INTERVIEW WITH JESSE LABELLE
February 10, 2010

By Vickie Young
Photos Courtesy of Wax Records


Vickie: Hi Jesse.

Jesse: Hey Vickie, how are you?

Vickie: I am doing good, thanks.


Jesse: You're right on time….actually right to the minute.

Vickie: Oh perfect, that's awesome. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.

Jesse: No problem. Thank you for calling me up in the first place and wanting to do this.

Vickie: I always love seeing Canadian talent.

Jesse: It's a pleasure to be able to be some of that Canadian talent for you. It's been a long time coming, for all of this to be happening, so it's very nice to finally get to do things like this and talk to people about it.

Vickie: Absolutely. I have been reading your path and journey and it's unbelievable.

Jesse: Oh, thank you, very much.

Vickie: No problem. I actually wanted to talk about the early part of your career if that's okay?

Jesse: That's absolutely perfect.

Vickie: Okay, good to hear. I was looking back and I see that one of your so-called "perfect accidents" actually happened on City TV's Speaker's Corner. Can you tell me about this and how that ended up in marriage proposals?

Jesse: Yeah, absolutely. It was probably 8 years ago maybe even longer, can't put a date on this at this point. I had this crazy idea….I thought you know how Speakers Corner was actually around, which I miss. I think the building's not the same without that little you know public video booth in the corner, but that is a whole other conversation. I went down there, a couple friends were with me and I brought my guitar and I thought I wanted to go on air and sing. At that point I was sort of looking at any way of gaining some sort of attention in the music industry, some way of getting my name and my voice out there. So I did it and it got shown as the pick of the week on City TV Speakers Corner, though I never actually saw this clip. I just heard from a lot of people that it was chosen. After I'd done it, at the last second I thought... what if someone likes this, how are they going to get in touch with me? I was about to put my phone number then I finally got the idea to put my email.

Vickie: (Laughs) Ah-ha.

Jesse: I put my hotmail account on there and within the next week nothing happened, but when it aired all of a sudden I would go to my in box and there would be 400 new messages waiting.

Vickie: Oh my God.

Jesse: ……. they were all from people who had seen this little clip of me singing, and most of them…. and I would say 99% of them were girls saying, "Oh my God I love you, will you marry me?" And, "Where can I get your music?" It was a little overwhelming to be honest. At that point, I hadn't realized that it had aired on TV and I thought this is great because people are responding. This is what you always look for as a response, you're looking to connect with people, and I got all these emails. One of them that didn't say "I love you, will you marry me!" was from an unknown at the time - Fefe Dobson.

Vickie: Right.

Jesse: And hers was the one that said, "Hey, you know my mom manages me and I am a singer and a song writer. I am trying to get started in this business and would you like to write together?" I thought, that's refreshing that's why I did it.

Vickie: Absolutely

Jesse: That's why I went on TV, not to get a marriage proposal! At the young age I was probably 16 or 17 years old at the time, I wasn't looking for marriage. I was looking for a way into this industry.

Vickie: Wow, you must have realized right then that you definitely made an impression.

Jesse: Oh, absolutely, oh yeah. Like I said it was overwhelming up to that point. All I had really done is play the guitar at the cafeteria at lunch at high school.

Vickie: Yes.

Jesse: You know I took a class in high school, a vocal music class, my teacher was such a huge inspiration, such a huge reason that I was able to do what I do. Every day in high school there was a class I would go in and sing for 45 minutes and she really embraced the fact that I did guitar and she would always say, "Why don't you bring your guitar to class?" She played piano as most vocal teachers do. She really nurtured something inside of me that I knew was there that I was looking to bring out. I am getting a little ahead of myself. All I knew up to that point is playing in the halls out of high school; it's kind of how I made friends. High school is dominated by popularity…….as I went through high school it was very much like you would think you would see in the movies - like a popularity contest, between the pretty people and the ones that have the cars, and who's the first person to drive. All I had was my guitar and my music so that was my way to get through all that.

Vickie: That was a great thing to bring to the table though.

Jesse: Yeah, it was making me more friends in high school than anything else. I was the guy playing in the halls and music has a way of doing that. It has a way of attracting people's attention that you may not otherwise speak to you; especially in high school…..you are still figuring out your personality and learning about yourself and the world around you.

