James Bay

James Bay reflects on his process in the studio, his influences, and the art of crafting a setlist as he marks the 10-year anniversary of his breakout debut, Chaos and the Calm.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:05Speaker 03

  If you love music and great artist interviews, check out Before the Moment, hosted by Nile Rodgers. This new series follows Nile as he travels across the country talking with some of today's most fascinating artists about the moments that shaped their lives and careers. From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Nile explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the point where everything changed, and this podcast tells the stories that came before it. Listen to Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series, on iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is also available as video on YouTube. You can visit Norah Jones' channel and be sure to subscribe while you're there. Hey, I'm Norah Jones, and today I'm playing along with James Bay.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  Hey, I'm Norah Jones and welcome to the podcast. With me today and always is Sarah Oda. Hi. Hi. Our guest today is the Grammy nominated, Brit award-winning singer-songwriter, James Bay. Yay. He broke through with his debut album, Chaos and the Calm, and he is celebrating the 10-year anniversary of that debut album this year. That's so exciting. We have not met until this podcast was filmed. And he's just a delight and an incredible singer. Yes. You're gonna hear about his process in the studio and how he's involved when he's working on music. You're gonna hear about his surprising country vibes, even though he's from outside of London. Yeah. Kind of unexpected. He's got a little bit of country there. Yeah, he's a little country.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. And as always, you're gonna hear some great music, new and old, from across his catalog. This was really fun and I hope you enjoy this episode with James Bay.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  I broke the speed limit to get to you.

• 3:07Speaker 04

  I took a road where there was no road.

• 3:13Speaker 04

  Lost my keys, ain't common sense. Jumped a gun to jump the fence, just to find you gone.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  I turned the lights off in the kitchen.

• 3:33Speaker 04

  I took the needle off the glue.

• 3:40Speaker 04

  Dropped the roses in the sink. Woke a cold and on the break, just to find you gone.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  Nobody told us this weight on our shoulders Would keep us apart from the morning through the dark. If love is a door that we walk through together, Then how come we can't find the key? I broke the speed limit to get to you.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  I cut a valley through the rain.

• 4:35Speaker 04

  Hell of an angel at the bar, Little candle in the jar, Just to find you go home.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  Nobody told us this weight on our shoulders Would keep us apart from the morning through the dark. If love is a door that we walk through together, Then how come we can't find the key?

• 5:46Speaker 04

  Nobody told us this weight on our shoulders Would keep us apart from the morning through the dark. If love is a door that we walk through together, Then how come we can't find the key? I broke the speed limit to get to you.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  I took a road where there was no road.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Now we don't ever get it right. Couple sailboats in the night. Drifting all alone. All the places that we went. I went back to them again. Just to find you go home.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 6:57Speaker 05

  It's very, wow. Mm, shaking it out because it feels, it's very exciting. I was saying about like big necked guitars. I, all that adrenaline and I heard Jack White say that he likes big necks and he does all these things on his stage to make it a bit difficult for himself because that's where he can put the adrenaline.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  And I loved that and even down to like, I play everything like a whole step down. That's actually for, like I love a C shaped chord but I sing better in B flat.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  So that's for that and that requires heavier strings, but the heavier strings is somewhere to put some adrenaline because it's hard to like bend them and stuff.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  That's really.

• 7:34Speaker 05

  Or else I'd be like, and like all this crazy like, I just.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  You feel like it tames you?

• 7:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  A little?

• 7:39Speaker 05

  It keeps me in a sort of strangely sort of necessary cage, just a tiny one. And I, and it's, and the cage is saying like, keep fighting to get out of me. Like it's a funny little thing we do, me and the sort of performance.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  That is very funny.

• 7:52Speaker 05

  Experience. I know it's a bit weird and what's funny about it also, I figure is that I'm out there and people are like, oh, you know, he does the nice soft sad songs. And it's like, I'm up there like a sort of coiled spring, which is probably not that healthy.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  Trying to stay.

• 8:03Speaker 05

  But there's something in all of that that sort of creates a friction that feels important to the art, potentially a very potential thing.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  It probably is, that push and pull.

• 8:13Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  You know?

• 8:14Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  I'm trying to think if I have what I have like that.

• 8:18Speaker 05

  I, I have to say like, and maybe you'll think of something, but like for some artists perhaps, and in my view certainly with you, the, the, the sort of golden effortlessness of your delivery is a whole different beast and very.

• 8:36Speaker 05

  Inspiring and just something that I know you understand this.

• 8:42Speaker 05

  You sort of have to make the listener or the audience member feel so safe that they can relax into whatever's happening.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  That's so kind and sweet.

• 8:50Speaker 05

  Oh, I just think I think that's a great show.

• 8:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:53Speaker 05

  Or a great record made when the listener is lost in that great way.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 05

  You can be you can be you could be listening to the Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground to be lost in sort of what's happening, what is that noise in the background? And you could be sort of on the edge of your seat and that's it's all everything. It's all subjective. So it's all allowed and that's cool. But the other thing that I'm really going for, and even some of my favorite like rock and roll bands or like ultimately just sort of noisier artists do it very well. But I just feel like, oh, I'm loving this because they've got it. And your music, yeah, that's that's my experience. And so I'm going for that myself because I'm inspired by so many people who can do that. Yeah.

• 9:31Speaker 03

  But I think you you're you can hold it in so well, too. And it sounds it kind of to me, now that you have said that, it does kind of sound like there's something in there that the push and pull I can feel in the best way.

• 9:49Speaker 05

  Okay, well, that's a huge compliment. I appreciate that.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  It's like it's like I know you can go there, but you don't have to.

• 9:55Speaker 05

  And I'm trying to.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  And that's the thing is you don't want to have to.

• 9:57Speaker 05

  No, I'm trying to mature into that more and more. And I'm 34 and it's taken me a long time.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  That is a maturity thing.

• 10:03Speaker 05

  It takes a minute.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Younger, younger people definitely go there quicker.

• 10:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I really have for a long time. I certainly did when I was starting out and like it it it reveals itself in my sort of more my lead guitar playing, but probably all my guitar playing and my singing, which are my main two things that I do.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  So well, by the way.

• 10:20Speaker 05

  Well, that's very kind, but like.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  I know I know what you're saying, though.

• 10:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I I'm enjoying that as I hopefully sort of mature more and I feel it a little bit more recently that I'm enjoying the way I'm able to sort of harness the the power, as it were, and like hone it.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 05

  Because I want to I want the delivery. And then the reception for the people in the audience to be a certain thing. And I'm getting closer than I've ever got. I don't ever want to fully get there.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:46Speaker 05

  That's the other strange truth.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  You never will ever fully master any of it, right? And that's why we keep doing it.

• 10:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's one of my favorite things.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  And we keep evolving and changing. And that's the beauty of doing it. That's why Willie still is doing it. Cause he gets a kick out of it.

• 11:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, but you know what? I think you can say a similar thing for so many of the kind of older sort of legends and icons that keep going, the Stones, you know? These guys, they clearly love it.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:11Speaker 05

  And there's another, there's another angle. It's clearly the main thing that they kind of know how to do. And the main reason that they know why to get up in the morning.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:18Speaker 05

  That's also okay, because they've been so great at it that there's always been, you know, reason for them to go again, to put another tour on or whatever. Same for Willie. Yeah, it's, it's, there's, there's a few different reasons, aren't there? And they're so powerful.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Some people just don't want to be home.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  I guess.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  There's, there's that too. Like, you don't know how to be home. Do you tour all the time when you're not doing an album cycle?

• 11:46Speaker 05

  I, I've tried to, if I'm honest, like if I look back over the last 10 and a bit years, you know, pandemic aside, like I have, I have tried to. You know, if I'd say to my managers, my team, I just want to work. It really means touring more than anything.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 05

  I, I didn't start music from a,

• 12:08Speaker 05

  isn't it fun to write songs and sort of work out different ways to record them in our bedroom? Sort of perspective. I did a bunch of that. We had an eight track recorder that me and Tom, who's still in my band. Tom is my oldest friend, I've known him since I was three.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:19Speaker 05

  He plays bass in my band. And then my brother, Alex, like the three of us, and a couple of other bandmates at the time chipped in on an eight track recorder.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  How old were you?

• 12:29Speaker 05

  We were 13, 14.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, and.

• 12:33Speaker 05

  So we would do that kind of thing, but we were doing it in between working out and finding out where we could do another show. Someone else's living room, a pub, a bar, a club. We kind of, from the earliest moment, we sort of lived, and I certainly lived to play live. So that's carried through into my sort of desire at this point, with the great luxury of having this as my like, career and my work purpose.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  But that's great, that you love it.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  I want to play all the time. It doesn't come without struggle.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 13:04Speaker 05

  Boy, oh, boy.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. Today is, yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, and just like, missing people at home, you know, missing family, missing my family, like.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Do they ever come out?

• 13:12Speaker 05

  They do, they have done.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  That's its own tricky thing, though.

