JOHNNY JEWEL IN CONVERSATION WITH LO HARLEY
2023-04-24Hey Johnny, how are you? Where am I calling to?
I’m in the desert in Southern California, outside of LA. It’s my favourite destination and after moving from Montreal to Los Angeles about 10 years ago, I came out here once or twice a month to write. During quarantine, hotels all closed, so I decided to get a place here. I moved my studio in LA to out here full time. I love it.
Are you writing at the moment?
Every day, always. No matter what. Since I was a teenager. Tapes, notebooks, CDs… It’s crazy. I do everything on paper.
And what are you listening to at the moment?
I listen to a wide range of stuff throughout the day, but I primarily listen to things I’m working on. What I’ve been listening to is a film I’m finishing. I was in Amsterdam two weeks ago mixing and we’re almost done. That’s a new project called Holly. I’ve been emersed in that building the soundtrack. There’s 14 main pieces of music and those 14 main pieces exist in 30 or 40 forms and I’m trying to decide what works. I’m spending a lot of time listening what’s the best way to optimise the listening experience. Sometimes less is more, and sometimes a liner build is better.
What’s inspiring you right now?
I’m always on this linear path, always going down this road and I pick up things along the way. I have a 12-year-old daughter and that’s a huge part of my life and she has discovered the theatre. Right now, she’s the lead in The Wizard of Oz so the classic Hollywood technicolour films have been present in my house. It’s inspiring to see her discover art from for herself. I’ve never put a piano or a guitar in front of her. For a child everything is yours, everything is brand new. You’re the first one to feel this way. That’s inspiring as an artist.
Speaking of family, I heard your father was partly deaf? How did that influence how you think about sound?
Both my grandparents were deaf, my aunt is deaf. My father wasn’t technically deaf, but he was born in 1937 in Houston, in a really impoverished Polish household. My grandmother lost her hearing due to scarlet fever when she was 7 and as she was uneducated, assumed her children would be deaf too. My father grew up in a silent household. By the time he was 4 or 5 he wasn’t really exposed to sound which is sad. His personal experience, which has informed my experience, was that there was a sadness there because of a lack of sound. That’s not a blanket statement on the hearing community as a whole.
I think a larger impact musically would be that my father was an ordained Baptist minister, as was my mother. We weren’t allowed non-Christian music in the household. We got our first colour television the same year MTV started, and they accidentally had a subscription to MTV when they bought the cable service and I just discovered so much music. It resonated in a way that just seemed like it made sense. I always felt like an outsider, but that music made me feel connected in a natural way. It was an overload.
You’ve got your hands in a lot of pots. When you’re working with other people how much of it is a collaborative process?
I generally work alone, even in a collaborative sense. It’s rare that I’m collaborating in real time. My process is pretty singular in that way. I think because I spent so much time isolated in my formative musical years in Texas, learning to record and playing music alone. I’ve never really been interested in jamming. I only play music for 2 main purposes- 1 is to write and 1 is to capture material to collage and edit, or record and release. I don’t wake up and play piano for the sake of playing piano. For me it’s a sound tool that I connect to on a very deep level. It’s really about manipulation of the content and of the musical notes.
Before music I was a painter and for me, music is like mixing paint or gathering hues. The real work is on the canvas later.
You exist in a world you’ve completely imagined and designed by yourself with Italians Do It Better. How did you build that world?
In the early days I had been approached by a few labels and I tried releasing music on an indie label. I didn’t feel that there was enough quality control and that was reflecting on my work. I have such a wide range of discipline – drawing, mixing, production, writing, typography, artwork, directing… also the looks, the make-up and fashion. I felt being on a label was a bit limiting. That was the decision to unify it and release my work in a focused way. The aesthetics are just based off my own bread crumb trail of things that have impacted me in my life- whether that’s art deco or 80s new wave, or punk, disco. I love sci-fi and cosmic imagery, astrology, fashion and the power of suggestion, subliminal messages, the idea of the escape of nightlife. All of that is wrapped into this 80s infused colour palate based on my own personal explosion as a child. I’m always on the hunt for something that hits you really hard.
I don’t always agree when people say the music fits the aesthetic because I don’t really think sound looks like anything. It can feel like a colour. Through the language of repetition, you can introduce themes that are strict, and people can learn to associate a certain image to it. But I think the two forms are completely independent, just like the other senses.
Your music completely dominates the mood of a film. Can you tell me about ‘Tell Me’. I think it’s a completely perfect song.
This has a very interesting story behind it. It began after Drive. I kept in touch with Ryan and he had gone on to do some other movies. I was living in Montreal and I went to see a film, but before the film they played the trailer for The Place Beyond The Pines. In the trailer they used Ghost Writer by Suicide and I text him like oh my god, the trailer with Suicide is amazing and he didn’t know. He had been listening to a lot of Suicide while he had been on set with Lost River and Ryan wanted to use it in his movie, and that’s how we got talking. He sent me the script and I immediately started sending him music. I asked if he ever heard the song Whisper which was an unreleased, bootleg, 1978/1979 demo from Martin Rev who’s the keyboard player for Suicide, singing this kind of homage song with this classic 50s dream pop kind of thing. We tried to find a way to work it into the film, but it wasn’t exactly the right recording. He had the idea to have Saoirse Ronan sing it with a Casio on camera for a scene, and this really wrapped up her character and where she was at in the film. We decided to have a proper version of the song recorded too so I flew to New York and met Martin Rev and said I want to alter the song and he was open to it. I recorded a few different versions, and I came down to a studio to do ADR in LA- when the actresses come in to do voiceover work. Saoirse was there. The studio was fully booked so asked if I could have the kitchen and set up a tape machine. I unplugged all the phones and turned all the lights off and we sat on the floor. We did one take. That’s how the recording was made. It’s a very pure, perfect thing. Me and Ryan were losing it – hairs standing up, crying. It was incredible to work with her. It’s incredible what she can put into sound.
Thinking towards this summer… You’re playing on June 14th in London as part of Christine and The Queens’ Meltdown festival at the Southbank Centre! I’m so excited to see you play live again. How did the collaboration come about with Chris?
It was presented as a possible option and I think they had asked me if I would consider doing anything live that was solo, which I’d never done, and asked if I was interested what would that look like, what would I do. I thought about what could be an interesting concept, and they were keen on it. I love to be challenged and this is a huge challenge. It’s going to be cool. See you in June!
What else can we look forward to?
I’m working on 2 albums right now. 1 is a solo album, and 1 is the original score for Holly. Everyone is free to do what they want but for me, I still think like an album and write like an album. I’m lucky to be able to choose what I get to work on. I only work on what I want to work on.
Words – Lo Harley
Photography – Paige Margulies
