorn and with that Esjay makes us a cuppa. Two sugars and milk for me. Honey and Jack Daniels for her. “It helps the vocals.” She says. Over a steaming cup, Esjay offers a little inside info on the recent Stealing Love Jones tour of North America. “In the first 11 days we did the equivalent of the Durban to Cape Town drive 6 times. We all got a wake-up call over there. We were paying 8 dollars to sleep and shower in truck-stops along the way. Emotionally and physically it was very hard and made us all feel so blessed to have come from a place (South Africa) where we are loved and supported.” Jason, still sleepy-eyed on the couch, says they were driving a senior-citizens van and pulling a trailer. He elaborates, surprisingly talkative for having just woken up, “Six hours of driving, an hour to unpack and set up the rig, an hour of sound check and rehearsals, then waiting for 4 or 5 hours for the show. We’d do the gig and then pack up and hit the road again to haul anywhere between six and thirty hours in one go! It was work. Fun, but hard work.”

Esjay, speaking of the album name says, “We’ve all been through so much. I’m thinking of calling the album “Bleed to Bloom”. Taken aback, I confess to Esjay that I think any artist will know exactly what that name means. “Sometimes it’s just the vision of so many people believing in you and your dream that keeps you going.”, she says.

I ask Esjay what it’s been like returning home. She tells me the pace hasn’t eased much. After a quick tour of S.A. with Sarah Bettens (K’s Choice) the band hit the studio again. “Bjorn has been working from 7am-7pm for the past three weeks… we’ve been working until 1am for the past three days to finish vocals and all the quirky stuff. He’s leaving in two days so we’re pushing to finish the guitars and vocals on the last three songs of the album. We have a benefit concert in Zimbabwe on the 4th July in support of the community of Bulawayo. It’s a bold and pioneering move in the current climate of political uncertainty there. We wanted to go against the grain and do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. After that we hope to return to North America and gain some more ground there. It’s scary because I’m leaving everything that’s comfortable. I know there are thousands of others out there trying to do what we’re trying to do but I’m comfortable with it. I can’t see myself doing anything else. Jason and I wrote a song together called “99” and it describes that feeling in the lyrics, “I SEE THIS AS DESTINY… I SEE THIS WRITTEN ALL OVER ME.”

As I sit on my fuzzy chair sipping my tea I listen to Esjay, now singing again from the vocal booth. A couple of lines keep repeating in my head, “Days turn to night…to the echo..to the echo..to the echo…forever…forever.” It seems to me that this life of touring and studios, singing the sun down and long into the night, the endlessly repeating cycle of writing, recording, gigging and touring is Esjay… forever.
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For information on Stealing Love Jones, including music, tour dates, management and booking info, check out http://www.lovejonesband.com/ or WWW.MYSPACE.COM/LOVEJONESBAND

Lonely

The art of being lonely is a shrewd one. It’s cool to be free and all that. My time and my money belong to no-one but me. But tonight I went to a concert and then ate supper alone. Standing in a room full of people or eating at the bar (because that’s where they put you when you are a party of one) falls a little short of the full experience.

That ultra-stupid song, “Lonely. I’m so lonely. I’ve got nobody for my own.” keeps popping into my head. I’m the guy that hums the McDonalds tune until another song or t.v. commercial replaces it so it’s unavoidable really. Whatever happens to be on my mind works its way through the neurons and synapses in my brain and somewhere along the way gets turned into the tune that most closely matches the message.

The trick is to make sure that when you’re in a crowded room you hum quietly in your head and not so anyone else can hear you. Occasionally I do slip and that always draws looks of suspicion from whoever happens to be close enough to hear. There’s no coming back from that either because people generally avoid conversation with those deemed to be “not right”.

Gone are the romantic images in my mind’s eye of the cool loner that everyone secretly admires and wants to be like. I used to want to be Brad Pitt’s character from that movie, “Legends of The Fall”. But now I realize that he wasn’t cool. He was just lonely.

At my last count I had 507 friends on Facebook. Many of them are genuine friends and not just Facebook ‘friend’ friends. But tonight as I stood in the Cannery Ballroom on 8th street in Nashville, watching James Morrison I sort of wished that one or two of those friends were with me.

Homey-D-Angel

Approaching the garbage can on the pavement I have this thought, “If I throw this away that homeless guy (Homey) is going to stop me and ask for money.” I’m right. Homey wants a cigarette so I give him two and ask if he needs a light. He assures me he has a light so I start to head off towards my original destination which is a Boston-style fish restaurant in East Nashville, almost directly across the street from Homey.

