She is so alive, so vibrant, so GRAUUUEEE, like the ecstatic and empowering roar of a tiger. Her music, her show and she are like a kick in the belly, a Good Healthy Dense kick in the belly. It’s real!! And so FREE!!!

L.E.H. -How and what was the path that lead you to the stage in Moby Dick,

Madrid, and in general to doing what you do nowadays?

J.E. -I’ve been playing in bands for the past 10 years, setting up my own concerts, making records, traveling the world. I started out playing saxophone in an all girl punk band called Subtonix, then formed The Vanishing, then did an electronic duo with Bettina Koster from Malaria! amongst other things. For the past 4 years I’ve been living in Berlin, where I met Toby Dammit, and have been working on getting my new music off the ground. I just finished my first solo record “Is it fire?“ which was recorded between Berlin and Mexico. For this we worked with Pepe Mogt from Nortec Collective, and Budgie from Siouxsie and the Creatures, Martin Wenk from Calexico, Namosh, etc. For this release I decided to start my own label, called Fantomette Records, and in the moment the record is available through mail order and at shows.

L.E.H. - What is your background: musical education; theatre; dance; something

else?

J.E. -I took music lessons beginning at age 4 with violin, then piano, drums, flute, played in the school marching band, and eventually picked up the Sax when I was about 16, but I wasn’t sure yet what my direction was going to be professionally. My teacher was telling me: “in 5 years you will be a great jazz player” and this didn’t really interest me because, as much as I loved jazz, I would rather make something new because I just saw it as a dead form. Why would you want to repeat something that was courageous and inventive at the beginning but has now become so complacent? Standards? What is that??? Like classical, and all great forms of music now seem so conservative because people have the tendency to just follow the forms without having a desire to break out of it.

When I was younger I was into acting too and was in plays in school, but at a certain moment I decided I hated acting, that I wasn’t into imitating other people, it just didn’t feel good to me. At 15 I dropped out of high school and enrolled for a year at community college studying Jazz Improvisation and recording, and for awhile I thought I wanted to be a sound engineer, but it wasn’t until I was about 18, after traveling through Europe alone, squatting, and hitch hiking through Spain playing saxophone on the streets, that I finally realized I simply wanted to start a band and be a rock n’ roller. In all the years of “learning” music I felt that the one thing it didn’t teach me whatsoever was how to relate to people, how to build something musically together, how to communicate. So when I began playing with people I made a conscious decision that I didn’t care about being trained and that it was of no use to me anymore.

L.E.H. –Childhood fascinates me, I think it’s the main responsible for the adults we are today (or we are supposed to be). Where did you grow up? How was your childhood?

J.E. -I grew up in a very small town in Northern California, by the sea. My parents were hippies. I’m the oldest of six children, and from a young age we moved around a lot. We lived in treehouses, schoolbusses, ashrams, a schooner in the Atlantic Ocean and the back of a pickup truck made out of wood and stained glass where we traveled from coast to coast. My childhood was a bit like growing up in the wild. My favorite thing to do was to walk into the forest for hours until I was hopelessly lost, then try to make my way back the same day. Sometimes I would camp out with friends overnight in the swamp, we would eat raw noodles and drink Coca-Cola and ditch school.

L.E.H. –I have a very strong interest in education. You tell us to you would ditch school… I find schools so lethal to creativity and intelligence, so boring, uninteresting and flattening… and television, main stream movies and computer culture are so vulgar too, just as schools, it seems kids’ brains are being flattened and sucked out by school, TV, movies, and computers, and ridiculous magazines (especially fashion mags). You said your parents were hippies, how was it to grow up in an atmosphere so unconventional and sort of free?