• 13:15Speaker 05

  It's its own tricky thing, I bet you know all about it. But, but I just adore getting on a plane and a bus. All of them are such luxuries, because some people, you know, get on a train in a van, or maybe even less than that. And I've done all versions, I've been around America in a car for six weeks, in the backseat of a sort of four-seater car, with a bunch of guitars in the trunk, sort of thing. And then I've done, you know, I've been around on two buses and all kinds of other stuff, and I'll take any version.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:48Speaker 05

  I will take any version.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  I like the bus version.

• 13:50Speaker 05

  I do like the bus version. I also don't, I also, there's things about it that are kind of really difficult, but...

• 13:54Speaker 03

  I don't sleep good on the bus anymore, which I'm only realising now. Maybe I never did.

• 14:00Speaker 05

  I think you kind of take whatever, you sort of, on a bus, if you wake up, that's good, because it means you were asleep.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 14:07Speaker 05

  And that's as best as it can get.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 14:09Speaker 05

  So, but no, I love it, I love to tour, and a part of me very much lives to tour. Just lives to play live, you know. I'll do all sorts of things from being sort of based at home.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  But that's really good, because... I feel like that's, well, first of all, it's the only way to make money sometimes nowadays because nobody buys records.

• 14:30Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  But also, it's just, it keeps the music alive. I think there's a lot of artists who are a little more insular, or they don't like to tour, or maybe they don't tour between stuff and they get kind of rusty and they...

• 14:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  I think that would be hard for me.

• 14:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, for you.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  For me, that would be hard.

• 14:51Speaker 05

  I agree with you.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  I don't practice a lot, you know, I don't like to play at home that much.

• 14:54Speaker 05

  Well, it's interesting, my, one of the guys in my crew on this tour, we've been on this tour for about five weeks out of six, and it was really, he said a really nice thing, and he wasn't even, he was kind of saying it to the bunch of us that were sat on the bus and not even directly to me, he said, "It's nice right now," he said, "because at this point in a tour typically, you learn the set, and everybody in the crew and the band learns the set, and you just know, you get to a point where you know what's happening tonight, and you know what you're doing in the setup of the venue and the stage and everything, you just know, and you can get a little bit like, I know what I'm doing," and almost get a little jaded, even within the sort of microclimate of one tour.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely, yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 05

  But me, well, he said that's not happening for him on this, and he didn't feel like it was happening for anyone really, and he said the reason for that is that I'm changing

• 15:36Speaker 05

  quite a few songs in the set most nights, and soundchecks in the last sort of six to 12 months have changed for me. I was a really kind of pedantic soundchecker, doing, you know, two-thirds of every song in the set for every soundcheck.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  Wow, that's a long, that's a lot.

• 15:49Speaker 05

  It's a long soundcheck, and I wasn't necessarily sort of singing the whole soundcheck, but I was checking every guitar, I'm a bit of a super geek for guitars, and I change guitar on most songs, which is intense, but I love it. And my soundchecks have become rehearsals, and that keeps us from being rusty, from getting rusty, because we're having to, I'm having to sort of invent and reinvent, or I'm choosing to invent and reinvent different aspects and segues between songs, and I'm getting the band to really play.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  They have a better time, they're like galvanized all day and all night, we're having like in-between moments between having a drink on the bus, or going to this place, or whatever it may be, doing laundry, we're talking about that transition from song seven to song eight, or like how we play into verse two on Hold Back the River, or whatever it may be.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 16:32Speaker 05

  And it's just...

• 16:34Speaker 03

  It's exciting.

• 16:34Speaker 05

  It's the best. It's everything that I was sort of going after when I was a kid. And we were just playing seven shows a week in the same town.

• 16:43Speaker 05

  And so in that respect, like you're saying, like, to get out and be touring as often as possible keeps you from getting rusty, keeps me from getting rusty, I think, because I know what rusty feels like too.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, as long as you have enough songs to switch in and out and you're not doing the same exact set every night. Or if you're playing with musicians and you are being loose with it and you're not playing it the same way every night.

• 17:02Speaker 05

  Both of those things are happening for me.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I'm not saying like reinvent the song just to for this, but like, you know, just sing it a little. Sing it from your heart. Sing the words. Don't think about everything else.

• 17:13Speaker 05

  It's so, it's such an exciting thing to do that for me. And I've always wanted that to be my sort of life in and around shows on tour.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  On this last, in the last four or five months of touring, I've brought my first ever medley into my set.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  I've never medleyed anything. And the only reference I really had in my mind, even though I know loads of artists have done great medleys, was when I saw Beyonce in 2016. And I watched her turn up with this absolute powerhouse set. And I like a powerhouse new album.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:41Speaker 05

  Which was all newer material, of course. And the medley in that show of like stuff from between like 2003 and 2007 or something was just unbelievable. And it saved, it's got so many, there's so many reasons to do it. It saved her voice from singing like all of Love on Top or all of Halo. She just did like a chorus and a verse.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  And then you got more songs in the set too.

• 18:01Speaker 05

  Then you get more songs in the set, the audience still get a taste of what they want. So it's that fan service thing. And I'm just fascinated by all of it. I love getting into it. And then last night I actually took that medley out of the set and it's going back in the set tonight. But it meant I could do other songs. You know, we've been doing Speed Limit as a band and it's very different really to how it sounds on the record. And even if the audience think it sounds similar because it's the same song.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:21Speaker 05

  And we're not diverting from the song too much. I know that for us, we're having to really think about it in a sound check, which, like I said, is now rehearsal.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:28Speaker 05

  And it's, I love it. I love, I'm just, I love obsessing. I got, I did an interview the other day and a guy asked me. To talk about, he said, you know, how do you assemble the set for being an opener, doing a festival and doing like a headline show?

• 18:41Speaker 03

  Those are three different things.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  They're so different. You know, I love it. I don't know. I really, and you know, for me also in that, perhaps for lots of solo artists, there's the sort of solo presentation as well. Whereas maybe just, you know about it, when it's you and just a piano, or maybe you and just a guitar, just you and an instrument.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:55Speaker 05

  It's, um, you've got to rethink it.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, you have to rethink everything.

• 18:59Speaker 05

  I'm.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  Rearrange it.

• 19:01Speaker 05

  I'm a total nerd for all of it.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  But that's great because it means that you have an environment that is enjoyable for everyone and you're enjoying it.

• 19:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  And that's, that's what you should be doing.

• 19:11Speaker 05

  I, I feel that and I can get to a setlist where my like wider team all go, that setlist's great. Now, what a, what a privilege to be in that scenario.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  Wait, do you obsess over setlists?

• 19:23Speaker 05

  Kind of.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  And then overthink it and then switch stuff out in the middle of the show?

• 19:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  And then regret it and then.

• 19:28Speaker 05

  There could be some of that. Like I took the medley out last night. And the medley is, yeah. And the medley's made up of three songs that I know the fans love. And I just took it out last night. So they didn't get any of those songs. And it's easy to overthink it, but you, you kind of can't have it all, but like.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  Well, that's what live is. It's that moment. You just do what you're gonna do. And then you breathe and then you, it's the next moment.

• 19:46Speaker 05

  And like if I didn't play the medley in DC, I just, I'll do everything in my power to get back to DC.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  And I'll, and I'll play those songs.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Do you look at old setlists from towns you're in?

• 19:56Speaker 05

  No, is that a thing? I like that.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  I started doing that just to see like what I played the last time I was in the city. If I was in the city like maybe two years before. And I'll try to avoid certain things.

• 20:08Speaker 05

  Just for the sake of being different?

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 20:10Speaker 05

  That's cool.

• 20:10Speaker 03

  I'm not sure if it matters.

• 20:12Speaker 05

  No, this is it. It doesn't. But I, I, I.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  To them.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  No, that's what I mean.

• 20:16Speaker 03

  Like I don't know how many repeat customers I have. You know what I mean? That are gonna be like, well, it's similar to the last show. Cause usually it's so different by then anyway, you know?

• 20:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, it is. It's, I'm, I'm, I'm in a sort of like ongoing conversation. And really I feel like I'm in an ongoing seminar with, with the, the icon Sheryl Crow, who I've released a song with recently. But she has talked to me about how she's taken, uh, recording and releasing songs has taken a little backseat for her. Because of that, I feel double privileged that she's on a song that I've just put out. But she said, because, you know, I've got a lot of music from a long career. And a large, she was talking about how a large percentage of the audience are very much, she was trying to sort of accept that they're coming for the older stuff.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 05

  And it meant, she decided that it meant she could slow down on writing and releasing newer stuff.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  I don't think she's done, and I hope she's not done.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:05Speaker 05

  Uh, putting new stuff out, but like, like I say, I'm in this ongoing sort of seminar where I'm listening to her sort of thoughts and feelings on that as they sort of evolve.

• 21:12Speaker 03

  That's really interesting to hear that.

• 21:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Cause I feel like if she feels pulled to a song, she's gonna do it.

• 21:19Speaker 05

  I hope so.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  She just doesn't feel the pressure to release new material, maybe.

• 21:23Speaker 05

  That seems to be the thing, and that's a beautiful scenario. She says, like, what a wonderful situation to be in. Even though she's still an artist that loves to write and record and release, but um. Yeah, I mix my set up, and like I was saying earlier, when the team, the wider team says that was a bulletproof set. Now, wow, what a compliment.

