Some people have it and some people don’t. As for Jesse Labelle, I’ll leave the decision up to you.
Right now, however, he’s got the looks (typified by the girls screaming for him), he’s got the sound (the album review will be up on Eggplante in the coming days), and he’s got, well, it.
Jesse Labelle, who I had the chance to sit down with in January, played a show opening up for Faber Drive this past Thursday, where he wowed the crowd. Quite the feat considering Faber Drive does techno-pop while Jesse concentrates more on what I’d call ‘love-pop’.
He played a 40-minute set and, when all was said and done, did what any self-respecting artist would do in a small club like the Phoenix and signed autographs at his merch table. Very admirable, just as you’d expect from a down home country boy.
I was lucky enough to chat with him for a few minutes after the show and we talked about life since his new album, Perfect Accident, launched last week.
Eggplante!: So how’ya been?
Jesse Labelle: Good! Album’s out… it’s the full length thing.
E: I was looking at it, and then I saw, this thing has 12 songs on it, man!
J: I’m really, really proud of it. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted, it’s the picture I’ve always wanted to paint myself as an artist.”
E: So where do you get the inspiration for all this stuff?
J: It’s all real. It’s all real life. It’s all stories and situations that I’ve been in, mostly with one person. It’s kind of like a little journal of a relationship from beginning to end and then end to beginning and through it and back again.
E: And it makes sense because the cover liner of the CD looks like a scrapbook of what you would actually have along the way.
J: The artwork in that was really important to get across the fact that this whole album was written in journals and on loose pieces of paper and the whole entire thing was multiple diary entries on different days, years, months of my life.
E: So I’ve got a question for you. We’ve talked about the inspiration, I saw some pretty inspiring names on here; Mike Wise and Mike Kirsh from the Midway State. What was it like working with them?
J: They’re two good friends of mine; amazing guys, amazing musicians. When I was tracking the album, in the very early stages of it, I always enjoyed jamming with the two of those guys, so we got together in a basement and we just jammed as if we were a band, and what happened was that I loved what they were playing so much that I invited them onto the record. They obliged and came by and ended up playing a lot of the guitar and the bass.
E: Are we going to see Jesse Labelle on the next Midway State track?
J: You know what, unfortunately, they as a band are a very tight unit. They are very much into ‘it’s gotta come from the band’, you know?
E: So you’ve got a six stop tour under your belt with Emily Osment, you’re doing over twenty stops with Faber Drive and New Cities, the Soda Pop tour coming up; are you doing any festivals this summer?
J: Well I’m playing Canada Day in Oshawa, down by the beach there. And once the Soda Pop tour is over in July, we’re gonna start looking at the next options and how I can keep on going and doing exactly what I’m doing now, because it is really my very favourite thing in the entire world.
E: That’s all I can ask for!
What else can you say other than congratulations to a person like Jesse. Right off the bat, he said that he is satisfied with his album because he painted the picture what he wants to see in himself as an artist. Incredible stuff, Jesse. Incredible.
Enjoy the photos below and make sure you check up with Jesse along his tour by clicking here.