J.E. -I feel really grateful for the way my parents raised me. My mother was pretty much the best I could ever ask for. She was really caring and listened to me like I was a human being. It wasn't like she left me alone cos she wasn't paying attention or doing her job. I was just really independent from a young age, I was an explorer and I wasn't afraid to be alone. I remember when I got the chicken pox when I was about 7 years old. I wasn't allowed to go to school for 2 weeks and was sort of quarenteened away from everybody else. I was so happy! I was drawing pictures in my room and really creative the whole time. I really didn't like school. I don't really remember learning that much! In 5th grade my teacher was really into music and we would sing all day long and that was neat, but in general, I found it really depressing being around the other kids in school. I just didn't fit in with them, they seemed stupid and vulgar (like you say!!) and they made ME feel like a freak. Of course I had friends there, but I just don't think it was a very nurturing environment at all. In retrospective, the only things I think I really retained (that I still use) from my entire experience in elementary, Jr. and high school was: learning to type on a computer keyboard! As far as the rest, I think it gave me a pretty ugly outlook on humanity. As far as "socializing " me for "the world", to be honest "the world" outside of my hometown turned out to be filled with much more interesting things than what I was exposed to there. I suppose that's why I was so eager to drop out of school and get on with my life.

It was in the 6th grade that I started to get really fed up with the experience. I felt pretty tortured in Jr. High School. I just didn't fit in and I had people vandalizing my locker, because I was kind of punk or goth, I was just different. At a certain moment, I just realized I didn't have to be there, that the rules were meant to be broken if you didn't get along with them. So I would go to school in the morning, then around noon, just walk out after the first break. I would walk down into town and go to the beach. Sometimes the principal would follow me around in his fancy car, yelling out the window that he was gonna call my parents. Well, I don't think he did, and then on the weekends I would see him really high on coke at some party, so that never amounted to anything!

But it was the freedom in doing this that made me realize I could live my own life and didn't have to fit in with this imposed structure of school. I think school teaches kids how to be part of a group, how to be a sheep in a way. It doesn’t encourage artistic minds, or individuality. It is just socializing people to live inside the lines and to follow the rules. So why would you want to fit in with that??? This kind of behavior I've noticed my whole life. People repeat it once they get in the work force. They form communities based on whoever happens to be around, and they do things together. Whether it be homework or going to bars, it’s the same. It's not based on mutual interest or pushing any kind of boundaries, it’s just this weird group mentality of sticking in a herd. It really bothers me. In retrospect, I think my parents helped me a lot by just accepting who I was and letting me be myself. They never told me what I should think; they nurtured what was there. So I never questioned the essence of what was in my heart, I just knew it was all right.

L.E.H. –I wish more people thought like you do, we’d have a more exciting world. Would you like to have a kid?

J.E. -Yes! I really think I would. Not right now though, but maybe in 5 + years.

I don't want to change what I do and start some different kind of life, so I think if I have a child, they will find me because they want to be part of my lifestyle, they want to be on the road. I've actually already had conversations with my future kid, who was knocking on the door a while back, trying to crash on in! I told him (or her??) to bug off, that I wasn't ready!! But I think they really want to be part of my scene, so we'll see!

L.E.H. –That’s so funny! It’s a nice thought, though, that our kids want to come to us, and they come knocking at our door… sometimes it’s good if they’re too early… you never know. I just think your background is very interesting and anyways, you clearly are a person with well functioning brains instead of a computer ha haa! like so many of our contemporaries, so I find your opinions very interesting. Actually, I am horrified by the new generations, kids my daughter’s age... they do have computers for brains, it is so scary!!! This 13 year-old girl told me she never reads because she doesn´t understand what she reads, and she gets bored. She is only interested in make-up, clothes, models, and chatting in the Internet. She is like most of the kids in her class and in other schools, and in my opinion she is brain dead, poor kid, completely ignorant, and uninterested in most things; no enthusiasm for almost anything. Maybe all these new people will vegetate in their technical computerized lives... Brrr, gives me the chills!

