Bare Jams play the Hope & Ruin, Brighton after successfully navigating a turning point for the band through their new album No Rain. No Flowers.
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. It's lovely
00:06to speak to Jay Keith from the band Bear Jams. Now, exciting times, you've got the new album
00:11out and it's a really significant new album out for you. I should say that you were heading
00:16to a date in Brighton before too long, but the album is one that matters because it sounds
00:21like in a way it re-cemented the band.
00:25Yeah, it did. We were at a place at the beginning of 2023 where we could continue, wanted to
00:31continue and took all this emotion and put it into this album, which, as you say, re-sparked
00:44that we wanted to do this and we could not live not having this feeling again.
00:50Yeah, that's so interesting because you were saying that the doubts came in when you weren't
00:55doing it. As soon as you did it, the doubts went.
00:59Yeah, it's sort of a...
01:02And what's the lesson of that?
01:04So actually, there was like a lesson in this of when you get into a state of, I call it
01:10like overwhelming paralysis, where you've got so much that you just end up doing nothing
01:16because as an independent artist, probably about 10% of it is actually music.
01:24So every time we get into these states of overwhelming paralysis, it's like
01:29you can always focus on the music because that's productive, you know, and it's the stuff
01:35that you love doing. It's why you do it. And I think people forget that thing of like,
01:42just turn to your instrument and neurologically, it takes over your whole brain so you don't
01:47have the capacity to think about anything else.
01:49Well, so it wasn't a question of sitting thinking,
01:52I don't want to do this. It's a question of just doing it.
01:55Yeah, it's a doer, not a thinker. As we always say, it's like easier to translate something
02:01through audio than to try and explain it through like text or something like that. It's like,
02:07I'll just play it for you.
02:08And just to prove your point on the back of this realisation and the new album,
02:14you've actually got an album ahead, an album in hand, you're a year ahead.
02:19Yeah, so on the week of release of No Rain No Flowers, we were in the studio tracking
02:27the next album, which is already written and ready to go because we want to maintain consistency
02:35as a musician. And I feel if you need to just keep making music consistently,
02:41you know, and the more you do, the better you get.
02:45Fantastic. And that title, I saw that expression, No Rain No Flowers on someone's T-shirt for the
02:50first time about a month ago and just said, wow, that says it all, doesn't it? That's a
02:53brilliant title. Why is it appropriate then?
02:57So, it's sort of in life as well, you have to, there's no path without pain or consequence if
03:03you want change. But the payoff is going to be great for what you actually want, whether that's
03:13in a relationship, whether that's in a job, whether that's in something you want to achieve.
03:18You need to go through that hardship in order to achieve what you want. And it relates to that
03:29saying of like, the path to hell is heaven, but the path to heaven is hell, is a saying I saw the
03:36other day and I was like, that relates to exactly what that is.
03:39That's the next album title then?
03:42Yeah.
03:43Brilliant. That gives me plenty. Really lovely to speak to you. Have a great trip to Brighton
03:46and good luck with the new album. Thank you.
03:49Thank you very much, Phil.