Jape: 'You have to have a wide range of skills to survive'
Richie Egan aka Jape on life in Sweden, realism about what a career in music looks like, validation, and his new album Endless Thread
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Today is an interview with Jape aka Richie Egan. He was on TPOE 279, at the start of October 2023, to talk about his sixth studio album as Jape, Endless Thread. Below is the first half of the chat - the second half is a track by track of the album, so maybe you’d like to listen to that? I really liked his honesty and I think it shone through with all of his answers. Interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.
Tell me about the work side of things, the stuff that's differentiated from what I would know you as as Jape.
I treat music as a craft and as long as I'm able to craft music, no matter what it's for, I feel extremely lucky and extremely blessed. So I've done different jobs for different things, all different types of media, I suppose, that I've made music for. And I love that as well. I love to be able to, like, get somebody else to tell me what to do, sometimes, where I can just be a craftsman. I like that, I love that. That's maybe something I didn't know how to do beforehand, then I learned how to do it in a specific project. That to me is great. Also nowadays, to keep the wolf from the door - to make a living from music, you've got to be able to do that. And more. You have to have a wide range of skills to survive.
Did you have those skills when you moved over to Sweden? Or is it just something that you developed over the years?
Well it's not really skills, I suppose. For me, there's so many different ways. I really am a bit of a jack of all trades when it comes to music. I'll dip my toe in anything without really mastering any of them, but I try and keep a childlike curiosity to that end of things. To me, it's just about keeping curious and then finding some gig where somebody wants you to do something you haven't done before. And then just trying to experiment, read about it, and learn how to do it to the best of my ability.
So you get the same satisfaction, say, making Endless Thread as you do fulfilling a brief?
Yeah or jamming with Matthew [Bolger] and or another musician. It's all different parts of the same thing to me, it's all part of the power of music really - I know, it's a little bit cheesy to say that, but the way it can be so many different things and you can come at it from basically an infinite amount of angles and other people's perspective; sometimes when you work a lot on your own, which I do, you really miss other people's perspective, whether it's playing with another musician, or working with somebody, a visual artist or something, that stuff keeps you fresh, to be able to do that.
Tell me about jamming with the guys, is that almost like a social aspect at this stage?
Matthew, as I said, he's in the Rednecks, and he lives in Malmo. So we had many months where we were basically just playing together on a Wednesday night for the pure fun of playing together. Having a cup of tea, just making some tunes, and having a laugh, basically. Cos the Rednecks aren't going at the moment so it's a little taste of that basically, you know - not the same.
But it's always just there? That's nice, though, you never get tired of it.
Yeah, that's it. The thing about being an artist in any field and getting older, I think it's important to never rest on your laurels and think that 'this is the way to do things', because it's always changing, always evolving, and I think you owe it to yourself to try to also evolve and stay fresh.
This realism about a career in music, did you always have that? That you knew you weren't always going to make a living just from Jape or just from the Rednecks? Or is it just something since you moved to Sweden?
Big time. When I was younger, and I had the hype around Jape, all the money I ever got for publishing deal, record deal, all that stuff, I basically spent it on equipment for a studio basically. So back then, when I was younger, there were bands getting signed, and they would be spending their advance on, studio time, where they'd spend a lot of money maybe recording a record and then, at the end of it, maybe not even really particularly dig the record and then they've got no money left from their advance. My take was, 'well, if I just do it myself, and even if it all falls to shit, which it will eventually, at least then I'll be left with stuff that I can still create, in my own time.' And that's all I really want, to be honest with you.
Wow. So you've always just had this sensible head on ya?
I've always thought about the long game of things. Because life is a strange thing. The idea of impermanence is something that I really always am very close to, and what's here today won't be here tomorrow, or will be in a different form. It's just trying to be able to be present for all the different forms of change, which will occur, basically.
Speaking of that long game, I was just doing my research yesterday: Cosmosphere, your first release, came out in 2003. So is this 20 years of Jape? Is this something that you've thought about?