• 21:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  And then two shows later, I'm gonna dismantle it.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 05

  Because I've got other songs I wanna play. Uh, I feel.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  Is it a little, cause they said that?

• 21:51Speaker 05

  Probably. There's a self-destructiveness that's weird and true about artists, I think, sometimes. I think sometimes we've just gotta kind of, if it gets too soft and lovely, you gotta get some friction back into the mix.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  Well, I've done bulletproof sets before, and then I'm, I know that I have a big show, like, say, I have a big city in four days, so I'm like, cool, that was the perfect set. I'm gonna mix it up for a few days and then we'll do the bulletproof set in, in London.

• 22:14Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  And then we do it, and it just doesn't have the same thing.

• 22:17Speaker 05

  It's so wild.

• 22:18Speaker 03

  So it's totally an alive, evolving.

• 22:21Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  It depends on everything, the temperature, the audience.

• 22:25Speaker 05

  Yes, it's why it's live music.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:27Speaker 05

  We played in Mexico City the other night, and they're unbelievable. They go so crazy for people when they make the effort to go all the way there, cause it's far, obviously. The last time I played there was 10 years ago, and then I played there again. So some people said, you know, we've been waiting 10 years for you to come back. I was very grateful of that. Uh, and then the next night we played in Philadelphia. Poor old Philadelphia. Love them. They couldn't compare. And they were great. They were great in their own right. They were great in their own right. They all stood there, very intimate and sort of vulnerable and some like arms folded.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  It's like sports fans.

• 22:58Speaker 05

  I'm like, I kinda need you to go crazy like Mexico City, and they're like, no, no, we've come for you to like be very earnest. And I thought, and I, I realized it a little bit more in hindsight, but I did partly realize it in the set, I thought. I really appreciate you Philadelphia for wanting that sort of version of what is just a very live and ever changing thing. My only other hack, I guess, which I felt like I learned in the pandemic, a very strange time where people were jumping on the internet, artists were going up on Instagram live streams or whatever. I saw Chris Martin, who's certainly got a lot of hits under his belt, big songs, and probably a handful of bulletproof sets.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 23:37Speaker 05

  He went and did a livestream thing and he found it. He's got this great sort of kind of goofiness, I guess, and he clearly found it quite bizarre. The world had shut down and people were just tapping and typing into his live feed and saying, play this, play that, play yellow, play the scientist. So he's like reading as it goes by and going, oh, the yellow, okay. And he'd do like verse and chorus and then he'd go, you know how the rest goes, what else have we got? And it was amazing to sort of watch and you could felt everybody around the world sort of tuned in and sort of laughing. I've kind of applied a little, I know I talked to you about the medley thing earlier, but like I've applied a little bit of this to my shows because I get this anxiety and it's a really like, I sort of feel blessed to be in a scenario where this is my anxiety live.

• 24:22Speaker 05

  I have the setlist ready, I'll be doing the show and there'll be signs in the crowd saying, please play this song. And it was never in the setlist and I'm stressed because I'm like, I want to play, I guess.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  No, that is always stressful if it's not in the set.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're like a people pleaser, you know, as a performer in some respects. So I'll do the Chris Martin verse and chorus.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 24:39Speaker 05

  And everybody cheers and it's very unexpected and it's very off the cuff and that keeps it live.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  That's always great. I've done that and it's usually a song I haven't rehearsed with the band. I never told them to learn and that I just haven't done in so long. So I'm like, well, I guess I'll do a solo version.

• 24:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, I played in LA the other night and a lady in the audience had a sign for a song of mine called Incomplete, which is from my last, from my first album, Band Don't Know It. Some of them do, but we've never done it as a group together. And then the next night I had some time, I had a free night and Gia at Hotel Cafe in LA, who I know very well, it's a great venue and I said, can I come and just do some songs? Just kind of impromptu, informal. She said, yeah. So I let people know on social media I was going to go and do that. And this lady came with her same sign from the night before and I hadn't played it the night before and I said, yeah, absolutely, I'll give it a go. I got some of the lyrics wrong, I forgot some of the lyrics.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  She probably loved it.

• 25:34Speaker 05

  We had a magical little one.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:37Speaker 05

  On the air, guys.

• 25:38Speaker 06

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• 26:11Speaker 03

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• 26:56Speaker 03

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• 27:06Speaker 07

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• 27:17Speaker 08

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• 27:37Speaker 03

  Do you wanna do another song?

• 27:38Speaker 05

  Let's do another song.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  And that last song was from your new album.

• 27:42Speaker 05

  It was. It was from Changes All The Time, which came out in October 24.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. Did you self-produce that?

• 27:48Speaker 05

  No, I worked with Gabe Simon.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 27:50Speaker 05

  He actually put his hand up and said, can we be co-producers on this? I said, Gabe, because I haven't had the confidence. I'm very busy with the production of my music.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, I'm the same, even if my name's not on the production. It's like, I'm pretty much involved in

• 28:03Speaker 05

  Big time.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  Everything.

• 28:04Speaker 05

  Every detail. And that's

• 28:06Speaker 03

  And I'm a pain in the butt.

• 28:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, same, boy, oh, boy, absolutely.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  And I fight the fight that is the right fight, usually.

• 28:12Speaker 05

  I'm getting better at fighting that fight. And I'll take any advice you've got, because I'm learning and growing and learning to just be better at that. And Gabe actually makes an amazing kind of space for me to

• 28:23Speaker 03

  Good.

• 28:23Speaker 05

  You know, one of my, I've said this before, and it always feels kind of prickly, but like, one of my favorite, I love Gabe so much. I love working with him. And I treasure the ability we have to argue.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  Ah, that's nice.

• 28:39Speaker 05

  We argue great.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  You can clash and it's

• 28:41Speaker 05

  We do it great.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  It's, yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 05

  We do it so great. And that's one of my favorite things about working with him. I mean, there are so many things I love, and he's a great musician, a great producer. He's a great writer. And, you know, on this record, he invited me to write during recording.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Is this the first time you've done that?

• 28:59Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Ah, I remember my first time.

• 29:01Speaker 05

  Right, so I don't wanna go like, deep into this.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  No, it's important.

• 29:04Speaker 05

  We can if you want, but like, what it's based on is, it's expensive to make a record.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 29:08Speaker 05

  And like, you gotta pay for time, and the clock is ticking.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:13Speaker 05

  And that's stressful, because I find that stressful. I didn't grow up in a world where I could just sort of throw away like, time and money, whatever.

• 29:22Speaker 05

  So it's very anxiety-inducing for your, you know, collaborator and producer to go, hey, should we just like, stop recording for a bit and not worry about the list of songs that we've got? And see what we wanna write? Because I have a very busy writing relationship with Gabe as well.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:37Speaker 05

  And this time, I said, okay, let's give it a swing. And we wrote three songs that went on this album, that nobody had heard before we went into the studio. The first one we wrote was the first single, it was called Up All Night.

• 29:52Speaker 05

  And then, you know, there are other ways that I love working with Gabe. So Speed Limit is a song that, it didn't really need to change an awful lot from, the demo was a voice note.

• 30:01Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:01Speaker 05

  It didn't need to change an awful lot from that, a guitar and a vocal. But we wanted to, I wanted to explore this kind of like, Feel of it being, of it sounding like it was being played in the corner of a bar, last thing before the place closed, kind of thing, you know, that kind of feel.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  You captured it.

• 30:14Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you, thank you. But I had an appointment to get to, like a doctor's appointment or something on that afternoon in the studio, so we set up to do like a scratch version, scratch vocal. So there's like bleed on the vocal mic of the guitar amp and everything. And I did it and he felt really good about it and he had this little look on his face and I thought, well, Gabe, I'm coming back because I'm gonna do 10 more takes if you like it or not.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  And he loved it.

• 30:38Speaker 05

  I went and I came back and he said, you know, he really like twisted my arm, said, this is the absolute take. And like while he did it as well, he played the drums down while I was singing and playing guitar. We did it very Black Keys, very early Black Keys style, like no bass, no keys.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  Just the two of you.

• 30:53Speaker 05

  Just the two of us. And he wanted the drums to be so light.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're very distant.

• 30:58Speaker 05

  Yeah. No, no sticks were good enough, so he chose the chopsticks from the Chinese takeout that we had the night before and those are what I recorded on that song. And like, I think he barely played any cymbals. Anyway, yeah, Speed Limit, yeah, it's from, it's from this new album and I had a great time making that record. It was intense, it's, I've sort of come to appreciate it's always intense for me. Maybe it is for so many artists in different ways, but like, I'm a little embarrassed at how much I can stress.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  Really?

• 31:28Speaker 05

  The environment when making a record.

• 31:30Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  But like, I'm trying to give my absolute everything, every fiber of my being to the thing and I want it to feel good and great, you know?

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 05

  Is that like, what's it like for you when you make a record?

• 31:41Speaker 03

  It's intense for you in that you're worried that it's coming out right or?

• 31:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I, I try and, I'm trying to shed, I'm constantly trying to shed. In, in this sort of day and age, I'm trying to shed concern or anxiety about how it'll be received and perceived. You can't control that.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  In the studio. It's really hard to not think about that. But I definitely, I think because my first record was so big, I had to just completely shut it out. But I had, again, I had the like, the privilege of doing that because of the success.

