One can never know what to expect when meeting musicians for an interview. 90% of the time you’ll get diddly squat in the refreshment stakes – which is fair, obviously – whilst some (like Anna Burch) might give you a belt of whisky to sit with or others (like Jason of Allusondrugs) might offer you a rider beer to enjoy. Occasionally some might just stand with the guitar on their person and mumble through five minutes of questioning, but the less said about that the better.

Meeting Jamie Lenman in late November, he’d graciously anticipated my arrival and made me a cup of tea, which I unfortunately had to decline (as tea is horrid). Not to be outdone, he soon knocked up a coffee (with choice of non-dairy milk) and having introduced me to his team, suggested we conduct the interview from the bunk beds backstage (lying down, Red Dwarf style) in the labyrinth of the Deaf Institute.

“There’s a lot more chin-stroking than moshing than there has been previously,” He says when we eventually get set up, sat across from each other on the same bunk bed as I put to him a line of questioning whilst trying not to scold myself. “Which took a while to get used to, but when I constructed the set – designed to showcase some of the deeper cuts of the new record – I was sort of expecting that.”

Manchester would end up being the penultimate show of a thirteen date UK tour, which included several spots Lenman hadn’t ventured to previously as a solo act. The last time he was in touring mode, for 2017’s ‘Devolver’ – shows including on stage drum battles where Jamie himself would hop behind the kit – he tells me it was the first tour to focus on a concept, whilst this time around the shows have delved deeper than ever before.

“As it goes on, I’ve done so many tours now, the way I live and the way I work, I can’t really afford to just go on stage and have a grab bag of songs and shout ‘1 2 3 4’ to the rest of the band like we used to do with Reuben. Everything has to be sort of slightly more considered, so more or less against my will, the way I tour now is to construct a show – with a capital S – and then stick to that.”

Whilst the old saying suggests it might be grim up this way, the North has been notably warm and welcoming for Lenman and new drummer Jack Wrench (ex-Arcane Roots), with him acknowledging that venues are packed out, particularly in Scotland (where they’ve always been kind to him). A relief no doubt given the planning and set-up.

“It’s more like a show than a gig… It is quite meticulous, we work very hard on it – I work very hard trying to work out what goes where and as a result I think this one is, like I say, a bit more for the chin-strokers than the moshers.”

Given his back catalogue and stint in a cult favourite band (“Don’t do it. Oh, you can bring it up – don’t ask me when they’re getting back together…”), one assumes that putting together a setlist for each live show can become a tall order and unsurprisingly, he suggests the construction of this and the performance itself can take even more time than actually making an album.

“…With the album you’ve only got a set of fourteen songs to consider, to construct and whatever.” He says. “But then if you’re going on tour – I’ve made six records now, counting Reuben records and my own records – you wanna concentrate on the album that you’re touring, but you don’t want it to be exclusive… You wanna try and represent something from each of your records, so everyone gets what they wanna hear.”

The tour – his only tour of the year – came off the back of new album ‘Shuffle’, so he’s understandably had a lot on his plate. Elsewhere though, he’s had quite the eventful 2019. Following support slots for the likes of Biffy Clyro and appearances at Download and Reeperbahn festivals the year prior, 2019 saw intimate invite only performances, album listening experiences, the ‘Lenmania II’ stage takeover at 2000trees Festival, record shop in-stores, fronting Black Peaks at ArcTanGent Festival and even a showing at Glastonbury in summer.

“When you put it like that, yeah I hadn’t realised. It sort of all goes through me but yeah, the roundup – we did some big things didn’t we? I was playing with some new drummers as well, which is a challenge, but an enjoyable challenge. Yeah we did a lot of stuff didn’t we… sorry, what was your question?” He says with a laugh.

‘Shuffle’ – fourteen reinterpretations of famous and not-so-famous music from the world of film, literature, video games and TV – is an album that at the time we called “an exciting, interesting and genuinely refreshing new concept.” The genre-shifting album includes reworkings of songs from The Beatles to Cyndi Lauper, Yorkshire chansonnier Jake Thackray to a scene from short film ‘Always Crashing in the Same Car’, acted out alongside its original star Paul McGann. ‘Adamantium Rage’ – a cover of the theme music from the ‘Wolverine: Adamantium Rage’ video game, a personal Lenman childhood favourite – began to take shape back in 1995 when Jamie recorded a demo on a tape cassette recorder at the moustache-free age of 12.

