ON THE RISE
For Grammy nominated rocker Ja’son Manwill, the competition to be America’s Next Top Hitmaker is the latest step in a career as a performer, songwriter and producer.
Between steps were some challenges that could have caused him to surrender to the emotion in the title of his Grammy nominated single “Despair.”
Instead, he is now a quarterfinalist in the Hitmaker competition, which puts him among the top 1 percent of contestants.
He wants fans to know this about him: “I have been through so much in such a short period of time that I appreciate life to the fullest, and I want to make sure every time a fan comes to my show, they get the best show they’ve ever seen. I leave everything on the stage.”
His specialty is rock, his own and his take on rock classics. He has a voice built for the job and the guitar work to go with it.
His first instrument was the piano, and from there he progressed to the point where he now plays that and guitar, drums, bass, cello and 24 other orchestral instruments.
“When I was growing up, I played piano, then from piano I learned bass, and then from bass I learned guitar.”
His career to date has had more twists and turns than a dirt road in the Rockies. In the beginning, he played in Chicago area cover bands. In 1995, he wrote “Despair,” the song that eventually got him a Grammy nomination. That’s a story, too.
He was in a relationship, a serious one involving a ring, but one day she gave him the ring back. Sort of.
“Basically, I got the ring back not from her but her mother, and the day I found out was the same night that I watched The Wedding Singer and Adam Sandler’s song about Linda. Immediately after I watched that movie, I went to my bedroom and started writing ‘Despair.’”
At the time, he said, he was listening to Green Day and Blink 182, so the music is “an homage to them.” The vocals were inspired by the Sex Pistols.
“At first it was really, really dark, and it evolved from there.”
About that same time, someone close to him told him that he had no talent and no voice and he took it to heart.
“Basically, for 12 years I stopped doing what I loved because someone close to me told me that I wasn’t good enough.”
During those years, he made a living traveling and speaking and doing training seminars.
“I was a speaker and trainer traveling all over the world, to three continents, and I was on some of the top stages of the planet.”
But after his day job came music.
“At night, I would go to the hotel lobby and I’d say, ‘Hey, where’s a karaoke bar? Where’s an open mic bar?’ And I would go there and perform.”
Gradually he regained his passion and drive for music.
“Every time I went somewhere, that’s what I was doing.”
One night in Wisconsin, he was playing Led Zeppelin’s “All My Love,” and someone came up to him and said, “Hey, would you like to be in our band?”
“Like, it was just that simple.”
That was 2007. Two years into that renaissance and he was back, about to make it big. He had an interview scheduled on MTV and then, in a freak accident, he suffered a traumatic brain injury when he raised up while getting cilantro out of the refrigerator and hit his head on the freezer.
The blow struck a soft spot on the back of his head. “I was 2 pounds, 14 ounces when I was born, and that soft spot on the back of your head, which normally grows and fills in, did not do that for me.”
Three days later he was in an ICU, experiencing a hundred seizures an hour. That was his life for years.
In the 2014-15, period, he said, “I decided that I was going to be the cause versus the effect of my environment and, no matter what, I was going to get back on the stage again because that’s what I love doing.”
He describes that time as “tough.” He hadn’t played any instrument for years, but he persevered and, eventually, “I left everything and went to Paris, France. I played with people from ‘The Voice,’ and I was playing every day in the squares with them. I got my passion back to play again.”
Back in the states, he continued performing at karaoke and open mic bars, wrote the music for Ashley Garland’s award-winning song “Mother,” from the film Nawal the Jewel, finally produced “Despair” and was nominated for a Grammy.
Since 2022, he said, “I’ve been taking my music to a whole ’nother level,” performing at karaokes and open mics.
In addition to his appearance on “Hitmaker,” he is getting ready to put out some music.
A pair of songs is coming out in October: “It Bites Like a Serpent,” “which is like a Doors-slash-Ozzy Osbourne type of song,” and “Fright and the Fear,” “a Metallica inspired riff with melodic things that you’ve never heard.”
Before then he has a three-track EP he will release as soon as he gets it back from production. “Finding Love Again” is an AC/DC-Guns and Rose type of thing.” “Prisoner” is like Guns and Roses with Days Of The New and a “’90s type of feel.”
“And ‘Rise Above It All’ is the true story of a person that was addicted to drugs for 40 years, got off them, started helping other people get off them, and he wanted me to tell his story.” It has some Led Zeppelin vibes and it also has “this Elton John, Billy Joel type of flair.”
