Jam Sullivan & Rob Pennington on Pure Local Extra

On the 5th of October, the Pure Local Extra show at Newport City Radio was joined by solo artist Jam Sullivan and Rob Pennington of The Flying Spider Revival for a chat about their latest music news and an insight into their experience with music. The two musicians had only met each other last week as they played together in a show They have two very different styles and experiences with music so let’s get right into my overview of the interview.

Starting off the interview Jam and Rob talked about just how long they’ve been in the music business. Rob has been making music for around 28 years now and he’s had quite the journey in finding his current style. He started playing in an indie rock band but quickly changed to an alt country style with a friend. This style of music would evolve to his current style of country rock. 

As for Jam, her musical journey started in primary school with classical guitar lessons. Although, she would lose interest in that instrument. She would later take up singing as it was something she had always been interested in. As said by Jam herself, she had always been nervous and wasn’t really interested in performing. However, an experience with an open mic night changed that. She told us that she went to Cambridge and made the choice to partake in an open mic night. She was going to be leaving soon and hadn’t done much so she bit the bullet and took part, her logic being that if it went horribly wrong then she wouldn’t have to see the people at the mic night again. Thankfully, the night was a success and it grew her confidence with performing.

We next took on the topic of songwriting and the process it entails. For Jam, She couldn’t pin down an exact process for writing, although most songs she writes come from the same place: raw emotion. She told us that when she feels something it comes across in what she writes. The part of writing a new song that she struggles with the most is the melody, she told us that lyrics come first for her songs. 

As for Rob, it’s a similar story with not having a set way of writing. He told us that he usually comes up with snippets of a potential song, so a set of lyrics, chords, etc, and if he remembers it in a week or so, then it’s worth putting into a song. Rob gave us an example of when this happened, he told us that he found a specific guitar riff which he played non stop for a week. That riff would end up in The Flying Spider Revival song ‘Louisiana’. 

Throughout the show we listened to some songs by our guests. Firstly, we listened to a demo of Rob’s song ‘Many Miles To Go’ , a song with an emotional backstory. Rob told us that he lost his younger sister a few years ago, he imagined going to see all of the places he went with her when they were younger and wrote about that. A little later, we listened to Jam’s ‘Thinking About It’. She told us about the song, she told us that it’s about not knowing what others are thinking about. More specifically, constantly thinking about something you want to say to someone but not getting the chance.

We briefly discussed Newport City Radio’s newest project ‘Covers Club’, in short, we gathered a group of local artists who perform in a number of different styles. Each artist picked a song from each other and have to cover it in their own style. Rob is taking part in this project and has to cover a reggae song in the country genre. While Jam isn’t taking part, she said she was interested. 

Lastly, our guests told us about any upcoming gigs or songs. As for Jam, she is working to release an EP at the end of this year to the beginning of next year. She is also going to be playing some shows in Barry and Abergavenny. For Rob, he has some songs to be released, one of which is a Christmas song. He also has some shows, one of which is in Aberdare.

Finally, as per tradition, Jam, Rob, Kym and Amber gave a kazoo cover of a famous pop song from the 80’s: Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Gove You Up.”

If you missed the show you can listen again here:

https://player.autopod.xyz/707789

Written by Amber C.M