Oh god, 20 years!? I've never - Cosmosphere is a special enough record because Niall from the Redneck Manifesto, his parents used to have a holiday home in Avoca in Co Wicklow. And basically, I just took all my small amount of equipment back then, 2003, went down there for seven days, and wrote and recorded the entire record in seven days… That record was a very special time. Neil from Somadrone, he actually came down to do some keyboards and stuff on it as well. So yeah, crazy man. 20 years. Holy shit, didn't know that... It was Leagues and Dave O'Grady, they used to run a label called Volta Sounds. They put it out back in the day. So were really - they still are, Foggy Notions still doing the biz - but back in the day, Volta had Messiah J and the Expert on there, and they used to do, yeah, loads of good stuff.
I don't know if you saw the Irish Independent's list of the 50 best Irish albums of all time? There was no Jape release on there, which is surprising since you've got two Choice Prize-winning albums. It's a good list, and it's maybe a predictable list near the top, but do you have any pangs or qualms about that?
I think there's definitely more than 50 good Irish albums. I would just like to imagine that I was probably number 51, somewhere around there. It's nice to get some validation but I think I've had enough validation from public sources. And what keeps me going is just the idea that I'm trying to make something that's exciting to me at the moment.
How do you get that validation? Is it just, you reach a certain age, you’re ticking off boxes in your career that it's like, 'I'm just doing this for myself now'?
I genuinely don't think it really has more to do with the 'career' end of things. I think it's more to do with doing something that I can genuinely feel myself is something that maybe I either haven't done before, or have done to a lesser degree. And if I can just push myself a bit harder and then let that particular thing go, and then say, 'Well, at least I made a step in the right direction'. Like, that's a big thing for me at the minute in a lot aspects in my life: if you don't know what to do in your life - and we all have periods where we don't know what to do - I think if you can just make one step in the correct direction, it's really helpful. And what tends to happen is, even if you feel lost, if you take one step in a direction, that might lead you to a second step in that direction, and that then may lead to an option which you were not aware of before you made the first step. And I feel like that with music, that sometimes you get to the point when you don't feel so creative but if you just move towards - it can be a tiny thing as well - if you can move towards something that you feel is worthwhile, and slowly get there, you'll eventually find you've built up a little bit of momentum and something will happen, that enables you to do something that may be better. And not just in that world. I think it's the same for mental health. If you have a hard time, as we all do, sometimes it's very hard to see the bigger picture. But if you can just do a small thing in one direction. Those things add up. So the validation from the art is from trying to move in a correct direction, which I have decided is the correct direction myself, because it's personal.
I guess there's so many acts nowadays who are seeking that at the start, that validation, before they start thinking of, like, 'I'm just making the tunes for myself, and if anybody else likes them, that's great'.
Well, the thing about Ireland is Ireland is small, and if you just make good music, you don't need to worry about all that stuff. I think it's two stages. So the stage you need to work on is the first stage, which is creation of good music, because if you work on the first stage, the second stage will happen. Whereas if you work on the second stage, which is the validation, I think then the first stage probably won't happen. The work is the main thing. For young artists, just work really hard on your music and you'd be surprised how fast people - I think everybody knows everything that's happening musically if you're in tune with it, so stick to that.
Do you get young artists or young musicians contacting you, seeking advice or anything?
Yeah, sometimes. That young guy Chósta, I made a track with him. A lovely dude coming from a really pure creative place. YourCuzMarcus as well, he's another really cool act coming up in the hip hop end of things. I get messages, and I love getting messages, from young artists because - not that I'm very successful, but I'm definitely a lifer. So, there's certain things that maybe I've learned over the years that I could impart. A lot them are probably way more talented than me anyway. But sometimes you still need a bit of a guidance in terms of self-respect as well. It's important to have that as an artist. And I think a lot of artists sell themselves short on that one because they just want to be an artist so they're willing to sacrifice maybe more than they should, in order to be that.
The self respect with you, do you think looking back, you always had it? Or is it just something that you strive towards?
For me, I think pretty much I always have had a certain self respect, maybe misguided confidence, but I see, sometimes, people selling themselves short. People can ascribe to you the characteristics you put forth into the world. So if you put forth the idea that you're not worth much, then people will think you're not worth much; you have to know your own value. That's cheesy, but you know what I'm saying?
