J*Davey is Ms. Jack Davey and Brook D’Leau. The L.A. funk babies were forerunners of that indefinable mid-aughts sound that would eventually come to define the years after it. A mixed bag of ‘70s rock infused Hip Hop along with disparate influences from the likes of Prince, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, punk, neo-soul and a gang of others, Ms. Jack Davey and her “torrential Mohawk” were on the brink of super-stardom.
Then, musically and label wise, things began to go awry. They signed a deal with Warner Bros. Music as the label faced a time of considerable flux, and found themselves sinking ever deeper into the quagmire of producers, execs and personalities that make up the music business. Suddenly, the work began to stall, as they dropped a few “mistapes” between their signing and the eventual release of their first retail album New Designer Drug in 2011.
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With their label experience leaving them exhausted, the group went on hiatus. Ms. Jack Davey simultaneously became a mother and a songwriter while Brook began touring with Miguel and his band. But you can’t teach chemistry, and as they’ve seen their signature sound go mainstream, J*Davey grew drawn together, again. Now, with the release of two new songs “Love? Yeah!” and “Deadly” the two are back in the studio creating a new EP and ready for the get back. In this exclusive sit down at Red Bull Studios, we spoke with the now restored duo as they detailed their return, why A&Rs are different these days, and why they’d never sign a “360 deal.”
J*Davey Recalls Beauty in Distortion, New Designer Drug & Signing To A Label
DX: So, 2011, New Designer Drug comes out, you guys drop it on your independent imprint (iLLaV8r), we really loved it but it felt like there was a lot of stuff going on with the label. Can you guys talk about that time, what you were going through, and why you wanted to drop it at that particular point?
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Brook D’Leau: Do you want me to say it?
Ms. Jack Davey: No… New Designer Drug, I mean, I think that all of our projects have been these culminating pieces, these end-chapters to these time periods, for us. So, The Beauty in Distortion was right when we signed our deal and we were like, “We have this music. What do we do with it?” And so we just put it out so we could move on to the next phase, which was us being signed to a label and working on what we thought was going to be this great label release. Then, you get into the label system and you realize what it really is about and all the dynamics and what it really takes to even get an album together and actually out to the public. Its so many things that go into it that has nothing to do with the music. We started seeing that more and more as the years progressed, and it got to a point where everything had just kind of changed. We had sonically changed as a band. Being signed to a label taught us so much about making music, at the same time, where we were actually in real studios and had nothing but time and opportunity to just make whatever we wanted to—and finish, which is something we had never been able to do before. ‘Cause with The Beauty in Distortion, our hard drive crashed, so we lost all of the files for all of those songs, so they were just [left] as is. We had never heard our stuff mixed and mastered, or completely done. So, we really got to dig into our creative process. So if anything, being signed to that label was more like music school for us. We really got to learn how to produce and how to write songs and about the business, as well.
DX: What else did you learn?
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Brook D’Leau: I definitely understood more [about] how to collaborate in a room full of people you don’t know. Obviously we have our synergy—and do what we do—but getting involved in the label, they’re [like], “You guys need to work with these people. This is what you guys should do. You guys should be over here, doing this.”
Ms. Jack Davey: And we didn’t understand a lot of that, so we resisted a lot. Our thing was like, “You guys came to us. We didn’t come to you, so take it or leave it.” That’s not how the business works at all. But, at the end of it, we did have a great collection of songs that we had worked on for the last three years. The label started to implode from the inside, as well, so everybody we came in with was getting fired, including the president and the guy that signed us. So, it was kind of like the perfect time to keep it moving. Yeah, so we had this great collection of songs and it was kind of like, “Why not put it out?” But, at the same time, we had just gone through three years of this crazy situation. I know that I needed a change; I needed a break. It was kind of like the perfect time for me to sit down for a while. Then, Miguel came into the mix, which was a blessing in disguise, as well. It kept Brooke busy, so he wasn’t sitting at home, waiting for me to stop being a mom, and get back on tour. At the same time, it took us to this next step where we are now. I feel like, once again, it’s been this crazy learning experience for us, as well.
How A&R’s Have Changed & Not Signing a “360 Deal”
DX: If we’re smart A&Rs, though, I’m listening to the music and saying, “Well, my artist can’t do that. But they can take a piece of that and do that.”
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Ms. Jack Davey: Well, the thing about it is, there aren’t that many A&R guys left that are doing A&R jobs. There might be A&R guys, but they’re not doing A&R jobs. They’re doing branding jobs—they’re brand managers now, which is dope. The game has just changed. When I was growing up and we were in the studio in the ‘90s, it was just like big budgets. We’d rent a studio like this in 24-hour blocks for months. And food budgets, and writers, and you had you’re A&R guys sitting on the couch back there, telling you how many fucking decibels to shave off the kick drum. That’s just what they did.
