Spring break, 2018.
Five of my friends and I were just about to leave Florida and go back to our lives at college in Nashville, and we had used the last hour of our trip to “take cute photos on the beach” outside the condo we had rented. When the camera memory card was full, we started our walk back to the car.
But about halfway up the beach, my friend Luke said something that I think about probably once a week.
Hold on guys. I’m gonna go be introspective.
Really. He said that.
We thought he was kidding, and just stared at him as he walked to the shore and stood there silently, looking at the ocean, just being introspective. And after about a minute, he just walked back to us and said “okay, let’s go.”
I think Luke would like Henry Jamison.
I’m not saying Henry Jamison definitely just stares at the ocean and searches for purpose like Luke does, but, if his music is any indication, he definitely does a lot of introspection. He seems to find limitless significance in everyday things, and draws from personal experience to tailor meaning.
There’s a frankness in his lyricism that always seems so personal, as he introduces his stories matter-of-factly. Just listen to the beginning of “In March“:
We met at the gas station and wandered round all day.
Then we went home and
sat sad-eyed in the darkness and played GTA.
On the surface, he’s just telling you about a day he spent with his friend when we was 17. But when you hear the rest of the song, Henry doesn’t just give you the full story – he gives you its full meaning.
It’s an experience-life-first-and-ask-why-second mindset, and it’s captivating. His new full-length on which “In March” appears, Gloria Duplex, is a study in American masculinity, and how it has affected him and others. It’s filled with personal storytelling, careful metaphors, and a lot of Henry delivering beautiful melodies in a tone that’s warmly conversational.
It’s a reminder of the beauty and power of folk music, and proof that if Luke can find meaning in a week of playing beach sports and watching the worst show ever, then we should all do some introspection from time to time.
If you want to know how Henry Jamison writes songs like that, we’ve got good news: we asked him.
Also, you should follow him on
Twitter // Facebook // Instagram // Spotify
to make sure you don’t miss anything. And here’s his website.
How did you start making music?
I started singing with my parents and at the Waldorf school in Shelburne, VT. I don’t know the date; maybe when I was two. Then I had a boombox with blank cassette tapes and I set up pots and pans and banged on them and banged on a shitty Sears guitar. This was in the early 90s. I made a record called “Henry’s Tape”. It had a song about Santa and a song about not wanting to go to school.
Who are your influences?
The Beatles were my first real obsession, which of course I’m happy about. I liked Alison Krauss and also Pete Seeger and Raffi. Then I liked 00s indie rock like Death Cab and Modest Mouse a bit and a German band called The Notwist. I loved Sufjan. Then I liked Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. I got into some neo-classical choral music in college, which informed my harmony some. And I sang in a choir through high school and played viola in orchestras, reluctantly. That’s the spectrum, more or less, and I don’t know exactly how it fits together.
What does your songwriting process usually look like?
Usually I will mess around on guitar in one of three or four tunings. If I get some chords going, I’ll sing bit of gibberish over them and record it. Often there will be some melodic and lyrical raw material in there, so I comb through and try to hear what I was saying. It’s like chiseling away to reveal what’s already there. Lately I’ve been writing on the piano more, which is really different and good.
How do you write melodies?
Once in a while, I’ll make an intentional move, like I’ll say “this melody should have a big interval jump here” or “this is a step-wise ascent into the chorus”, but that isn’t really my main mode. Usually it’s just what comes. I’m always looking for little melodic moments, but I can’t just call them in.
What role does production usually play in your songwriting process?
I tend to group my songs based on how production-dependent they are. When I’m solo, I don’t play about a third of the songs I have recorded. Those are the ones that exist best with all of the arrangement elements. Most of my songs can exist in either setting though. Even with those, I’ll write them with certain production ideas in mind.
Your lyrics usually have a frankness unlike anybody else I’ve heard. It seems like you’re describing exact moments very honestly and specifically. How’d you arrive at that writing style?
Well, vaguely stated, my agenda is usually to tell a literal-seeming story, but with a philosophical or mytho-poetic commentary interpolated around the edges. So that requires a frankness that ideally coexists with something more enigmatic and interpretable.
Even though your lyrics are seemingly so specific to your experiences, you still find a way to leave room for relatability. Is that ever a tough line to walk?
No, I think that most of experience is very relatable, so if a song is even getting at my own experience partially then it’s usually bound to be transmitting something like you’ve felt. In certain ways, my interests are obscure, but I’m always trying to filter things down loosely to a pop-song format, so even if I’m doing something relatively abstract, there are solid points of reference for people.
What makes a song good?
Just its own logic. Its own internal coherence. It’s ineffable, but people know. You know as a listener and you know as a writer.
What advice would you give to other songwriters?
Read a lot, look at plants, don’t go on your phone too much. That’s advice that I should take.
What was the first part of “In March” to be written?
The finger-picked guitar part at the beginning was part of another song that was for a past project. I always liked it, so I transplanted it.
Did you write the song specifically for the album?
In a sense, in that I’d already written a song or two about boyhood. This is the longest and most complex story-song I have.
Is there a reason behind its track placement on the album?
I put it late partially because it doesn’t have a hook, per se, but also because enjoying it fully will require understanding it fully, and that can only really happen if you’ve gone through the whole record almost by then. It leans on people seeing the tensions between father and son and how they play out in the video game.
It’s rare to find someone who can get away with poetically talking about GTA and Coca-Cola. You seem to find a lot of meaning in seemingly small moments and things. Can you speak a little more to that?
Well, I don’t remember this exactly, but the poet Hart Crane said that poetry would have to integrate the machine, but that was maybe in 1910 and now we have so much more to integrate or poetry will die. It feels dire. I wanted to edge into talking about how things really are, but I still couldn’t say Burger King, I had to say Dairy Queen. And I couldn’t say Assassin’s Creed, I had to say GTA, like we need ten years of building nostalgia to hear something poetically.
The song beautifully contrasts lighthearted and dark moments. One moment, you’re with your friend playing video games, and the next moment there are gunshots and an ache of loneliness. What was the inspiration behind creating those moments?
The violence is in the video game and in the domestic tensions; it seems a fair formula. We might be drawn to violence as entertainment in proportion to our half-unconscious feelings of being misunderstood or oppressed? I don’t know. The main point was that the arena for perfectly natural feelings has been transferred to the virtual, which I think leaves them unfelt, or only distortedly so.
What is the song about?
A boy, me, playing GTA in the basement with his friend, who feels some heaviness when his father comes into the room and goes on a killing spree in the game. When I play the game, I take the helicopter and watch the sunset; at the end of the song, we both go outside and look at the crocuses. It’s a juxtaposition of the virtual and the natural, the human, cramped spaces bristling with psychological tension and the open air.
Who is it for?
It’s for men, myself included. I mean, it’s more broadly for our higher selves, for the parts of us that can see beyond our immediate resentments and self-preserving instincts.
What do you want listeners to take away from the song?
I just want it to be a visual thing, with a story that isn’t too didactic but is meaningful.
What was the production process like?
This was a really fun and easy one, especially considering how involved it was. I came in with it as more of a strum-heavy thing, but the guitar ended up taking a backseat to Thomas’ piano and synth stuff and my friend Adam Simon’s awesome string arrangement. Ben Davis played upright bass and Jeremy Gustin played drums and I had been imagining them as rhythm section on the chorus for a long time, so that was amazing to finally hear.
Are there any touring plans in the works?
Oh, very many. A month in the US with Guster, two weeks headlining in Europe and then a headline US tour for all of May.
