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<\/p>\nThroughout the first decade of the new century, Jamie McLean played guitar in beloved New Orleans institution the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. For the last several years, McLean has served as guitarist for another Crescent City legend, Aaron Neville. But alongside those duties McLean has long since established himself as a singer and songwriter in his own right. Touring in support of One and Only<\/i>, the latest album from the Jamie McLean Band, the guitarist played at Asheville, N.C.’s Isis Music Hall on September 12.<\/p>\n
McLean is a regular visitor to Asheville. With the Dirty Dozen Brass Band he played at the Bele Chere Festival in 2005; with his own band, he played that festival twice. When the DDBB returned in 2010 for that year\u2019s Warren Haynes\u2019 Christmas Jam, McLean was in the group as well. \u201cI remember playing the Orange Peel a lot with them, too,\u201d McLean says. \u201cAsheville was always a regular stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But he notes that for whatever reason, there was a gap of a few years when he didn\u2019t play here. \u201cBut then last year, we played the Diana Wortham Theatre with Marc Broussard,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThat was a sold-out show; people came up to the merch table afterwards and asked, \u2018When\u2019s the next one?\u2019 So we quickly turned around and booked a show at Isis in May of this year.\u201d And he\u2019s coming back again.<\/p>\n
Partly through his work with the DDBB, McLean has strong connections to the jam band scene. But the strong thread that runs through his work\u2014especially on his studio albums\u2014is an emphasis on concise songwriting. \u201c More than anything, I feel that the songs are the strongest part,\u201d he says. \u201cI always want to focus my energy on that.\u201d He offers the example of one of his favorite artists, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. \u201cThey\u2019re a prime example of a really great band with great songs,\u201d he says. \u201cThey could be concise on an album, and then go rock the songs on stage. And that\u2019s something we\u2019re shooting for.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut really, more than anything, I\u2019m trying to focus on writing great songs,\u201d McLean says.<\/p>\n
In pursuit of that goal, the guitarist tries to create music that feeds listeners three ways. \u201cThe saxophone player for the Dirty Dozen used to say the band gives you something for the mind, for the body, and the soul,\u201d McLean says. \u201cAnd the biggest part of that is the soul.\u201d He notes that hasn\u2019t always fully appreciated those values. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I first joined the Dirty Dozens, I had been studying a lot and playing a lot,\u201d he recalls. \u201cA big part of my plan was trying to be flashy, playing a lot of notes and showing off all the stuff that I had been working on.\u201d He laughs when he explains how that went over. \u201cAfter my big long solo with all these notes, the baritone sax player would come out and play one note over and over and over and over. And the place would go crazy! I quickly realized that it\u2019s not the number of notes; it\u2019s the feeling that you put into it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that feeling is something McLean tries to convey with his songwriting as well. Though he typically writes alone, in the months before making One and Only<\/i>, he decided to try a different approach, co-writing. So he headed to Nashville.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a different creative thing that can happen when you get more than one person in the room,\u201d he says. And while most of the songs on One and Only<\/i> are the product of writing solo, McLean feels he learned a great deal in his Nashville songwriting sessions. He says that the regimen\u2014one co-writing session in the morning, another in the afternoon\u2014was something like a gym workout. \u201cWhether those songs would ever end up on an album is irrelevant,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was more a matter of getting the repetitions in, flexing that muscle.\u201d <\/p>\n
One and Only<\/em> is a varied collection of songs; the title track features an arrangement that\u2019s very much in the Nashville tradition, while other tunes lean more in a rock direction. McLean laughs when he\u2019s asked if he\u2019s trying to confound those who would try to pigeonhole him into one style of music. \u201cWhen I sit down to write, I don\u2019t consciously think, \u2018I\u2019m going to write a rock song now,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThese things just sort of present themselves.\u201d He does allow that several of the new album\u2019s songs are related in their subject matter. \u201cThere are a few new New Orleans-style funky numbers,\u201d he says, \u201cbut there are a lot of, for a lack of a better word, love songs.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cBut I like having a couple different little things to keep interest,\u201d McLean says with a chuckle. \u201cEspecially in the era of the short attention span.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Throughout the first decade of the new century, Jamie McLean played guitar in beloved New Orleans institution the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. For the last several years, McLean has served […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62],"tags":[237,3619],"class_list":["post-15542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","tag-asheville","tag-jamie-mclean","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15544,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15542\/revisions\/15544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}