Before we talk about the new album, Endless Thread, let's talk about Sentinel, which was released in 2019. Kind of the other side of Jape? I feel like you've always had that balance of guitar, acoustic, slow stuff, and then heavy on the electronics, as well. How do you look back on Sentinel? Do you feel like 'I ticked off this sound and now I want to work on this sound', just personally, work related?
I think some artists are good at doing projects where basically, 'this is my project now, I'm gonna do this and this is going to be this'. But for me, for good or bad, it's how I feel at the time is what reflects in the music. And so that album was quite a sad record. And I think maybe I was a little bit depressed at the time. Yeah... There's no ticking the boxes, basically; there's ticking the boxes in the sense that, like I said earlier, I want to have something that basically feels like a progression for me. But then in terms of the songwriting itself, the pure songs, then that is very personal and comes from whatever particular mindset I'm in at the time, which I can't predict. Obviously, some of the earlier records were a lot more successful than some of the later stuff I've done, but the thing is, if you want to do stuff for a long time, you have to get used to the idea that some of your stuff will not be successful. But the main thing is that you're able to just satisfy your own need to make art. That's what it is. It can be a kick in the teeth, sometimes, maybe if something doesn't really resonate with people. But once you learn to understand that feeling, it's quite liberating - failing is actually really liberating. And it took me a while to understand that. You don't have to succeed all the time. Because if you fail, you really look at yourself and go, 'OK I can pretty much do whatever I want now, because there's no pressure'. And it makes you question what's important to your own, I suppose, voice; 'what is important?' And if you're constantly successful, I don't think you get the chance to question that, so it might sound a little bit like a deluded copout, but I do think there's great instruction in failure. Sometimes. Not all the time, though (laughs). Professional failure.
I was listening to your interview on the Nialler9 podcast, from almost a year ago, around the release of the mini album that you released last November, 9K Hi Vol 1. You said that you were eight or nine songs into making this album, Endless Thread, but it hit a dead end. So you went into doing that (9K). Tell me about this 'dead end'? Not quite a failure, but maybe a barrier that you hit in the creative process? Did you realise that you had hit this dead end and that you just needed to make music to get over it?
I needed to do stuff outside of music to get over it. I got myself into a bit of a dead end in terms of like, I suppose drinkin' as well. Basically, I could see it was not so much a dead end as heading into a corner in general. And so I kind of realised that in order to make the view wider, I needed to address stuff outside of my music. So I did the 9k Hi record on old samplers. There's no lyrics on it as well, which I think is a bit telling because I was working out a lot of stuff in my own life. And I feel like I broke through that barrier, thank god. I feel like I came out the other side of it and then was able to go back. On the new record Endless Thread, the songs were written in a sort of weird place between being unhappy and trying to work towards being happy, but they were kind of mixed and overdubbed in a place of kind of joy, which was the first time I've felt a feeling of joy for a good many years.
And so going back to the beginning of Endless Thread, when does it actually start? Do some of these songs stretch back years and years? Can you pinpoint the exact start point for the album?
This one started in and around Covid times, when we were all just about to lock down, it started in around then, the batch of songs that became Endless Thread.
So you enjoyed working on them initially before that dead end appears and you have to figure out a way to get to the end point?
Yeah, like, I'm a great subscriber to this, Eoghan, is that I genuinely think your work is always a couple of steps ahead of you, in terms of your subconscious. You often find, when you're writing songs, that they're talking back to you about yourself, before you know it, before you consciously grasp, 'OK I need to deal with this then'; already you've written a song which basically is very similar that thought that came much later, but it was already inside you from before. When you open yourself to writing, you can you can tap into that amazing wisdom that I think is in everybody that sometimes it's difficult to tap into. So the songs started there. Then just let them be for a while and sit with them and see which ones are good and what needs to be crafted and how can I then come up with an actual - I like to come up with an idea/theme for a record. So for this one, a loose theme was short, accessible songs with layers, which will reward repeated listening for myself and others. So tape manipulation was another thing on this one. And try and find parameters that work for each album, basically. And then letting it sit. I mean, when you're working on your own, you can leave it for too long. I like to have a deadline, but I never really have deadlines.
Jape tour dates:
November 2: Coughlan’s, Cork
November 3: De Barra’s, Clonakilty
November 4: Kasbah, Limerick
November 5: Róisín Dubh, Galway