The
Magic Lantern

Happy new year pals! This time of year makes us all reflective, looking backwards and projecting forwards. 

From where I’m sat, I feel like I’m in the middle of one of the most creative and challenging periods of my life. I feel very alive. There is so much that is uncertain right now, so few of the old pillars left to hang a flag on. So it feels even more important for me as a man and a musician ‘to engage in the hard work of hope’, to borrow a phrase.

If there is value to what I do it is, I guess, in trying to articulate my own search for meaning in such a way as to allow the audience to do the same. It’s an imprecise and entirely subjective science, but I believe it in with all my heart.

I’m excited to be releasing this new EP ‘The Life That I Have’ on 31 Jan, with the new single ‘Family Affair’ out on the 10th. I have two big announcements waiting to come later in the month which I’m stoked to share with you when I can. In the meantime, I wish you all kindness in your reflections and thanks for being on the journey with me.

Big love

Jamie x

My new single ‘Family Affair’ is out 10 Jan and you can pre-save it here:
https://show.co/6vO5Jsz

The song is a meditation on a loss witnessed in slow-motion. This year I’ve been spending a lot of time helping to care for my Dad who has Alzheimer’s disease. The love I have for him is deep and true. As a son and a songwriter, finding a way to articulate the slowly suffocating feeling of crushing inevitability and its effect on all of us, has been a challenge I’ve done my best to rise to.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been sharing the lyrics from this new EP and today it’s my new single ‘Gentle Face’, which is out next Friday 8 Nov.

I had the first seed of this song some years ago and it kept bouncing around my head, I had the first two verses and that was it. But I then forgot about it until I found myself singing it a lot in quiet moments over the last year as the general anxiety and collective loss of confidence of our present moment – our politics, the climate crisis and the state of the world – has grown. So I finished it. 

I realised perhaps that I wanted someone to just tell me it was going to be alright, that somehow if we could just go to sleep perhaps things would be better when we woke up- both an understandable and entirely naive response to the situation. 

Looking forward to being able to share ‘Gentle Face’ with you next Friday 8th Nov!

J x

Gentle face
How I need you when I make mistakes
You put things in their rightful place
So we can go to sleep

And i’ll put the mountains back together at your feet
Piece by piece up until to the snowy peaks
While all the world sweats concrete

Tender one
I had a dream where all I did was run
And they knew what I had done
Please help me go to sleep

I pulled the plug and let the oceans drain away
We can cross them again some rainy day
But all our hopes our hearts betray

We might as well
We might as well
Start over again

Silver tongue
Whisper words from all the songs we’ve sung
You know what we could become
So sing me back to sleep

And we’ve swapped the sky for a glowing tiny screen
Head down walking, trapped in the machine babe
So say farewell to the Holocene

We might as well
We might as well
Start over again

What. The. Hell. This fringe is a crime. Urgh.

So I’ve been spending time going back through old photos, remembering how much has been misremembered but also how life seems to stretch or flatten like a concertina. Sometimes impossibly long, and sometimes bunched right up flat to the moment.

I’ve been sharing lyrics from this new EP ‘The Life That I Have’ which is out 31 Jan, and today I thought I’d share the lyrics for ‘From My Window’. I wrote this sometime ago after a friend passed away and it’s a song that’s never left me. My friend Emily Wright recorded a beautiful version it with her band Moonlight Saving Time and this EP felt like a good time to record my own version. It was time.

From My Window

From my window
I see you
But you don’t see me

A hundred stories
With no one in them
But me, and the enemy, and you

Your guardian angel’s sleeping
While you’re up here weeping

And it’s overcast
With youth and beauty

You’re cold and shaking
You lonely creature
You’ve cleared the ledge deep with snow

The pulse quickens
The tears are dried now
A crowd has gathered below

And mothers baby’s falling
Through arms outstretched and calling

That it’s not the ending
There are just more stories

In advance of my new EP ‘The Life That I Have’ coming out on 31 January, I’m sharing the lyrics of each track over the next few weeks. This week it’s ‘Winter (Bill’s Song).

I wrote this one a while ago and recorded it on my second album ‘Love of Too Much Living’ back in 2014, but some songs stay with you. The best ones grow and their meaning evolves to embrace the current moment. When I first wrote ‘Winter’ I was in a very different place, and it was a lot about me and where I was at the time. But over the last few years I’ve started hearing it in my Dad’s voice and so I’ve made a new version of it for him.

This record represents a bridge between what’s been and what’s becoming, and the journey of this song really encapsulates that for me. Looking forward to sharing it with you. J x

Winter (Bill’s Song)

Winter’s cold is coming,
Lonely people stay indoors,
Huddled ’round their heaters,
Huddled ’round their heaters,
Like sailors missing shore.

We’re confronted every morning,
Of still waiting to grow up,
All your questions will be answered,
Your questions will be answered in time.

So put on all your jumpers,
And scream around the house.
And let it out…

The day’s the same as always,
But now it’s growing dark,
And nobody comes calling,
Nobody comes calling anymore.

If you’ve got no one to hold,
You can hold onto me,
You can hold onto me,
We’ll warm ourselves.

Where’s my lover?
And when’s my time?

In heaven we’ll find old friends,
We might laugh and make amends,
We might laugh and make amends,
Enjoy ourselves.

Where’s my lover?
And when’s my time?

#thelifethatIhave

In advance of my new EP ‘The Life That I Have’ coming out on 31 January, I thought I’d share the lyrics for each track over the next few weeks for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing (like me!)

I thought I’d start with the song ‘Family Affair’ which is certainly the most direct and the rawest on the EP. When I was writing it it put me in mind of Elliot Smith and This Is The Kit in different ways both of whom I love. The lyrics came in one sitting, which is unusual these days. I find it quite hard to sing emotionally but I’m happy with how they came out.

Super excited and very happy to going on tour to promote the release of my new EP ‘The Life That I Have’ which will be out 29 November.

20 Nov – The Lescar, Sheffield
30 Nov – Smugglers Beer and Music Cafe, Sandwich
1 Dec – Smugglers Record Shop, Deal
2 December – The Junction, Cambridge
9 December – Sebright Arms, London
15 December – The Prince Albert , Stroud
16 December – The Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol

I have a new EP coming out on 29 November called ‘The Life That I Have’.

Lots more to announce about it coming soon, but over the course of this year making it I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a musician, what success looks like, and what the future might hold.

A lot of being an independent musician feels to be about somehow finding a way to keep being an independent musician. Success is still doing it. Ultimate respect and love to all my fellow musicians finding a way, still doing it.

I am very happy to share this film ‘Re: Her’ made for the last song on my album ‘To The Islands’ starring my friend and amazing dancer Zoë Solomons.

It completes a quartet of films about movement, bodies and change from an album whose chief concern is to explore memory and the possibility for hope in a world of near constant uncertainty. I am so proud of this record and the films that Adam Lawson and Adam Greves have made to accompany it. I hope you enjoy it x

https://youtu.be/WpQo6Vr9vGE

A film by Adam Lawson and Jamie Doe
Starring: Zoë Solomons

Special thanks to Zoë Solomons, Adam Greves, Kahn Roberts, John Layton, Christopher Grace, Stephen Tasker, Elizabeth House, Josh Grey-Jung, Jack Miguel and Rhia Parker.