Vickie: Exactly! Well you sound like you have an extreme maturity about you.

Jesse: (Laughs) Thank you very much for that.

Vickie: You're very welcome. Did this incident not also lead you to meet Dave Thomson whom you became writing partners with?

Jesse: Yes, ultimately he did not have much to do with Speakers Corner but you know there is a lot of ways of looking at the chain of events that becomes your life, I believe that it did have a fairly instrumental part in it. It was more the playing of high school that lead to me meeting Dave Thomson, to make a really long story short; I attracted the attention of a couple of girls in high school one of whom which was very good friends of Jay Levine, the base player for the Philosopher Kings, and Simon in Prozac... You remember them?

Vickie: Yes, I do.

Jesse: Yeah, at the time Prozac was starting. He taught me how to nurture what I had. He would say, "You should go by there (Sony) and you should work with the writers there. One of those writers happened to be Dave Thomson, and the very first time we got together I asked him, "What do you like aside from wave?" and the obvious influences that he had in the past?

Vickie: Right.

Jesse: ……he said, "I really like the Michelle Branch and that sound, and the pop rock guitar sound." All I could think to myself was, "Wow! This guy is exactly like me. He's got the same influences. He wants to same thing." We sat down and wrote a song, within 15 minutes we had people in Sony poking their heads in and saying, "Hey, what is that? That sounds really, really good."

Vickie: Wow.

Jesse: It was like an instant bond the two of us had. We knew immediately that what we were looking to create was very parallel.

Vickie: That's incredible.

Jesse: Yeah….. We have written together for years. I mean when it came time to write this album, the obvious choice was Dave. We call him Dwave actually…..but everybody thought, "Yup, Dave is the guy!" It was like there was no thought process behind it. He and I always created what I thought was the best sounding and best lyrically and melodically. We had the best writing and production relationship so it was a very easy choice to have him produce the record.

Vickie: Well you have obviously made the right choice with your latest single "Perfect Accident" and the response it's getting.

Jesse: Yeah, it's great. It's so wonderful to see all of that coming to fruition. It was a song that was written so many years ago. It actually had fallen off my radar before I started speaking with the record label. That was one of those songs I had always loved and it was one I had played here and there live, but it was never really out front. It was one I had done a while ago and then when I started sitting down and meeting with the record label, they said, "You know what our favourite song is - it's "Perfect Accident". That was a blast from the past, it was written 6 or 7 years ago.



Vickie: (Laugh) I can't believe all of the karma going your way.

Jesse: Yeah, I am a really big believer in all of that, I think that energy is extremely apparent in everybody and the world around. You can't deny it because there is a natural energy that flows between us and the world and everything around us. Last year, I guess in Jan, I met a woman practicing Reiki. Have you ever heard of Reiki before? It's with the energy, the aura, the soul it's all very it's based around the idea that your body possesses energy you cannot actually see.

Vickie: Okay.

Jesse: But it's there and it draws certain people to you and it draws you to certain people. You know Reiki is more or less cleansing of that energy.... I have never believed in anything like that before but I started seeing her within in the last couple of months I felt like, "Wow! I am drawing in all these great things into my atmosphere. It just makes me a real big believer in the fact that the energy is all around us and it's something you can't really ignore.

Vickie: Is that kind of like the concept of, "Ask the universe for it and they will give it back to you".

Jesse: Exactly. If you put it out into the universe and believe it and it's going to find you somehow.

Vickie: Well, you should keep doing it, Jesse. (Laughs) It's obviously working.

Jesse: I haven't been to see her in a year. I was sitting with all my friends last week and I was thinking to myself I've got to go back I've got to keep doing this cause it certainly worked for me last year. That's the way to start out the year on a good note…..I am all for it.

Vickie: Well, that's fantastic. One of the things I noticed is you lend a lot of your song writing to fellow renowned Canadian song writers.

Jesse: Yes, that is something I am very proactive in.

Vickie: Is that difficult to do and are you more critical on their delivery?

Jesse: Sorry, you mean when I am writing with other people?

Vickie: No, when you have lent your song to other artists. Is that something that is difficult to do, or….?

