Jesse Stephens is just one of those guys. You know the type- extremely talented and can basically learn how to do anything. His art and music is imbued with one overriding characteristic- simplicity. But as one who masters the art of simplicity knows, there is often more there than meets the eye.

Design: Jesse Stephens

I’ve looked forward to doing something like this with you for quite a while now. It’s been a few years since we first collaborated on photoshop tennis matches – which, I will ad, was a very enjoyable and inspiring experience (Jesse and I had the longest running photoshop tennis match on baseboard.net history at one time, which you will have to take our word for it, since baseboard.net is no longer).

For you, which came first – design or music?

They have both always been there, my Dad's a musician and also an artist, so I’ve always been doing it. I’ve always been into drawing ever since I was a kid, I don’t remember not drawing and I also don’t remember not playing an instrument either. One of my earliest memories is taking piano lessons, I was about 6- I’m not very studious though so I wasn’t very good [laughs]. But yeah, always music and I’m counting design and drawing as the same thing just one lead to the other.

Piano is your first instrument?

Yeah or the ukelele, there’s some funny photos of me carrying around a ukelele in my nappy.

Did you go to school for either music or art, or are you self taught in both?

I studied 2 years of design after high school and I did 3 years of piano theory during high school but I gave that up because I can’t practice.

Photoshop Tennis. Design: Jesse Stephens

I’m extremely envious of your ability to express yourself in both the audio and visual art forms. I’d picked up the guitar a few times when I was younger but never had the discipline to stick with it, I always ended up right back with the visual arts.

But even today I feel something inside of me that desires to be expressed through music. Can you talk about your experiences with that? Are there times when only a visual expression will suit the inspiration and vice versa?

Yeah, not really. I’ve never really felt that particular with the visual. I tend to spread myself pretty thin. I’m not as good as I’d like to be at everything, and because design is what I do for work, I don’t tend to get emotionally involved very much in that. Whereas music was always an outlet, especially in those difficult teenage years when all you want to do is sit in your bedroom and play nirvana songs [laughs]. So music has always been the emotional thing for me, not design.

It seemed like you put emotion into our photoshop tennis shots.

I guess I do, yeah true. That all comes out of what I’m feeling at the time, but that’s really only a bad emotion- a kind of disgust, hurt or sadness, that’s the only sort of emotion I feel that I can effectively convey with what I do. If I try to convey contentment and happiness it comes across as corny and cheesy for me.

Through your music and design?

Both ways yeah. I’m not good at humor. A lot of it is quite dark when I look back at it, I know what I was reading at the time, I might have been reading a book and it just sort of sparked it. There’s a few I can think of that are pretty heavy. I wish I could be more positive with it, but it just doesn’t seem right.

I was reading a letter the other day that Pope John Paul wrote to artists, in it he says that “The Spirit is the mysterious Artist of the universe” and that “there are many impulses which, either from within or from without, can inspire your talent. Every genuine inspiration, however, contains some tremor of that “breath” with which the Creator Spirit suffused the work of creation from the very beginning” He then goes on to say that its this divine breath that reaches out to human genius and stirs it’s creative power.

Do you recognize that process in your work?

What about you?

No, I don’t think so, that’s a tough question for me. [Serious long thought] Good luck typing this one up! I don’t even know who I would say is inspired. Obviously, we’re given these gifts by the fact that we’re created with the ability to love, and to enjoy music and to play and to enjoy a work of art in any way, and that people have been given the ability to create these things and to enjoy them is a reflection that we are made in Gods image. I would just never say that my work…yeah… it’s just too big.

Like I said, I have a lot of difficulty conveying good emotions, or positive emotions so the things that really move me to write or to do things are often anger or frustration or darkness, darkness is just sort of a feeling I guess, It's something I can't process unless I do it.

Some people do it really, really well, I sort of envy that, even Sufjan Stevens, he's able to write about his love of people, and family- he's still got a tinge of sadness which I can relate to a lot. Even about his faith he can write sort of really obvious lyrics about his faith and not come across as really corny. It's interesting.

I know that you have been working for quite a while on an album. How is it coming along?

I was hoping you weren't gonna ask me about that! Yeah, I've been sidetracked, I'm still working on it, one day I'll finish it.

What are some of the challenges you've faced so far with it?

Me, and my creative process- I'll put something down, and maybe I'll buy a better mic or get better equipment, or I think of a better idea, which means I've got to redo everything again basically. Which, isn't true really, I don't have to but that's just the way I feel and the way I end up doing it. So at the moment I have to redo all the vocals [laughs].

