Dinner with: Jessie Ware

Dinner with: Jessie Ware

18 July, 2012
by: Emma

Emma McAlpine interviews up-and-coming singer Jessie Ware in The Abbeville Kitchen.

It’s a first for me and a first for Jessie Ware. I’m interviewing her over dinner at a restaurant of her choice – The Abbeville Kitchen – in her local neighbourhood of Clapham. I love food, she loves food; it seems like a good a premise as any for an interview. A few thoughts occur to me as I walk down Abbeville Road, a rather bijou part of Clapham full of restaurants, delis, estate agents and cook shops. What if, after I’ve asked her all my questions, we run out of things to talk about and end up awkwardly stuffing our faces to fill the silence? How am I going to eat, look at my notepad and talk to her in a seamless, professional fashion? It turns out I needn’t have worried. Not only do we have plenty to talk about, I realise when I get home I haven’t even got round to asking her half the things I wanted to. 

We meet on a Wednesday night at the back of a bustling Abbeville Kitchen. Luckily it’s a warm evening and we move to a table outside so my Dictaphone and I can hear her better. “This place is packed every night and it’s always full of locals,” she tells me. A bistro specialising in British and European food, the emphasis is very much on quality ingredients, with a no-nonsense menu and simple, earthy dishes. She makes a few recommendations as she’s been here before and we settle on smoked mackerel with Dijon mustard and pickled kohlrabi; cauliflower with paprika and manchego; some deliciously nutty iberico de bellota ham, roast pigeon with chickpeas, aubergine and mint, and green beans in vinaigrette. 

She's rocking some amazing false eyelashes and apologises for "looking a bit drag queenie" as she’s come straight from a black and white photo shoot. “I love dressing up and pretending to be a character,“ she says. “I’m thinking: ‘What would J-Lo do?’ a lot at the moment. Do you like my J-Lo hair with the cow licks and the pony tail? It’s ridiculous, I’m from Clapham for god’s sake!” As if to prove it, she takes a bite of the mackerel and remarks: “That is ‘bangin’.” 

If you haven’t heard much about Jessie Ware yet – prepare to. Her debut album comes out in August and she’s been hailed by music journalists as ‘one to watch’, ‘girl of the moment’ and the ‘hottest songstress to come out of 2012’. Her album – Devotion – is an enthralling mix of genres with elements of hip hop, downtempo R&B, pop, dance and soul music all tied together with her stunning, melancholy vocals. There’s both a contemporary and classic feel to it too; with collaborations from house producer Julio Bashmore and nods to her ‘diva’ idols like Sade and Whitney Houston. 



I tell her I particularly love two tracks she wrote with Bashmore called '110%' and ‘Sweet Talk’, which reminds me of ‘80s Whitney. “Good, that’s exactly how I wanted it to sound!” she enthuses. “I imagine people drinking cognac on a yacht to that. We wrote it on a really hot night in Bristol last year and we finished it that night. I really enjoy writing with Bashmore; we like going over the top.” I ask her whether the mixture of genres on the album reflects her own taste.

“Definitely,” she replies. “I think people expected me to be a dance vocalist and follow in Katy B’s footsteps. I love what Katy B does but the world doesn’t need two of us. I wanted to be unique. I love soul music and hip hop and feel lucky I was allowed to throw it all in. I think you can get away with that on your first album. Now I could go and do a soul album or a dance album without being pigeonholed.”

Ware mentions being lucky several times. It’s clear she feels blessed to be making music, having never dreamt she could embark on a singing career. “Everyone said I had a lovely voice at school but I didn’t have the confidence to do it. I thought I’d try to be a journalist or a film maker instead.” After completing a journalism course at Lambeth (“I failed three of the exams because they were the week after Glastonbury!”), she briefly worked for the Jewish Chronicle and a TV production company, until out of the blue, something fortuitous happened. “I got a call from my mate Jack (Peñate) who asked me to do the backing vocals for a Zane Lowe session in Maida Vale.” After Peñate recruited her for more gigs, festivals and an American tour, she quit her job. A collaboration with SBTRKT followed – which saw her provide the vocals for his future garage hit ‘Nervous’ – and not long after that, she was signed by PMR records to make her own album. “I was in the right place at the right time,” she reflects.


By now there isn’t a scrap of food left on either of our plates and we’re ordering pudding. A Greek yoghurt and honey sorbet arrives – a light and creamy ball of goodness which is easily the best dessert I’ve had so far this year – followed by a raspberry panna cotta. “I love how we’ve just gone for cream,” she observes. She’s as obsessed with food as I am and we’ve spent a lengthy part of the interview chatting about supper clubs, TV chefs, Brixton market, cookery books, blogs and restaurants. She chose to shoot the video for her single ‘Running’ in antiques-emporium-cum-restaurant The Brunswick Café (“I was wearing wedges and tripped trying to saunter down the stairs gracefully. It was awful; I’ve still got the scar on my foot!”) A Jewish ‘princess’ as she jokingly refers to herself, she tells me how to make proper chicken and matzo ball soup, removing the impurities with eggshells and leaving the onion skin on while cooking, for colour. 

We finish our coffees and her boyfriend arrives to give her a lift home in his car. She sweetly insists on dropping me at Clapham South tube station and I share a brief journey with them (the car radio coincidentally tuned into Katy B). Ware is off to Berlin tomorrow, then she's got more British and European festival bookings and a (sold out) homecoming gig at Brixton's Plan B venue on August 15th. “What about the Brixton Academy – any plans to play there yet?” I ask her from the back seat. “Not as yet but yeah, that would be the dream!” she laughs. Listening to several of her tracks on the tube home, something tells me that particular dream is well within her reach.

Devotion is due for release on the 20th of August. For more information on Jessie Ware please visit: www.jessieware.com

We have a pair of tickets to give away to Jessie Ware's headline gig at the Brixton Electric on Tuesday 13th November. Click here to be in with a chance to win!

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Emma