Jesse: Oh, okay gotcha. Not so much, actually. I have yet to lend a song to somebody I haven't written with them. It's still at the point when I do lend music to other people, I always make sure to involve them in the creation process.

Vickie: Okay

Jesse: There is only one time it didn't happen which was with Canadian Idol. It was when Rex Goudie was the runner up or 2nd place winner and I had written a song with Dave that we were considering putting on my album. But the truth was the song didn't feel quite like it was me, at first I felt like it was a great song it was meant for somebody else and when the opportunity came along, I placed it with him. I thought, "I hope he kills it", and he did a great job of it. I was never supper critical of it.

Vickie: Okay.

Jesse: There are cases though when I write with somebody and in the writing process I end up singing a lot of my heart and soul into it the song and the tough part about that is I am writing about something specific, whether it's about a specific person or a specific situation, and I really feel like when the song is finished and demoed up, it has to retain that feeling because to me it is extremely personal.

Vickie: Right

Jesse: ….and to this person, it maybe or maybe not, but if I don't feel the emotion is there, I'll be the first person to comment on it saying, "No, no, no, you've got to record it this way, or you've got to redo this or redo that".

Vickie: Okay, so you have a say in the delivery of it then?

Jesse: I try to, yeah. Sometimes it becomes beyond your control because you just write it with them so someone else is responsible for recording it. So again I usually try to involve them in the creation process of it, especially in the process of the lyrics. Because me, personally, I can't sing about something that didn't actually really happen to me in my life……I can't do it. It doesn't give me anything to draw back on.

Vickie: Exactly…… I understand.

Jesse: I am not saying that I am a bad actor. (Laughs) Which I am? Actually I am a horrible actor. I need to draw on a real life experience. I feel like if you're drawing on something phoney, someone is going to see it, it's is going to come across somewhere.

Vickie: I think that's maybe why your lyrics of such great vulnerability to them. It must be because you are actually feeling the emotions as you are creating them.

Jesse: Absolutely. That's a really important thing to me, that there is honesty in the song. Without that; maybe you will get 1 out of 10 people who notice it, but 1 out of 10 people is enough to make me think, "That's not cool, it has to be real."

Vickie: Well, that's so great that you're so convicted about that. Have you ever considered taking your talents to another outlet like novel writing or script writing?

Jesse: You know, there have been lots of times when I thought, "Yeah, I would love to try and write fiction or turn some real life experiences……let me rephrase that, I have thought of that before. I definitely have thought of writing short stories and I really believe that the idea of it should stem from something real. You know, if I try to spread myself too thin amongst too many things, it would take away from one thing. I think I have to get a little more comfortable with what I am doing musically and get grounded with the music first before I take on a whole other level of writing. To answer your question it's definitely something I have thought about multiple times. I think I have two unfinished books or books that I have started on my computer that have got one or two chapters in them. I always lose it to the music, that's probably why. The music is the love and that's what always takes over.

Vickie: Right. Maybe you could bring the two things together by writing about your journey?

Jesse: Yeah…..absolutely, I would not be opposed to that. I have always thought if I was going to take up writing to take some sort of course on it, journalism or on writing short stories. It's something I think you'd really do need to learn about. There's definitely an education process behind it or at least there would be for me as an aid. Music to me has always come to me extremely naturally. I think that if I were to go to pursue something in professional writing, I feel like I'd deserve it a lot more if I went to study it for a little while.



Vickie: Okay, fair enough. That's a great way to be setting the path in the right direction and doing it right the first time. Do you think that your grandmother's career has some influence on you choosing music or having it in your genetic makeup?

Jesse: I think it has everything to do with it. I was talking to my mom about that the other day. I really think it's genetically programmed in me. They say that all traits skip a generation, right? Whether it's physical traits or whether they are things deep down inside of you in your genes. I believe in a lot of ways this maybe picking up where she left off and continuing what she did with her life. In a lot of ways I wish that she was around to see it, but then I also think in a lot of ways she knows what I am doing.

Vickie: Absolutely. So you're fresh off of Emily Osmond's Tour. How did that go?