Brook D’Leau: They also had expense accounts and credit cards and shit like that, too.
Ms. Jack Davey: They were creative people. Nowadays, they’re business people. And it’s not bad—it’s not a bad thing at all. It’s just different, you know? Going back to when we signed our deal, I think my problem was I was coming in from an old school standpoint and it was right at the turn of the “360 deal” and it was like, “Woah!”
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Ms. Jack Davey: We signed right before that and it was just like, “Damn.” In hindsight, if we would have wanted that to work, we should have signed a “360 deal.” That’s the only way it’s going to work, these days.
Brook D’Leau: They were trying to make us re-sign into a “360 deal” and I, personally, think that that’s the reason shit went sour. ‘Cause we were like, “Fuck no!”
Ms. Jack Davey: They were like, “You don’t want to sign that? Alright.”
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Brook D’Leau: So they don’t have anything vested in us, because they don’t own everything!
Ms. Jack Davey: [Their mentality is], “We can’t guarantee that we’re going to make the return we need to make, if you don’t sign this deal.” At the time, we didn’t understand [that]. But now, that makes perfect sense. That’s how that shit works, you know?
Brook D’Leau: I still wouldn’t do it.
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Ms. Jack Davey: Me, personally, I still wouldn’t do it because I’m a writer, so I want my publishing. I want as much publishing as I can have. Yeah.
Brook D’Leau: My deal is like, if we’re making T-shirts, and it’s our designs…
Ms. Jack Davey: I want my money from that.
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Brook D’Leau: Yeah. I don’t want on the bus for 200 days on the road, not taking showers, not seeing my family. I want most of that money. You know? Whatever. We don’t need to talk about the business. That’s the boring stuff.
DX: You mentioned you’ve been writing for people. Who have you been writing for:
Ms. Jack Davey: Well, mainly Miguel, which is an honor. Being a songwriter and figuring out the formula is something that many people don’t do; it’s difficult to do. To be able to work with someone who has figured out the formula and does it effortlessly has really been a blessing. So, I’m mainly writing with him, for now. His girlfriend is an artist too, so I’m writing for her project. I did a few sessions with Danity Kane… I mean, I heard their record and, it was really good, so that’s kind of a shame that it didn’t work out. I was like “Ok, I want to be a writer now. I kind of have to get back on the studio grind of just taking sessions with random producers just to get myself on tracks and get my name out there.” I’m getting there. Of course, J*DaVeY is always the focal point.
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J*Davey Talks Getting Copied & “You Never Hear About The First”
Ms. Jack Davey: I think we both did. Me, I was like, “I don’t want to do music right now. I don’t want to do music the way I’ve been doing it.” I think we were just—I know I was just burnt out. We were just burnt out on the process and on the politics. We had cultivated this sound, unknowingly, for so long and got so many “no’s” and so many setbacks. And then we’re listening to the radio, looking on television, and we’re seeing all these people doing the shit that we had been doing for a while. Not to be braggadocios about it, but that’s just what it is. We turn on the television and it’s like, “Wow, that girl looks just like me and that sounds like a bootlegged J*DaVeY song!” For me, then, I remove myself so I don’t get caught up. Because what started to happen was it became more so about the gimmicks and all of these things that you could take from us and try to mimic than what it really was, which…
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Brook D’Leau: Like, somebody will take the hairstyle…
Ms. Jack Davey: They’ll take the haircut and then it becomes like, “You’re lumped into that [group with the others].” I just wanted to take a step back and do something completely opposite, beyond the personal stuff.
DX: Back then, even your hair was a big to-do. I remember reading a New York Times article and they referred to it….
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Ms. Jack Davey:“The Torrential Mohawk!” And that’s what it was, which it was for a long time. I mean, I had that hairstyle for almost eight years and then, one day, I was like, “I don’t want it anymore” and I shaved it off. I remember walking into a meeting with my managers with skin-bald head.
Brook D’Leau: It was skin-bald.
Ms. Jack Davey: Skin. Bald. And they were probably like “This bitch is fucking crazy!” But, I felt like I had to move on. I felt like I wasn’t progressing forward as an artist. I was just stuck in this caricature of myself.
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Brook D’Leau: I feel like it becomes that if when people allow a look, or you’re trying to hold on to what you think you are. Well, it’s like if you lose this hairstyle, then you lose everything. Actually, what we were doing wasn’t about that. It’s great that it transcended and it became a thing where other people felt, “Oh, now I’m an edgy chick because I shaved the sides of my head.”
