The
Magic Lantern

TWO DAY WORKSHOP – Develop Your Songwriting Practice: ‘A Way of Seeing the World’

On 7 & 8 August I am running a two day workshop, for experienced and emerging songwriters alike, unpicking my songwriting process at the beautiful Sands Films in London.

Over two days we will practically explore a range of creative approaches for starting, developing and finishing your songs while examining the central question of why we write songs and what their purpose is.

There will be a particular focus on those elements of song craft I am obsessed with – structure, tension and release and of course, lyrics.

I will be joined by my wife, musician, lecture and master workshop leader Rhia Parker, who will explore the value of collaboration and offer practical tools to improve your ability to write and make music collaboratively.

Cost is £200 / £175 unwaged. 12 places available.

I often talk about how lucky I am to have songwriting to work out what I think and about the social value of songs. I have taken these beliefs into teaching songwriting, creative practice and live performance at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance over many years and into delivering creative workshops as far afield as Musikhögskolan i Malmö in Sweden and Beyond Vocals festival in Slovenia.

So I am excited to share what I have learnt directly with you in these workshops Rhia and I are hosting ourselves.

If you’re interested in attending, or know someone who might be, sign up here

Love is everything

J x

I am overjoyed to announce that I will be doing my first solo tour in Australia this December and January to support the release of my new single ‘No One’s Fault’ which is out next Friday 25 November. 

I am really excited to be playing some small shows in the East Coast alongside my great pals Little Clouds and Emily-Rose and the Wild Things. Tickets are pretty limited for these intimate shows so good idea to get one as soon as possible if you’re interested. 

Dec 4 – Sydney (south) Peppermint Grove Studios 

Dec 16 – Rocky River – The Gompa House Concert

Dec 18 – Bellingen – No. 5 Church St 

Jan 14 – Newcastle – The Base

Jan 15 – Canberra – Smiths Alternative

Poster by Campbel Sibthorpe

Artwork by Imogen O’Reilly

J x

There is something relentless about the necessity for constant self-promotion particularly among independent musicians (and I’m talking about myself here). This comes from many sources but among other things it perpetuates an anxiety many of us already have that we are not good enough and are somehow failing even as we continue to find ways to make and release new work. 

This too often leads us to measure the value of our work (and each others) in categories given to us by the advertising platforms we can’t help but use to communicate about it, and the streaming platforms we can’t help but use to distribute it. 

The abundance of available metrics encourages us to believe that art and music is a measurable popularity contest and the goal is a kind of validation via algorithm. And yet the fact bananas out sell apples doesn’t tell us anything important about either – not how they taste, how they smell, which one works better in a pie, which you put in a smoothie etc. 

I’m aware this could all sound like the preemptive self-justifications of another grizzled independent artist before their new record comes out. But as I get older and as I work with younger musicians as a teacher, I think a lot about how I can continue make this sustainable, not just financially, but mentally and artistically too. I feel this as part of a community of musicians in London and the UK, many of whom I know often feel two steps away from packing it all in. And they’re amazing. 

I salute everyone who has the gumption and determination to have an idea and see it through. This is always worth celebrating. For our own hearts we ought to measure the depth not just the breadth of the connections our music makes. Of course we all try to spread the word to as many people as we can but the final tally represents the success of our marketing campaign not the value, quality or usefulness of the work, and that’s important.

So let us be that person who shares their friends work and remember that it’s the human connections we make through the music that what will continue to sustain and nourish us, not the first weeks streaming numbers…

Big love 

J x

RELEASE DAY! My new single ‘There’s a Light’ is out today! I am so happy to share it with you. STREAM / WATCH VIDEO / BUY ‘THERE’S A LIGHT’

Over the past couple of years I’ve come to embrace the radical certainty that no matter how difficult life gets, nevertheless it goes on. There is something beautiful in that. That the world doesn’t stop for you, no matter how much you may want it to. And as it continues, so do all the incidentally beautiful things that add up to make you realise that it is possible to be crying your heart out and still feel joy at what remains.

Today’s going to be a good day
I decided that while I was crying
You can’t keep folding a tragedy
Over and over again.

This is the last single I’ll be releasing from ‘A Reckoning Bell’ before the full album is released on 5 November. In many ways, ‘There’s a Light’ is the album’s emotional centrepiece and I hope it can be useful for you.

Huge love to Chris Hyson who produced it and all the players for the spirit that brought to it.

All love

Jamie

I am thrilled to announce the ‘A Reckoning Bell’ tour in November and December. Tickets are available from my gigs page.

I am over the moon to be opening for my absolute top pals This Is Kit on the first half of the tour while the second half will be our own headline dates. 

One of the strangest things about making this album was not having the chance to come to understand these songs in communication with an audience – with you. This has been such a fundamental part of my process for years that it was nerve racking and exciting in equal measure to record them before they’d ever been heard live. 

As a result I am doubly excited that this is my biggest tour to date and to be heading to some of my favourite venues and cities across the UK from Totnes to Glasgow and my first Irish show in Dublin, to share this music with you.

Can’t wait to see you out on the road!

Big love 

Jamie x

Poster by Campbell Sibthorpe
Photo by Dave Hamblett, treated by Raimund Wong

My new single ‘Blades of Grass’ is out today! You can stream or buy it from your favoured site here: 

LISTEN / STREAM / BUY ‘BLADES OF GRASS’

I think of ‘Blades of Grass’ as a joyful song for a desperate time. It is the second single to be taken from my upcoming fourth album ‘A Reckoning Bell’ and celebrates our unavoidable human fragility and wild need for companionship. 

If the past few years have taught me anything it’s the freedom to be found in the emotional honesty of life’s tougher moments – that nothing matters more than love and sometimes all you can do is be there. The song and cover artwork feature my wife Rhia who has taught me so much about the quiet resilience of the human heart.

The beautiful video that accompanies the song is another experiment in distance collaboration. It was made by and features my amazing friend, the musician Leena Culhane in Santa Monica, California and centres around our everyday acts of finding joy in desperate times and the memories we carry with us wherever we go. You can watch the video here. 

I hope this music can be useful for you. 

Onwards with love and fierce determination.

Jamie x

What can loss teach us about love and how do love’s many small acts give a life meaning? 

These are some of the questions that have preoccupied me as I’ve been making music over the past couple of years while trying to be a good husband and son, friend and colleague and helping to care for my Dad with Alzheimer’s disease.  

Making music has always been a way of working out what I think, but in the midst of this intensely emotional time, it has also been a raft when the ground has given way. I believe that music has a social function in allowing people to project themselves into and onto songs to come to know themselves and their own lives better. That is the spirit in which I make music that is how I offer it to you, that it may be useful if it’s what you need. 

In some sense I’ve always been writing about love and loss, our search for meaning and the irrepressibility of joy for a decade from my first album ‘A World In A Grain of Sand’ (2011) and through my other records ‘Love of Too Much Living’ (2014), ‘To The Islands’ (2018), and my two recent EPs ‘The Life That I Have’ (2020) and my first instrumental EP for solo piano ‘My Soul Is A Strange Country’ (2020). 

As I’ve grown I’m finding there’s no bottom to the well of human experience, that it just gets deeper and more complex. But that is life and the light always finds a crack. And there is nothing more beautiful than that. 

‘Bound for Glory’ the first single from my new album it is out on 4 June 2021. 

Big love

Jamie x