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Telegraph

Is Jamie T pop's answer to Jamie O?

Rising punk-pop singer Jamie T is polite, talented and hugely enthusiastic. But can he conquer America? He talks to Helen Brown

He'll probably hate me for saying it, but rising punk-pop star Jamie T is the Jamie Oliver of the new Thamesbeat scene, bursting out all over with infectious nice-guy-getting-stuck-in, estuary-English enthusiasms. I'm not sure Oliver would approve of his diet though, which, in the four hours we spent together on Treays's (his full name) US tour consisted of a steady stream of lager and Camel Lights.

He has a bottle and a cigarette on the go when we meet at 1pm outside his suburban Texan motel, beneath a Scalextric-swirl of flyovers. Pasty-faced Jamie gazes up at the cars from beneath the peak of his baseball cap. The smell of spilt beer steams steadily from his jeans.

The man recently described as "the bastard lovechild of Billy Bragg and Mike Skinner doing his best Joe Strummer impression" is a London boy, used to the hustle of a city, and the lack of pedestrians is freaking him out. As is the absence of his bass player, whose very minor criminal record saw him barred from the US. A roadie will pluck the big strings in his absence.

Treays actually plays bass himself. The first track on his critically acclaimed debut album, Panic Prevention, is all about his battered acoustic bass guitar. So as we settle at the bar of a scuzzy downtown saloon, I ask Treays why he doesn't play the thing himself instead of drafting in the untried roadie.

"Oh," he grins, "I can't, y'know, bah bah, bah-dee-da-dee dah [he mimes playing bass] and sing. It's too much. I could if I practised, but I like running around and strumming. The bass is meant to stand still. Plus I don't like the idea of looking like Sting. That's uncool. He's like a pure alpha male, man."

Treays pulls a face, and then veers off into a rave about how much he loves the Police - "They're wicked" - but not Sting's solo work: "Jeez! It makes me wanna be sick, but hey he's good, he's good..."

For a 21-year-old lad, proudly waving his passport at our fender-moustached bartender, Treays knows an awful lot about music that was made decades before he was born. He talks about Squeeze, Bob Dylan, the Pogues, Tina Turner and Tom Waits, spilling over with passions, opinions, obscure anecdotes.

He's continually excited by the idea that all the musicians he admires "wrote those songs in their bedrooms, just like me!" He high fives me each time we find a band or song in common.

He's totally uninhibited and yet incredibly polite; sings phrases; theorises; gesticulates emphatically. He's nostalgic for the days when he was just beginning, dragging his guitar from pub to pub and shouting down a hostile crowd. I suggest that this must be a fun time to be his age, because music is all cross-fertilised and kids aren't expected to adhere exclusively to any one scene.

"Yeah," he nods. He likes the fact he can "wear a hoodie and Reebok classics and still play acoustic nights". He hates music snobbery: "I can't stand it when you go to some little club and some DJ behind the decks thinks he's more musically aware than you - he's just looking down on the crowd thinking he knows best.

It's a beautiful breath of fresh air when somebody puts a bit of Kylie on and you think: 'I know this!' But things are more randomly interconnected these days. I feel I missed out on the fun of scenes, y'know?"

When Treays was growing up, his friends were always a little bit older than him, "and everyone I know has always been into music and searching for new things.

One of the most enjoyable things for me is to go back home with one or two mates and put records on and listen!" He widens his eyes, stretches his palms apart, cat's cradle-style. "And if they talk over things, then I just put on the headphones."

I ask if his parents, with whom he was photographed in the family's nice Wimbledon lounge on the sleeve of his second single, are into music. "No," he says, slightly bewildered, "it doesn't really compute. They had a few Pretenders records and my dad has a great Elvis box set - if you pull all the records out it makes a big picture of the King!"

Treays refers to the "pelvis white boy" on Dry Off Your Cheeks, a typically brawl-voiced cheeky-tuned track on Panic Prevention. These are songs of alcohol-doused, wild-youthed nights on the city streets.

The neon dazzle of all that "tip-toe dancing" and "pressure prancing" is reflected in a gutter grimy with tears and physical fear. His top 10 hit Calm Down Dearest has a protagonist who sings of having "sedated hatred" with whisky and sitting in corners sulking his socks off. For a while, Treays suffered from anxiety attacks.

He admits to a fascination with the seamy side of British nightlife. "I went through a long phase where I took photographs of the graffiti in toilets," he says. "I got obsessed. In Soho some of it's weird.

Next to the usual dull stuff you'll see something that says 'My girlfriend's outside getting on really well with my best mate, and I know they're shagging and I hate it.' And you're just trying to take a piss. Just expecting to be humiliated by a wall and some guy's poured his heart out."

Even though he's "all peace'n'love now", there's also something in Treays that loves the after-hours scuffle too. "Although I haven't been in a fight myself for two years," he says, "the last was when some guy said something rude about a girl I was with. I criticised his Ugg boots. We both insulted each other. I apologised and he hit me! Then he went to shake my hand and I spat in his face.

Then I got the shit kicked out of me. I woke up in the middle of the road. The other guy was on the pavement with a perforated ear drum. He couldn't walk straight for three weeks. When you're young, you're testing the waters. I kinda realised quite quickly I can't fight - I shouldn't say that in the papers should I? I'll get the shit kicked out of me now."

He hands me a half-smoked cigarette. "Finish this," he instructs his interviewer, "I'm having a wee." He pauses. This is America. He puts on an accent. "Sorry, I mean I'm going to use the washroom." Treays has no idea what America will make of him.

He worries that his humour might not cross the Atlantic. "But what do I know," he ups palms, "I've only been here five hours." He's more worried that America won't live up to his fantasy. "The New York I'm thinking of probably isn't there any more - I'm hoping its going to be like Tom Waits, Nighthawks at the Diner. Ha."

He's off again. Quoting Waits. He likes songs to tell stories. "People always take me so literally," he says, "but the stories are about playing with reality, amusing yourself, thinking about stuff. I wrote a song pretending to be an old woman," he says. "Its not on Panic Prevention but I've got, like, five albums' worth of material.

Anyway, the chorus was: 'If I had a penny for every young man who'd left me on the sidelines I'd be a rich woman.' She'd been young at the time of the Second World War. Anyway, I pitched my vocal up until I sounded like a granny, until my gobby voice has got that vulnerable quaver in it."

We gaze out across the bar. I think Treays is experiencing a rare moment of reflection. But he's actually caught up in the hip-hop tune that's playing on the bar's jukebox. "I love this song!" he says.
by scummy | 2007-04-14 22:32

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by scummy

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