Every song he does, he said, is different.
Connect to Ja’son Manwill on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts, and cast a FREE vote for Ja’son to be featured in Rolling Stone Magazine this September at https://tophitmaker.org/2024/ja-39-son-manwill.
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ON THE RISE
M.O.T.H.E.R. – the new collaborative band helmed by Robbie Furze of The Big Pink and currently featuring Jamie T and Jamie Hince of The Kills – have given their first proper interview, talking to NME about the emotional origins of the project, their aim to be “the guitar version of N.E.R.D.”, and their hit-list of future collaborators.
Revealing the new project at the end of May alongside the blistering anthemics of debut single ‘My Love’, Furze shared that the seeds of M.O.T.H.E.R. had come from losing his own parent after a prolonged illness. “My mum got sick about five years ago and was ill for about four years before she died,” he told NME.
“In that period I had a daughter, which was this real juxtaposition of death and birth. My mates – Jamie T and Jamie Hince – came together for me, and then sadly Jamie [Hince] lost his dad too,” Furze went on, sitting in a West London pub alongside Hince.
Hince continued: “I lost my dad four days after Robbie [lost his mum], and it felt like, if ever there was a calling, it was that. But it didn’t all come out of that doom and gloom. I hate mentioning COVID but everyone had so much time on their hands and there was this open creativity back then. I was working on music with Jamie T, sending each other stuff, and the idea for the three of us to do something together came out of that. It felt nice, like we were buying into this camaraderie, and this gang.”
The three musicians have previous credits together, with the two Jamies also writing on The Big Pink’s most recent album, 2022’s ‘The Love That’s Ours’. Fully collaborating on M.O.T.H.E.R., Furze joked, was like “the clash of three egos”. “Everyone wants to work with each other because you like what each other does, and so it’s not quite imposter syndrome but you have to live up to [that idea] and jump in and be a character,” Hince continued. “You can’t be too humble about it.”
Recording between Hince’s studio in LA and Furze’s studio in London’s Bethnal Green, the current trio have also dropped their self-titled debut EP featuring three further tracks: ‘Real Human’, ‘Traitor’, and ‘Surrender’. The ethos of the band, meanwhile, is for the line-up to shift with each release, bringing in familiar faces from other groups and working with whoever might be available at the time.
“We did a little bit [of recording] with Jenny [Lee Lindberg, bassist] from Warpaint who I love; I really want to get something solid down with her,” revealed Hince, while Furze suggested that names including Zach Hill of industrial hip-hop trio Death Grips, and electronic producer Skream have all been in the mix for future iterations of the band.
“We ran into Zach and he seemed into it but then he started ghosting me,” he noted. “Whether or not he decides to text me back, it would be wonderful to have that kind of thing. Jamie Hince, Skream, Rhys Webb from The Horrors [who played on their recent radio session], and Zach – if I saw that, I’d wanna hear what that nonsense sounds like!”
Check out the rest of the interview with Furze and Hince below, as they discuss their endearing bromance, their admiration for Jamie T, and why the band are unlikely to ever make an album.
NME: Hello Robbie and Jamie! You must have been kicking about at a lot of ‘00s parties, how far does your friendship go back?
Robbie Furze: “Me and Jamie T started becoming friends on the circuit of festivals when the first Big Pink record came out in 2009. Then me and Jamie Hince met at Corona Capital in Mexico in 2012.”
Jamie Hince: “He had a reputation – I think we all had reputations… I remember his wife giving me these dried insect snacks and I didn’t eat them because I thought he might have laced them with something…”
Furze: “Every band playing Corona Capital was staying in this massive hotel, so it was just chaos.”
Hince: “It was at the height of ego. Everyone had bodyguards. Bands were trying to outdo other bands. Like, The Black Keys – you’re two guys from Ohio, you don’t need armed bodyguards…”
Where does Jamie T fit into all this?
Hince: “Our orbits crossed quite a bit. I remember seeing him at some tiny little pub when he was probably about 19, and I love how it’s come full circle. My heart sinks a little bit when I see Jamie T working because I know I’m nowhere near [as good as] that. I have to chip away at things and stand back and then dive in again to get the feeling, whereas he’s just got the feeling from the start.”
