Name: Greg Jamie
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, visual artist
Nationality: American
Current release: Greg Jamie's "Beautiful Place," featuring Josephine Foster, is out now. It is the second single off his album Across a Violet Pasture, scheduled for release October 10th 2025 via Orindal.

If you enjoyed this Greg Jamie interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, and bandcamp. 
 


When it comes to experiencing strong emotions as as a listener, which albums, performances, and artists come to mind?

Arvo Pärt comes to mind as someone whose music makes me feel emotional. I think I get quiet and feel like the earth is opening up when the strings hit in Spiegel Im Spiegel.



It feels like it stops time and makes me emotional whenever I hear that pairing of piano and viola.

Purple Mountains is an album that makes me emotional. I think David Berman channeled his emotions lyrically and with vocals in a way that felt really visceral and shocking and also kind of reassuring and funny.



In performance I think losing control is a moving thing to witness. And then for performances or recent performances, seeing Anonhi at BAM last year was a very emotional concert for me.

She is a beautiful example of being both in control and also knowing how to sacrifice that control for emotional impact.

There can be many different kinds of emotions in art – soft, harsh, healing, aggressive, uplifting and many more. Which do you tend to feel drawn to most?

This might sound weird but I think I’m hunting for a transcendence in art.

I think about Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who’s one of my favorite filmmakers, as conveying almost exactly what I'm drawn to in art. Something pensive, soft, at once human and otherworldly. Very green in color and kind of forest-like in texture and depth. I like the artist Salman Toor for a similar reason. I like a lot of bucolic settings and kind of outsider characters lost in the landscapes.

Clarise Lispector’s book The Apple in the Dark was one that drew me in recently. I also like art that has something that’s just somehow surprises you with its nakedness whether emotionally or literally. A sudden shift in tone can do so much.

I don’t know if there's a specific word for any of this but I think I'm hinting at something …

I have had a hard time explaining that listening to death metal calms me down. When you listen to a song or composition, does it tend to fill you with the same emotions – or are there “paradoxical” effects?

I love that discrepancy.

Sometimes listening to free jazz can feel very still or painterly. Sometimes really gentle folk music can be really unnerving or make you feel like jumping. What the music is seemingly conveying at first glance and what the listener actually feels can be opposite.

I don’t listen to a lot of death metal but I think there’s something reassuring in the sound. Like it's important to know that those sounds exist and come together and that can feel calming. The sound of something immensely dark feels really appropriate right now.

I also sometimes like playing something that's clearly being played loud and turning it down to a quiet volume.

In as far as it plays a role for the music you like listening to or making, what role do words and the voice of a vocalist play for the transmission of emotions?

I’ve long been a fan of the emotive singer! From Richie Havens to PJ Harvey and Daniel Johnson, the emotional intonation of a singer has always moved me and been an inspiration.



I like a distinctive voice that can be both big and fragile at the same time.  Something on the verge of breaking. I think the conveyor of the song is really crucial in what I’m drawn to in terms of how they can convey emotions.

But just emoting doesn’t mean that's what I want the listener has to copy. “This guy sounds sad so now I'm kind of sad” kinda thing. That’s why emo music is often really off putting.

I recently learned that Jeff Buckley was a fan of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and just knowing that made me understand Buckley’s music more.

When it comes to experiencing emotions as as a creator, how would you describe the physical sensation of experiencing them? [Where do you feel them, do you have a visual sensation/representation, is there a sense of release or a build-up of tension etc …]

Creating a song in your head is kind of a swelling experience. Creating a melody and a vocal cadence is something that for me is akin to a kind of spirituality that I don’t experience in any other facet of life.

And then trying to recreate that emotion live or in a recording setting is its own separate emotion.  Usually one of trying to recreate the source of that original emotion that created the song.

But the physical sensation - that’s interesting. I think it's kind of an out of body experience, so I’m not sure. Maybe my shoulders?

When it comes to composing / songwriting, are you finding that spontaneity and just a few takes tend to capture emotions best? Or does honing a piece bring you closer to that goal?

For me it depends on the song. I think sometimes you want to capture or bottle the spontaneity of the created thing where the song almost surprises you because it's so new.

But yes, I find I need to go back for at least a few sessions of writing an individual song. Some songs take more sessions to come into themselves.

Lyrics can change forever. Some songs I’m already singing different lyrics of live than are on the album.

How much of the emotions of your own music, would you say, are already part of the composition, how much is the result of the recording process?

