Hey, super nice to have the chance to chat with you. What have you been up to over the past year in this big old mess?
Hey LITN! Thanks for taking the time to chat. So my job is teaching guitar/drums and gigging at the weekends so a lot of that, playing tennis, and learning to cook! Can make a banging spag bol…
I’m very interested in how you started your adventure with music, and did you know from the beginning that this is what you wanted to do?
How it started out… car journeys busting out Avril Lavigne and Busted full blast, 2003, annoying the hell out of my mum’s poor, yet tolerant ear drums. But my main childhood influence was Green Day and I picked up the guitar in 2006 after a weekend away at my cousin’s, who was constantly playing Green Day songs and that’s what made me take my first guitar lesson. But yes apart from maybe wanting to be the next Frank Lampard when I was 8, music was always full steam ahead!
Congrats on your new release, ‘This Isn’t Your Average Song’. Can you give us some insight into it?
‘This Isn’t Your Average Song’ is a 10 minute rap/spoken word song about the difficulties of the music industry. Every single writer, performer and ‘tryer’ of music will be able to relate to this monologue of honesty, rejection and self-deprecation, representing the daily grind required to sound the tiniest of drops in the musical pond that is the entertainment business. Witty lyricism, pedestrian grooves and eerie chord changes (with numerous key and time signature fluctuations) contribute to a brutal assessment of how modern society has brainwashed the art form, or at least that’s what the persona portrays until…
What are you doing to ensure you continue to grow and develop as an artist?
Just keep writing, keep releasing, keep gigging, keep trying to create engaging content on social media and then hope that someone enjoys it 🙂
What should we expect from your next releases in terms of style and sound? How different are they going to be compared to your previous works?
My next release will be an indie song about climate change, called ‘Drowning In The Sand’. Following that, I have a classical orchestral piece in the pipeline too. I love writing in a variety of genres so hopefully the diversity shows when compared to my previous releases.
Where are you based? Can you tell us how the music scene there has inspired your sound at all?
I live in Bicester, Oxfordshire. The music scene around here is good, with plenty of open mic nights and music venues/festivals. But my main place of musical inspiration and where I was most prolific songwriting-wise was Guildford, Surrey, where I studied at The Academy of Contemporary Music.
If you could perform at any venue in the world, where would it be and why?
There’s a farm in Somerset that would be pretty cool to play, – the cows just love it there 😉
Can we expect a new EP or an album from you in the near future?
Certainly once I’ve got enough songs released to make it a worthy EP. My last EP, Addicted To The Music, was released in 2020 so in a couple more singles time, for sure!
Finally, have you got anything to share regarding upcoming gigs, and what have you got planned for the rest of 2023?
I usually perform twice a weekend so all my gigs are listed on my website: www.jamiefeltonmusic.co.uk . Really looking forward to one in particular – Sandy’s bar, a classy little speakeasy-type establishment in the heart of Oxford. So the rest of the year is gigs gigs gigs and then hopefully recording ‘Drowning In The Sand’ in the Christmas holidays.