J.E. -Kids are growing up in such a different way now. There is a lot of pressure from the media to fit in. I know a few very young women who have boob jobs already!! And in my school there were girls who almost died of anorexia! It's from the media that they get these ideas that they want to change their bodies! It's a strange time. I do think we are living in one of these sci-fi visions of the future. We are already living in that time.

All the brainwash is so heavy that even when you look out of it, and see other people wrapped up in it, you just sort of accept it as fact, without questioning it, without wondering if we are really going down the tubes as a humanity. But in a way, I believe that 'big brother" and all the possible horrors of the system against man are also an invention of the mind. We don't have to buy into that kind of belief. It can exist, and does exist on certain planes, but it's not necessarily something I want to put my energy into. There is too much beauty and wonder out there and the possibility for making the world a better place. I would rather focus on that. That's why I'm not really into politics or reading the news. I know it’s very American to say that, as Americans are so often completely apathetic and uneducated about what’s going on in the world, but I do feel like the news is always focusing on the grossest, most inhumane aspects of life. You have two sections in the news, you have politics/war, (rich white men, who control things through money and power and weapons) and you have entertainment (dumb actresses with their plastic surgery and drug addictions, who they're going out with). It's really become so gross.

L.E.H. –To get back to education and social pressure… I am reading this book called: ‘Reviving Ophelia. Saving the selves of adolescent girls’, written by Mary Pipher PhD in psychology (everybody should read this book). It’s pretty horrid what she writes about... fascinating and terrifying... becoming a woman in this patriarchal misogynist society is not easy... brrr, poor girls, they are an endangered species really, and nobody seems to care, or realize it! Diderot wrote to some female friend ‘You all die at 15’, and that was 200 years ago!

J.E. -Adolescence was the worst time of my life. Age 10-14 I felt like I was in hell. There are not rites of passage in our modern societies. There is no way to know how to cope with this transition, or even know what is going on. Women are the creators; they nurture all life. Essentially, adolescence is that transition, literally, into becoming a creator. Although it’s a physical thing, it’s psychological too and I wish we could return to some ways to acknowledge and celebrate this.

L.E.H. -Can you remember the first moment when you felt love and passion towards music and/or the performing arts?

J.E. -I think it was just always around and just immensely emotional and important to me. I remember clearly the first time I realized that a person could sing a song which they did not write, I think I was about 4 and it just devastated me, the idea that somebody was singing words and telling a story which was not their own, like it didn’t matter or wasn’t real. I didn’t understand it and I ran into the woods and cried for hours and hours! I grew up listening to reggae, jazz, 70’s rock n roll. My mom was a drummer and loves bands like Cream. My dad was more into classical and blues. So I sort of just listened to what was around. When I was about 8 years old I discovered Cindy Lauper’s “She’s so unusual” which was the first album I bought for myself. I was simply smitten with her, dressing up like her with short mini skirts and lots of purple eye shadow, and I remember the principal of the school taking me into his office and asking me why I was wearing so much makeup. I also remember around this time seeing Joan Jett on MTV singing “I love rock n roll” and thinking how tough she was. There was a booth at the flea market where I used to get bootleg tapes, I was really into all the trash pop music of the early 90’s Paula Abdul, Milli Vanilli, Prince’s “Purple Rain”. When I was about 12 my cousin was living with us, and she was older and turned me onto Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Siouxsie and The Banshees. So I started getting into 80s music. Blondie, The Selector, and The Specials were some of my first loves, and The Selector was one of the first concerts I really dug. I saw them a few times when I was 14. Later I got heavily into Be Bop Jazz, and discovered the punk rock scene, reading every book I could on it, and listening to lots of bands from the late 70’s: X ray Spex, The Slits, Roxy Music, etc. but the punk scene in America had already turned into this crusty hardcore thing, and it seemed all about how gross you were and how huge your record collection was, so I never really fit into that. It wasn’t till I moved to San Francisco when I was 18 and started playing in bands that I felt like I was finally part of a community and creating something on my own terms.

L.E.H. -Can you see substantial differences between Europe and the USA artwise?

