Jamie Scott
JAMIE SCOTT AND THE TOWN BIOGRAPHYAt 19 years old, Jamie Scott looked every inch like the man who had it all. Still a teenager, he'd already landed himself a record contract at a major label, he was neatly tucked away with his childhood sweetheart and was still living, surrounded by friends and family, in the suburban town he had grown up in. With all the boxes ticked, it should have been so perfect. But, perhaps somewhat inevitably, things began to unravel.
"Nothing was happening, basically. The two men who originally signed me left the label and I was left doing nothing." He ended up parting company with the label. Scott's obvious frustration with the way his career unfolded coincided with a messy split from the girl he loved, a situation that went on to fuel most of the material for Park Bench Theories. "The relationship is at the heart of the album but it's not a break up album as it goes from the stage of almost being married to breaking up and hitting rock bottom with nothing."
Feeling he had missed his chance as a performer, Scott had decided to forge a career writing film scores. "I've seen hundreds of musicians that I've been blown away by but never even got signed and just fell by the wayside. I had accepted that my chance had passed."
Of course, for a man who first picked up a guitar aged seven and taught himself to play, music was clearly a natural compulsion, and the one he was used to giving in to. Scott's musical loves and influences now are one and the same as the varied bunch he grew up listening to. From his mother, Jamie developed an appreciation of James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Carole King. "Tapestry was the first album I ever heard through my mum playing it in the house all the time. I was seven years old and I remember staring at the sleeve and listening to the music, just being totally mesmerized by the music. I didn't know what it was about then but I was just touched by it." From his father, he took away a keen love of soul - Wilson Pickett, Donnie Hathaway, The Flamingos. "At school, mates would be talking about bands like Bon Jovi and I didn't have a clue who they were talking about as I didn't start listen to pop radio till I was 15."
Scott taught himself to play guitar at the age of seven by attempting to play along to his mum's copy of Joni Mitchell's Blue album "I was terrible to begin with, guess it was a few years of trial and error before I could play." He quickly moved on to the piano a few years later when he discovered the instrument at a mates house. Spending time after school there, Scott honed his talents.
The death of his aunt led to an unexpected boost to his ambitions. Unbeknown to Scott, she left instructions for a piano to be bought for him upon her death. "Having my aunt buy the piano for me made me feel even stronger that this is what I wanted to do." He spent day after day writing and playing songs.
At the age of 25, Scott has been given a second chance at making it. Luckily, his music was discovered by the right person and barely months after his last deal, Scott found what he was looking for in a different record label and signed a new deal under the name Jamie Scott and The Town.
"It makes me feel amazingly lucky that I've had a chance to record this album, that's all I ever wanted, I didn't make this to sell millions of albums. I feel like I have achieved what I wanted to now."
The previous comparisons to Jamiroquai that he once attracted seem pretty one-dimensional, probably an observation based on his dextrous and soulful voice. In truth, the Jamie Scott of Park Bench Theories is less easy-on-the-ear funk and, if comparisons must be drawn, somewhere between Jeff Buckley meets Stevie Wonder.
So, to Park Bench Theories. It's an album that charts every stage of that painful arc in Jamie Scott's life when everything started to go wrong. Issues of trust, love, difficult decisions and, ultimately, moving on all circle each other from song to song. "When people ask what is Park Bench Theories, I'd say on a basic level, it's about misinterpretation and misunderstanding and how that could lead to the downfall of everything."
Weeping Willow is an intense display of the hurt you feel at that awful moment when the person you would have trusted with your life lets you down badly, whilst Changes reflects various life changing scenarios that shape you as a person. And while the subject matters don't make for light listening, Scott's melodic ability and that beautiful, dexterous voice makes for quite the opposite. And on a lighter note, London Town is full of the wide-eyed optimism of someone progressing through a dark period of their life and moving on, both physically and emotionally, and it is this message that Jamie Scott wishes the listener to take away with them. Though still a spring chicken, relatively speaking, the 25-year-old has already endured more than his share of set-backs and come out the other side. And does he ever have any regrets? "Not one."
Click here to view His official website
Click here to view Jamie's hit single "When will i see your face again">
