Interview with JESSIE EVANS, Lyon, May 08

We first saw Jessie Evans and Toby Dammit live on a canal boat in Lyon as part of the Nuits Sonores evening dedicated to Berlin in May 2008 . Their show was mesmerizing and the Berlin spell has been cast on us for sure!
We were very excited to welcome them live the next day in a small venue in Saint-Etienne. They were just great. While chilling out before their gig, talking about Charlie's Angels, Jean-Luc Godard's "A Bout De Souffle", red Bordeaux wine, the restaurant located in a famous square in Saint-Etienne where Toby had already been when touring with Stephan Eicher, Kap Bambino who made a great Chili show the previous night, we plugged the Minidisc recorder on:

Angry Ballerina : Why did you move from San Francisco to Berlin?

Jessie Evans : I decided it was where I wanted to go after hearing the album “In Flames” by Hanin Elias* (a Berlin Singer who since then I have become good friends with). It was like she was calling out to me so I came on over.
This is a very exciting town with loads of artists like Namosh, Cobra Killer, . Extra Action Marching Band  .. and cheap rent prices.
Toby Dammit and I met there.

AB : Out of the ashes of AUTONERVOUS came your solo project, do you find it a self fulfilment?Jessie Evans : Definitely. It's easy to start a label and not doing anything then. So now that I do it all on my own, I manage the whole tour and do the promotion. The next record will be on my label Hypno tease!.

AB : How does your creation process work?
Jessie Evans : Everything begins with rhythm. I'll sit with the drum machine for several months just making beats, until I have enough that’s fluid as a whole that I like, then I will start to add bass and other instruments. The lyrics usually come separately  and I will try to fit them into the music, which sometimes works really well. The songs that have no words yet I'll just sing over the music,  without words, phonetically, and then try to decifer what I said, and figure out what is the meaning of the song.
In general, it works better for me if I don’t have a set idea about what the song is supposed to be about. Set ideas are always like dams that block the pipes. Occasionally I have already made some lyrics which I consider to be so profound that the direction is decided, but more often its better if the subject is not settled into my mind, there is so much more freedom that way and sometimes I will go through so many ideas with a song before it is finished that to get stuck on something is just a waste of time.

AB : How come you recorded the tracks in Mexico?
Jessie Evans : To go somewhere different to see what influences that would bring.
We recorded most of it in a laundry room on a rooftop in Mexico City which we converted into a little studio. The colors were beautiful up there, purples, fluorescent yellow, orange. We also recorded some saxophone in John Waynes house in Acapulco and some tracks in our motel room in La Playas in Tijuana that we stayed in for a month. Down there it was so loud it was hard to get a good take. Every 5 minutes you have someone driving by in a truck with a megaphone trying to sell brooms and toilet plungers out the back of their truck. Or selling tamales on a bicycle with a tape loop running through a megaphone!

AB : A top 5 "places of inspiration" for songs to come?
Jessie Evans : Lately songs have been coming to me a lot in the hour before the concert, like when im in the car putting on my makeup or walking around at night before the show. The same songs come over and over, like wild animals howling outside the door, at first I look at them like they were nothing but after they continue to come back I start to accept them and take them in.
Sometimes they seem really foolish at first, which is why I don’t trust them or myself even for having them, like being a host to some plague or something you think is a bit ugly or disgusting, like parasites, but I think if they are reacurring then they are really true, not connected to ego, but something that wants to come in and be heard. Part of the process for me with becoming a singer is to trust the original ideas and not question them.

AB : How would you describe your outfit on stage? Is "wearing an outfit" putting on
your stage persona ?
Jessie Evans : For the tour we just went on I copied this old decorative poster from the 40’s of a girl in a bullfighting ring in Spain. Since traveling in Mexico a lot recently I’ve become obsessed with Bullfighting paraphernalia, though I’ve never actually seen a bullfight, but I’m a Taurus, so I identify with bulls and its always thrilling for me to spend time in places where so much importance is put on bulls.
Even though it is a bit tragic, but its tradition, and with that comes sacrifice. I guess although I identify with the bull, I am putting the outfit of the showgirl matador on and in a way, even though I’m trying to “lure “ the audience in closer perhaps its making a joke of luring myself in, or out of my shell, however you want to see it.

AB : How do you feel about sharing a stage persona with being you during and after
the show?
Jessie Evans : If day to day living is a black and white drawing, an outline of who you are, then stage persona is just coloring it in some more, making it more vibrant. There is no difference here for me with who I am on and off stage except that the stage is a place where I know I am allowed to be free, and to shine, whereas day to day life I often feel like I should blend in and just be part of everything else, be responsible.  When I first started touring in bands I had this idea that I had to change my costume constantly. And I never brought the clothes with me, so I was just finding them as we arrived in the evening, finding them in the trash, or wherever I could, and dressing up differently all the time. Sometimes really great ideas would come out of this, by surprise, which would ignite some other parts of myself and a different performance, but other times it wouldn’t work out so well. I think this was an important time for me because I was really into improvising with the show I was doing back then and I was just figuring out myself all the time. But In general it took so much energy to change all the time and was pretty stressful so now I really prefer now to have a uniform for tour that I can wear for the entire time and just get into character and stay there. I’m like that also with regular clothes, I prefer to wear the same thing as many days as possible, until its really dirty, then change. It takes too much energy for me to think about what im going to wear, and I like to keep things simple and reserve the thoughts to go elsewhere.

AB : Is Jessie Evans on stage "the scientist of love"?
Jessie Evans : Anybody can be a scientist of love, and when I’m singing that its an invitation for people to come closer, look at whats around you.
Man has been so obsessed with discovering the universe in such scientifical terms that I think more important things have been overlooked.. This emotional side of things is also the side that woman is most in touch with by nature. I just wanted to point out that this is what is important to me, and lets get real and look at what’s there around us, in the flesh.

* ex member of Atari Teenage Riot