J.E. -I moved to Europe after my first tour here, because I saw that I could get by as a musician playing shows in the underground and make a living. I had been hustling my whole life working in restaurants and bars, junkyards, and so many ridiculous jobs, because I hadn’t broke through into any kind of mainstream audience and it was impossible in America to make a living as a musician. Europeans still respect music and art as a valuable part of society. Berlin welcomed me with open arms when I arrived.

L.E.H. -What are your inspirations? What musicians? Dancers? Actors?

Painters? Flowers? Rocks? ...?

J.E. -Lately I’ve been reading about Toulouse-Lautrec. I love how he shows the juxtaposition between glamour and repulsion, the dark side of the performer, without the makeup, the overbearing, overindulgent side and the lust for this. I wrote a song that I want to dedicate to La Goulue, the girl who invented the Can Can, because she was the toast of Paris, but died on the streets, an alcoholic, and alone. What a sad story but many dancers have unfortunately had a similar fate. I think the celebrity has become like a modern manifestation of the human desire to sacrifice, to put someone on a pedestal then tear them down –like Michael Jackson! I’ve been studying Mayan culture and it was really much simpler then –(also in Roman society) – you rip somebody’s heart out, in cold blood, as a sacrifice to the sun and to ensure that life continues! Or you put two people together in a ring and let them fight till the death. The most brutal wins. Now its much more psychological, but I’m not sure what is better. When I first got into photography I was inspired by Cyndi Sherman, how she uses herself as a canvas, especially in the series, “Untitled Film Stills”, how she shoots herself playing different roles. The message is so simple “I can be any of these women –the bitch, the whore, the secretary, the mother.” I also was inspired by Nan Golden, the idea that the snapshot is art and that any persons life is worth being shown. Anaïs Nin, with her compassion and insight into human relationships, and knowledge of love and how she bared all. Jack Keroac, Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”, Maya Deren’s “Divine Horseman”, Ginger Baker’s mecca to Africa to play with Fela and Tony Allen, and the dancing of The Sweet Things. Rita Hayworth, Astaire and Rogers, Mae West, Esther Williams and the divine cinematography of “Bathing Beauty”, the sensuality of Guy Bourdin, Tijuana’s Sound Machine, Warrior Queen, Yma Sumac, Sun Ra and his Arkestra, Man Ray, German

Expressionists, The Brucke and their beautiful images of Germans bathing in the sun and lakes! Alton Ellis, Astrid Hadad, Kenneth Anger, Nona Hendryx, Lydia Lunch, James White, Grace Jones, The Extra Action Marching Band!! As for rocks, I love them all, especially green ones or ones like a globe with lines like Saturn spinning around their center like a belt. If I go to the beach I will take home as many as I can carry.

L.E.H. –Yeah, stones and rocks are wonderful. Could you say you have a master/mistress from whom you’ve learned a lot?

J.E. -Josephine Baker has been a big inspiration. She was incredibly free and had something nobody has possessed since, really one of the most underrated dancers. She had such a great sense of humor and literally danced her way out of poverty, from growing up as a poor black girl St. Louis, America, in a very segregated time, to becoming one of the most celebrated stars in Paris. It’s amazing to see the pure power and determination of one soul. It was a also great pleasure to visit Dali’s house last year also, and a similar feeling, to see the power of a human being in one life, to transcend the every day horror that life can be, to create and surround oneself with beauty, and to live like a god.

L.E.H. -What do you feel is the Zeitgeist (l’air du temps)? Could you describe it?

