Cooleh

How do you write your songs? Are they personal stories or fiction?

All of my songs are close to my heart. They usually reference what I am going through or what my girlfriends are going through. For a song like No More, it is all about being so enamored with someone that whatever, mental, spiritual, metaphysical or physically I have I want to give over to that person. Usually Brook (other half of J*Davey) will give me a track and I’ll tap into an energy that the song brings up or I will feel like I finally have a canvas to create my songs; Or we have some song floating around and we make things up as we go along; we try not to take it all so seriously.

I notice your songs reference a woman wanting someone, no begging but not trying to be to forward. Could you talk about that balance?

I grew up fascinated watching women like Grace Jones. She was such a striking, bold and a bit scary image for me. I try to be bold in how I dress and how I wear my hair. If anything I want brown skinned young women to know that they don’t have to be afraid of their sexuality. Know what you want and go after it. Women get stuck in wanting men to plan their dates and pay for everything and guys these days don’t do that. If you want a man, you have to be bold enough to say what you want. If anything my songs promote boldness. Closed mouths don’t get fixed. Find it and define it on your own terms. You don’t have to explain it to anyone--that is sexual freedom.

Your lyrics are interesting in that they seem to be well versed in a talk with your girlfriends kind of way and yet remain profound.

I am not reinventing the wheel. I know there are a lot of girls out there writing songs talking about the same things, wanting a man etc; I am trying to challenge myself. I think of it as a writing exercise, like when I took a creative writing class at Sarah Lawrence College. I am always trying to figure out how to say things without really saying it and saying it in the same old way.

http://www.missjackdavey.com/
http://www.myspace.com/jdavey