• 32:17Speaker 05

  Wait, so hang on, are we talking about when you were making the first one? Are you talking about?

• 32:20Speaker 03

  No, I'm talking about after that.

• 32:21Speaker 05

  Making the second and beyond?

• 32:23Speaker 03

  I'm just talking about after that.

• 32:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  I think the first one, I was just sort of ignorant and I, you know, I, we didn't know it was gonna be that big.

• 32:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  We didn't think, dream it was gonna be that big.

• 32:31Speaker 05

  That ignorance is truly bliss, isn't it?

• 32:32Speaker 03

  So that is bliss, yes. And I think after that, I had to just shut it out because I didn't think I was ever gonna make something that big. Well, I wasn't stupid. I knew I wasn't gonna ever make something that big again.

• 32:44Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  And I haven't.

• 32:45Speaker 05

  Well, you got very close.

• 32:46Speaker 03

  And I'm happy with that, you know, it's totally fine.

• 32:49Speaker 05

  What, can you say anything, just for me as a super fan, if I may? Can you, can you just say anything about the, the second record particularly? And I know I told you earlier, I'm a very big fan of that album, but the second record is strange territory, isn't it?

• 33:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's so strange.

• 33:04Speaker 05

  So going into making it, you know, do you, what do you remember?

• 33:07Speaker 03

  I remember, well, I was a new songwriter. I only had two, two and a half songs on my first album, mine. So I was still new at that and I was getting more into it. And so my bass player at the time was also my boyfriend and we, we just sort of shut the outside world out at that point.

• 33:26Speaker 05

  That's nice.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  And the band was all my best friends, you know? Yeah, it was great.

• 33:31Speaker 05

  You can, you can hear it.

• 33:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, and so we, and, and I did some of their songs as well. We were all kind of getting into songwriting. So we just sort of like focused on each other.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  And, and the music and I don't think I, I think I also had like jazz phobia at that time. Because I had a lot of, I came from jazz, but the first album wasn't really a jazz record.

• 33:52Speaker 05

  Right.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  But everybody called it a jazz record. So I got like a little like wary of, of labels.

• 33:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, you, I guess you do. I've been called like folk and acoustic.

• 34:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 05

  In ways that I have, I think are so okay, but are so like five percent of who I am as an artist.

• 34:07Speaker 03

  Well, that's the problem with like. Believing all that stuff, or reading it, or like, just not realizing that it's just what it has to be and you don't have to have any part of it.

• 34:17Speaker 05

  You can't control it, really.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  You can't control it.

• 34:20Speaker 05

  Because someone will, you know, I'll, I'll be seen with an acoustic guitar in my hand and someone will say, "I like easy listening music, I'll try and listen to your music."

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Oh, easy listening, don't get me started on that.

• 34:29Speaker 05

  I bet. Well, you know what, though?

• 34:31Speaker 03

  But it's probably my biggest, my only radio play.

• 34:34Speaker 05

  This is, this is it. But like, I, I, I wanted to say though, like, just, uh, that there is a really great version for, for all artists of, of like, making something that is easy for people to listen to.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:48Speaker 05

  I just wanted to say, like, and I'm a fan of lots of your music, but the second record for me, there's, I, I listen to it with such ease, but it isn't just that. So I don't, I'm not just gonna sort of put it over there as, as even my version of easy listening.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 35:03Speaker 05

  I'm gonna say, I listen to it and I find it, I'm like, uh, uh, so captured by how easy I, I find it to listen to, but how much it makes me wanna play and write and, and sit among people and play with them.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 05

  So there's a, there's a, it's pulling me at the same time. Sure, it's easy and that's, that's a lovely sort of feeling as a listener, but the way that it's put, when music pulls you.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  It pulls you.

• 35:27Speaker 05

  That's really exciting. That's when it's got you.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  That's really, and that's something you can't really put into words. It's a feeling.

• 35:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  So when people try to write about people, especially when you're young and you get pigeonholed, or you get labeled a certain thing, or, or you get detractors, or whatever it is, it's really easy to make it, make you wanna sort of prove it wrong, even if you're not conscious of it, not admitting to being conscious of it. So, you know, for years, I had this like punk rock thing I wanted to do.

• 36:00Speaker 05

  Right.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  But like, you know, I still try to just, you know, I feel like what's natural always rises to the top when I'm in the studio and what, you know, even if I'm trying to like, prove something wrong, it usually isn't the best. Way to go about it and it never makes the record.

• 36:14Speaker 05

  It's funny, isn't it? But you needed to go down that road.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's play a song.

• 36:19Speaker 05

  Let's play a song?

• 36:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 05

  I just wanted to talk about you playing guitar, but we'll go back to that.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 36:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, because I'm mixing something up where you play guitar and I really loved it.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  I have another band called, well, I was in a band called El Madmo where I learned, sort of started playing guitar and then I have a band called Puss in Boots where I play guitar. It's more of a country leaning thing.

• 36:38Speaker 05

  What did you do with Jakir?

• 36:40Speaker 03

  Oh, so Jakir.

• 36:41Speaker 05

  Was that you? Was that Norah Jones?

• 36:43Speaker 03

  Yes, that was, so Jakir King produced your first album?

• 36:47Speaker 05

  First one, yeah.

• 36:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, in Nashville. So he produced my fourth album, which was the first time I worked without my original band, my boyfriend, etc. We had broken up, it was like a big.

• 36:59Speaker 05

  Right.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  I wanted to change my sound up.

• 37:01Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  And I needed the right producer to help me because I'm not an engineer. I knew what I wanted, but like I didn't know how to get it.

• 37:07Speaker 05

  Jakir's great because he's as great a producer as he is an engineer.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:11Speaker 05

  He's both things.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  He's so great and he's so sweet and he went where I wanted to go and he wasn't trying to stamp it with his sound or anything.

• 37:19Speaker 05

  Did you make it Blackbird? No?

• 37:20Speaker 03

  No, we made it in New York.

• 37:22Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  We did one session in LA and one session in New York.

• 37:25Speaker 05

  Fair. I didn't know if he was like a Blackbird based, you know, Blackbird in Nashville?

• 37:28Speaker 03

  That's right. No, I didn't go to Nashville with him, but.

• 37:32Speaker 05

  Sorry, but so yeah, my roundabout way of wanting to talk about you playing guitar, but let's play a song and then.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  But that is, yeah, we'll talk about that.

• 37:40Speaker 05

  I want to know about that because by the way.

• 37:41Speaker 03

  That was a great experience.

• 37:43Speaker 05

  I just, I'm a terrible piano player and.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  I'm a terrible guitar player.

• 37:49Speaker 05

  Well, I just want to talk about the sort of transition, I guess, between you have a primary instrument, don't you? And then you, again, you get like drawn to like, well, people know me as this, I want to do this.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Exactly. I do think that was a thing for me, but also I think it was just fun and I think it was just easier to write songs on guitar because. I knew too much about the piano.

• 38:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  And I was thinking too much when I was trying to write.

• 38:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  Songs weren't spilling out of me on the piano, but they were on the guitar.

• 38:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's funny the how it is.

• 38:17Speaker 03

  Because I only knew through like four chords.

• 38:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  So, Come Away With Me, I wrote on guitar.

• 38:22Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 05

  That's cool.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  And those are the only chords I knew.

• 38:25Speaker 05

  I mean, that's, there's so much magic in that.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:27Speaker 05

  But yes, the song, but just the process, you know.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's interesting.

• 38:31Speaker 05

  That's really cool.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  Sometimes you have to strip it back to the, the beginning.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, because, you know.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  My stomach is growling.

• 38:37Speaker 05

  There's Peter in. Um, we've got, we've got the Peter in.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:40Speaker 05

  Um, uh, obstacles and, uh, you know, ways to, ways that you struggle become.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 05

  Part of the, the discovery of something new.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, your limitations are what make you.

• 38:51Speaker 05

  Limitations.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  Otherwise, you're just gonna be too good. Right?

• 38:55Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  You're just too good at it all.

• 38:56Speaker 05

  Absolutely right.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  That's not interesting.

• 38:59Speaker 05

  It, it kinda isn't.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 05

  What do you want to do?

• 39:02Speaker 03

  I was thinking Elephant.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  The Elephant.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Who's the other singer on this one, on the record?

• 39:09Speaker 05

  Maggie Antone.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Oh, I love it.

• 39:12Speaker 05

  She.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  I love her voice.

• 39:13Speaker 05

  It was, she, I, I've still yet to properly, I've met her on the phone.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, here we go.

• 39:18Speaker 05

  I need to, I need to, this is the time we live in. I need to meet her very properly in, in real life. I hope I can do that.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 39:24Speaker 05

  Because she wasn't in town when I was recording this, but Gabe, again, you know, he said, you, you, you're making these, we're making these songs, he said, where you, you've got a song with Sheryl Crow, which is just a, a very exciting, like, you know, big flex.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:36Speaker 05

  And we did a song with John Batiste, um, for this deluxe thing.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  Also a big flex.

