I have really been enjoying listening to We Are Gold Mounds by John Heart Jackie. Jennie Wayne and Peter Murray, the duo behind JHJ have crafted a beautiful gem of an album.
Earlier this week I had an opportunity to talk with Jennie and Peter about their music and writing. What struck me was that John Heart Jackie is an idea that goes beyond the notion of a band and making music.
Peter explained that for years he has carried around a letter that he found in a used copy of the book Le Balloon Rouge. The book had originally been a gift from one friend to another, and the correspondence had been given along with the book. “The letter really spoke to me.” Peter said. “It was a really beautiful thing. In this letter this person is saying let this beautiful book be an escape for you when you need it to be…..This project (JHJ) is in a sense this idea.”
For a time when Jennie and Peter got together, they wrote a series of make believe letters to each other, taking on these characters who where corresponding. They simulated the way letters use to be written, before email and instant messaging, when time passing between correspondences could be weeks or months. “We would not write back and forth everyday.” Peter said. “We would sit with these things for a while.” The letters and characters, they explained, took on a life of their own over time. “We thought that this was an important part of creating other parts of this project that are not musical.”
This idea of allowing a new form of expression and interaction to develop between Jennie and Peter is so intriguing to me. For Jennie and Peter, it allowed them to find a new space to create and collaborate in that was different from what each had done before on their own.
Hook In My Arm
“When we were having conversations about music, when we first started, one of the things that we were particularly interested in was the notion of the duet….and what you can create with just two people. In being together, we can make music that we could not make on our own. And that is the whole idea behind collaboration. The sum of our parts is greater than what either one of us can do individually.” Peter went on to say “I think that it is an important and humbling thing that I always try to remind myself of…… And it is more fun to hang out with your friends and make wonderful things.”
That sense of humility that Peter mentioned was no more apparent than when Jennie talked about song writing. Jennie said “I am not a tremendously prolific writer. I am not constantly writing little songs. I have to pull them out of myself. Those songs that come in 30 minutes are really few and far between. We are both constantly considering other artists and writers and listening to lots of different sounds and reading lots of different words and thinking of those things. And with all those bits of information in our heads, we can apply our own musical sensibilities. I think as long as we stay inspired by things we are able to create.”
I asked them, in creating songs, did the music or the lyrics come first? “The words and music are really related.” said Jennie. “You have to have the right words at the right point in the melody. You cannot just write some words that are meaningful and put them with some other melody. They really need to be created simultaneously and woven.
Listening to We Are Gold Mounds, one can really sense that these songs were created in a special and unique space, both figuratively and literally: From the ideas that developed from their letter writing, to the sounds of birds in the back ground of songs recorded at a countryside winery in Oregon, to the playing of a saw, recorded in the upstairs bedroom of a house.
Deep As Whales
When I asked Jennie and Peter if they have arrived at a sound and process for creating music that they were content with, they said no. “There is the inevitable progression of an artist.” Peter said. “You make one thing and that is just a step to the next. And at the end of your life or in this case, the end of a project, when it is done, whether it be tomorrow or in 25 years, it will end when it is supposed to end. And it leaves this body of work and you will have seen the progression from the first recordings that we did out in our garage to the end.”
From the sounds of it, Jennie and Peter are onto the next set of songs, which they say will be more fully developed than those on We Are Gold Mounds. I will look forward to hearing those recordings when they are done. In the mean time, I will be enjoying the songs from what I hope is the beginning of a great creative journey for them both.
I asked them, in creating songs, did the music or the lyrics come first? “The words and music are really related.” said Jennie. “You have to have the right words at the right point in the melody. You cannot just write some words that are meaningful and put them with some other melody. They really need to be created simultaneously and woven.
Listening to We Are Gold Mounds, one can really sense that these songs were created in a special and unique space, both figuratively and literally: From the ideas that developed from their letter writing, to the sounds of birds in the back ground of songs recorded at a countryside winery in Oregon, to the playing of a saw, recorded in the upstairs bedroom of a house.
Deep As Whales
When I asked Jennie and Peter if they have arrived at a sound and process for creating music that they were content with, they said no. “There is the inevitable progression of an artist.” Peter said. “You make one thing and that is just a step to the next. And at the end of your life or in this case, the end of a project, when it is done, whether it be tomorrow or in 25 years, it will end when it is supposed to end. And it leaves this body of work and you will have seen the progression from the first recordings that we did out in our garage to the end.”
From the sounds of it, Jennie and Peter are onto the next set of songs, which they say will be more fully developed than those on We Are Gold Mounds. I will look forward to hearing those recordings when they are done. In the mean time, I will be enjoying the songs from what I hope is the beginning of a great creative journey for them both.
For those in Seattle, John Heart Jackie will be playing at the Sunset Tavern on February 20th….so come and check them out.
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