Jamie Lenman: No Rest For The Awesome
JAMIE LENMAN is a busy man. With the release of his fourth solo studio album The Atheist on November 25th, as well as a mini tour and the third edition of his marvellous Lenmania all-dayer in Manchester, we’re lucky to catch the man himself on a rare break. Scarcely one to sit still, his output to date has been frequent and always top-notch, and his inimitable style and dress sense has made him something of a legend in the scene.
But just how does he do so much? “The answer is that I have an amazing team. I have Wall Of Sound PR, my label BSM (Big Scary Monsters), my manager, my agent and his assistant, my band and my live crew, my sound engineer, my driver, my tech: there’s a lot of people. Actually, shit, it’s like a small company under my employ. Not forgetting my publishers as well!”
“The other answer – and why this period feels more frantic than it has in previous years – is that there was a bottleneck in the first half of the year. I recorded The Atheist in January and there was a lot of indecision about how it was going to go out, who would release it, blah blah blah. There were three or four months of inaction on the surface. There were lots of meetings behind the scenes, but a lot of what was happening, I wasn’t involved in. So I sat twiddling my thumbs, buying expensive pinball machines (Jamie bought a “very expensive” Dr Who pinball machine that he has wanted since he saw it on a family holiday as a kid) and waiting for my manager to call and say ‘it’s all go!’ Then in summer, around the time of Download, we got the go on everything so we had to cram a year’s worth of stuff into six months.”
So let’s break down JAMIE LENMAN’s hectic end to 2022, and start with his new album The Atheist. Approaching his tenth year as a solo artist, and indeed the years before that leading alt rock darlings REUBEN, he has become synonymous with making a raucous, rousing racket. Odd then that none of that exists here. “It’s been a long time coming,” he reveals. “For every album from Muscle Memory to Shuffle, there’s been a discussion around what kind of record it should be. Each time we come to recording an album, I have floated the idea of an accessible, poppy indie record, and producers have turned it down, so it has been on the agenda for 10 years. The ideas have brewed and stewed, and there are songs that I wrote 20 years ago, no joke. Now is the right time.”
“I made a conscious decision to lose the more aggressive edges of my signature sound – there’s no shouting or heavy guitar tones. Every track has acoustic guitar or piano in the mix and I wanted that organic fullness. I wanted this to sound warm and… brown. That sounds weird to say, doesn’t it? But I wanted this to sound like aged oak and coffee.”
While you likely won’t hear of many other albums described as sounding like an office from Mad Men, it actually works very well for The Atheist. There’s a far sweeter and warmer sound to this giving the feeling of a fuller band than ever before. So just how many people play on this album? Has JAMIE LENMAN’s company grown even more for this record? “[laughs]! I fooled you. It’s all me!” Jamie enthuses. “I played everything!” While he goes on to qualify that he doesn’t exactly play every part on the record, he did play the vast majority, including trombones, trumpets and piano. “It was a dream come true and actually a lot easier than I thought. Some of the drums I never actually played until the take that is on the record.”
But JAMIE LENMAN isn’t content with just being a casual multi-instrumentalist and alternative national treasure, because he will soon be hosting the third edition of his marvellous Lenmania all-dayer. Started in 2020 in London, 2021’s edition saw JAMIE LENMAN take over a stage at 2000trees; now in 2022, he’s taking the show to Manchester, with the likes of SAINT AGNES, SICK JOY, JAMES AND THE COLD GUN, KATIE MALCO and GEN AND THE DEGENERATES heading to Club Academy and Bar 532 on December 18th. But it’s not been an easy road.
“The first Lenmania was hellish – even though it seemed to be enjoyed by all. I’d never done anything like it and had my agent screaming down the phone at me – he would say ‘I book bands not festivals!’ It really wasn’t fair on anyone. Then the second one was 2000trees and we did a mini Lenmania tour around the country. That one was interesting but it just wasn’t true to what Lenmania was supposed to be, you know? It’s not a festival or a tour, it’s a one day event with two stages and the idea is to have no gap between bands.”
So has he cracked the formula this time around? JAMIE LENMAN is a confident man by nature, and that seems to be magnified here ahead of Lenmania III. “This is the perfect fit to get the structure!” He beams. It helps too that he’s surrounded by friends. Those friends also happen to be some of the brightest sparks on the British rock scene. “BRIGADE are good friends, and they were the first band booked – that happened at Pizza Hut; KATIE MALCO I’ve been aware of for years and dug it, we met at ArcTanGent and it just reminded me how cool she is; SICK JOY are managed by the guy who used to manage REUBEN so it’s a bit like when your dad marries someone else and you suddenly have step brothers; and then SAINT AGNES are always knocking about as buddies. To be fair, I don’t know RAD PITT, and GEN & THE DEGENERATES I’ve never met before but I’m looking forward to getting to know them.”
And then what does the future hold for Lenmania? “It’d be good to get BIFFY CLYRO, wouldn’t it!?” While this may seem like a lofty joke, it actually may not be entirely outside of the realm of possibility. “I did shows with them in Ireland, and last time I was supposed to see them was at Download but I got thrown out of their area by security. I got home to all these emails asking me to come see them and asking where I was, so I need to see them again.”
JAMIE LENMAN‘s schedule for November and December 2022 is proof then of what can happen if you bide your time. While there have been frustrating, empty periods of the year, he never lost sight of being able to do what he wants, whether that’s through his recorded output, or through putting on a celebration of the finest British bands on the scene today. So next time you feel stuck in a rut, just be more JAMIE LENMAN. We can all learn a thing or two from him.
The Atheist is out now via Big Scary Monsters.
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