Jesse: The tour was great. The kids that came to see it were so responsive and the parents were responsive too, and that was one of the surprising things. Not that I didn't think it would happen because I am using to playing in coffee houses and to a more subdued crowd than a bunch of screaming teenagers, but it was great, you know, I was really able to connect with the crowd. People were so kind and gave so many kind words of support. It was an amazing experience to have so early on. It's kind of unbelievable.

Vickie: I heard that there were people that waited hours just to be photographed with you.

Jesse: Yeah. It was wild. I really liked that part of it. I thought it's really important to get to meet everyone that came out to see you, especially willing to wait for 2 hours just to say hi and shake your hand. I am all for waiting around; I think that they deserve that.

Vickie: I see here too that you were nominated for the magazine "The one to watch for in 2010 with Nick Jonas and Drake."

Jesse: Yeah, that's a little wild too. I went to the same high school as Drake did.

Vickie: Oh, really!

Jesse: Yeah! It's wild. There's a bunch of people that have gone to the same school Shawnee, the lead on 90210, she went to that high school, too. She was really good friend with my little sister. So it's really cool to see all these people that I have known. They are out there doing their thing. I actually never met Drake, I never came across him. He was probably attending the same high school that I went to after I graduated, but I always heard the name Drake and knew he was on Degrassi. People are saying, "Hey, that's so cool that you know all these kids who were living in the same area and are now doing with their time."

Vickie: Oh absolutely. So what do you consider your biggest accomplishment so far?

Jesse: I think my biggest accomplishment is really being able to do something that I love, you know. To work at something for such a long time that a lot of people work at and I have been able to pretty much make a career out of something that doesn't seem like work to me.
The fact that it's working out now that's definitely like what I feel is my biggest accomplishment. After 10 years of doing it, really feels like it's starting to be really earned. You know I feel like it's something that I have been waiting for a really long amount of time.

Vickie: Oh, that's great that it's coming together for you. Passions always seems to show eventually.

Jesse: Yeah, absolutely.

Vickie: So your album is being released in Mid-March?

Jesse: Yes, it's going to be Mid-March early April. We're just putting some finishing touches on right now. We may actually go and record one or two more songs for it. I had this idea the other day that I wanted to put something on the album that was really broken down, very acoustic, very rootsy, really down to earth ‘cause we did this thing at the show which I am doing all the time now where the band leaves the stage and I just perform acoustically for a couple of songs. The response to that has been so great that I thought to myself, "If it takes two extra weeks to release the album because I want to go in there and put a really basic acoustic song to get that vibe out there on the album, then we'll push it back two weeks and it will definitely be worth it.

Vickie: Are you planning a tour?

Jesse: There a couple tours that were just putting the finishing touches on for probably right around when the album comes out. I am hoping to be on tour as much as I possibly can, you know. I love meeting all the fans and the supports of the music, and I love playing live; that's really the greatest reward.

Vickie: Okay, I have one more question for you Jesse. I want to know your favourite song on the album and why?

Jesse: Ah, favourite song on the album and why…..That's a tough call I'd written so many for this album and now I am just thinking of the ones that actually made it, you know. It's one of those albums where probably 20 songs were considered for it and only 10 are getting picked, so out of the 10 I probably would say my favourite song is "Australia". It was one of the most recent ones that I that I wrote. It comes from a different spot than a lot of the songs came from. I wrote it on the piano, which I never do. I am purely a guitar player, but that one came to me by sitting down at the piano and it was a different feeling to it it's the one that dials into every single song that I that I have written over the last 10 years of my life. It's kind of like the graduation of all of the writing that I have done; I think that song embodies it, that's why it's my favourite.

Vickie: Is that the one about the love story between the two people that have to part?

Jesse: Yeah, there's all kind of life's hope, lost loves, trust songs…..that one "Australia" is a song about somebody who more or less takes off into the world to find themselves in far off places and it's about the feelings that I have seen wondering how they are doing, not knowing where they are in the world, or if they are eventually coming back home. It's about the anticipation of them coming home. A little bit of fear of them coming back home and that you really don't know how they have changed.

Vickie: Well thank you so much Jesse. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for making Canada proud and I am looking forward to seeing what you have stacked for the future.

Jesse: Absolutely. I am looking forward to just keeping this year going. It's been an unbelievable year so far.

Vickie: Good stuff. Well, thank you again.

Jesse: You're very welcome.