Jeffrey Gaines: J.G. Jeff Gaines. Old enough, and singer, songwriter.

BB: How did you first get into music?
JG: As a child, I got involved with music immediately. Our society is riddled with music. Cartoons have music. Kids start singing jingles that are on commercials and stuff. Educators use music to get you to memorize the alphabet. Just the very nature of song is in everything we do. I realized I was interfacing with the music, humming and singing all the time. And I tend to be pretty good at it. I can pick out a tune and sing in key. So if you got some aptitude and ability, then you just start pursuing it.

BB: When did you write your first song?
JG: My first song was written probably about 1985. It was one long run on sentence, a song called “Father Time.” I was in a band at the time, and they all went on a dinner break. I had dialed up a pretty good sound on the guitar and I didn’t want to leave it, so I said, “Go ahead guys, I’m not even hungry, I’m so into this sound.” And for the first time I was left alone. Being in a band you always have a project that you’re working on, there’s an objective. But being left alone there, not really rehearsing, I started just making music, letting it tell me where it was going to go.

BB: When did you decide that music was going to be your career?
JG: You find out it’s going to be a career when grown men want to invest in you like a product. It’s weird, you’re just singing in some club having fun, and there’s a guy in a suit standing in the back of the club. He comes up with a card and says you should come by his office. So in a way, the powers that be approach you, and let you know that you’re a commodity, something they can sell. That’s how it was for me, anyway. So I’m in the business, there you have it.

BB: Tell me about your songwriting process. How does a new song usually come about?
JG: Actually it’s effort. Once you’re a recording artist, you have to produce. Writing songs for me now is just a matter of clearing the space and taking the time. I tend to be a scattered person, and I distract myself from the work with fun, friends, TV, movies, whatever. As far as writing songs, you just sort of have to get away from all of the distractions. So if you get a clear desk, a clean piece of paper, and a pencil with a sharpened lead you’ll write a song. I write songs because I know that I want to put records out, to make a product to go to market. It would almost serve no purpose at all to me if it didn’t get it out to the public, or if I didn’t play a gig. If I were just sitting under a tree somewhere, I wouldn’t be playing a guitar. I wouldn’t be just playing to the wind or something. I want to play to public demand. It’s weird because, in a sense, I’m like an actor. I mean, you deliver the emotion, but you’re thinking about the craft of selling the emotion.

BB: So what are some of your favorites of your own songs?
JG: I am really proud of a song called “A Simple Prayer,” on the record Galore. I just feel good about having a sort of peace-hippie-folksinger-antiwar song. I was very proud of those lyrics.

BB: For many people, you’re most famous for your cover of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” What place does that hold in your career and in your life right now?
JG: I like it because I’m a singer, so it’s real easy and fun, and I got it locked. When it became a hit again in 2001, it was playing on the radio nationwide. I was going to all these radio stations, and I had to play it like every morning. Funny jocks in the morning, telling jokes and talking about celebrities, saying, “Hey, we’ve got Jeffrey Gaines coming by he’s brought his guitar.” And it’s like 7.30 in the morning, and every morning I just nailed it cold. I sang that fucking thing so many times, if I didn’t love singing it would be a problem. My audience is completely split in a way, because some people are like, “Man, I love that Jeffrey Gaines because he does In Your Eyes,” and the person right next to him rolls their eyes, going, “I hate that that’s all you talk about. This guy is so important in my life in so many profound ways, other than some cover he does.” So it’s a strange thing for me.

BB: How did that version come about?
JG: I was seeing a girl, and she liked this record and I was against it. At the time, I was listening to what I thought was cutting-edge cool alternative rock, so if it wasn’t super punk and super underground I didn’t want to hear it. Peter Gabriel at that time seemed like one of the monsters of rock, I didn’t even want to hear it. So one day I was driving home from a gig, and this girl was in my lap sleeping and the song came on the radio. It was so peaceful and she was asleep, so I knew I wouldn’t have to hear, “Oh my god this is the greatest song ever,” and I could just listen and see, alright, what it is about this song. So then I actually listened to it, driving home from the gig, with my woman and the sun coming up and no other cars on the road, and I’m just absorbing it without any hype around it, and I get it, I get it. I thought, if I turn those words around, and sing it to the audience, and not make it about one girl or one thing. When I look out at all those people looking up at me, I’m inspired. That is what keeps me “awake and alive.” When I turned it into an audience song, it put power behind it for me.

BB: What are your musical influences?
JG: When I was a little kid growing up, my parents played so much music. Otis Reading, Wilson Pickett. You know, Memphis soul, not really Motown as much as the deeper south stuff. So it’s sort of blues-based, gospel-based. And I’m a product of the musical time that I got a guitar, in ‘79. In ‘79 there was Cheap Trick, Kiss, the Cars, stuff like that. They wrote “Just What I Needed” to be on the radio, to have people turn it up in their cars and rock to it. That’s how I look at songwriting.

BB: What’s your process for recording music when you’re in the studio?
JG: You know, the process changes throughout your career. When I write a song I demo it. It’s just me playing the drums, bass and stuff. It’s really exactly how I feel it, but it might not be up to snuff performance-wise, because I’m not a drummer. So maybe I’ll get a real drummer to come in and try to interpret what he hears on my demo. Now he might take it somewhere else. When you’re working on creating a record, you allow for things to be collaborated. There are some songs that I don’t like once I’ve recorded them, but generally the only time I really hate a song is if we’ve messed it up in the recording of it.