Jamie Alimorad
Interview – Jenn Stookey
Photo – Sam Polonsky
I met Jamie at Two Old Hippies in Nashville, TN on a cloudy and sad looking day, but taking to Jamie about his career and music was anything but sad. He was welcoming, chipper, and open to speak about it all. I am always happily reassured when there are musicians in this world who are also smart, know what they’re doing, and how they’re going to continue in the future. Take a look at the interview with Jamie Alimorad below to find out about his self-taught background, awards he’s won, and what’s coming for him in the future.
Jenn Stookey: You went to college in Boston and did Music Technology right? So is that more like the recording side and not business?
Jamie Alimorad: Yeah, there was nothing on business. I did take music industry as my minor because I wanted to have that background for my career. But Music Tech, I went into it thinking it was going to be nonstop recording engineering. It was pretty different. There was a lot of audiosynthesis and building virtual keyboards and working with software but it was incredibly compositionally based. So we were writing songs and soundscapes and orchestration, so it really brought together all the aspects of what I would like to do as an artist.
JS: So you released your first album after you had graduated so do you think your college experience and doing all of that helped that release?
JA: For this path that I’m on without going to school at Northeastern, it would not have been this. My first album came as a direct result to winning a competition in Wister, MA which I found out through the grapevine at school. I won studio time and I went in there with this big plan that in 40 hours we could record a 4 song EP and somehow we did it and that’s how everything started.
JS: Did you go into the contest expecting anything?
JA: No! I just wanted to play and I saw it as a great opportunity and I had never played Wister. It was at the Wister Palladium which is a pretty big venue, it holds about 3,00 people and the place was absolutely mobbed. 65 acts, 12 hours of music on two stages. I felt good going in. I knew there was a prize which was either going to be studio time or cash so I went in thinking I was probably going to take the money because I have a great staff of professors that can record but then after talking it over with a management group and then even talking with the staff, they encouraged me to take the studio time and milk it as much as I could.
JS: So did you grow up listening to the same type of music that you perform?
JA: Yeah, both my parents were really influential with the music that was given to me. I grew up without cable so all the stuff from grunge that was going on from the early to mid-90’s I missed completely and nothing thatw as going on MTV I really listened to and in the car the radio wasn’t on that much and I was listening to cassettes. I grew up on a lot of 80’s music and I love that sound. I love early 80’s rock like strong pop rock, whether it’s a dude in a band or a singer/songwriter thing I really love, and then The Beatles. I just love everything about them.
JS: You’ve won a lot of awards and one of them being the American Songwriter lyric contest, which is amazing! How did it feel when you won that and how did it happen?
JA: It was for a song that I actually have not released. The lyrics were good enough to win that award.
JS: What type of a song was it?
JA: It’s kind of funky but it’s more rock funk with a little bit acoustic drive to it called, “Just To Be With You.” It was a song that I was considering for Cornerstone, my first EP, but we actually cut it. When we got into the studio and we were thinking about adding a 5th song, we presented it and we just listened to what we were playing but it didn’t really hold up to those other songs from an overall stance.
I wrote that song maybe about 2 years before recording Cornerstone. So I had grown as a writer at that point too and I certainly think I have written a lot better songs since then. But the timing worked for that song and got the nod from the magazine.
JS: So do you think you’ll ever re-mix it or master it?
JA: Oh yeah, I’d love to! I’ve played around with it a lot, new versions, different styles; I haven’t tinkered with the lyrics because apparently they’re good enough. I would like to go into it and maybe with what’s coming up next because stylistically it certainly fits with the bill.
JS: Do you have an EP or an album in the works?
JA: I’m working on something. Whether it’s going to be an EP or a full length is going to depend on timing. I’ve been working with the best in the biz, Gino Vinelli, who had his hay day in the 70s and 80s, unbelievable singer and songwriter. He really challenged me to go outside of my comfort zone from a writers perspective. I like to arrange immediately so I think of things like, “this note and this melody can interact with the guitar in this way.” He told me to get rid of all that and we have just been doing piano vocal stuff or guitar vocal stuff and just getting to the bone, really raw. That’s freed me up to explore a lot differently. Hopefully towards the end of the year we will have a strong idea of when the record will be coming out.
JS: I saw something that said you do music lessons? What type of lessons do you give?
JA: When I’m home I teach. I do piano lessons, voal lessons, drums, and guitar. I have about a dozen students and they keep me on my toes because they’re all ages, between 6 and 16. They’ll question you, they’ll ask “why are things this way?” which I like because it keeps me on my game and I’ll say, “well this is how it works.” It makes you practice more and gets you back into the discipline of the basics, playing your scales, doing rudiments, all that stuff.
JS: So did you take lessons for those when you were a kid or did you learn on your own?
JA: I took lessons for piano starting at 7 and that was the first instrument I ever learned to play. And then in 4th grade I started in band and played the alto saxophone and did lessons there and did that all through high school, was a total band geek. I was a drum major and we traveled all over the country playing Disney World, The Peach Bowl, Boston, it was great! And I formed my first garage band in 7th grade and since I had the instruments at my disposal and if the drummer wasn’t there then I’d be like, “well what’s this like?” and I would play drums, and the same goes for the rest of the instruments. So I started to fiddle, and eventually because of what I knew from Piano, I was able to turn it into an instrument that I could play.
JS: These next few questions are ones that we ask everybody we interview. The first one is, what has been the most difficult part about your career and how did you or are you continuing to overcome it?
JA: I think what’s really difficult right now is to get people to listen. There are so many people that think they’re “it” and sometimes it doesn’t translate. I compare the undiscovered, independent scene to a crowded Tokyo subway. You have thousands upon thousands of people trying to get through this little opening to “make it” and every now and then someone sneaks out and sometimes you’re at the wrong stop and the timing wasn’t right and maybe it wouldn’t be appropriate for that person to be on this big of a stage at that point in their career.
When you’re stuck in the pack and you’re like “please listen to me” whether it’s a record person, management, or an audience at a bar, you just want to get some sort of notice because you’re trying to move your career forward. You just hope that out of a show you get that one person that’s like, “you know, I really like what you did tonight and I would like to know more about you,” and have it grow naturally from there.
JS: What has been the highlight of your career?
JA: There has been a couple. I’m a big Boston Red Sox fan and four years ago I got the opportunity to sing the National Anthem at Fenway Park which was an absolute dream come true so on a little kid level that was a really cool moment.
To work with Gino has been an absolute thrill because he has been an idol for so long. I got to work with and meet some of my other idols like Fee Waybill of The Tubes and Rick Springfield. When you come into contact with them and they treat you like a peer and they ask for your opinion and then they listen, that’s really cool to be brought on that level and feel like you belong.
JS: If there was one moment for you to feel like you’ve made it what would it be?
JA: When I can sell out Fenway Park and it’s me, not the anthem, that’s the top for me. One day.
