Because It’s Real: Q & A with Jont

Popshifter: I’m happy to see “Suzette” is included on the record, though I have to admit that—once again—that song’s been stuck in my head for weeks now.

One of the things I’ve always liked most about your songs is that they are often quite sweet—sentimental even sometimes—without being trite or saccharine or the slightest bit. . . I don’t know quite what the word I’m looking for is. I guess what I’m getting at is that your songs tend to be really good in precisely the same way that many others’ songs aren’t. Do you find that comes naturally, or is that something you have to work fairly hard at?

Jont: “Bittersweet” was a word someone used recently to describe that thing you’re talking about, and though it’s a simple word I think it describes it fairly well. Basically the thing I’m interested in is being brave enough to actually say exactly how I feel: not more, not less. If you want to say something emotional and open and honest, it isn’t cheesy if you actually mean it. If it is a cliché of an emotion, there is some detachment there from the truth. But if you can get down to the actual simple truth, then you can say anything you like as open and honestly as you like and it’ll sound okay, and not sentimental, because it’s real.

Allen Ginsberg

Popshifter: How’d it come to pass that you narrowly escaped a rather, uhm, uncomfortable encounter with Allen Ginsberg?

Jont: Ah, that was back in the mists of time, when I was just 18 and travelling around America on Greyhound, interviewing American poets. I was primarily a poet, or someone interested in writing and reading poetry, until I was 23, when my poems evolved in to songs and I started teaching myself how to sing.

When I was 17 I wrote to all the living American poets and asked if they had an hour to spare between October and March. . . about 20 wrote back and told me “yes” and I went across the country interviewing them, probably asking them very naïve and earnest questions! I’d written to Ginsberg, but being the rock star he was, he hadn’t replied. But the wonderful poet Robert Creeley, who has also recently passed away, had enjoyed talking with me so put me in touch with Allen and when I reached New York at the end of the trip I ended up having dinner with him in his apartment, the same one he had used to hang out in with Neal Cassady and [Gregory] Corso and [Jack] Kerouac.

It was a trip. He took a picture of me with Walt Whitman in the background and we ate a vegetable soup with no salt and then had strawberries for dessert. And yes, he asked me if I liked sex—which is fair enough, I was expecting something of that sort coming u—and we talked about whether I was a virgin, and then when it was obvious I didn’t want to have sex with him, he said he was tired, walked me to the door and asked me “you taken any hallucinogenic drugs?” I hadn’t. “They’re pretty interesting you know. . . ” and he shut the door. . . .

Much thanks to Jont for the interview, and also to Jont’s parents, Sue and Christopher, for being such gracious hosts and opening their home to several annoying Americans when we were there. By the way, Sue’s garden really is amazing!

Additional Resources:

Supernatural is available for download now, and was released in physical form, with a deluxe 50-page booklet, on May 19. More info and songs, as well as episodes of The House We’re In, are at Jont’s MySpace Page as well as at Jont’s website.

The Supernatural release party will be at Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, London on June 1.

Click to read more from Jont on. . .

Evolution of Unlit and Supernatural
An encounter with Allen Ginsberg

Pages: 1 2 3