Viva Lewes Issue #152 May 2019

ON THIS MONTH: MUSIC
Jamie Freeman
Dreams About Falling
Jamie Freeman’s new album, Dreams About
Falling, has a brilliant cover image – a sepia,
1930s picture taken from above and behind of
a trapeze artist about to leap. “It’s that moment
I’m interested in,” Jamie tells me. “All the work
and preparation he’s done to arrive there. His
whole life has led to this moment. Will he fly or
will he fall?”
The album’s produced on the Union Music
Label Jamie runs with his wife Stevie (who
also runs Americana Music Association UK),
but the making of it involved much greater
collaboration. Produced by Neilson Hubbard,
and recorded over a single five-day stint in
Nashville, Jamie recounts how the musicians,
like brilliantly prepared trapeze artists in their
own right – and “with no ego – everyone you
encounter in Nashville is a musician, and probably
a better one than you!” – turned up and did
their amazing thing each day before disappearing
at 5 or 6pm – to be with their families, or do
a gig or sometimes two in the evening.
“Nashville feels like my second home”, says
Jamie, who lives in Cooksbridge, but has been
spending time in the Tennessee capital for the
last fourteen years, and has made many friends
and contacts there. “And my favourite phrase is
‘the high tide floats all boats’ – people do things
to help each other, and everyone benefits.”
The songs on the album have wonderfully accessible,
and emotionally honest lyrics. (‘It’s an
open heart: it can take a beating’, the first song,
and single, All in The Name, starts.) Eight of the
ten Jamie co-wrote – with, for instance, Angaleena
Presley and poet Amy Tudor. “Songwriting is
my thing”, says Jamie. “And co-writing is what I
most love to do.”
So how does that work, I’m curious. “It’s brilliant”,
he says. “You’re in a room with someone,
with your notebook and a guitar, and one of you
says something, and that’s the spark. So, we’d
been talking, and Angaleena walked across the
room, looked out of the window, and said “I
miss those bars” while talking about something
completely unrelated. And THAT’s where the
song begins.”
Words have always been central to Jamie, from
a childhood spent word-playing with his four
siblings, who include musician Tim and actor
Martin. And it was when he was with Martin, at
a Paul Weller concert, in his late 20s, that Jamie,
who in the interim had been “a punk, then
into hiphop”, was re-introduced to the music
he grew up on. “Paul Weller played a Crosby,
Stills, Nash & Young song, and reminded me of
a record we’d had at home, and we didn’t have
many. The album was CSNY’s Déjà Vu, and the
memory sent me on a voyage of rediscovery.
“Americana bats back and forth across the
Atlantic”, he says, “so I feel a legitimate claim
on it. You can’t sit in a café in Nashville without
hearing the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who,
the Rolling Stones…” Charlotte Gann
Dreams About Falling launches at the Con Club
on 16th May, 7.30pm, tickets £10.
lewesconclub.com
Photo by James McCauley
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