As regular readers of this blog may recall, I interviewed Jaimee Jakobczak about a year ago. Since then, she’s released two albums – Acceptance and From a Bedroom above a Garage – and currently has another on the way. Jaimee also recently started a podcast in which she interviews independent artists and is rumored to have a book in the works. With all she has going on, I thought I’d drop Jaimee a line to catch up.

You’re really moving at a fast clip. Acceptance came out in April and From a Bedroom above a Garage came out in August. And now you have another album coming out – an incredibly ambitious one, I should add, which weighs in at nearly an hour-and-a-half. What compels you to write and record?

I think I’ve caught myself at a bit of a weird time. When I released my first recording there was this incredible rush about it like, “hey, look what I can do,” that encouraged me to keep going and see what else I could do. Somewhere along the way as I got more comfortable with my voice, both lyrically and musically I recognized I had a lot of stories and experiences that had been weighing on my mind that I wanted to release into the world and that’s really what has driven the pace of all of my releases since. Kind of how like when a baby first learns to walk and suddenly they’re running around all over the place and you can barely keep up. That’s me, I’m the baby; I’ve got places to go and people to see.

I remember seeing a picture of a chart you posted on social media a while back depicting the titles of all of your songs and the parts that either still needed to be recorded or had been recorded. Are you always that methodical in your approach to recording?

It’s funny because I don’t consider any part of my process terribly methodical. When I’ve decided on a particular collection of songs that I think might sit well together in an album, though, I do like to lay them all out on a white board with all the potential parts I might try to incorporate into them, but it’s really not that calculated. Like, I’ll end up staring at that whiteboard one day and looking at a song title and thinking, “I think that one should have piano,” for some reason and looking at another song title and saying, “that one definitely doesn’t need any acoustic guitar,” and it’s very instinctual – crossing it off on the whiteboard helps me see the overall progress but keeps it open to any changes I might decide on later. Mostly it just helps me bring my attention to the song and ask myself what I think is the best way to present it, but I rarely follow any real order when I’m recording and sometimes I don’t even fully finalize songs that make it on the board. 

Do you have a sense of what each song will sound like before you start to record it, or does the song evolve while you’re working on it? Has a song ever started as one thing and turned into another?

Almost always. I still tend to write lyrics first and that really drives a lot of my decision making. Again it’s mostly instinctual, “this one should be soft and somber because I want to really lay into that despair,” or, “this is lyrically a really depressing story, but I don’t want the listener to feel that way so I should give it more energy with lots of loud, melodic guitars.” Moreso in the earliest days of putting songs together I would spend a lot more time trying to decide on a sound-direction for a song, even recording multiple variations of those songs before settling in on one that made the final cut. But these days in the interest of time and in an effort to trust my intuition, I sort of just run with the first ideas as they come and see where it takes me while still being open to changing elements or discarding parts as new parts come into mind. It’s one of the trickier things about having to play all the instruments in an arrangement. Back when I’d work with bands, as the engineer you get used to sitting around while the bass player argues with the lead guitarist about what instrument deserves more attention or should drive certain parts of a song; as the engineer and player of those instruments, you have those arguments with yourself, but it’s a little easier to come to an agreement and keep the session rolling along.

I love that you’re not pigeonholing yourself into a particular style or genre. Acceptance had a rock vibe, From a Bedroom was acoustic, and I feel like the new one, Foxchase, is leaning more toward a pop sensibility. Has genre-hopping been a conscious plan for you, or has it just happened naturally?

I am undoubtedly a product of my environment and upbringing in this way. My parents had a pretty eclectic music taste ranging from icons like Elvis to The B52’s to The Rolling Stones to Aretha Franklin or Etta James and the British invasion was probably as huge for me as it was my dad. I got into Nu-Metal and Grunge from one brother, Rap and Hip-Hop from the other and my sister was into all the pop; New Kids on the Block, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez. And I gravitated towards punk, pop-rock and dips of metal when it suited my mood while growing up in a town that was all about Euro-dance beats. It’s definitely not conscious, I just appreciate a lot of different musical styles and whereas when you’re in a proper full band of 3-5 players, I think something that tends to happen is you all have to settle in on a direction for your sound that makes you all feel satisfied as musicians so you end up with a body of work that largely fits in a particular mold. As a solo artist, there is no mold until I personally decide on it for any given song and sometimes you wake up and you’re just like, “let’s rock out a little bit of country today.”

I’m struck by the fact that Foxchase has some retro-sounding synths in it, yet it doesn’t feel like a “synth album” if that makes sense. What was your approach to integrating what might be (or at least might one have been) considered non-traditional rock sounds in your music?