• 39:40Speaker 05

  A huge, I was like, well, how is this possible? And he said, let's talk about, maybe we could get like, somebody who's a little less known and on their way up.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:50Speaker 05

  And, because we've all been there.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:52Speaker 05

  I've been that person. And so, uh, they knew Maggie and called her, and then I spoke to Maggie and she was very excited. She got, we sent her the song, of course, first.

• 39:58Speaker 03

  Where is she based?

• 39:59Speaker 05

  Well, I can't work it out because she was somewhere, she was in Austin at one point and, and maybe Nashville, so she's somewhere between those two.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 40:06Speaker 05

  Texas and that, and, and Tennessee. She makes great music, she's got a fantastic voice.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 40:12Speaker 05

  And she really, Carrie, who played drums on a lot of this music and helped just production and everything, she sent me a video of when she was recording Maggie singing and I was completely like stopped in my tracks.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  That's so awesome.

• 40:28Speaker 05

  Because it was like the a cappella thing where I was just, she was just filming her on her phone while she was putting a takedown. So yeah, that's Maggie singing on here and it's a funny one, like I really like how there's such a duet sort of detail to this, but it's not like busy with like harmony and everything.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  No, I like that too. I'm gonna resist the urge to put a harmony on.

• 40:47Speaker 05

  No, you know.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  I might stick one in.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  Please do, like look at everything we've just said, like let's keep it live.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  But I also, I really love unison.

• 40:53Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  I love that, I love that.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  I've never like sung something so in a really wonderful way, there's a sort of one dimensional nature to what I'm doing in this song, it's all very low and kind of I really enjoy.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  I like the low.

• 41:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, not just because I'm on tour and I'm trying to, you know, chill my voice.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it sounds great.

• 41:12Speaker 05

  And I'm gonna try it on your lovely old Gibson guitar here. One, two, three, four.

• 42:11Speaker 04

  I can't run from it, but I can't hide. See the elephant from every side. Now I'm standing on the cokie side. Screaming allergies into the night. Screaming, "Save me from the wreck I am." Pull me under, pull me up again. I'm so damn believing I've been living in sin. Let the light back in. Let the light back. Let the light back in. Let the light back. Let the light back in.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  A little faith, a little faith, a little courage now.

• 43:13Speaker 04

  Up on a wing, up on a wave, onto another town.

• 43:20Speaker 04

  It's gonna feel a little strange and then a lot somehow.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  But if I'm learning anything, I gotta not back down. I've been terrified to change my faith. Took an emotional holiday from all this tussling. Time to stare dead in the face. There's no other way around it. I can't run from it, but I can't hide. See the elephant from every side. Now I'm standing on the cokie side. Screaming allergies into the night. Screaming, "Save me from the wreck I am." Pull me under, pull me up again. I'm so damn believing I've been living in sin.

• 44:10Speaker 04

  Let the light back in. Let the light back. Let the light back in. Let the light back. Let the light back in.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  That was fun.

• 46:00Speaker 05

  It was fun. There's so many bits of my own song that I sort of forget are coming.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:04Speaker 05

  And I'm just like, okay, uh, yeah, it's like this.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, this is a lot of words for me to say.

• 46:08Speaker 05

  I know, it is.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  But it was really fun.

• 46:10Speaker 05

  You've crushed it.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  I thought that was great.

• 46:11Speaker 05

  I thought it was really cool.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  Yeah?

• 46:13Speaker 09

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• 46:41Speaker 03

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• 47:26Speaker 03

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• 47:36Speaker 07

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• 48:21Speaker 07

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• 49:02Speaker 05

  What's the piano? What is this guy?

• 49:03Speaker 03

  What is this?

• 49:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  This is the Steinway and Sons.

• 49:06Speaker 05

  Oh my goodness me.

• 49:07Speaker 03

  It's from the twenties.

• 49:08Speaker 05

  Oh wow.

• 49:09Speaker 03

  The nineteen twenties.

• 49:10Speaker 05

  How are you on piano geekery?

• 49:13Speaker 03

  I'm not very geeky.

• 49:15Speaker 05

  That's cool.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  I do play a Yamaha.

• 49:17Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  On stage.

• 49:19Speaker 05

  And that's a, you're going out with strings? You're not going out with like a digital situation?

• 49:23Speaker 03

  No, I tried to go digital this year because I was, last time I went out, I was convinced that it kept going out of tune and it started to drive me a little bonkers. Because usually I don't really care, but...

• 49:33Speaker 05

  But is your ear for that just insane?

• 49:36Speaker 03

  No, I mean...

• 49:36Speaker 05

  Like quite dialed in?

• 49:37Speaker 03

  I don't usually care depending on the song.

• 49:40Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  You know, like if it's a country song, I don't care.

• 49:43Speaker 05

  That's great.

• 49:43Speaker 03

  If it's a gospel song, it can be a little wonky and it sounds good.

• 49:46Speaker 05

  Yes, I was good, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  But there's certain songs, you know, on Come Away With Me, I do this thing where I go, I go like...

• 49:55Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm copying Duke Ellington, but...

• 49:57Speaker 05

  Perfect.

• 49:58Speaker 03

  It didn't sound good out of tune, is my point.

• 50:01Speaker 05

  It's interesting though, like, you know, there is, isn't it wonderful when you sort of go back through live records from decades past and like you, you hear somebody caught in a moment that you know they're trying to make so beautiful and it's, and it's out.

• 50:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 05

  But that's like, there's this record...

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Doesn't matter.

• 50:16Speaker 05

  Have you heard Joe Cocke or the Mad Dogs and Englishmen?

• 50:18Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 50:19Speaker 05

  Right, like wow, for a start. And then there's, it's them doing, it's him and Leon Russell doing Girl From The North Country.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  Oh wow, yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 05

  And like, the piano is beautifully kind of honky tonk, like, and Leon, and they've just got, he's got a very particular voice. And then Joe Cocke reaches for some sort of falsetto detail that's not really available to him.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:40Speaker 05

  And where he kind of, Matt knows all about it, where he kind of winds up at is, I don't know, somehow magical.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Is it your favorite part of the whole thing?

• 50:51Speaker 05

  Kind of.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:52Speaker 05

  This is, and this supports any of your concerns about out tune this. Ultimately, you kind of end up going, no, people love it. I mean, I don't know, and then, you know...

• 51:00Speaker 03

  I don't really care if it's out of tune, really. But I feel like they've done so good with digital lately that I thought maybe they would have a cool, old funky piano sound, digitally, that would sound better than my pickup on the piano. Because you know how it is with the pickup on acoustic, it's just so much better with a microphone. But my band sort of entertained me, my crew entertained me, and then we went back to normal.

• 51:24Speaker 05

  That's okay.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  Normal piano.

• 51:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, I get you.

• 51:26Speaker 03

  We did rap it in white, though, this year.

• 51:28Speaker 05

  That's cool.

• 51:28Speaker 03

  Which was hilarious.

• 51:29Speaker 05

  Love that.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  I never thought I would want that, but

• 51:32Speaker 05

  You're full of Liberace.

• 51:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had like a visual aesthetic for my new album that I really wanted, so

• 51:36Speaker 05

  That's great.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  It works.

• 51:37Speaker 05

  That's very cool.

• 51:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:39Speaker 05

  Same kind of question about, tell me about when you play live, how much are you playing guitar?

• 51:45Speaker 03

  How much what?

• 51:46Speaker 05

  Is it, you're playing guitar, is it often, or sometimes none?

• 51:49Speaker 03

  Usually I throw it in the middle of the set, and I'll do like three songs minimum,

• 51:53Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  but five songs maximum.

• 51:55Speaker 05

  And is that some with the band, some without?

• 51:57Speaker 03

  All with the band.

• 51:58Speaker 05

  And now I'm gonna jump to the thing we were just touching on, with guitar tuning. Do you sort of wig out about like guitar tuning?

• 52:05Speaker 03

  Guitar tuning? No.

• 52:06Speaker 05

  That's great.

• 52:07Speaker 03

  Do you?

• 52:09Speaker 05

  Not really.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:10Speaker 05

  It's, for me, I don't know about you, but like, so I use in-ear monitors. Do you use wedges or you, no?

• 52:15Speaker 03

  We use wedges.

• 52:16Speaker 05

  Great.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  I've tried in-ears, but it's tricky.

• 52:18Speaker 05

  It's very tricky.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. I get it.

• 52:20Speaker 05

  It's ultimately better for me, but it's still so tricky, and then

• 52:24Speaker 03

  Do you sing harder without them?

• 52:27Speaker 05

  This is the thing that I do think happens, and the in-ears have helped me with, because and then the science is if you sing harder, you're gonna go sharp, is what people say.

• 52:36Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 52:36Speaker 05

  Doesn't always happen, but Well, I think I probably do, but

• 52:39Speaker 03

  Screw those people.

• 52:40Speaker 05

  But, yeah, but I, from tuning of a guitar, to in-ear monitors or not, they can be a struggle, but for me, so like band members around me, and like no shade to the band members, like they are trying to dial in their in-ears in a way that I stop caring. I don't know if I have the space and time to care.

• 53:03Speaker 03

  About your ears?

• 53:04Speaker 05

  About the quality of the mix, my engineer is doing a fantastic job.

• 53:08Speaker 03

  That's the best place to be.

