Neal Haydain of Jacksoul
Is deeply emotional music like soul more relevant to people today than it was to people, say, forty years ago? Why or why not?
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I wouldn’t say more relevant...more prevalent maybe. I think that when people go to find these examples, no matter what song that is, they want to feel something, and they want to know that you’re telling them a story. So for me soul is as present whether it’s Sam Cooke or Johnny Cash or Vince Gill. It can be on stage music. You can tell when someone's really feeling what they’re saying, and I like our music to...I want you to feel it more than you think about it; it’s actually inside of you before you even realizing what he’s singing about it; this is the truth of this story. I think most people demand that. The thing about it, back in the fifties, the music scene was so new. Right... Everybody knew what their parents listened to. Guys from the country were hesitant to listen to R&B--maybe they were more strict and didn’t know what the hell it was. And now I find that so many singers, songwriters, regardless of what their genre is...they really do get it. They know, that that’s why we're here, to tell these real stories, whatever genre we like the best. |
I’m sure glad you’ve been barrelling ahead with this. What are you listening to these days?
I’m listening to a lot of crazy stuff... I am now doing a little bit of production as well, which means you’re trying to get into the head of the artist you’re working with, listening to what they're all about—so I’m listening to everything: from Louie Jordan to old Jazz Five and Dinah Washington tracks, and I’ve been kind of rediscovering some great rock and roll, too, through a couple of bands that are coming through the studio...everything from old Ozzy records to System of a Down, which has some great stuff. The nice thing about working with other musicians is that you’re always investigating other musical possibilities. It’s great. It’s been a great summer for just listening to music.
Awesome. For its latest album, jacksoul has drawn upon a decidedly surprising array of songwriters to create a superb offering of soul music...
Thank you.
Please comment on the album’s importance to that body of work we call soul.
I think it’s important to celebrate, not just the masters that come from the R&B soul tradition, but the guys that I’ve seen taking it a bit further—younger cats, more than thirty years later, making music in the rock genre sometimes, as with “High and Dry” by Radiohead or Burton Cummings’ blue-eyed soul with “These Eyes”. And it’s like, these guys are building on the same music. These are great songwriters; they’re not particularly coming from the same place as Sam Cooke or weren't listening to those old Curtis Mayfield sides. They’ll take fun at what they want to, the stuff that speaks to them, and maybe they’ll kick in a heavier guitar or crashing drums when they make their music, but that’s what I felt when I listened to “These Eyes”, it was like man, this is two guys from Winnipeg doing their turn on what a soul love tune is all about. It’s going to kick a little bit harder and a little bit bigger because that’s what all music from Winnipeg is.
I think, for us, it was a way to celebrate not just the obvious stuff that came in the sixties—we’ve all got a copy of the The Commitments soundtrack—it’s a way to show how that evolved over time and influenced a whole bunch of songwriters since, myself included. So I think for me it’s a bit of just a guilty pleasure—these are the things that I sing in the shower—but if I was going to be talking to a younger musician, it’s like, well, these are some of the guys that inspired me, that were inspired by some of the greats, and it just goes back; it gets farther and deeper...on many levels.
Exactly... What would Sam Cooke say about your arrangement of Radiohead’s “High and Dry”?
You know what? I hope he would realize what it meant for me. As songwriters, we’re all trying to mine some soul. To me, that song is almost creepy in the way it kind of speaks to the way I feel sometimes. I think it’s got a lot to do with not falling prey to your own celebrity and believing your own press and acting like an ass just to sell some records. That is fundamentally something that every musician goes through once you’ve been on the radio for a bit, so besides being a song that is rich enough in emotion that anybody can bring a particular story to it, let’s say between Thom Yorke, myself, and Sam Cooke, if you will, I think that if any one of us had come across that song in our path, we would have felt the truth of that story, definitely in the lyrics, and I hope he would find that I was able to take that...I don’t know...that sort of vulnerable quality in the song and push it even a little bit farther. The original tune is sublime; I can’t say we’re really trying to improve it; there’s just something that we bring to it, something that speaks large of our experience. As long as anyone listening to the record understands that we love these tunes.