Furze: “He’s pretty incredible. The song ‘Traitor’ on the EP was supposed to be for my vocal, and he was almost getting pissed off that we couldn’t get the verses right. He was just like, ‘I’ll sort it out’, goes up to the mic, does one take and it’s done. See you later. He’s that kind of guy.”
Do you have to leave your ego at the door in those situations?
Hince: “I did this amazing beat for ‘Traitor’ that I loved, and I sent it to Jamie T and got back a text saying: ‘One pound fish’. Fuck! I mean talk about leaving your ego at the door… I know what he was saying, he thought it was a bit ‘cor blimey’ waltz. But some of the shit he ends up doing, it’s totally ‘cor blimey one pound fish’!”
Furze: “But whatever works for the track works, and everyone has to be happy with it. You push each other without really knowing it.”
How did you envision the project?
Hince: “These things just come together. It sounds cheesy, but I wanted it to be the guitar version of N.E.R.D. – a production team of people that love each other.”
Furze: “We’ve got songs in the pipeline with other artists already, and it makes it like an N.E.R.D. or Unkle or Massive Attack thing. Being collaborative makes me more excited.”
Hince: “It feels like that time has gone where albums really last. Records seem to come and go quite quickly now. So I’ve shifted my enthusiasm because I think the attention span has gone. You spend so much time making records and so little time getting any reward.”
Furze: “I’d like to do standalone singles, or another EP of four or five tracks as a batch. I wouldn’t wanna go further than that.”
None of your individual bands and projects sound that alike – where do you think your tastes align?
Hince: “There’s something unspoken that we all seem to agree on which is this epic-ness. There’s a line in one of the songs that talks about ‘the last of the hooligans‘ and that seemed to be the feeling behind it all. If there’s a similarity with what everyone wanted, it was maybe just being a bit romantic and epic.”
Why do you think you were drawn to that?
Hince: “I don’t know, maybe we’re just lonely men?”
Furze: “Beaten down but being pulled up by hope…”
Hince: “We’ve all been bashing around, making all this noise and spending so much time doing it; I think it gives you that feeling. There’s something tiny and irrelevant about what you do but something life and death about what you do too, and I think the cocktail of that makes it… well, the last of the hooligans.”
Tell us a bit about ‘My Love’ – the first proper single.
Furze: “It’s one of the most basic songs. It’s a love song about hope, but it just has such an incredible energy to it with its simplicity. I’m not a massive Beatles fan but it has this relatable energy [like their early music]. ‘I wanna hold your hand’ – you don’t get more basic than that, in a great way. I think simplicity is power. Sometimes less is more, and if you mean it you can get away with it.”
Are there going to be live shows?
Furze: “Definitely. We’re playing a bit of catch up because we didn’t think ‘My Love’ would get the reaction it has, but we’re desperate to get out and do gigs.”
Hince: “In the spirit of the collaborative project, I’m really liking the idea of having different people in different countries playing with us; having a different vibe each time.”
Furze: “It would be really exciting to see different characters that you know from different bands. For the radio session [with Steve Lamacq on BBC 6 Music] we had Rhys Webb from The Horrors on bass, and I love that idea.”
You’re obviously very close – what are your favourite memories of this charming bromance?
Furze: “Jamie’s probably my best friend in the world and we’ve been through a lot together. In 2015 we both uprooted and went out to LA together, I went out there for about five years and he stayed, so we were pretty inseparable. It got to a point where it was breakfast, lunch and dinner together.”
Hince: “We just became one person. People would confuse us even though we don’t look the same. He had an ex-girlfriend who he went to say hello to and she said, ‘Hello Jamie’. We just started having the same vibe. The same embarrassing energy. We’ve chilled out a bit recently but when I was in LA and Robbie was in London we’d speak to each other for four hours a day. I was getting complaints from his wife.”
The ‘M.O.T.H.E.R. EP’ is out now.
The Big Pink returned with their third studio album, ‘The Love That’s Ours’, in 2022. It marked their first full-length effort in over 10 years. T and Hince worked on that LP, too, co-writing the single ‘Love Spins On Its Axis’.
The Kills released their sixth and latest record, ‘God Games’, in 2023.
Jamie T, meanwhile, made a comeback with ‘The Theory Of Whatever’ the previous year. He recently joined forces with Fred Again.. on the track ‘Lights Burn Dimmer’, and performed with The Maccabees at their big London reunion gig last summer.