I think I have an inherently emotional sounding voice for whatever reason. But it also depends on my vocal register. The illusion of me seeming more emotional might actually just be me singing in a higher register. And maybe I sound more calm or peaceful when I'm singing in my lower register.

But yeah I sing about death a lot. I’m not sure why. I’m the son of a lifelong funeral director so that may have something to do with it. I also like to paint these first person narratives of paranoia. I feel like a storyteller in this way, but songs for me are not complete stories. More, they are a snapshot of an emotional state.

The song “Sunny” on my new album is sort of an emotional replication of a kind of fever dream or inconsolable paranoia. But the sonic texture of the song is almost dreamy and relaxing I think. Ruminative.

For Across a Violet Pasture, what kind of emotions were you looking to get across?

Entrancement! I want to build small worlds that create small spells. “Beautiful Place” is a song on my new album that aims to do that for example.

I think lyrically its almost naive or overly simple but that's not the takeaway for the song or the goal of the song’s overall emotion. Instead the song is like a sort of spell. The lyrics a sort of mantra of longing.

How do you capture the emotions you want to get across in the studio?

Turn the lights down low, drink some good tea and hope your brain can empty out of enough for you to be honest with the performance.

I don’t have a personal home recording set up so I’m always at someone else’s mercy in a way. Oddly it's how I prefer it. I don’t think it's out of laziness (or I hope it isn’t) but as a way of kind of channeling an uncontrolled space and take me out of my comfort zone.

It’s important for there to be something unusual in order to create that new mood.

What role do factors like volume, effects like distortion, amplification, and production in general for in terms of creating the emotions, energies or impressions you want?

Its easy to look at effects as sort of a distancing tool, but that’s not what I’m trying to do. There are a lot of effects on my vocals and sounds on this album. What I’m trying to do is create a new kind of character to what is already familiar.

The instruments- and human voice- clearly are what they are but they are put through these gauzes or filters that give it an otherworldly quality. I think that creates a sense of surrealism.

The familiar is removed, and in its place is a ghost - a sort of thing that we’ve seen before but now in a context that's there to haunt you.

In terms of emotions, what changes when you're performing live on stage, with an audience present, compared to the recording stage?

I’m sort of a nervous performer usually - when it comes to having an audience present. Which can make the emotion on stage feel heightened. Might make you think the performer isn’t ok or maybe being too closed off. But maybe that gives an extra intensity to the whole thing.

That said, I’m hoping to pick my head up more and maybe make eye contact moving forward.

It's hard to know how much to consider the audience at any given time, and I think it takes some control to not let it play too much of a factor, but also enough to make everyone feel acknowledged.

How does the presence of the audience and your interaction with it change the emotional impact of the music and how would you describe the creative interaction with listeners during a gig?

I was in a band called o’death for a long time and the live experience there was everything.

Whether it was a big audience or small audience we got so much energy just from playing in front of people. I think it was a communal experience.

What kind of feedback have you received from listeners or concert audiences in terms of the experience that your music and/or performances have had on them?

People used to tell us that seeing o’death live was a really intense emotional experience. And fun I think.

I know that’s not something I will maybe ever know how to replicate live and that's sort of mentally a challenge I have with this new material that just doesn’t create that kind of intense effect on an audience. So what is the new mood that I can create?

Would you say that you prefer to stay in control to be able to shape the emotions or do you surrender to them and allow the music to take over? Who, ultimately has control during a live performance?

It would be my preference to completely give myself over to the music as a kind of soft sacrifice.

I respect control but I don't think that’s what we’re here for as artists. If there is a control in the skill you have, then that control is an even more powerful tool to give up when creating something raw and honest. Depends on the performer.

I think a lot of performers know how to control the emotional tone of a room. But its exciting when you don’t know who is in charge.

The emotions that music is able to generate can be extremely powerful. How, do you think, can artists make use of this power to bring about change in the world?

I hope that there can be some leading by example that there isn’t just one way to exist, that capitalism has effectively destroyed our humanity. Artists are here to speak to emotion in others, maybe even more than recreating emotions. Someone like Leonard Cohen is having a conversation with our emotional core.

The world changing part is the opportunity to speak some kind of emotional truth, whatever that emotion is. I don’t know how change happens through art. I really just don’t I think it can offer maybe an alternative example of ways to see the world.

And it would have to do that one person at a time. And it would have to let each person have their own path of interpreting. So I guess, slowly is the only way.