Retro, nice. That’s cool. I think it really just comes back to that thing I was talking about before more so with intuition, like, if I think I want to build up a bridge of a song in a certain way and I know that type of feeling might be best felt with some vibrant string arrangements then suddenly I’m sitting at my midi keyboard trying to think like a cellist or violinist, which is deranged because I don’t know how to play either of those instruments. Same for piano or any what I just now call “auxiliary arrangements,” like weird percussive things that only show up once or twice for a texture thing or mood shift. With my first recordings I was very much of the mind that I wanted to ensure the songs made sense for like a traditional 4-piece rock band so I didn’t really experiment beyond rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass and drums on those. On Foxchase, I threw that out the window. Honestly it’s a lot of just sitting around my room being like, “this needs something but it doesn’t need another guitar line, so what else might be cool here? Maybe horns?” and you try it and often whatever pops into my head is sort of exactly what I feel the track needs.

I’m curious about the name of the new album. What does Foxchase mean to you?

As usual with me there are a couple meanings to take away from it, a figurative one and one that’s much more grounded and literal.

I leave for work really early in the morning and either walk or bike in and I come across foxes often who have found themselves in my suburban neighborhood looking for food. They’re quick, you’d never be able to catch them, but they’re also really curious when they’ve spotted you. They always seem to know so much more than they let on and there’s this funny juxtaposition about how they seem out of place in my neighborhood when in reality, they’re there because we took over what used to be their home. I’ll usually wait to make sure they cross the roads safely back to wherever they came from because it seems like the least I can do to help and it always feels like a nice treat to see them out and about; I like to believe they understand this, that we’re both sort of just curious about each other and don’t mean any harm but, neither of us want to get too close to the other just in case. That’s a foxchase.

It’s named after a street in my hometown as well. When I ultimately decided on the stories that shaped Foxchase, I realized I was thinking a lot about my childhood and the experiences that guided the direction of my life back then. One of the more noteworthy of those is that when I was in 7th grade we had a new kid join our school and she quickly became one of my new best friends. We’d spend a lot of nights sitting on her porch stoop outside the townhouse she shared with her mom; her parents were divorced and it was really difficult for her at times. I had my own difficulties with my own family of course but most of my own recollection of these days is me just listening to her vent about it and try to offer my support which, as a 12 year old you don’t really know how to handle a lot of the adult situations we were talking about. It wasn’t until more recently that I was sitting with these thoughts and realizing how heavy those nights were for us and I’m sad that we didn’t have people around us who we were more comfortable sharing that weight with or getting advice from, in those moments we just had each other. That second part makes me happy, though – not everyone has that type of friendship and I’m grateful I did.

Foxchase doesn’t really offer any sort of guidance although I do try to offer reassurance that you’re not alone with the way you feel, because whether you’re 12 or 32 or 58, there are a lot of experiences that are difficult to carry yourself. My hope with sharing my own is always that it might help someone else in some way, even if it’s just a way for them to have someone to share their porch stoop with. My friend lived on Foxchase Avenue; we did a lot of growing-up there.

Do I remember correctly that you have a book coming out? Is that something you can talk about?

I do! Although I don’t know when. I’m waiting to hear back about its release date, but I should have more info on that soon. It’s not something I’m intentionally trying to be secretive about, but I’ve been trying to respect the publishing process, for whatever that’s worth. It’s a children’s book about a busking musician that I think is a pretty fun story. It’s ultimately about not giving up on your dreams even if they seem difficult to reach or even if there are a lot of obstacles in the way to getting to them. It sort of goes hand in hand with the messages I try to promote through my own music, so I’m excited that it should be out soon.

And what about your podcast? How’s that going?

I’ll admit I haven’t made much headway with it yet because of prioritizing Foxchase. I know I’m procrastinating a little bit about it because I worry more now about burning myself out with all the different things I’m trying to accomplish. That said, it’s still very much on my mind and I’m slowly making a plan to get some interviews for 2024 underway. It’s difficult sometimes to do the added legwork of reaching out to creatives I’m interested in speaking to, so I’m hoping in time more artists become comfortable with reaching out to me first as well.

The last time we talked—at least on this blog—you mentioned that you were very slowly starting to put a live band together. What’s the status on that project?

Oh man, it’s been a bit of a nightmare, honestly. You’d think there are no musicians in the greater Toronto area with the level of difficulty I’ve had just reaching people who want to play or can afford the time for a weekly practice. I had a guy reach out to me recently who was running some sort of stupid scam and it ended with him asking me for money somehow after he’d spent an extensive amount of time trying to convince me he was a big-deal in the industry – I’ll share that story with more detail eventually although I almost don’t even want to because I think he was just looking for attention and it was completely absurd. But I’m not too fussed. I’m getting a better handle on how I’d like to run my solo-acoustic shows and if I have to rock it out as a one-woman variety show until I find the right players,, that’s exactly what I’ll do. I don’t get discouraged by this stuff anymore, I just get more creative.

Do you have anything else going on that you’d like people to know about?

I wish I had something more concrete but, not quite there yet! Barring something crazy happening, Foxchase will be out in full in the late winter or early spring and I’m turning my focus into trying to get more live gigs rolling for the summer, wherever that may take me. Hopefully I’ll have some good news on that front to announce soon!

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me!

Thanks Marc!