Ms. Jack Davey: I wasn’t the first person to do it, you know? I won’t be the last person to do it. When it started getting into that mentality of, “Who has ownership of the hair? Who has ownership of the haircut?” I was like, “I don’t want to do this shit anymore.”
Ms. Jack Davey: In reality, Marcia was definitely my guru. But, in reality, Salt-N-Pepa and, you know, Tonto… If you wanna go back to… you know [Laughs].
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Brook D’Leau: You know what I mean? Everyone’s trying to take credit, or get credit, even though it’s a flipside to it. I don’t feel like we harp on, “We did that first.” However, I do notice…
Ms. Jack Davey: There are some very specific references out there.
Brook D’Leau: In particular, there’s one huge artist—huge artist right now. One female pop star who… We did a show at the Roxy maybe eight years ago—maybe less than that. It was probably, what? Five years ago? Whatever. So, we did this show, and this is when she had—I don’t know if you [Ms. Jack Davey] were blonde then, you weren’t blonde then, but definitely had the Mohawk poppin’—and on stage we had…
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Ms. Jack Davey: All these broke down mannequin pieces—mannequins all over the place.
Brook D’Leau: Mannequins and televisions, a few televisions. A friend of mine and I did some random art stuff or whatever. So, literally, later that year, this huge artist—who will go unnamed—she pops up on our stage set. It’s her in the middle, with this blonde Mohawk thing with mannequins and televisions everywhere for her big New Year’s Eve show!
Ms. Jack Davey: It’s like that’s pretty dead-on specific. We gon’ let you slide. But, at the end of it, once we started getting caught up in the ownership of it, that’s when, for me…
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Brook D’Leau: I don’t want to own this shit anymore.
Ms. Jack Davey:I was like, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this shit right now so I’m just not going to do it. Even musically, I just wanted to make music with a guitar, now. I don’t even want to make music that sounds anything like anything I’ve been doing.
DX: “I’m gonna make folk music.”
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Brook D’Leau: Basically.
Ms. Jack Davey: In all honesty, that’s what I did for a little bit. He was touring and we were both establishing these great connections with Miguel—him on the music side, me on the writing side. I shifted my focus to that. I was like, “I’d rather just write for people. I don’t want to have to be on tour 300 days out of the year to make my money.” And then, that turned into everybody [saying], “They broke up. They hate each other, and she’s singing background for Miguel,” or, “She’s just trying to write. He’s just doing this.” It was nice for us to dip off for a while and not be heard from or seen. ‘Cause at a certain point, you just start oversaturating yourself in the market and people just didn’t really know what to do with us. We didn’t really know what to do with us.
DX: It’s the plight of what people would consider [being] “forward…”
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Brook D’Leau: Yeah, you never hear about the first guy, the first girl. The second or third…
Ms. Jack Davey: Nobody wants to bet on the first person for fear that…
DX: But you guys have a really devoted fan base.
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Ms. Jack Davey: We do, we do.
DX: And they’re always fighting your battles like, “They did that first!”
Ms. Jack Davey: And people still, to this day, will bring that up. I think that’s one thing we’ve had to learn—and which we revel in now—is [to] let other people, in your work, speak for you. You don’t have to say a word.
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The Return of J*Davey
Brook D’Leau:Yeah, we have a hands off approach to it. All these ideas are there for the taking, you know what I mean? We take ideas from other artists that we’re inspired by so…
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Ms. Jack Davey: We try to put a little bit of a remix on it…
Brook D’Leau: Listen, I will never be ok with just doing something that’s a direct rip. Not a direct, direct rip. Of course, so many different things influence us but it’s like “How do you make that your own?”
DX: Because being influenced by is not copying. They’re two very different things.
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Brook D’Leau: Talk to any renowned artist. As much as he is overly referenced, [Jean-Michel] Basquiat did the same thing. Picasso and all these other artists inspired him. He redid a lot of those pieces but it was like those ideas going through his brain. Pretty much, a lot of people don’t even involve their own brain in it. There just like that-to-that. And then you have songs where it’s like, “Oh, this song is a sample of a sample of a sample.” It’s like, “I sampled this song, and the song I sampled from is sampled from someone else.” And it’s like where is your idea?
Ms. Jack Davey: And who’s getting the check?
Brook D’Leau: [Laughs] It’s weird. We obviously have talent individually. But, it’s rare when I see the reaction I want to see, outside of J*DaVeY. I don’t see that thing. We just have a thing we do together that we’re not able to replicate outside of that. I value it, and also realize there’s a void. There’s a place for that. We filled a void for whatever was missing. All day, she could be a writer and do a million songs and put out solo projects. I could do the same thing, but you can’t really deny energy when you hear it. There’s just something about it. We just keep it movin’ and still do what we do. I mean, we’ve been doing it for 14 years now. So, I go [with] what I know.
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