At the curb I hear Homey calling me again. I turn around and he asks me for two dollars and a quarter. “I’m alcoholic.” he pronounces and I tell him I can give him three dollars but that’s all. Homey asks me what my name is and I tell him, “Tim”. He sort of smiles and introduces himself, extending his hand for a shake, but I don’t catch his name. I’m too worried about the fact that my hand is now firmly clasped by his. I’m thinking, “When’s the last time Homey washed his hands? No offence guy but I can feel the germs crawling on me.”

I guess Homey doesn’t get to talk to a lot of people so the handshake becomes a handhold and I am his captive audience for a few minutes. “Germs are proceeding up my arm to my elbow now.” He tells me he had a son who died at the age of 27 who I remind him of. He asks me where I’m from and tells me all the places he’s lived. The whole time I’m in this uncommitted sideways stance, trying to keep my body facing the restaurant and my head listening to Homey.

I’m finally able to catch a break in the conversation and I tell Homey I’m going to head across the street now. He looks at me and says, “It’ll come back to you..”. I’m still thinking about the germy handshake but I also wonder if he means that the three dollars will come back or the fact that I stopped to talk to him. Sitting at the bar a few minutes later (germs washed off in the bathroom) I order a shrimp basket and think about getting one for Homey but I look across the street and he and his shopping cart are gone. I guess he scurried off to get that alcohol.

So I’m watching a baseball game and eating my fried shrimp (which were awesome) and thinking about homeless people and wondering if maybe Homey was actually an angel. I’m feeling a little lonely (as one does when eating alone) but probably not as lonely as Homey….

My America

I stepped off the plane from South Africa, in Washington, DC. I went outside and smoked a cigarette and surveyed what I could see of the city. It was early morning and gleaming. I saw people with coffees and cell phones looking busy and badly dressed.

I used to drive by Africans waiting at the bus stop on North Coast Road in my home town of Durban, South Africa. Those Africans had something I never saw in the fabulous people that lived in my neighborhood and went to gym at Virgin Active in La Lucia. They carried a sadness with them that was visible even when they were smiling. There was a hardness to them that couldn’t be covered up with their clothes.

I live in Nashville, Tennessee now. My neighbors; the people I see at the gas stations and in the malls all have that sadness I used to see in the Africans. I used to think that it was there because of the injustice of the lives of the African people. Living in their squatter camps and villages and commuting into nice neighborhoods every day to work. But here I see people who weren’t politically abused or unjustly oppressed living in a kind of squalor that that they bought into of their own free will. They have more money here and they have more stuff, nicer clothes, better cars, i-phones, i-pods, good jobs. But they’re just as lost and hopeless as those Africans who are still standing at that bus-stop every day.

The America in my memory is a backyard next to a football field with warm summer rains and bare-chested summer days. The America in my memory is a friendly place full of familiar places and things and routines. The America in my memory is proud and right and confident and righteous and just. Now it seems America has doubts. There is an awareness among Americans that maybe things are changing. All that seemed so sure and steady; our position in the world, our economy, our jobs are in question. “Where are our troops?”, “Why are they there?”, “Are we fighting the right battles?”, “Are we right?”; These are the questions America is asking. Where is my America now? Maybe it was only ever in my head.

Street signs bark at me everywhere I drive. “Jimmy’s Auto Parts and Repair” shouts in peeling paint. “Kroger” screams high atop its mast; a scream that can be heard a mile down the road. America is strip malls, signage and parking lots. America is fast food. America is fat people. America is BIG. Big is good. Bigger is better. Big cars. Big trucks. Big movie theatres. Big popcorn. Big people. Big houses. Big highways. Big signs. Big churches. Big sin. America is fast.
America is cars on highways always moving, always going, always driving. Where are you going America?

America is vast and beautiful. From the sky she is mountains, plains, trees and water. Rigid cities rise from the earth. They look small and peaceful, surrounded by so much nature, dwarfed by mountains. Tiny roads like symmetrical arteries spread and fade into the distance.

America is 9 to 5 and 5 til late. America never goes home. Always moving, eating, going, doing, meeting, greeting, partying, playing, running, gymming, driving, watching, seeing, using, buying, selling.

I am 32. My generation expects so much and appreciates so little. Everything is a ‘given’. Everything is taken for granted. There is no country where this is more apparent than in America.

But I love America. She is my home. She is my people. She is opportunity upon opportunity. She is welcoming and warm. She is a Sunday afternoon nap. She is a symphony of cultures, sometimes dissonant, but always music. She is free. She is everyone matters. She is a conversation with a stranger. She is speak your mind. She is wealthy.

America is a personal journey that for me has just begun.