• 53:09Speaker 05

  But I just, I've got too much of a show to do.

• 53:12Speaker 03

  That's where you have to be and that's where I fear the in-ears will take everybody out of that moment and into their ears and their mix and how that's how it was for me 15 years ago when I tried them.

• 53:24Speaker 05

  I'm doing the sort of cardinal sin of like pulling one ear out slightly.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that why is that a sin because it's bad for your hearing?

• 53:30Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, someone's gonna tell me I'm gonna get tinnitus in this ear and the other ear is gonna be all right, it's gonna be all off balance.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  It'll be all off balance.

• 53:35Speaker 05

  Some version of that might be sort of happening, but like.

• 53:38Speaker 03

  I feel like earbuds give me tinnitus, tinnitus, is that how you say it?

• 53:43Speaker 05

  Well, I have said it very, you say tinnitus?

• 53:45Speaker 03

  I do, but I'm not probably right.

• 53:48Speaker 05

  I don't know if I'm right.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  I think I'm wrong.

• 53:50Speaker 05

  I have no idea. I hear people from both sides of the pond saying it both ways.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think earbuds give me that anyway.

• 53:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, fair. You mean like AirPods or whatever?

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 53:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm just an over-ear guy, whatever it may be.

• 54:00Speaker 03

  Whatever brand you wanna, no shade.

• 54:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course. I use just over-ear stuff if I can for that.

• 54:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's better.

• 54:06Speaker 05

  But, um, so my thing is that even though I reckon I do sing, I feel more confident and sing better with in-ears because I kind of got used to them and like worked hard to sort of make them work for me.

• 54:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:19Speaker 05

  I still want that thing that you're getting where you can just hear everybody on stage.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:24Speaker 05

  I guess we make a lot of noise for good two-thirds of the set and.

• 54:26Speaker 03

  You're loud, you've got a much louder band, I bet.

• 54:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I'm not far away from the cymbals.

• 54:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, right there.

• 54:30Speaker 05

  It's rare that like we're on a big enough stage that I can be, and I don't even wanna be that far away.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I keep my band super tight.

• 54:37Speaker 05

  I don't want a huge footprint. I wanna feel, I don't wanna feel like Tom on his bass is like in the next town.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  I don't know how people do that.

• 54:43Speaker 05

  I don't either.

• 54:44Speaker 03

  That feels so wrong to me, especially when you go to a TV show and they have you all spread out. It's like, how are we gonna play together?

• 54:50Speaker 05

  And with that in mind.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  We're in different countries.

• 54:52Speaker 05

  Absolutely, and with that in mind, like, I even think it looks cooler when people are on top of each other on a TV show.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  They don't, yeah, they don't get it.

• 54:58Speaker 05

  You know, like, whether it's like a recent like Jules Holland thing or like old Grey Whistle Test or whatever, like, or, I don't know, even Saturday Night Live, it's kind of a small plot.

• 55:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 05

  Isn't it? For like, you can't be that far away from each other.

• 55:09Speaker 03

  It's better that way.

• 55:10Speaker 05

  I was watching, um, this is massively tenuous, but there's 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, so I was watching.

• 55:16Speaker 03

  I was obsessed with it.

• 55:17Speaker 05

  All these documentaries and stuff and all of the, the, obviously the musical guests and you'll see some absolute giants on there and they're just, they're really on top of each other with their band.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:25Speaker 05

  And it feels just innately musical.

• 55:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:27Speaker 05

  Kind of love it.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  Okay, I have a question for you.

• 55:30Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 55:32Speaker 05

  I'm ready.

• 55:33Speaker 03

  Questions. I did prepare questions, I swear.

• 55:36Speaker 05

  So can you tell, I just can just go on and on.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 55:39Speaker 05

  Paul will tell you all about it. Oh, James, yeah, never shuts up.

• 55:41Speaker 03

  No, it's great. I don't have to do anything. How, where's the sort of country vibes come from you? What did you grow up listening to?

• 55:47Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you. Good, good question.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. Because you, you grew up in England, but not in London?

• 55:52Speaker 05

  Not in London. I grew up in the kind of commuter belt outside of London, the, the sort of suburbs, kind of the middle of the country, very kind of suburban, middle of the road.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  Suburban, not country? Not like English countryside?

• 56:07Speaker 05

  No, not countryside. No. I mean, in a way, it's a small country and you're never too far away from that kind of thing.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  But that's not where you were.

• 56:13Speaker 05

  My town is 30,000 people, so not, not massive. And there's, it's, it's a, it's a busy sort of market town, town center sort of thing with like, you know, we call them like high streets and stuff. And I don't know, around that, there's like fields and things. But yeah, it was, it was pretty kind of run of the mill with all love and respect to my hometown. That was the, that was the experience. And that was kind of great for a kid, like growing up. Felt, felt pretty safe. But the sort of, the kind of country influence that I think you're talking about, I think all, all kinds of different American and Americana type sounds. Me and my, my brother Alex is, is only 18 months older than me and we grew up very close. And he was the lead singer in all our bands and I was a guitar player. And we wrote a lot of the stuff together.

• 56:58Speaker 05

  The material was respectfully sort of awful, but like also I'm very proud of it to this day because it was our first ever anything. I feel bad. It wasn't awful, but it wa, it really worked for us.

• 57:09Speaker 03

  Of course, early, you gotta learn somewhere.

• 57:11Speaker 05

  Yes, of course you do. But we were listening to, my, my parents aren't musicians, but they had the radio playing in the house all the time. And they had a record collection that sort of evolved from vinyls to CDs over time. And there was a lot of like American music in there. You know, me and my brother, we liked sort of Hollywood movies. And I think Americana was a thing, pop culture wise. Like we were just really sort of turned on by it. And it was very natural and normal. And, you know, music, pop music and, and film was a large percentage American in our minds. There was, there's loads of great British music and, and I'm inspired by so much of that. But.

• 57:52Speaker 05

  I think my favorite British music has probably been inspired by American music and the same the other way around.

• 57:57Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, there's such a history now of that already having been the thing.

• 58:01Speaker 05

  That's true. I suppose country is pretty sort of intensely American.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  Originally.

• 58:07Speaker 05

  Originally, yes.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  But some of my best, favorite American sounding bands, I mean, The Stones sound so country.

• 58:13Speaker 05

  Of course, like when they did, like when they did, like, Let It Bleed.

• 58:14Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 58:14Speaker 05

  They've got some songs that like, that really, really sound country and sound great for that. There was days when Mick Jagger really sounded like a country singer.

• 58:21Speaker 03

  I mean, yes.

• 58:22Speaker 05

  And I love all of it, basically. I, I, you know, I, I still just sort of soak it up. And I, I find it's very natural to sing with that kind of influence. I try and have a sort of individual voice, a unique voice. I'm not really trying to do an impression of anybody.

• 58:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I think it only works, I don't think, neither was he, you know.

• 58:48Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah.

• 58:49Speaker 03

  I never got that sense.

• 58:51Speaker 05

  Okay. Well, yeah, no, I'm, I'm with you on that and like.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:54Speaker 05

  So I think I just love the sounds and you replicate in, in, in falling short of like being your heroes because that's impossible.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:06Speaker 05

  You wind up as this unique thing that is you and I like, well, that's, that's, that's why I sound the way I sound. Cause just a load of American music has, and still is.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:18Speaker 05

  Playing an enormous part in why I like doing this. Simple as that, really.

• 59:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. What was your first band with your brother called?

• 59:26Speaker 05

  The Jet Kings.

• 59:27Speaker 03

  The Jet Kings?

• 59:28Speaker 05

  I'll tell you why.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  That's very cute.

• 59:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  It's not so bad.

• 59:31Speaker 05

  I know, I feel all right about that one. I feel all right about that one. We, we were trying to think of, and I can't remember. I wish I could remember the terrible names that we, that we didn't go with. But then we just, one of the guys in the band.

• 59:43Speaker 05

  I had a guitar, it was an Ibanez guitar, and it was called an Ibanez Jet King II, and we saw the words Jet King.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  No, that's cool.

• 59:49Speaker 05

  And we thought, hey, that'll do.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  That just made it even a even cooler name.

• 59:53Speaker 05

  We could be the Jet Kings, so we were that, and then later on, we were Roadrunner, which I didn't hate either, to be honest.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  Oh, Roadrunner's fun.

• 59:59Speaker 05

  But Roadrunner was, and there's probably a billion bands called Roadrunner, we were listening to, it's interesting where we got that from, a very transatlantic band, Humble Pie, Steve Marriott was their lead singer, who was an English guy, they were an English band, but boy, were they influenced by, and they did a song called Roadrunner, which we loved.

• 1:00:16Speaker 03

  Oh, cool.

• 1:00:17Speaker 05

  And I can't remember if that was a Ray Charles cover, it might not have been, they did something else that was a Ray Charles cover, anyway, we took a band name, I mean, it's not the first time anyone's done it. Sorry, we took a song name and we made it the band name, but.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  And you both played guitar, or?

