{"id":5840,"date":"2012-04-25T10:18:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T17:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=5840"},"modified":"2012-04-25T10:19:19","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T17:19:19","slug":"jessie-baylin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/04\/jessie-baylin\/","title":{"rendered":"JESSIE BAYLIN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

JESSIE BAYLIN<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Putting a new spark into her career with unexpected help from her grandmother\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThree days before I was to start recording this album, the label cut my budget in half,\u201d says Jessie Baylin. \u201cThen the next day, they cut it another quarter.\u201d The Nashville-based\u00a0singer-songwriter took the hint. \u201cThey listened to the demos and didn\u2019t think I had the songs,\u201d she recalls with a sigh. \u201cThey wanted to put me with hit writers, or use someone else\u2019s songs. But I had the songs I loved\u2014and I knew this album had the potential to be what it is. I thought, \u2018You can\u2019t stop me from making it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

So she parted ways with her record company\u2014then got an unexpected budgetary boost in the form of an inheritance from her late grandmother. Baylin, 28, took that as a sign that going indie was the thing to do, and promptly started her own Blonde Rat label. \u201cMy grandma\u2019s childhood nickname was \u2018The Blonde Rat,\u2019\u201d the\u00a0New Jersey native says with a smile. \u201cShe was really sassy\u2014and my best friend. When she passed, she left me a nice sum of money. Along with some of my own savings, I was able to finance this record. It was risky, but I had to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baylin viewed her decision to \u201cinvest in myself for the first time\u201d as an opportunity to bring in a variety of collaborators. Producer Kevin Augunas introduced Baylin to multi-instrumentalist<\/p>\n

Richard Swift, who she calls \u201cthe man behind the curtain.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s a genius,\u201d Baylin says. \u201cIt was like I\u2019d waited my entire life to meet him. He arranged the songs, played a lot of the instruments and got the whole ball rolling.\u201d Soon L.A. session legends like drummer Jim Keltner, guitarist Waddy Wachtel and string arranger Jimmie Haskell were on board. Baylin\u2019s longtime friend, actress Scarlett Johansson, directed the video for Little Spark<\/em>\u2019s first single, \u201cHurry Hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The singer says many of her best songs originate from the personal musings in her diary. \u201cI journal every day,\u201d says Baylin, who wed Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill in 2009. \u201cI like that the ideas come out of my life. It\u2019s nice to lift lyrics from a journal, because who else are you writing it for? You\u2019re being really honest. There are always many different truths laced in the songs. It feels very natural.\u201d As does her decision to free herself of major-label control and take the reins of her destiny. \u201cI feel lighter,\u201d she says. \u201cI can hear it when I listen to the record. And I enjoy being part of all the little things that I didn\u2019t even know existed last time around. Even stuffing envelopes to send out\u00a0CDs is incredibly rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Bill DeMain<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JESSIE BAYLIN Putting a new spark into her career with unexpected help from her grandmother\u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cThree days before I was to start recording this album, the label cut my budget in half,\u201d says Jessie Baylin. \u201cThen the next day, they cut it another quarter.\u201d The Nashville-based\u00a0singer-songwriter took the hint. \u201cThey listened to the demos […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[3514,3303,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5840"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5843,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840\/revisions\/5843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}