“I suggested doing it before ‘Muscle Memory’/instead of ‘Muscle Memory’, because I was a little bit shy about going out with my new material on my own.” Says Jamie of its official germination. “I actually thought a record of covers – which is not why I did it – but at the time, I thought that might be quite a good way to introduce myself through sort of the guise of great songs that people might know.”

Producer Space (Idles producer, amongst others) nixed the initial ideas, suggesting ‘Muscle Memory’ and ‘Devolver’ were the best way forward for Jamie at that time, choosing the strength of original material over covers at that point in his career.

“…By the time we actually did ‘Shuffle’, that was my third bite at the cherry and I was pretty convinced that that had to be the record.” He continues. “The other times I’d been successfully persuaded to do something different, by people I trusted and I agree was the right… I’m still not convinced ‘Muscle Memory’ was the right move to make, but ‘Devolver’ definitely was. Whereas this time there was no option, because it was all that I could see – all that was in my windscreen. It would’ve been incredibly hard to turn the creative ship around to try and do something else. So I’m glad we did it when we did it.”

“Lots of other people have said don’t do it and I felt pretty sure that Space would understand.” Continues Jamie, lamenting that when even Space said no, he considered shelving ‘Shuffle’ in favour of looking into other projects for a further three months. Whilst other projects did come about upstairs, he was unable to completely focus his attention, with everything coming back to ‘Shuffle’.

“That is a little bit what I felt like I was doing.” Lenman says of the potential for half arsing it. “When Space said just write another twelve songs, I was like – it’s not really how I work.” He chuckles.

“Space is an amazing animal and if you give him three months or even a month and say write me an incredible twelve tracks that run the gambit of all your feelings and sound brilliant, he could probably do it. But that’s not how I work and I sort of have to wait for inspiration to strike.” He continues. “All of my originals albums – and in fact, all of ‘Shuffle’ – As you heard from that demo when I was twelve, I have been working on ‘Shuffle’ for twenty five fucking years. It’s the same with every record I put out, it takes a long time to gradually come to fruition.”

Working with Space again was a no brainer for Lenman and when we talk of the in demand producer, he has nothing but kind words to say (regardless of Space knocking back the idea of ‘Shuffle’ on more than one occasion!)

“When we were in the studio, I probably had more fun making ‘Shuffle’ than any other record, because we were playing with all these beautiful toys that other people had gifted to us.” He says. “…There was a stressful side to it, but when we were actually in the studio making it and I had him all to myself, it was wonderful. He’s got so many strings to his bow and he’s being pulled in so many directions that quality time with Space is a rare commodity and something I treasure highly.”

In parallel to the past 12 months that Lenman has had, Space himself has been equally as busy (“He’s doing stuff you wouldn’t believe.”) From releasing debut album ‘Never Not Nothing’ for his own band, electro-punk act Black Futures, to their own headline tour, whilst balancing a period of likely exhaustion and becoming ill during the production of ‘Shuffle’ (“He turned up to the studio a couple of times when he really should have been in intensive care…”)

A few months back, Black Futures played HMV in Manchester to a small crowd of people, still putting in a shift and treating it like one of their headline shows, regardless of turnout. Discussing this with Lenman he looks as if he knew I was going to bring it up, knowing the thought process and graft Space puts into his work. Highlighting ‘Get In The Van’, Henry Rollins’ story of touring with Black Flag, he brings up the story of one instance in which the band played to a crowd of no one and yet still treated it like a huge show.

“That’s the attitude that I try to keep in mind and Space also keeps in mind.” He says. “I hope my energy levels or my disillusionment if I have any never gets the better of me and I hope I never deliver what is a substandard performance, despite what is happening in the audience.”

A personal highlight from the new Jamie Lenman record came with the realisation that ‘Killer’ is the title of the incredible 90’s number one hit single from Seal and Acid House DJ and producer Adamski. With that up his sleeve just two songs in, I put it to him that constructing the tracklisting must have been nearly as painstaking as a live show setlist.

“No it wasn’t that hard.” He suggests, noting that whilst a few other tracks were considered early on, they didn’t go much further due to not being particularly different to how the original had sounded. “I couldn’t think of anything that I could really add to it, so I thought there’s not really much point. So what we ended up with, the fourteen tracks, were all the ones that I really felt like I wanted to put my own flavour on.”

Two that did make the cut are the sorts that on paper may have upset the apple cart, but versions of Beatles classics ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ‘Hey Jude’ are different enough to not warrant horror from traditionalists. Or at least that’s what we thought.

“WHO said that?” Says Jamie with a smirk. “I’ve heard nothing but complaints about ‘Hey Jude’. My managers hated it.”