• 1:00:28Speaker 05

  It was funny, you know, me, so I played, I wanted to learn to play the guitar, I heard Layla by Derek and the Dominos, or Eric Clapton, when I was 11, and I sort of, my dad was playing, it wasn't often that they would play records, my parents, they would have the radio on, but one Saturday morning, he put this record on, and I heard it from the top of the stairs, I ran downstairs, I said, what is this? He said, this is Layla. I said, what is Layla?

• 1:00:50Speaker 03

  That's adorable.

• 1:00:51Speaker 05

  My dad, no, my dad's in his late 70s now, so he was really there in the 60s, when like guitar music was kind of going off in London and in the UK, and in the world. And he said, well, this is Eric Clapton, he was in Cream, all this information, I didn't know anything about it.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  He knew it all.

• 1:01:05Speaker 05

  He kind of did, like, and he'd been to see all those guys in the 60s, he was there in a lot of those shows, and he said, well, the song finished, and I said, play it again, play it again, I listened to it a second time, and then I took the CD out, the CD player, and I took it upstairs, and he never saw it again. But in the meantime, I said, I have to learn how to make that sound, how can, you know, I need a guitar, and we found, he had a nylon string classical guitar in the cupboard that he'd never learned to play.

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  That's so great.

• 1:01:30Speaker 05

  So I learned to play that, I became deeply obsessed. My brother, because we were so close in age and as friends, you know, we were always trying to do the same thing, really, there was a sort of, probably a competitiveness, as well as just a sort of bonding, but he didn't want to play initially, he was good, and Tom, who I talked about, who's still in my band, and I've known Tom since I was three years old, Tom was, you know, we were at school together, and he was like, yeah, I've heard guitar music too, and I've heard like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Dire Straits, and like Pink Floyd, whatever.

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  Everybody came in with their own little influences.

• 1:02:01Speaker 05

  And so Tom was the other guitar player in our little trio, and so Alex kind of didn't need to, but, you know, not long after, he would sort of, and he did it in a sort of, slightly sort of. Kind of shy way, he didn't want us to sort of go, here's how you do this, this and this. Maybe he'd watched us do a lot of it by ear, so he was trying to watch us. And then, my brother to this day is a great guitar player. He can, he can play guitar. Um, he's less of like a lead guy, but he can do it. And, and he's, he's worked it all out on his own. Um, and he still sings and, and writes and, and plays as well.

• 1:02:34Speaker 05

  But yeah, no, it was, he was, he was the lead guy. He was the front man. He was really like going after like a Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Chris Robinson, like hybrid. Um, and we were trying to be the Black Crows and the Faces and the Rolling Stones every day.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  That's so cool. And you'd sing?

• 1:02:47Speaker 05

  I did a little back in singing, but, um, and I got, I got, you know, I was sort of shy about it, but I got some, a couple of nice compliments about my singing. And then one day I really sort of discovered people like James Taylor. And, um, I kind of dug deeper on Carole King and Joni Mitchell and these individuals with songs, sort of, you know, from the first person. Classic, like unbelievable songs. And I thought, maybe I can just do something on my own as well. You know, Eric Clapton was always a big deal for me. Um, and at the time, you know, there was people like Adele coming through. Uh, Ray LaMontagne was just a giant influence for me. So I was trying to copy all those guys and sort of step, sort of step one foot out of the band life.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:28Speaker 05

  And, and one foot into the sort of solo experience. John Mayer was like a big thing back then, yourself, you know, like I, I was hearing all this music from these great, huge like solo artists who were, yeah, just sort of soaring through like radio and, and music and showing kids once again that you can, you can try it, you know, on your own.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  Crazy.

• 1:03:50Speaker 05

  So, um, but.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  And it keeps going.

• 1:03:52Speaker 05

  It keeps going.

• 1:03:53Speaker 03

  Cycling.

• 1:03:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. Uh, uh, America was always a huge player for me in, in, in record, in my record collection, you know, stuff coming out of America, or still is.

• 1:04:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Speaker 05

  So it's very normal to me. And I know guys from the UK. Who don't get it in the same way, and that's so okay.

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  They just didn't grow up with it, maybe, you know?

• 1:04:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that's, that's, that's all right. And you know, there's American folks who of course are just super kind of American in their, in their musical existence and sort of they maybe have heard of Oasis or like they've, you know, some sort of UK giants. Um, I don't know, I just love it. I love, I love, it's a bit too broad to say it like this, but it's certainly been said before. The American sound.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, at this point, I feel like it's all mashed together a little. But I didn't know you were British.

• 1:04:40Speaker 05

  Right, sure, that's okay. I remember one of them.

• 1:04:42Speaker 03

  I have known of you for a long time, but I actually didn't know you were British.

• 1:04:45Speaker 05

  That's okay. One of the first times I ever went to tour in America, I was opening for somebody around the whole country for about six weeks and I played my little opening set and then I went stood by the merch stand in, in Boston in a paradise rock club in Boston. And this old fella came up to me with his fantastic Boston accent and he said, I thought you were a Boston local.

• 1:05:03Speaker 03

  That's so cute.

• 1:05:04Speaker 05

  And I was sat there with my little Clifton English accent saying, no, no, I've come over from, you know, England.

• 1:05:09Speaker 03

  That's sweet, yeah.

• 1:05:10Speaker 05

  It's, it's fascinating that.

• 1:05:12Speaker 03

  It is fascinating.

• 1:05:14Speaker 05

  I guess the music unites and it doesn't end up mattering where you're from, but funny how it goes.

• 1:06:09Speaker 03

  From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Niall explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every artist can point to that turning point, the moment before the breakthrough, before the success, before everything changed. Through candid conversations and personal stories, you'll hear what happened before the moment that made them who they are today. Listen to Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series, on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:06:45Speaker 07

  Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party systems:

• 1:07:27Speaker 07

  cloud platforms, data pipelines, AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Anapaula Assis and Access CIO, Giovanni Daniele, two people who think about these questions every day. Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:08:11Speaker 03

  Do you want to do a song from your first album?

• 1:08:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, that would be cool.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  Is that cool?

• 1:08:14Speaker 05

  That would be great.

• 1:08:15Speaker 03

  All right, this is "Let It Go." I love this song.

• 1:08:18Speaker 05

  Thank you. Let's see how we go. I have no idea how fast these songs should be. I'll just count it in. One, two, three, four.

• 1:08:41Speaker 04

  From walking home and talking loads

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  To seeing shows and evening clothes with you

• 1:08:54Speaker 04

  From nervous tides and getting drunk

• 1:09:01Speaker 04

  To staying up and waking up with you

• 1:09:07Speaker 04

  And now we're sleeping in the edge, holding something we don't need

• 1:09:14Speaker 04

  All this delusion in our heads has gone and burned to our knees So come on, let it go, just let it be Why don't you be you And I'll be me

• 1:09:34Speaker 04

  Everything that's broke, leave it to the breeze Why don't you be you, I'll be me And I'll be me

• 1:10:03Speaker 04

  Throwing clothes across the floor

• 1:10:10Speaker 04

  To teeth and claws and slamming doors at you

• 1:10:16Speaker 04

  If this is all we're living for

• 1:10:22Speaker 04

  Why are we doing it, doing it, doing it anymore?

• 1:10:29Speaker 03

  I used to recognize myself It's funny how reflections change We're becoming something else I think it's time to walk away So come on, let it go Just let it be Why don't you be you And I'll be me Everything that's broke Leave it to the breeze Why don't you be you And I'll be me And I'll be me

• 1:11:28Speaker 04

  Trying to fit your hand inside of mine When we know we just don't belong There's no force on earth could make it feel right, no

• 1:11:42Speaker 04

  Trying to push this problem up the hill When it's just too heavy to hold I think now's the time to let it fly So come on, let it go Just let it be Why don't you be you And I'll be me And everything that's broke Leave it to the breeze Let the ashes fall Forget about me

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  Come on, let it go Just let it be Why don't you be you And I'll be me And I'll be me, yeah

• 1:13:02Speaker 03

  Did you always have a voice? Could you always just sing?

• 1:13:06Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:13:06Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:13:07Speaker 05

  It's a big no.

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  It sounds like you have a very natural voice.

• 1:13:11Speaker 05

  I appreciate that. That's kind of the greatest compliment ever. And it's definitely from you. But no.

• 1:13:18Speaker 05

  I recognize that. I worked hard to, I worked hard definitely to sort of get it to feel effortless. Like, for a long time, I guess I was a teenager and my voice dropped and all that stuff. I couldn't do false sets over nothing.

• 1:13:28Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 1:13:29Speaker 05

  No way.

• 1:13:30Speaker 03

  You sure can.

• 1:13:31Speaker 05

  Well, I appreciate that. I enjoyed sort of getting it to work. My brother could just do it. But yeah, I was just, I come from quite a sort of loud, sort of shouty family.

• 1:13:41Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:42Speaker 05

  So we've got like, we've got core strength to kind of project. And I had that vocally. But yeah, no, I don't know. I sort of enjoyed just doing it a lot. You know, playing in pubs and bars, you just sort of get something down the mic.

• 1:13:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:56Speaker 05

  And people are fine.

• 1:13:57Speaker 03

  I think that's the best way to get good.

• 1:14:00Speaker 05

  And you refine it later on, you know? But no, I appreciate you saying that a lot. Thank you.

