Speaking from his home he shares with his wife and two children, Jamieson reflects on the Grinspoon 1998 Warp tour of Australia where Jamieson, then 22, exhibited odd behaviour like randomly dispersing daises and rose petals from a plastic bag whilst reciting poetry. “I remember that Warp tour fondly, I don’t remember the petals but I do remember it was a hell of lot of fun!
“After that we ended up going over and doing the ‘99 Warp tour of the States with little known bands like Eminem and Black Eyed Peas,” Jamieson’s voice cracks into a warm chuckle as he reflects on the dramatic irony of his last statement.
However, whilst Jamieson experienced many good times with Grinspoon’s success, cracks began to form due to over-consumption of drugs and alcohol and in 2007 Jamieson appeared on ABC talk-show Denton where he admitted to a serious addiction to the drug ice, an addiction that had led to a rapture between him and his band members as well as his wife.
Since then, Jamieson has worked very hard to kick his drug addiction and be a part of Grinspoon’s sixth studio album Six To Midnight as well as see him become a responsible father to his two children, a loyal husband and, in the last 12 months, start performing as a solo artist, part storyteller part rock’n’roll troubadour.
During this interview Jamieson takes a break to tend to his children: “There’s one for you and one for you, enjoy! Excuse me I was just opening some ALDI flavoured chicken snackos!”
Jamieson noq quite frankly discusses his decision to start playing as a soloist by starting with this preliminary statement: “I’m not releasing any product, I don’t have a single, I don’t have a video. When I do play on my own there is no real justification for it except…” he trails off before saying, “I’m essentially unemployable. I can’t get a job at a bakery because my resume essentially consists of, ‘I won triple J Unearthed in 1995 and then started touring the world’ and that’s my employment history. So last year when I was running out of money and the kids needed their chicken snackos I booked seven dates throughout New South Wales and went ahead with it.”
While it seems like a fairly gutsy move to go from having three blokes on stage with you to just hands-solo, Jamieson did have a pretty experienced mate to call to ask advice. “So before I headed out on the tour I called Tim Rogers (You Am I) and asked what to expect and he told me, ‘You’re either going to love it or you’re going to hate it’ so I knew pretty quickly that if it didn’t go well I wouldn’t keep doing it!” He concludes with a triumphant laugh before letting on why he decided to bring his solo show south.
“Now, Grinspoon’s manager and Grinspoon’s agent came to one of the gigs and were like, ‘This is really good’ to which I was like, ‘Yeah no shit it’s good!’ So they were like, ‘Let’s do more shows so now I’ve got three shows in Victoria’.”
However, Jamieson’s solo shows have not all been smooth sailing with him now recounting some heckling he copped in a Sydney suburb famous for its ‘Bra-Boys’ and race riots. “I had some heckling at the Cronulla show where they wanted to hear Dead Cat, basically I don’t know how to play Dead Cat because I didn’t write it. Now they started singing it and I just let them go until they forgot the words.
“Let me be clear, it’s not a Grinspoon unplugged set! It will mostly be made up of stuff I wrote that didn’t make past albums or new songs that I have, for want of a better term, pitched for the next album and also some covers. I mean these new songs are so disparate in their genres I don’t know if they’ll make the next Grinspoon album,” explains Jamieson.
One cover that Jamieson has been playing is Bullet Proof by La Roux. “I’ve been doing that for a while, not to anyone else, but I really like the lyrics to that song but I think her arrangements is not my favourite so I like to tweak the chords A-minor D and F. Some people found it hilarious when I did it but others not so much so I’m not sure it will make my sets when I play Victoria.”
However, he does admit that Lana Del Ray’s song Video Games may get played in his set. “I’ve learnt how to play Video Games ‘cause I like the lyrics to that song but on a side note I think she has been treated extremely badly by the media in general and that if she was a guy she would not have been treated this way!”
BY DAN WATT
