Viva Brighton Issue #64 June 2018

MUSIC
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mr jukes
Freewheelin’
“I made the decision to end it,” says Jack
Steadman, erstwhile front man of Bombay Bicycle
Club, now the inspiration behind the much
funkier mr jukes.
“It was a terribly difficult decision,” he continues,
down the phone from his North London home.
“We’d been together since school. We’d grown
up together in the band. But both musically
and personally I couldn’t have done anything
else. I had to listen to what my heart was saying.
Otherwise we would have made a really mediocre
Bombay Bicycle album.”
Jack was the creative one of the group, the one
whose ideas they all worked on and fashioned into
guitar-rich indie-soaked pop songs. So you get the
feeling the decision has been a good one for him,
but not necessarily the others: their last album So
Long, See You Tomorrow was UK no 1, and their
previous two had made the top ten.
“A lot of bands lose touch with the fact that they
haven’t got anything to say, and I could feel that
creeping up,” he continues. He talks about the
loss of the sort of “burning desire” that fuelled the
making of their first two albums.
It was while on a cargo ship sailing from Shanghai
to Alaska that he came up with the name for his
new project. He was reading Joseph Conrad’s
Typhoon. “I liked the sound of the name of the
First Mate,” he says. “I thought an album by ‘Jack
Steadman’ would have sounded like a folk album.”
“Also having another name gives you an alter ego
that affects the way you perform… as mr jukes I
become very energetic; it’s a weird contrast when
I go backstage afterwards and resume my normal
personality, sitting in the corner being quiet.”
One limitation Jack wanted to overcome in the old
band was his own voice. “I was singing all the songs,
and I’d listen back and wish someone else was able
to take them off into a different direction.” As mr
jukes he’s forged collaborations with the likes of
Horace Andy, BJ the Chicago Kid, and De La Soul.
“Suddenly I had the freedom to choose anyone in
the world… I was like a kid in a candy shop.”
The band he’s touring with are a nine-piece, with
a brass section, and three other singers. “But
not backing singers,” he says, “if anything I’m
the backing singer”. And who goes to the gigs?
“Some people like the style of music we’re doing:
jazz, funk, hip-hop. Others are Bombay Bicycle
fans who have heard a thread from before that’s
been continued.”
So could a reconciliation with his old band
members ever be on the cards? “It’s healthy in some
relationships to spend time apart and to come back
stronger having got that ‘grass is greener’ thing out
of the way. So I’m not ruling it out… we just have
to wait until that burning desire is there again.”
Alex Leith
mr jukes play the Love Supreme Festival, Glynde
Place, Fri 29th June – Sun 1st July
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