I think that’s evident, for sure...
I think that’s the point. We’re not just trying to pick things that we think people might recognize because they were all hits before? I think it’s more about “these tunes still speak to us so why not just see if we can actually bring something to them?”
I’ve heard that past behaviour is often the best indicator of future behaviour. Therefore, I’m probably not alone in believing that the band’s success will continue based on its solid accomplishments to date. You’ve won pretty much all of the really great Canadian music awards; you’ve been working really hard. What kind of goals do you and the band have right now?
It’s a job really. We always try to take things past our borders. To be honest, we just feel so blessed as musicians to be able to make a living at what we love to do, in this country. All of us, as producers would like to do more outside of the country, so that’s really the only other place to go. As producers and writers, we’ve all had records that have done some damage across the border, and I think we're personally fullfilled, so all we can really do right now is tell more stories and see if we can get a little richer. You get up every day just trying to do it better one more time. But then, I think on a business side, definitely, if we’ve convinced everybody in this country that you can't feel any better than on a Jacksoul record then hopefully we can do better elsewhere.
Since producing DK Ebomeka’s album, Love Stories, have you been considering a permanent career behind the scenes?
I’ll keep that going, but it sort of depends on the artist. When I meet someone that kind of turns me on, then you always end up investing more time with it. Anyone sees it’s justified because you love it. And you try to really help this person speak from their heart, sing from their soul, tell their story, and hopefully propel them forward so they don’t have to make some of the same mistakes you did [laughs]...musically, spiritually, business-wise, and it’s actually a lot of fun becuase you know you're doing something good; you know that you’re helping someone get to their sound faster, and that actually feels really good, We’re not good at the whole “cut & paste” thing, you know, “here, sing this track; now get the hell out of the studio”; it’s really a process where you have to sit with someone for months trying to get really into their head, stick around, you know, what they have to say, what they have to tell us. So I enjoyed that and would definitely like to do it again.
So performing pretty much keeps you busy; it’s a full-time career...
I enjoy what I do and I enjoy performing. Let's be honest: I get paid for it, so I have no problem splitting my time between turning out some good records for others and performing with my best friends, so if I don’t have to stop, then I won’t. I can honestly say that because of where we’re at; we're not here to reach, say, Michael-Jackson stature. [Laughs] Well...I don't think anybody wants Michael Jackson stature right now, if you know what I mean...but I don’t think we're here to be millionaires; we just want to make music for a living. If people really want to hear our version of what reality is like and the way we hit tunes, I’ll always keep that up.
Good... From what I’ve been reading about some of your values and what you’re looking for when you produce either your own music or someone else’s...really, a stripped-down version—you don’t want to dump a lot of production on people...What are some of the primary benefits of adhering to simple production methods?
It depends on the best of times and the worst of times...The less you do, production-wise—tricks and overdubbed sound—the more the song has to be great from the musician’s end, should it not? Honestly, that's why people do it another way. There's nothing wrong with exploring for the sake of exploring...you know, great bands like Radiohead; once you've sold a couple million records, it’s like okay, well that’s no longer a goal that you have to attain; what's next? You can start to do the same thing. After a lot of earthy organic records, it’s time to now explore the technology that supported us, because we’ve done as much as we can with the main record in a similar way, so now it’s time for us to break outside of our box. Creatively, yeah, you do have to grow and that's what’s going to happen on our next record. There are so many things that we’d like to do. We love samples, we love pro tools, we love digital editing, but we also love the fact that we don’t sound like everybody else...I think I got away from the question...for us...when you do record, making the focus of the band’s sound the production, the sound has to be great when you walk in. To tell you the truth, Jacksoul records don’t take that long to record; they take forever to write because we want it done, you know, great songs; we don’t want you to pull it out of the car stereo; we want you to keep it on for the whole ride. So we go back and forth and just make sure we’ve got the best bunch of tunes, and it only takes a couple of weeks of weeks for us to play. That’s the biggest challenge, you’re depending on the other guys’ ability to play.