• 1:14:04Speaker 03

  Well, thanks so much for doing this.

• 1:14:06Speaker 05

  It's an absolute dream.

• 1:14:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:14:10Speaker 03

  You've got a big show tonight, so I don't want to keep you.

• 1:14:13Speaker 05

  No, not at all, no. I just say thank you for, I mean, it's just a beautiful studio. We're in a big, busy city. And this is a very peaceful little quiet corner. And that's what a thing to have.

• 1:14:22Speaker 03

  It's fun.

• 1:14:23Speaker 05

  And what a place to come to. So thank you for having me.

• 1:14:25Speaker 03

  You're in London?

• 1:14:26Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:14:27Speaker 03

  Okay, I'll look you up.

• 1:14:28Speaker 05

  Please do.

• 1:14:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. Before we do our last song, can you tell me about your guitar?

• 1:14:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. This is, yeah, I can. This is a Gibson J200. It's the Gibson acoustic guitar, or one of the acoustic guitars with the biggest body. Now, all of my reason behind playing this jumbo instrument

• 1:14:48Speaker 05

  is from my days, not just playing over mic nights, but busking. I used to stand in the street and busk all the time. I lived in Brighton on the south coast of the UK for a couple of years. And I would busk for change, but really not for change. I would just do it to play more, to play in front of more people. I was always, my favorite thing, you know how they talk about, you know, it takes kind of 10,000 hours or whatever to really kind of harness

• 1:15:13Speaker 05

  an instrument or a way of sort of performing or whatever, or a way of doing something. I got a lot of those 10,000 hours when I was playing open mic nights and busking in the street.

• 1:15:22Speaker 03

  Best way to do it.

• 1:15:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, and like, I tune, all my guitars really just live at like D standard instead of E standard. So they'll drop down a whole step. It works better for me that way. I've got heavier strings, which are a bit louder marginally. And then the big jumbo body guitar made a bit more noise and kind of bassy noise when I was busking. Cause I wasn't plugged in in the street, I was unplugged. So it all comes from that time and it's what I became familiar and comfortable with. And I, also as a tall guy, I look pretty in proportion with a big guitar.

• 1:15:55Speaker 03

  You look tiny when you have a smog.

• 1:15:57Speaker 05

  I'm not like a super giant, but like, you know, like other ones, I've just got used to sort of, I guess, seeing myself with this guitar. But like, I like how kind of noisy it can be and I can do sort of intimate stuff on it. But, you know, even like let it go, but the sort of dynamic range really. It's because this, this one isn't an old one. I have a few different Gibsons that are like super old. And they're not all J200s, but Gibson make great for touring, like they make great stuff for taking out on the road. That sort of still feels like it sort of breathes and shakes and vibrates in the way that you want a sort of wooden instrument to do.

• 1:16:31Speaker 03

  Sounds great.

• 1:16:32Speaker 05

  Thank you. It's, yeah, that's, this is, I've had this for nearly 10 years and I've got a second one that I've had the same kind of time.

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 1:16:39Speaker 05

  They're still serving the purpose.

• 1:16:40Speaker 03

  It seems worn, well worn.

• 1:16:42Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:16:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:44Speaker 05

  So we're gonna have a swing at, uh.

• 1:16:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's do this song.

• 1:16:47Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:16:48Speaker 03

  The Eagles. Do you do this one live?

• 1:16:50Speaker 05

  Uh, on my own. Yeah, I haven't done it with the band. Uh, let's look here. I'm gonna use your guitar. I'll just talk my guitar up all big and like.

• 1:16:59Speaker 03

  Use mine.

• 1:17:00Speaker 05

  I'm gonna use yours.

• 1:17:00Speaker 03

  Tell me about it.

• 1:17:01Speaker 05

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you.

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  Tell me about my guitar.

• 1:17:10Speaker 05

  How do you feel about the Eagles?

• 1:17:12Speaker 03

  I like the Eagles. I'm not like a super knowledgeable fan, but...

• 1:17:17Speaker 05

  That's fair, no.

• 1:17:18Speaker 03

  I feel like they get a bad rap.

• 1:17:19Speaker 05

  I felt that they get a bad rap in America.

• 1:17:21Speaker 03

  People like to not like people who have sold a bazillion albums. That's my whole analysis of that. Same with Fleetwood Mac, I feel like.

• 1:17:34Speaker 05

  It's wild to me that. It's fine if they want to feel that way. I just think the music is great.

• 1:17:38Speaker 03

  The music is great, and because it became so successful, some people, I feel like, just kind of be like, "Yeah, I don't really get it." But I think if it wasn't successful...

• 1:17:49Speaker 05

  They paved the way for that.

• 1:17:50Speaker 03

  They either wouldn't have an opinion like that, or they would like it. It's just kind of what I think.

• 1:17:55Speaker 05

  I think you're right. I think you're totally right.

• 1:17:56Speaker 03

  That's one thing, I think.

• 1:17:57Speaker 05

  But like, this is, we're gonna have fun busking.

• 1:18:00Speaker 03

  I like this one.

• 1:18:01Speaker 05

  All right, I think if we can...

• 1:18:02Speaker 03

  Do it fast as you want.

• 1:18:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, yeah, run away with it a little bit, yeah.

• 1:18:12Speaker 04

  Oh, I was running down the road, trying to loosen my rope. I got seven women on my mind. For they wanna want me too. They wanna stone me, well, I said, "She's a friend of mine." Take it easy, take it easy. Don't let the sound in your own ears drive you crazy. Light it up while you still can. Don't even try to understand. Just find a place to make your stand. And take it easy.

• 1:19:01Speaker 04

  Oh, I was standing on a corner in winter Arizona Such a fine sight to see It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed floor So and down, take a look at me Come on, baby Don't say maybe I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me

• 1:19:32Speaker 04

  We may lose and we may win But we will never be here again Open up, I'm climbing in Take it easy

• 1:20:22Speaker 04

  Oh, I was running down the road just to lose my love Got a world of trouble on my mind Looking for a lover who won't blow my cover She's so hard to find Take it easy Take it easy Don't let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy Come on, baby Don't say maybe I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me

• 1:21:50Speaker 05

  That was great.

• 1:21:54Speaker 03

  That was great.

• 1:21:55Speaker 05

  I enjoyed it. Thank you, Nora.

• 1:21:56Speaker 03

  Thank you so much. Have a great show. Thanks for giving all your time.

• 1:22:30Speaker 03

  If you're a music fan, I've got a new podcast you have to check out. It's called Before the Moment, a new series hosted by the legendary Nile Rodgers. You know him as the producer, songwriter, guitarist, and co-founder of Chic. But in this series, he's hitting the road to sit down with some of today's most fascinating artists. From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Nile explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every artist can point to that turning point, the moment before the breakthrough, before the success, before everything changed. Through candid conversations and personal stories, you'll hear what happened before the moment that made them who they are today.

• 1:23:15Speaker 03

  Listen to Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series, on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:23:25Speaker 07

  I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Laura Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment.

• 1:23:38Speaker 10

  The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers.

• 1:24:12Speaker 07

  Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com/smarttalks.

• 1:24:26Speaker 03

  Oh, that was great.

• 1:24:28Speaker 00

  He's so nice. I love him. Beautiful voice.

• 1:24:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, beautiful voice. That was really very fun and I love meeting people. It's so special. I am lucky. I feel lucky doing this.

• 1:24:40Speaker 00

  New friends every week.

• 1:24:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's really been special, I feel like, for me, anyway. I'm not gonna cry. Thanks for listening to this episode with James Bay. If you want to know the songs from this episode, here they are. The first song was "Speed Limit" from Changes All The Time, which was released in 2024. Second song was "The Elephant" from the same album. Third song was "Let It Go" from Chaos and the Calm, which was released in 2015, 10 years ago. Fourth song was "Take It Easy," which is the Eagles' song, and it's on their self-titled album that was released in 1972.

• 1:25:21Speaker 03

  Special thanks to James Bay for joining us today. Norah Jones is Playing Along is a production of iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host, Norah Jones. Visit Norah Jones' channel and be sure to subscribe while you're there. This episode was recorded by Matt Marinelli, mixed by Jamie Landry. Audio post-production and mastering by Greg Tobler. Artwork by Eliza Frye. Photography by Sherwin Lenez. Produced by Norah Jones and Sarah Oda. Executive producers Erin Wong Kaufman and Jordan Runtog. Marketing lead, Queen Anaki.

• 1:25:59Speaker 03

  If you love music and great artist interviews, check out Before the Moment, hosted by Niall Rogers. This new series follows Niall as he travels across the country, talking with some of today's most fascinating artists about the moments that shaped their lives and careers. From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Niall explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the point where everything changed. And this podcast tells the stories that came before it. Listen to Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series, on iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:26:34Speaker 11

  With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. Whether you're leading a big project, planning an elaborate trip, or trying to balance work and life, ChatGPT can help. Give it a goal, plus things like files, notes, or project plans, develop a trip itinerary with daily updates, or create a prioritized schedule. So you can spend less energy sorting out the details and more on bringing your biggest ideas to life. Get started at ChatGPT.com.

• 1:27:01Speaker 12

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