On November 5th, UK-based Americana band the Jaywalkers released their fourth album, Time to Save the World. Recorded during the peak of the 2018 summer heatwave with Josh Clark as producer, the album features 10 original songs (and a Johnny Cash cover for good measure) which play on the strengths of each member. From tales of (almost) getting stuck up a mountain in Colorado (Rescue Me), to the ups and downs of life on the road (How Many Whiskeys?) and the feeling that a songwriter is always delicately balanced on the tightrope between creativity and despair (This Is The One), the songs provide a real snapshot of where Jaywalkers are at on their musical journey.
Here, member Mike Giverin answers the band's Essential 8 and talks songwriting, musical mentors, and Toto, shares the story behind "Rescue Me," and much more. Did you have a musical mentor? If so, who was it and how did they influence you? The three of us owe a great deal to the teaching and general mentorship of Stuart Williams. He’s the guy that taught Jay fiddle and Mike mandolin and rather handily he is also Lucy’s brother! His teaching on all things strings is second to none but it’s the extra miles that he’s gone for us over the years that have got us to where we are today. Stu’s whole approach to learning music is to get up and play in front of people, so as soon as we could pick a tune, he’d have us playing it in front of an audience. Although daunting at the time, it has meant that we are always comfortable in front of an audience. The way he’s supported us has changed over the years but he’s consistently done so freely; from accompanying us in our school music exams to playing on our brand new album! With any particular song, was there an “a-ha” moment when you knew the song was completed and perfect? Yes, with track 8 – ‘Set Me Free’ – it proved to me that a song is never fully written until it’s been arranged by the band. I wrote the riff first and then moulded the rest of the song around that. I originally wrote it at half of the speed we play it now, sort of a slow blues feel, but when we showed it to Lucy she couldn’t see how the bass would fit in with it. Even though it was fully written and it was one of my favourites I had written, we put it to onto the ‘maybe’ pile. As recording day came closer and closer, we had one last look at it as a band and someone had the idea of doubling the speed … 2 bars in we all looked at each other and just knew this is how the song should be played. It was a real ‘a-ha’ moment and proof that no matter how good a song you think you’ve written, the real magic is in the presentation. Please choose one song and tell the story behind it. ‘Rescue Me’ is our take on a bluegrass tale of woe and disaster. We (Jay and Mike) went over to the States back in 2016 to attend the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in the mountains of Colorado. Making a bit of a road trip around the event, we decided to take a jeep tour from Ouray up to the top of Yankee Boy Basin which sits at just over 12,000 feet. The song tells the story of a great day turning sour as the jeep gets a puncture, the guide had no tools, spare tyre or radio and we were stuck miles high as the sky turned black and lightning broke the clouds! There’s a touch of poetic license towards the end, we weren’t quite surrounded by wolves, but the day could have been much worse had we not been rescued by two kind gentlemen in a pick-up truck.
Do you write about personal experience, the experience of others, observations, made-up stories, something else or a combination?
This has changed quite considerably over the last few years. With the last album, I wrote a lot of songs based on stories and poetry from my home County of Lancashire in the North of England. But with this album, I wrote most of the songs about my own experiences and observations of the world. This was a deliberate decision as I feel I have grown as a songwriter since the last album and have more things to say than re-telling old tales. There are songs about the existential crisis most musicians go through when you’re not working in the dark winter month of January (Life I Chose, This is the One), a discussion of how you handle a really bad gig (How many Whiskeys), the previously discussed story of almost getting stuck up a mountain (Rescue Me) and then wider discussions of how we as a species are affecting the wider world around us (This Time, Set Me Free). What’s the best advice you have ever gotten from another musician? A rather bizarre one; there’s a rock band called Steel Panther who are sort of spoof on 80’s glam metal. They play on the whole explicit lyrics/exaggerated costumes etc. but at the heart of it they are all amazing musicians. The lead guitarist, ‘Satchel’ has a YouTube tutorial video in which he essentially suggests that the best way to find your own sound is to copy the sound of your heroes. Inevitably, you will get it wrong, but in the process of failing to play like your heroes, you will end up with your own sound. It made a lot of sense to a fiddle and mandolin player who spent their youth working out and playing along with the Nickel Creek, Alisson Krauss and old Bluegrass recordings. What is your favorite (or first) concert you have ever attended? My (Mike) first ever ‘proper’ concert was at 14 years old and just happened to be Nickel Creek at the height of their powers. I had played in brass bands when I was younger to an ok level, but wasn’t playing anything at the time. After a night spent watching Chris Thile’s mastery of the mandolin (and a very bad impression at playing cricket), I came out of the concert wanting to learn the mandolin and play like Thile…. 16 years later, I’m still trying. I think that will forever remain my favourite concert as well as my first. Do you have a favorite thing to do on a day off? This varies wildly depending on where we are in the country but nothing quite beats a game or two of Gin Rummy in a pub by a fire. Second to that you might find us bird watching, knitting, scouring the area’s charity shops or doing quizzes. We’ll leave you to decide who does what! What are your “must have” albums for the road? We have a whole bunch of artists within our genre that we love to listen to on our travels with Punch Brothers’, ‘How to Grow a Woman from the Ground’ and Bryan Sutton’s, ‘The More I Learn’ being two firm favourites. More often than not, however, we’ll go a bit further afield with our musical choices with musicians we admire from other genres. Our “hottest disk” is probably Toto. If we have time after our 17th playing of ‘Africa’ and ‘Rosanna’ then we might move onto Queen, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder or Eminem. The Jaywalkers are: Jay Bradberry: fiddle, vocals, guitar Michael Giverin: mandolin, guitar, harmony vocals Lucille: bass, harmony vocals Website/Facebook
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