Simple production methods also make the music easier to replicate on stage. It’s so much fun to play it on stage because all the building blocks are there. I don’t suffer from having to take a whole case of samplers or stuff with me, but I have no problem with some bands who do that, I mean, if that’s your sound. But for me, I like knowing that if I stop singing, I’ve got some great guitar playing going on; I've got some incredible drumming happening behind me. I think that’s a real show. I think that’s a show you can always count on. Potentially, people ask me to show to places that aren’t easy to get to—you know, Dawson City, Yukon—I get to meet some great people and as long as I have my sound man with me, I don’t give a crap what my gear looks like; we’ll make it work...but that’s how we do it. It comes from inside; it’s up to the musicians. Technically, if there’s a guitar, it's going to sound pretty much like the record. In fact, I think it’s one of the biggest benefits. On a day like today, when I’m driving in from Muskoka, I don’t even know if I’m going to have a sound check..oh well...but I know what the drums are going to sound like and it’s going to work out. So that kind of helps.
One more thing here...You’ve credited your mother with helping you to develop an appreciation for a wide range of musical genres. What advice would you give to parents who want to stimulate their children in the Arts?
Play music and go to concerts. And you know if you’re uptight and you don’t want to go and see the Hip Hop bands or whatever--I’m not even talking about that—I mean Sharon, Lois, and Bram or Fred Penner, you name it. Take them out to an orchestra now and then; let them see someone standing there with big cymbals in their hands crashing them together and what a harp looks like. It’s like some city kids who think milk comes from a factory; they don’t understand and they’re all grossed out when they figure out what a cow is for. It's the same thing with music; it becomes too magical for them and they believe they could never be a part of it, could never sing, could never write a song, could never join a choir, could never be a part of a bad punk band. And I think that as long as people are introduced to it early enough, it really helps. Singing in the shower, singing around the kitchen when somebody’s cooking...these were things that always happened when I was a kid.
My mother was also a part of a... “light opera society” they called it, that did Gilbert & Sullivan and stuff on the weekends. So I got used to people who fixed appliances and were lawyers and my mum’s a secretary—different strata, different classes—but everybody would take Saturday and Sunday off to practice this particular play, and that brought them together, and everybody had that in common. So even though I was a young kid growing up on welfare, when my mum walked into a club she was with bankers and all these people, and all they had in common was...music! And suddenly they’re hanging out together and throwing parties for each other, and that seemed to be a bonding experience...people from very different countries with very different accents...they all loved music.
So I think it’s a shame that now there’s not a whole lot going on in Southern Ontario—music-in-the-schools kind of thing—not that I know of—my daughter's growing up in the public school system. I think at the very least parent's could say, “Hey! As often as we're going out to a ball game, we're going out to see a concert”, and if they could do that throughout the year, six or seven times, that's all the appreciation a kid really needs because they might be inspired to take guitar lessons or learn how to play the cymbals, and it’s not like anybody has to run away to the circus or join a band and do the, you know, rock and roll fairy tale. It’s more that I think everybody should know how to play a little bit of an instrument.
It’s a shame that some kids get out of high school and they’ve never been to a concert...because no one’s ever taken them to one. They can sit on the Internet all day; they think they’re immersed in this virtual experience, but there’s nothing more awesome typically than being in front of someone putting on a great concert. I think that as long as you introduce it to them, they can run from there. I think in a world where both parents are working and some kids have nannies, you know and latchkey kids, it’s one more great experience that everyone can share. They can talk about it for weeks afterwards. You can keep the tickets and put them up on your corkboard or whatever. That’s the stuff I think I was always holding onto when I was a kid because my mum had no money. It was just a totally good experience to be able to go to a concert and watch a bunch of people get their rocks off, just singing their guts out.
I love live music, there’s nothing like it. I'm genuinely pleased to have had the opportunity to speak with you. Thanks for your time.
And I’m glad you could come out to the show and spend some time with me. I hope you enjoy it.
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