1542 Jamie Lidell
Interview

Jamie Lidell's family affair

Tom Zonderman
© BRUZZ
11/10/2016

Jamie Lidell has undergone yet another metamorphosis. The British whitey with a black spirit has become less Prince and more Stevie. "I wanted to feel the joy."

It's a white guy on bass," Jamie Lidell laughs when I congratulate him on his new, all black band with which he has just infused Pukkelpop with some real soul. I honestly hadn't even noticed in my enthusiasm for his quite brilliant set. "No worries. The most important thing is that just like the other guys, Owen (Biddle) is a church dude. [Laughs] He had a lot of church training in Philly. I'm like the Church of England. At best." Before I have even given him a proper handshake, he gives me a lively explanation of how important the (black) church is for musical formation. "It's an insanely competitive world of excellence that brings these kids up to a super high level. That's something we just don't have in England."

Lidell is a Brit, but after peregrinations to Berlin and New York, he ended up in Nashville. He stuck out like a sore thumb there, with the glitchy electronica of his previous, untitled album, on which he proclaimed his love for Janet Jackson. "Yeah, my Jam & Lewis record. It has that nineties vibe, which is coming around now, with Dev Hynes and stuff. I was just a little bit ahead of the curve." [Laughs] With the new Building a Beginning, on which he returned to pure soul, he fits in more easily. "I'm going all the way, man. The next one's country! I've always been an oddball, really. At school I was a lonely soul boy. I listened to Prince when everybody else was into the Smiths."

It was filmmaker Harmony Korine who brought Lidell and his wife, Lindsey Rome, to Nashville. "He lived there all his life. 'Come to Nashville,' he said, 'it's a cool place to create!' That's what we were looking for, but couldn't afford in New York: the space to create. That's what makes us happy. I like to cook at home, to make noise, to have space and time. Nashville is a great place for that, Harmony was right. Although he has moved to Miami now." [Laughs]



After seven years, Lidell feels at home there. The legendary Sound Emporium Studios of "Cowboy Jack" Clement, where Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis were regular faces and where the Alabama Shakes recorded their last album, is down the street. He recorded drums there with Daru Jones, who recently beat his drumheads to pieces with Jack White. While he created his last album alone and toured as a one-man-band, Lidell has now brought a crowd of musicians together. They include people like Pino Palladino, the bassist D'Angelo calls when he needs a funky bass line. His good friend Mocky, the backing singers of Chaka Khan, one of Bill Withers's engineers, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone from Wilco, and Deron Johnson, who played keyboard for Miles Davis. "Crazy, isn't it? It's a real family affair."

Building a Beginning is Lidell's most consistent soul album. It reminds Lidell himself of Multiply, the 2005 album that first brought his hoarse, soulful voice to a wide audience. "Not only sonically, but also the way I felt at the time. I had done Muddlin Gear and the Super Collider album. Really far out, Sun Ra style, nasty electronics. But I got bored of electronic music, bored of all the boys club, harder, faster, louder stuff. I'm a singer, I missed the songs." Over the past few years, Lidell has concentrated on that song writing. He wrote "Green & Gold" with Lianne La Havas for her Grammy-nominated album Blood. "I'm on the next level now," he glows, "which is hilarious, because it was only three days of work. But anyway, I wanted to go back to simplicity in my songs." Or is his new transformation from electronica shaman to silky soul man related to his separation from the renowned electronica record label Warp? "Not at all. I have my own label now. Which is really fun, and I own my masters for the first time. 'Don't give your master away!' Prince used to say. He would be proud."

Lidell sketched the contours of Building a Beginning at home, with his wife, who helps him to write his lyrics, just like Tom Waits's wife does. He then filled them out in bits and pieces. The method reminded him of Stevie Wonder. "Except that he played all those instruments himself. But I like the way he worked with overdubs and still created this band feeling." It is not only the method that connects him to Wonder, but also the soulful, openly romantic songs that remind you of Songs in the Key of Life. Lidell aimed to approximate the joy of that music; he wanted to make a joyful song without sounding corny. "Julian" is explicitly a tribute to his now one-year-old son, "How Did I Live Before Your Love" an unapologetic ode to his wife. "I'm a softie and I don't give a shit. In America I've learned that it's not cheesy to be open. That's hard for a reserved English guy. [Laughs] But it's sad if you miss out on that. 'You never get to say things that you feel because you feel that it's corny? What a joke!'"



Becoming a father has Lidell made more positive. "I won't let the darkness steal my precious years," he sings on Building a Beginning. "A child gives you an opportunity to evaluate. It makes you realise you're part of this circle. Like how you're another father and a son. In 'Walk Right Back' I try to go back to this time where I was a child. You approach life with a fresh outlook and not just come with your stubbornness. These songs are almost a note to self: choose life, be optimistic. In our short life we have that choice."

"This album couldn't be electronic," Lidell tells me as we say goodbye. "It would have felt cold. I wanted it to feel human. If you look at Stevie, that's what you feel. You feel humanity, you feel the joy, and that's what keeps it timeless."

JAMIE LIDELL & THE ROYAL PHARAOHS
20/10, 20.00, Ancienne Belgique, www.abconcerts.be


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