DJ Ron: On the song you more singing than rapping, what about that song inspired the change in tone? Like why was it more sung rather than rapped?
JustJack: There's no particular reason. It was such a kind of nice and cool melodic sample, I think the song just kind of came into my head. That was one of the ones where I just literally put the track on and just sang a few lines and they turned in to a song, it wasn't a sort of conscious decision.
DJ Ron: Is there another song you find yourself eager to rework or sample?
JustJack: Not particularly. The samples that I find are always things that I didn't expect to find, and I don't sample from records that I like. Often on records that I think are crap, I'll find something on there, a two bar loop or whatever, that works really well. There's not really anything that I thought that I'd love to kind of rework that or whatever. I'd love to write great original songs.
DJ Ron: So you sing and spin, do you ever do both at the same time like Sonique or Collette?
JustJack: No, I don't. Most of the records I play are songs in themselves, obviously Sonique plays house music and sings over instrumentals. I play a lot of actual songs in my sets so it wouldn't really work. I don't think anyone would appreciate me singing along to a Minnie Ripperton song or something like that, I don't think I'd do it any justice at all.
DJ Ron: So what are your live shows like?
JustJack: Funky and obviously a lot rawer than the record, they're very different. I've got a very good, tight band and it's livelier and funkier, people seem to like it. Some people like it more than the record, which is interesting. I've got a standard setup with the band, bass drums, keys, guitar and a backing singer so it's just like any other band. I think it is interesting, very different from the record though.
DJ Ron: A personal favorite song on the album is "Triple Tone Eyes," that's the one I find myself keep going back to, it has a really cool drum & bass sound to it. Do you listen to a lot of drum and bass yourself?
JustJack: I don't, no. The music for that song was made by the album co-producer and he had the track in his computer for a few months, and we were trying to kind of work out a way of, or trying to work out some kind of music for the actual Triple Tone Eyes song. That was a song that wrote without music, a melody that came into my head and I worked through it rather than actually over a track. We had to put a track with it and luckily for some reason we were going through some old tracks that he'd done and it came up and I just started singing the song. We couldn't quite believe that it fit so absolutely perfectly with it, it just came from there, and I think it was meant to be, it was fate.
DJ Ron: What does Triple Tone refer to, I was reading it as layers of dream an fantasy, what is Triple Tone to you?
JustJack: The Triple Tone was actually a girl who did have triple tone eyes which were a re a bit greeny and a bit blue and a bit brown.
DJ Ron: I was reading too much into it What's the connection between you and Madness?
JustJack: Someone from Madness actually runs the record label I'm signed to in the UK and we grew up the in the same area. He's like forty-five now but we grew up on the same area and I wasn't a huge Madness fan, although I have sort of gone back to it quite a lot since my youth. He was just a guy who understood the music and we had similar backgrounds and stuff and it was kind of totally by chance really that it was him, but he runs the label.
DJ Ron: And right now, what's in your CD player?
JustJack: What was the last, I'm trying to think of the last thing I was listening to. Actually the Blur album, which I think is brilliant. There's less mad tracks on it, but I think there's amazing kind of melodic songs on it. So I've been listening to the Blur album quite a lot, but I've been listening to Jack Johnson and Outkast, I'm listening to all kinds of stuff recently.
DJ Ron: Where does the name JustJack come from?
JustJack: It's just me, so it's just Jack, I mean that's mainly where it comes from, it just seemed to kind of fit. But also I think it looks good typographically, because I used to do a lot of design stuff, I was quite keen on having something that actually looked good on paper, which might sound a bit odd.
DJ Ron: Yes, so there's no allusion to Will and Grace?
JustJack: I've only ever watched it once and Jack wasn't in it unfortunately. People do bring it up every now and then, but obviously the name occurred far before that was created, so it's just one of those strange coincidences.