Whilst his managers may have hated the original version of ‘Hey Jude’ (one even providing unflinching initial feedback at the start of a meeting – “I don’t like Hey Jude”), it does come with the explanation that the unmixed, unmastered demo did consist of mostly six minutes of lengthy freakout. “To be fair to him, he did hear a very confrontational version.” Says Jamie with a laugh.

Whilst purists might suggest The Fab Four are untouchable, Lenman tells me it was “an absolute exquisite joy” to re-work The Beatles, with no trepidation on his part – other than considerable cuts to ‘Hey Jude’ for the sake of his managers’ well being.

“I believe that it’s a live and living thing that anyone can interact with and that’s the beauty of it, so I didn’t really think about any sacred cows or you shouldn’t mess with, because everyone’s covered The Beatles. They’ve gotta be the most covered artist – I might be wrong about that. I just thought, how can it possibly go wrong with such great materials to start with? I think even if I’d tried to destroy them, it wouldn’t have been possible, so I was fairly confident. I had a whale of a time.”

With the new album, we’re presented with a fully realised journey that the listener embarks on, complete with the sounds of actual shuffling and selecting between songs, as if the listener themselves is actually skipping through artists. This was an idea cooked up by Space, acknowledging that the idea of a covers records was all well and good, but listeners might be confused with the concept if it wasn’t spelled out to them.

“I didn’t see a problem with flipping from ‘Hey Jude’ to ‘The Remembrance’ to all these different styles of music – that’s how I consume music anyway.” Says Jamie. “…In the cold light of day and on paper, I do remember that no one can hear what’s in my brain and that not everyone thinks about stuff the way I do.”

Given the brief, Lenman went away and returned with the concept in place on the album, tying this in with the concept behind the artwork in the process.

“The only potential problem is that you know, the concept of shuffling on an ipod, which is where I saw it from, is itself ten years out of date.” Says Jamie with a smile. “No one has ipods any more, apart from me. But with the rise of playlist culture and Spotify, I think that it’s still just relevant enough for people to get it.”

Artwork wise, rather neatly the CD edition of the album actually shuffles, with little holes in the disc which can be used against the back cover artwork to reveal different logograms. Brilliant, sure, though it’s a shame the concept was unable to stretch to vinyl, no? (“Believe me, I looked into it…”)

Namechecking David McCandless (“the guru of the infographic and the logo design”), Lenman is clearly passionate about graphic design and illustration, his CV notably listing employment for the likes of Dr Who Magazine. Having spent ten years in a design agency in London getting to grips with logo design, it’s something that has always been of interest. “I love a logo, I love an icon.” He says. “To boil down a distinct concept into one tiny image I think is a very pure art.”

Another influence came through the design work of Watchmen illustrator Dave Gibbons who, amongst other things, created the album artwork for Madness splinter group The Madness and their 1988 self-titled studio album. Gibbons created a series of logograms to represent each track, which Lenman cites as “masterpieces of graphic design” and something to bring into ‘Shuffle’ – a logogram or an icon or a shape or a symbol that defined each track.

“…When the ‘Shuffle’ concept got introduced, I suddenly realised in a terrifying brainstorm – WAIT, what if these images themselves are shuffled, so it’s one image within another image using only a finite number of images less than the number of tracks but they all repeat, so the artwork is shuffled?” Says Lenman, sounding ever so slightly like Charlie Kelly in the infamous ‘Pepe Silvia’ scene in It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. “That was a huge headache to pull out, but I thought I’ve got to try and make this work. Sometimes I only really made it work by the skin of my teeth, some of them are pretty vague, but they all do fit in a sort of warped way. So that was a very big ask to tie those concepts together and I’m pleased that I managed to get away with it. I think it holds up.”

Sounding vaguely similar to the Frank Sidebottom code that was recently uncovered with the release of a film about the late Chris Sievey and his papier mache headed alter ego, I queried if there had been any similar sleuths with the ‘Shuffle’ concept and uncovering hidden meanings.

“I haven’t actually had a lot of feedback from people re the artwork, especially things like the CD where you can shuffle it. I mean, it’s useless really because it’s not like you uncover any secret messages.” He admits. “It’s window dressing really, the artwork, I just want it to be as good as possible. The record is the main thing, but as a designer it’s nice when I’m able to combine the two.”

With artwork still being such an important factor, talk turns to artists putting out any old tat and not caring about what the artwork looks like (have you seen some of The Fall discography or that first Fat White Family album?) Whilst he isn’t a fan of disappointing artwork otherwise, he does see how these things can come about.

