Jaymay
Jaymay would probably be happy if this biog was as short as this: Jaymay’s a young New Yorker. She’s in love with books and music and she writes eloquent, beautiful songs about the heart, her life in New York and the seasons. Her first album is ’Autumn Fallin’, released on Heavenly. That would probably do it for Jaymay. Toss the biog in the bin now, she’d say, put ‘Autumn Fallin’ on and listen. All you need to know is there…
Because one of the first things you learn from Jaymay when hired to write her biog is that there is plenty she’d rather didn’t make it into the biog. Not because there are reams of salacious detail or scandal. She just doesn’t want her biography to distract you from her songs. All you need to know really is tattooed into her melodies.
So let’s not dwell on her upbringing on Long Island, New York, one of six kids, born 26 years ago. Let’s not pick through the bones of her childhood in this hectic home, learning to play piano on the family’s rickety baby grand, showing an aptitude for violin and composing early “stupid, stupid songs” about her dog. And you probably don’t need to know her real name: Jamie Kristine Seerman. Everyone just calls her Jaymay.
We can, however, talk briefly about her passion for books, rivalled only as a teenager by her passion for Bob Dylan, because this is a recurring theme. And in a way, these two passions are intertwined later on, in her current work: a great storyteller using lean, powerful melody and her own singular voice to paint a picture.
This passion for books was so overwhelming that after college – in Florida, New York, even Italy for a while – she decided she wanted to work in publishing, and moved to Manhattan in 2003 with that express purpose. “Just so I could get free books, just so I could be near books.” But that never came off, and thank God. If she’d got near enough to a publishing house she may never have got onstage that evening in 2003 at a New York open mic night, where she completed half a song and realised that, oh yes, this is what she was meant to be doing. Writing songs, singing them and feeling a connection.
She played shows. She wrote more songs. She eventually released some of those songs, the five-song ‘Sea Green, See Blue’ EP, and these wise, poetic, incisive songs sung in a seductive burr struck a chord. Featured on iTunes’ indie spotlight, her EP became a top seller in folk. Then, Californian radio station KCRW started playing ‘Sea Green, See Blue’ on its popular Top Tune podcast and things really took off. People starting buying her songs, many thousands of people started buying her songs, and record labels started to offer her money to put these songs out on their imprints. Heavenly won the race. Jaymay’s glad about that. “They’re my favourite label after all,” she shrugs.
Since then, she’s moved for a brief period to London. She’s played tons of shows. She’s toured with the likes of Cherry Ghost and Bright Eyes. And she’s finished her debut album, ‘Autumn Fallin’. It’s a beautiful piece of work that tells with an acute eye for emotional detail the story of a love affair that navigates a bitter New York winter. This is heartache and heartbreak and renewed hope in melodic technocolour.
If there’s a better evocation of the rush of first love than Gray Or Blue and Sycamore Down, or a more faithful portrayal of its curtain-call than Ill Willed Person or You’d Rather Run released this year, then please, bring it on.
‘Autumn Fallin’ is the death of a relationship and the death of a friend,” says Jaymay. “It’s about Autumn turning into Winter. The songs come from seven months of life and relationships in New York. But there’s hope there in the songs too. If you think of the first song, ‘Gray Or Blue’, and the last song, ‘You Are The Only One I Love’, as bookends you can read a story.
And in these personal, poetic recollections of love that Jaymay delivers you hear not only a vivid insight into her seven months, but also a reflection of your own life and loves. And then, when the album is finished, you put it on again because you can’t believe someone could have nailed it, nailed you, so. And that’s all you need to know.
Because one of the first things you learn from Jaymay when hired to write her biog is that there is plenty she’d rather didn’t make it into the biog. Not because there are reams of salacious detail or scandal. She just doesn’t want her biography to distract you from her songs. All you need to know really is tattooed into her melodies.
So let’s not dwell on her upbringing on Long Island, New York, one of six kids, born 26 years ago. Let’s not pick through the bones of her childhood in this hectic home, learning to play piano on the family’s rickety baby grand, showing an aptitude for violin and composing early “stupid, stupid songs” about her dog. And you probably don’t need to know her real name: Jamie Kristine Seerman. Everyone just calls her Jaymay.
We can, however, talk briefly about her passion for books, rivalled only as a teenager by her passion for Bob Dylan, because this is a recurring theme. And in a way, these two passions are intertwined later on, in her current work: a great storyteller using lean, powerful melody and her own singular voice to paint a picture.
This passion for books was so overwhelming that after college – in Florida, New York, even Italy for a while – she decided she wanted to work in publishing, and moved to Manhattan in 2003 with that express purpose. “Just so I could get free books, just so I could be near books.” But that never came off, and thank God. If she’d got near enough to a publishing house she may never have got onstage that evening in 2003 at a New York open mic night, where she completed half a song and realised that, oh yes, this is what she was meant to be doing. Writing songs, singing them and feeling a connection.
She played shows. She wrote more songs. She eventually released some of those songs, the five-song ‘Sea Green, See Blue’ EP, and these wise, poetic, incisive songs sung in a seductive burr struck a chord. Featured on iTunes’ indie spotlight, her EP became a top seller in folk. Then, Californian radio station KCRW started playing ‘Sea Green, See Blue’ on its popular Top Tune podcast and things really took off. People starting buying her songs, many thousands of people started buying her songs, and record labels started to offer her money to put these songs out on their imprints. Heavenly won the race. Jaymay’s glad about that. “They’re my favourite label after all,” she shrugs.
Since then, she’s moved for a brief period to London. She’s played tons of shows. She’s toured with the likes of Cherry Ghost and Bright Eyes. And she’s finished her debut album, ‘Autumn Fallin’. It’s a beautiful piece of work that tells with an acute eye for emotional detail the story of a love affair that navigates a bitter New York winter. This is heartache and heartbreak and renewed hope in melodic technocolour.
If there’s a better evocation of the rush of first love than Gray Or Blue and Sycamore Down, or a more faithful portrayal of its curtain-call than Ill Willed Person or You’d Rather Run released this year, then please, bring it on.
‘Autumn Fallin’ is the death of a relationship and the death of a friend,” says Jaymay. “It’s about Autumn turning into Winter. The songs come from seven months of life and relationships in New York. But there’s hope there in the songs too. If you think of the first song, ‘Gray Or Blue’, and the last song, ‘You Are The Only One I Love’, as bookends you can read a story.
And in these personal, poetic recollections of love that Jaymay delivers you hear not only a vivid insight into her seven months, but also a reflection of your own life and loves. And then, when the album is finished, you put it on again because you can’t believe someone could have nailed it, nailed you, so. And that’s all you need to know.
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