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Mar 20, 2015 Jamie Lidell By Laura Studarus

Other than the jet lag, Jamie Lidell’s life is going pretty well. The genre-gobbling musician has just flown back to his Nashville, Tennessee home after logging some time writing with Janelle Monáe in London. Having just risen from a nap, he’s admittedly a bit sleepy when he answers the phone. But he also happens to be in a very good mood. Over the course of our conversation Lidell praises his health, friends, and even the friendly locals who can’t quite seem to get the hang of his crisp British lilt.

“I just love your accent!” he jokes, adopting a southern drawl. ‘Can you say cornbread?’ The whole thing will make me realize that I’m a long way from home. But it is my home. I live here with my wife. We love our lives here.”

Perhaps it’s all these good vibes, or simply the fact that at 41 years old, Lidell doesn’t feel like he has anything to lose, but recently, the musician took a leap of faith in the form of his newest single “Believe in Me.” A somber ballad played out against a slow-building bed of handclaps, pianos, and synths features some of Lidell’s most heartfelt lyrics to date. “Baby won’t you dry your eyes?” he croons in a heartsick baritone. “Don’t want to keep thinking about what could have been/and all the ways I could have tried.”

“It’s definitely not really easy to be vulnerable—because by nature, is it easy to walk down the street naked?” Lidell muses. “I think in my case, it’s more just trying to find something honest to say, even if it’s not a super positive, sellable catch phrase or slogan. I wanted to say something that felt right at the time. I think it’s really easy to hide behind the arm of certain lyrics and say nothing. Make everyone go ‘whoo!’ Then you don’t really put yourself on the line.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with a whoo here and there. Six albums and over 20 years into his career, Lidell has shifted roles with nearly every release. Soulful bandleader, electro pop weirdo, fearless experimenter, he’s done it all—often over the course of the same album.

“Somehow I felt like the most honest thing I could do is to be quite schizophrenic, even though it was seemingly confusing to an audience,” says Lidell. “I think the truth is, it’s the closest to my true personality. I like to be all over the place. One day I want to make some noisy thing, and then the next day I want to make some tearjerker. It’s just because I actually feel like that. That’s what I listen to as well.”

Although he has about fifty unreleased tracks in various stages of completion, Lidell is hesitating to speculate what his forthcoming release (his first since leaving Warp Records two years ago) will sound like. He moans about his lack of ability to simply put brackets around what he has, but also notes that the creative muses might not be finished yet for this round.

“I do tend to believe with music that if you’re not really on a role, you should come back,” says Lidell. “I do believe that the creative process is one of those mysterious things where you’re not really doing it, you’re just there to witness it happening almost. You’re not as responsible as you might think. You let it pass through you. If it’s a good day, then you pat yourself on the back. If it’s a bad day, then you think you’ve got no talent. It’s not really as clear-cut as that. You spend so much of your life doing it; you just have to turn up every day. Some days are going to be genius, and some days are going to fail. It’s not really your fault. It’s just luck of the draw.”

Not like the hit-and-miss nature of the creative process is going to stop him. If his upbeat approach to life, art, and everything in between casts Lidell as a sort of latter day Miss Mary Sunshine, rest assured—he’s totally okay with that.

“The most important thing to keep is the magic and to try to hold on to the magic part and not let any of the rest of it get too strong,” says Lidell emphatically. “Not let any of the other forces take you away from the core aspect of why you did in the first place. You’re constantly revisiting that. It’s been really fulfilling to me, recently, going, ‘Oh I still love this and I’m still doing what I’ve always wanted to do.’ I’m a lucky bastard.”

(www.facebook.com/Jamie-Lidell-20076240072)