J.E. -I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately after visiting some of the ancient capitals of Mesoamerica last month. We went to Palenque, Monte Albon & Teotihuacan. The thing that struck me the most when visiting these sites was how the people were living amidst the gods. God was not an idea confined to a far off point of past or future tense, but entities or even people that walked amongst them in every day life. You can see that every part of their architecture was art; that art was something deeply intertwined with life, and not something separate from it, as it feels often today, something eccentric, put in a box. Now it seems like art and music have become so marginalized. The concept of entertainment has really devolved. Not only has the quality gone down, but people are content to be spectators, looking in on things from the outside, without having a role in the process. I never understood club culture, though it seems that the premise is connecting with each other, people are content to get fucked up on drugs and be in their own world. 50 + years ago performers were skilled in every medium –singing, dancing, acting – now it seems like so much of what is out there belongs in a Pepsi add. I don’t get it. But maybe people have become retarded from so much Internet. Computers have already started replacing their brains. It seems like everybody is spending all this energy cultivating these artificial communities online, everything has become public, and everyone is grasping at the chance to be seen, but not for doing anything important. Modern technology has given every person the opportunity to be a creator, but not everybody has the guts to create something visionary, so there is just way too much out there right now. There is also too much information available and too many people talking about things instead of doing things, too much importance placed on the critic …all these BLOGS, I think it’s really boring. Where is the passion? Where is the mischief? What happened to dancing in the streets??! I’m reading a book right now on the history of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich and it mentions the possibility that dance was initiated by tribes moving together as a defense against danger. When they moved together they formed a bigger mass, which appeared stronger than one person. I think people in Western Civilization have really lost that connection to each other and its something I feel deeply indebted to search for and recover when I perform. The stage is basically just a platform to call out to everybody and see if they’re awake, maybe we can make something happen. Think about the power the armies of the world have to demolish and destroy life, what would happen if we could form communities like that that were based on celebration and reinventing our rites??

On the other hand, I have a positive example of technology: my youngest brother is really smart, and he is an example of somebody who I think is really benefiting from technology. He's 14 and has been playing drums since he was 4, he makes all his own music, with keyboards, singing, guitar, machines, drumming. He has like 4 myspace pages with his songs up there, and even one which is a recording studio called "upstairs room" His dad is a filmmaker so he's also gotten really into making movies and photography. He has like 50 short films he's made posted on youtube! I think the Internet has been really amazing for him, because he's able to discover so much and really explore and educate himself about the art and music he's interested in. This was never an option when I was a kid. It was so hard to find out about anything growing up in a small town! He's also growing up in a small town but he has the world at his fingertips! I think for an open mind, it can really be an amazing tool! You have the library of the world right there. You also have all the junk, but if you're not interested in junk, you can swim through it to find cool stuff.

L.E.H. -What do you see when you look into the future?

J.E. -Ultimately I want to travel the world performing until I die. Aside from that I want to live next to the ocean, move to a Spanish speaking country, either Mexico or Spain or South America, get a brass/ horn section and more rhythm into my live show, collaborate with all my heroes who are still living, see everything I can! !

L.E.H. -Do you like the past?

J.E. -Yea. I can be very nostalgic and have collected and saved an immense amount of recordings, photographs, and writing throughout my life. I know that history is just made up of what we decide is important enough to preserve and I have always really enjoyed reading the diaries and biographies of people, regardless of what type of life they led.

L.E.H. -Tell us something about Toby, and your work process together.

J.E. -I write and arrange the songs at home with drum machines, synths, and saxophones. Then Toby adds live drums and percussion, sometimes replacing the machines, or other times playing against them to create multiple rhythms. I think what’s unique about what we do is the combination of electronics with organic sounds, and how the stuff is very improvisational. He helped me a great deal with the album by recording all my vocals, which we did in hotel rooms around Mexico and in laundry rooms, and on rooftops, and also arranged a vocal choir and some trumpet and sax for a couple of the songs. He is an incredible drummer, and we get along very good and enjoy the same things so it’s great working together.

L.E.H. -If there is anything else you would like to mention that I have not asked about, please feel free to say it.

J.E. -I really love playing in Spain and I hope to be there a lot more often from now on!!

Por Laila Escartín Hamarinen

<http://www.myspace.com/jessieevansmusic>

Photos by Billy und Hells