Justin Jay Talks Fantastic Voyage, Goals for 2019, and More [Exclusive Interview]

Let me paint a picture of one of the most memorable moments from Origins Festival – for more reasons than one. The inaugural event was in full swing, Autograf was killing it on stage, and I was awaiting the young musical genius Justin Jay to meet me for an exclusive interview right before his performance.

The artist chatted with us about pre-show rituals, performing live, his DirtyBird fam, and much more. And then suddenly, disaster struck, lending a very serious shake-your-head moment to the situation.

We’ll get more into it later. For now, let’s chat Justin Jay and his Fantastic Voyage!

RR: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us today. How are you doing?

JJ: I’m going great. I just got in from L.A., easy flight. You guys don’t do daylight savings, so that’s interesting.

RR: You’re about to take the stage here at Origins? Do you have any pre-show rituals besides interviews?

JJ: My biggest pre-show ritual is to frantically try and finish up as many new songs as I can right before the show, in a way that’s unreasonable. Where my ride is always outside and I’m like, “hey I’m gonna be like 5 more minutes,” but really it’s 20 more minutes because I need to tweak this drum. (laughs)

RR: Over the past year or so you’ve been transitioning into live sets and performing with your band Fantastic Voyage. What was that process like? Any advice for artists that are looking into taking the leap into live sets?

JJ: It’s really scary, but the amount of fun that it is made me overcome how scary it is. Personally speaking, it’s way scarier than DJing, but the satisfaction for me, it’s like, it can go so bad, but it can also go so amazing. It’s like higher risk and reward, perhaps. But, DJing can also be incredible.

In terms of advice, I went about building a live show in a pretty interesting way because I really wanted to do something that didn’t feel like I was pressing play and letting things happen on auto pilot. So when I first started, I wanted to not use a computer and I did that for a little bit. We did one show and it was okay, but I realized to do that, I needed like seven people on stage, which is difficult. It’s a lot of friends and it’s really fun, but it’s hard to take on the road. So I got into using Ableton and that journey was really cool. Some technical advice that I found very useful was, first, I thought about these songs in terms of how they’re arranged, singing, piano, keyboard parts, bass, and drums. It’s like five things, for the most part. It started with me and guitar, where I just took my voice and guitarist out of the songs. Then I took the keyboards and the bass, and brought along two more friends. Then I took the drums out and brought a drummer. And so, step by step, I was able to slowly figure out what was working and how it was done. I feel like there’s so many creative ways to do live music that’s electronic with the computers and stuff. Honestly, you can do whatever you want, as long as you’re having fun. I feel like that’s all that really matters, you know.

RR: Can you tell us about any music you’re currently working on?

JJ: Yes, of course. There’s a ton of stuff. The main thing is I’m finishing up a new album. It’s been really fun. I’ve been playing out a lot of the new music already. I played this one song at the family set at Dirtybird Campout West Coast in October. It was so much fun, the song I played is really chill, mellow, and kinda pretty. Normally during the family set, everyone is playing like the biggest bangers they have. A lot of people were like “dude, what was that?” It was funny because it was the chill song in that set, but yeah, that was cool to get some love on the stuff that’s gonna be coming out. That’s the main thing and the classic, more shows.

RR: Any news you’d like to share regarding your label, Fantastic Voyage?

JJ: Thank you for asking. There’s so much stuff. Lots of awesome music. A bunch of bootlegs, edits, and EP’s. A bunch of great original music. Pretty much everyone in my band has one or two EP’s coming up and then also EP’s from some guys who are little, outside of the band, but good friends as well. Some cool remixes too. We have this crew of homies who are called Thumpasaurus, they’re a funk band that’s super dope. We’ve got some cool remixes of their stuff coming up from guys like Friend Within and this dope British guy, Cody Currie, and some other hip-artsy DJ’s. Lots of music on all fronts.

RR: One major goal or goals for the upcoming year?

JJ:  The biggest goal for next year is just to finish this next album and it’s coming along very well. It can be really hard to finish a song, it can be even harder to finish 15 songs. I’m very lucky, to be able to get help from your homies when you don’t know what to do is so awesome. You know, some of these songs are really difficult to mix, so to be able to be like “yo guys, how does this sound? Is this thing too loud?” Sometimes more hands on like, “how should I compress the drums on this?” It’s cool. One thing that’s been really sick is that a bunch of the guys in the band, we live together and we have this like silly frat house vibe kind of thing. There’s six of us and the guys that aren’t in the band are always stopping. It’s like a good energy of a lot of creative ideas and a lot of musical fire power.

RR: Many of your band members were college buddies too, right?

JJ: Yeah, half college, half high school homies. It’s really dope to see that my worlds have totally collided.

RR: We like to ask one fun question. Being a part of the Dirtybird family, if DB had awards similar to high school yearbook awards, which members of the DB clan would you vote for as, Most Likely To Be President, Best Dressed, and Class Clown? Obviously you would win Best Hair, so we’re not going to ask you that.

JJ: Wow I’m honored. So Claude VonStroke for Most Likely Be President. Best dressed, yo, kind of a sleeper, but dude, Kill Frenzy. He’s got such good style. He’s had good styles, plural. When he had long hair and was kinda like rockstar, leather pants, he did that. He did the man bun before that was really big. Then buzz cut, he looks like a cool European biker dude now. Class clown, I feel like probably Billy Kenny. He’s so silly. Free Billy! He got detention. Praying for him to come back. Great question.

And then, just like that, following a great question came a great disaster. My iPhone 7 (yes, I know, I need to upgrade, now more than ever) decided it was time to strike out and ruin the rest of the interview. I never thought I would wrap up an interview like this. However, this one’s an exception because I need to take a moment to laugh at myself and my momentary fail.

More to come in the next chat with this artist.

Special thanks to Justin Jay for taking the time to chat with us!

Connect with Justin Jay:
https://www.facebook.com/justinjayofficial
https://twitter.com/justinjaymusic
https://soundcloud.com/justin-jay
https://www.instagram.com/JustinJaymusic

Photo Credit: Phoenix Gonzales

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