“I think there’s a purity in that and sometimes I wish that I could just let the record go out with whatever. The fact that I’m such a control freak makes me unable to…” He admits. “I’d be interested to see what kind of career I would have if I was so focused on just the music I can imagine being in a place where it doesn’t matter what the sleeve says… But I’ll never know that, because I’m so wired into it.”

Holding onto every creative aspect is something to be admired, with a DIY attitude to creative control being something seen more and more these days. For Lenman though, it almost wasn’t the case.

“I had a weird phase at the start, when we did ‘Mississippi’ and just before I signed with Big Scary Monsters, when I sort of launched Jamie Lenman version 2.0 or whatever. I got to the point where I thought it would be nice if someone else did this for a change.”

The idea of having someone else take the reins was attractive for Lenman at that point and he shopped around for a label with an art department, meeting with a number of these labels with a view to develop a theme. Working with Space in a collaborative way and farming the artwork out to others fit in with the ‘Devolver’ period and allowing others in.

“I just thought at that point I’d done it myself for so long, especially after ‘Muscle Memory’, which was a huge artistic mountain to climb, similar to ‘Shuffle’. I was a bit exhausted…” He adds. Ultimately the creative aspect was taken back during the production and promotion of ‘Devolver’ (“Which is in no way impugning the great work that the artists I worked with at the start of the campaign did”) though it clearly offered learning points moving forward.

“My music is so personal.” Adds Jamie. “It’s almost selfish to say to someone else – you figure out what my soul looks like and take a photo of that.”

“What I love about this album is how you don’t know what’s coming next.” We said of ‘Devolver’ at the time of release and the same can be true of the career of Lenman as a whole. Whilst there are inklings as to what may be on the horizon moving forward (new material is in the works, with Manchester being treated to some of it later that night), there’s the small matter of tracking down and arranging time with Space first. Whenever they do get together, one thing is for certain – it likely won’t be a full studio album in 2020.

“I think most people actually – and I’m very grateful for this – have excepted ‘Shuffle’ as my third solo album, not like a bit of fun. It’s album number three, which I always considered it as.” He says. “…Next year would be too soon to bring out a new twelve, thirteen track studio record, so whatever happens to this new material, I don’t wanna do a full LP. The idea of an EP or a mini-album is attractive to me. A nice little *smacks lips* something to mop up the gravy of ‘Shuffle’ and then give me a couple more years at least to make another definitive statement. I think full studio albums should be a definitive statement of where you are at a time. Even though ‘Devolver’ and ‘Shuffle’ occupy a similar sort of space, I wanted them to be sister records, which is why I went with Space again, ‘cus I wanted to have a similar sound. They are their own definitive statement and I think I need a lot more time to properly brew and stew my next one. Does this sound pretentious? A little bit? That’s fine.”

With ‘Shuffle’ being accepted as his third, I put it to him that it now feels like he’s gone beyond the ex-Reuben moniker and after all the hard work, is seen as his own man.

“It’s funny because ‘ex-Reuben’ has started popping up in the descriptions again. It went away a bit, before ‘Devolver’. Just before ‘Devolver’, the Reuben stuff was reaching a fucking fever pitch that was pissing me off and I thought – man, it’s been ten years. I sort of hoped that ‘Muscle Memory’ would stop it all, but it didn’t.” He says. “If I said I wasn’t disappointed, I’d be lying because as much as I love… I’m Reuben’s biggest fan, I don’t think people realise this about me. Reuben was and still is my favourite band of all time, because we made it to be our favourite band. We were huge fans of bands, real band groupies – you know, nerds – we would talk for hours about other bands and every decision we made in that band was designed to reflect what we would like our favourite bands to do. So I love that band, I love playing the songs and I love it when people ask me to sign the cover of ‘Racecar…’ or whatever. I think people get the idea that I want people to shut up about it, but I do want to be Jamie Lenman. I don’t want to be ‘Jamie Lenman (Reuben)’. So that’s what I’m working towards. It feels at the moment like it may have taken a bit of a back step.”

“I suppose as time goes on, the more records I release under my own name, it will be Jamie Lenman and not ‘Jamie Lenman (Reuben)’, which isn’t to say that I don’t look back on those years oddly fondly, because they were painful and depressing and I had an awful time.” Continues Jamie, adding with a smile. “But I’m happy to say that most of my memories of that period are very positive and I enjoy listening to the records and I enjoy hanging out with John and Guy when we see each other.”

Like what you see? Why not stick around and check out the other articles and interviews!

Don’t forget to follow Birthday Cake For Breakfast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter!