"Sunlight paints with shadows on your face..."
The day couldn’t have been more typically British; bitter and grey, with the presence of the questionable sleet in the air that couldn’t quite be distinguished between rain or snow, but was still enough to shake the country into moral panic. In all honesty however, isn’t this the perfect day to capture what it really means to be in England? California raised singer/songwriter Jessarae packed up his life in sunny LA and relocated himself all the way to London, all at the sweet young age of 19 - this is basically what he came here for.
Jessarae’s boyish demeanour kept him bounding around the local park and jumping over tennis nets, meaning little direction was required from photographer Caoimhe Hahn. You wouldn’t have guessed he deemed himself officially homeless just hours before meeting us. Just for a little while. Discussing exciting tours and greatly influential British music icons, it sparked the question as to whether he was born in the wrong place. A musician delivering uplifting beats and feelgood lyrics are enough to remove ourselves from the grey mundane everyday, whiling away the hours instead in sweet summer escapes in our minds. Jessarae's latest EP 'The London Loft Sessions' is available to listen to here, a completely raw and charming delivery of his classic sound.
Stylist Jenny Holmes pieces together a mismatched array of nautical stripes and heavily embroidered denim and leather; the accessible rock and roll aesthetic. A variety of blues complement his wild blonde hair tamed by Lillie Russo, sun bleached over his teenage years in LA. Never the one to deny a challenge, Jessarae has positioned himself in a drastically new landscape away from the creature comforts he grew so accustomed to growing up. Often the life of a musician is glamourised in incomprehensible ways, but it’s nothing that he could have possibly imagined. You don’t need a house when your home is the stage.
How did you find the shoot today?
Really fun. I’ve never done anything like that before with that many people involved, and the clothing was better than what I would’ve picked on my own - yeah, it was fun.
If your mother were to describe you, what would she say?
That’s a good question, ‘cause mum should know. She would describe me as... she would say that I’m probably an excitable, kind of, fun loving individual. I don’t know, creative maybe?
‘Maybe’. When did you discover your affinity toward producing and making music and writing?
I started from an early age. I grew up singing ever since I was little and I learned the guitar when I was about 9 or 10 years old - I started writing songs right away. I’d just write lyrics, and then when I got my first laptop, that’s when I started producing music and making my own demos, and it was really just for me to listen too, you know. Then from there, I signed a publishing deal kind of by accident- well not really by accident, but I kind of fell into a publishing deal. I didn’t understand that you could be a songwriter as a career, how big the world was, and how many other people were doing what I was doing. I was like 17 or 18 when I started meeting publishers and maybe around 19 when I signed with them.
Wow, cool. Where do you draw your inspiration from?
Everything actually. The way I think about music is that it can never make you feel something that you’re not able to feel on your own. It might maybe make you think about something in a different way, but really it has to be something that you’ve felt before, for it to make you feel anything or for you to connect to it, that’s what good music is. So, I think I’m inspired a lot by just music, you know, going out to parties or clubs and the way people dance at those and the way they listen to music there or I guess by the world you know. I try to pick things up - travelling especially is good for that too.
Have you travelled a lot?
Yeah, I’ve been to Spain and been all over Europe pretty much.
Full interview available here.
Images taken from Boys by Girls, shot by Caoimhe Hahn.
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