That is a good lead-in to my next question, would you consider yourself a perfectionist, if so, do you ever see that as an obstacle to progress?

[laughs all around]

Ahhh yeah, it's a huge obstacle. It's probably my biggest obstacle. It's funny though, I don't expect perfection, and alot of my favorite artists are people who have imperfections in their work- an out of time drum beat, or a wrong chord, or bits and pieces of noise, that sort of stuff. But, for some reason, I can't leave any in my recordings. I sort of have to be able to listen to it with other people and not think "I should have fixed that". Which is really stupid, but it's the way it is really.

Photoshop Tennis. Design: Clint Fisher

That's why those Photoshop tennis things were really great, you work on them for such a limited time and you put them out and they go on and you can't take them back once they're out. Even like now, if I release a demo, I'm disinclined to bring it back and work on it just because it's out there the way it is and people like it for what it is. But if no one has ever heard it, then I'll work on it forever and continue to work on it just because- I can I guess. And then there's people like you who I show the good stuff to and they say "I like the old one better".

[laughs all around]

Which really sucks!

You hinted at it before, but is there a recurring theme in your work, something you constantly address in one way or another?

Yeah, probably. Most of my songs are about family and friends, just relationships and how I deal with them.

Are you interested in pursuing a career with your music, or is it something that you just want to always do whether its the main thing you are doing or not?

Yeah, it's just something I enjoy doing. I've been doing a lot of recording for other people as well, my brother and his band, also another friend of mine- recording and sort of collaborating as well. I enjoy the whole process, so it's not just song writing I guess. I'd have to do the swap, where music is the 9 to 5 and then design would probably fall into that slot that music currently occupies.

How much has your daughter changed your artistic life, do you have new perspectives and directions?

I cry a lot easier. I was always pretty easy on the cry but these days... I was reading Kurt Cobains suicide note yesterday and welled up. He said something about his daughter and how she just reminds him of what he used to be like- happy, unaffected- it's just so sad.

Yeah, well that's funny isn't it, because that's the only song I've ever been able to write that's happy, is a song about her.

Have I heard it?

No.

And it's happy? That's good!

Well... It's not happy.

[laughs all around]

It's like a 4 letter word!

I guess it's nice. It's about a nice thing.

I remember a while back you saying that Sufjan Stevens played a large part in re-energizing your faith. Can you share your experience with that?

Did I say that? Yeah, I definitely found his ability to put it out there and write about it, is a definite point in time for me.

but his music didn't annoy me or bug me, it was kind of really- "yeah this is right, this is what it should be about, you should be writing these kinds of songs, praising God". You know that's what all the Psalms are about- David, all he did was write about God and how great he was. I wish I could do it. I really envy that. It did give me that new perspective on things. I still sort of struggle with things, but.. that's just the way it is with me.

For a couple of years now, I’ve felt that we are just on the edge of a real creative renaissance. I think the time is ripe for authenticity and honesty, and that it’s our generation that is going to lead the arts into really meaningful directions where creativity and spirituality are more intertwined then they ever have been.

Do you think there is something big on the horizon?

There's probably something big. I don't know if it's gonna be an artistic renaissance, armageddon maybe. Yeah...I like the internet you know, when it's used for good instead of evil. Just things you know, the way you can be in touch with people, and it's not about...money. And yeah, like you say, if this thing's coming, it's gonna be because there's no money involved anymore. I'd love the day that record companies fold up under their own wasteful spending, it's ridiculous.

I really look forward to when that's over and people seek out the music that wasn't played to them on the radio. Like that Last.fm thing, it's awesome, such a great service, I've found so many great artists, that I would have never heard before, just because someone recommended it, or just because they pop up in a playlist, you like this guy- well you might like this guy. It's not always right, but.. And there's no money involved in that, these people are just doing it, but it's obviously a career for them as well.

I definitely feel that your music is part of that direction, and for as much as I listen to it, I can sincerely say that without reservation.

I think when you are heavy into appreciating music, you find out that there are certain songs, albums and musicians that are meant just for you as a listener and their work becomes gifts to you that touch your life in very specific tangible ways, and I want to thank you for giving me Jesse Stephens gifts.

[laughs] No problem. Well, I'm glad that you like it, because, well, that's what it's for really. I wouldn't give it out, if I didn't hope that someone might like it. Even, more than like, it means something. It means something to me, obviously that's why I do it, but for it to mean something for someone else is, awesome, it's what it's all about.

It comes across as authentic, and honest and transparent, and I think that's part of what makes real art, so that's why it inspires me.

I believe in honesty, above everything else really.

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