Megan Jerome discovers the easy way out
Twisted tangos and bawdy lyrics, tipsy dancers and Francophone hecklers, calls for an encore before the first song had begun. All this and more marked my introduction to Megan Jerome’s latest musical renaissance during a rollicking December gig at Kaffé 1870 in Wakefield.
Jerome’s Wurlitzer-and-vocals performance backed by drummer, husband, and long-time collaborator Mike Essoudry was illuminated by Christmas lights and would be illuminating in a different way to anyone who has listened to Jerome’s two existing recordings. Compared to the live performance, material on This Uneven Pace and Unlonely is much more laid back, pristinely recorded, and jazzier.
Jerome is, evidently, a tough artist to pin down, but that’s fine by her.
“If you weren't constantly self discovering,” she told me later, “you wouldn't be making music at all.”
When Jerome graduated from Carleton University’s music program in 2002 she was encouraged by a professor to apply for songwriting grants and began performing at smallish venues such as 107 4th Avenue in the Glebe. She released the two albums with Megan Jerome Trio—featuring Essoudry and multi-instrumentalist Petr Cancura—played countless festivals and even launched a semi-successful cross-Canada tour.
Jerome seemed to have found her groove singing love songs, songs lamenting the loss of lonely days, and meditative songs about skating. So forgive me for being not quite prepared for the Wurlitzer-fueled party that happened in Wakefield that night. You see there is a vibrant new recording in the works. I had chanced upon a Megan Jerome in the midst of a liberating musical discovery.
Megan the mining engineer
I couldn’t help but see evidence of the woman and the artist everywhere in her home. Jerome’s paintings hang on stark white walls, a family photo rests atop a grand piano, an enormous window that illuminates the living room seems to match her bright and open personality. And of course there’s the vintage Wurlitzer, which seems a good fit for Jerome’s old-school approach to art and life.
As she poses for photos, sitting at ease behind her piano, smiling and laughing through new songs she hasn’t quite finished yet, I imagine that Jerome’s carefree expression was passed on to her from her father, James Jerome, a former speaker in the House of Commons and avid musician.
“My family played a lot of music,” she told me. “My dad would play the piano for hours at the end of the day, and at parties. On Sundays, after dinner, we would sit around and sing songs.”
But although music was ever-present and piano lessons began at the age of five, Jerome became seriously sidetracked on her musical journey during high school. She quit piano lessons when drawn in by a promotional campaign called “Women in Science.”
Much to the confusion of what Jerome calls her “liberal arts” family, the same teenager who had once written lyrics to fit with a Harry Connick Jr. recording enrolled in the mining engineering program at Queen’s University.
The rationale? Jerome wanted to challenge herself by studying something that wasn’t already all around her.
“I sort of had a feeling that it would be taking the easy way out if I took art,” she recalls.
Thankfully for the world of music, that feeling wouldn’t last. Jerome had a change of heart in the third year of her program after a key conversation with an engineering classmate about challenging herself.
“He said to me, ‘I have no idea what you mean, Megan. I'm really good at this and I find it easy and I like it. I'm not doing it because it's hard for me and I have something to prove’."
It wasn’t long before Jerome left Queen’s, moved back to Ottawa, and found a home in the Carleton music department, where she would receive her most valuable education under influential professors such as Jennifer Giles. But the lessons learned from her experience at Queen’s wouldn’t be forgotten.
Megan the painter
On the white chair below the living room window, Jerome sits, cross-legged, confident and upright, and seems to smile all of her words. She offers her visitors coffee and doughnuts early on a Sunday morning.
“We don’t usually have doughnuts for breakfast,” she assures us with a chuckle. I can’t imagine this woman going through a quarter-life crisis.
“I liked writing words and poems a lot in high school,” Jerome explains. “But my poems always rhymed. I remember this one friend of mine in grade nine saying ‘Welcome to the 20th Century Megan, poems don't rhyme anymore!’”
It’s likely that Jerome has never quite felt at home with other people’s conception of art. Her music is deceptively transient. The simple song structure and lyrics feel like folk songs, but the musicianship on her albums is rooted firmly in jazz. She has played both jazz and folk fests, but the two genres don’t always play nice, as in the story she tells about debuting a song she wrote to a pragmatic jazz teacher.
“I finish this song, and she goes, ‘That's it? The lyrics—maybe—but the piano playing? It's like you're taking spinach and you’re putting it between your own teeth’."
This story gets a big laugh from everyone in the room—and the biggest from Jerome herself.
“You have to honour your impulse to create,” she explains. “The songs that I write are much easier to play on the piano than what I am capable of doing. But it's what I discovered with engineering. My friend, who likes it, does it. He’s not doing it because it’s hard.”
It’s a deceptively simple idea. I mention Jackson Pollock choosing splattered paint over classical techniques and Jerome responds, “Anybody could splash paint on a canvas, but anybody doesn't.”
Megan the wife
In many ways, Essoudry and Jerome are one person, and they seem perfectly content being that way. In performance they have a kind of chemistry that could only come from years of practicing, arguing, cohabitating, and being totally in love. But is union like this antithetical to the self-discovery that Jerome talks so much about?
“I didn't want to make any compromises,” she says of her early days with Essoudry. “But I realized, maybe I have something to learn from this person's perspective. Maybe the ways that I would compromise are going to be a way of growing, not giving up. The stronger you are as an individual, the stronger you are as a partnership.”
Essoudry is quiet, handsome, and a skilled wood worker. Jerome is quick to point out that the impressive, decorative coffee table in their living room was hand-made by Essoudry when they were dating. He seems calm and collected standing next to the whimsical wife, and gives only frank-yet-thoughtful answers to questions.
When asked what he thought of Jerome’s analysis of their relationship, Essoudry smiles and says, “What she said.”
But after a moment he elaborates: "It just gives you the security to express yourself. And there's a bunch of other things that come out of the equation of being an artist. Who does it have to be good for? Are you impressing somebody? Are you trying to get this girl or this guy? We aren't trying to create on that level. We try to create just to put it out and to be ourselves. In the best way, without any sort of pretext."
Megan the soloist
With the departure of saxophonist Cancura, Megan Jerome Trio is now a duo, but with a bigger sound in the new material. Jerome claims that the 2007 album Flying Club Cup by the Balkan folk band Beirut and recent vocal training were major influences.
Big, European folk rhythms pervade the new album on songs such as “Little Girls,” while the lyrics drip with arched-eyebrow bratty-ness: “I like sweet and I like nice, and I am learning I like a little spice/ champagne in my orange juice/ making love to who I choose.” The song turns on a dime from delicate, precocious piano to bold, bombastic drumming and accordion.
Another tune, “Cocktail,” a song about cafés, alcohol, and lustful alleyway encounters, is buoyed by staccato drumming and Jerome’s tango-tinged accordion.
“I think the songs evolved because I wanted to have more rhythmic music and I wanted to have a groove to play. I'm happy to move away from the Trio for a while so I can be a bit more autonomous,” says Jerome.
It turns out that that Kaffé 1870 show was typical of recent performances, partly due to Jerome serendipitously finding a Wurlitzer to bring to gigs and partly due to Jerome bringing out a sensuality in the songs.
“To bring out a character, a femininity, a women-ness—not a girlishness,” says Jerome.
“The whole self-discovery thing is very, very necessary to create the music I want to make,” she explains. And she knows that such discovery never really ends. After the new album is released, Jerome plans to take a year away from lessons to learn even more about creating songs just for her self.
Fittingly, she describes this essential process, in her own terms, as “removing what I thought I wanted, and getting closer to what I want.”
—Travis Boisvenue, Guerilla Magazine, 2010