Basement Finds 004: Jamee
The bassist and vocalist for the NY-based group MICHELLE ventures into her own music with upcoming EP, Crawling Out The Deep End.
Welcome back to Basement Finds, a series where I dig deep on the internet to find music and artists who have been buried or unheard. All music deserves to be heard and shared, and The Basement is a vehicle for that.
The Basement returns this week with a very special guest, Jamee, also known as Jamee Lockard of the six-piece Pop/R&B group, MICHELLE.
With the likes of Esperanza Spalding but with a pop twist, Jamee takes the front stage and leads with her bass and vocals herself. With two single releases, Unfold and After 10PM., the 25-year-old dives into writing about things that are true to her and her experiences only.
I spoke with Jamee on a call as she sat in a cozy bedroom on one of her favorite kind of days in New York: Mid-70° degrees and nothing hotter than that, just enough for tank top weather. We talked about the inspiration for her two singles, exploring queer relationships, the difference between performing and creating music by herself versus with her 5 best friends in MICHELLE and announces her debut solo EP, Crawling Out The Deep End.
This interview is edited for length and clarity.
TB. Congrats on your new single release, After 10PM. I want to talk about that a little bit later but I have to say it’s been in my head since it came out.
Jamee. Thank you! Love to hear that.
TB. Let's go back to the foundation. When and why did you pick up playing bass?
Jamee. That's a good question. I started playing bass when I was 16 in high school. I was in guitar class, and I liked the guitar. I played it a lot at the time, but then the bass player in our guitar class was a senior when I was a junior. So, when she graduated, I figured, let me try something new. I feel like the bass is where it's at. Also, I've always loved listening to the bass line of songs. Once I started playing bass in my guitar class, that's kind of where I found out that I liked guitar but loved bass. Then I played bass in a band in college and kind of fell off after COVID, but picked it back up with my solo music.
TB. Is music something you always wanted to pursue?
Jamee. I've always used music as my outlet, and I've always been singing and stuff like that. People have asked me a lot growing up if I wanted to pursue music, and I always said no. I was thoroughly a woman in STEM—I thought I was going to be a doctor or a scientist [laughs], or something in that field. I was like, no, if you mix music and money, it’ll just ruin your relationship to music. So, I thoroughly said no until some opportunities just kind of fell in my lap. Now I love doing music professionally.
TB. What did you study in college?
Jamee. Environmental studies and psychology.
TB. You just had your first solo show late last year at Golden Fest, which is hosted by singer/comedian Charlene Kaye. How did it feel going from being on stage with 5 other people to just 1?
Jamee. It was super intimidating. Honestly, I'm so comfortable performing just because I've been doing it for more than half of my life at this point. I've always performed in groups. So, when I was younger, I performed in a choir with, like, 50-plus people, and then in college, a group of three, then MICHELLE — there are six of us — so I'm used to having attention, but it's diffused amongst a whole group. So, performing by myself and sharing words that were written about only my experience, it was really daunting to have so much attention on me. It also felt really nice to be playing music that felt like it was truly representative of me and not a group vision. There's merit to both, but it was a special and new experience for me.
TB. How did you and Charlene meet? How did getting on the festival lineup come about?
Jamee. Charlene and I became friends because she interviewed Emma and I for her podcast, Golden Hour, where she highlights different Asian and Asian American artists in the music industry. We went on for the podcast, stayed in touch, and we just get dinners and catch up every once in a while. Then she posted about needing performers for the Golden Hour Festival, and I swiped up on her story and was like, “I would love to perform,” because we'd performed as MICHELLE the year before. I wanted to perform as Jamee this past Golden Hour Festival. She was super kind about it and was like, “Absolutely, we'd love to have you!”
TB. You opened up for Charlene’s show at Union Pool in Brooklyn a couple of months later. How has your relationship been with her? It’s awesome that she helps you have these opportunities.
Jamee. It’s honestly been so special. I think of Charlene as a friend, mentor, and older sibling. She’s such an interesting and kind person. It’s also really inspiring to hear someone who had such similar experiences of like touring in her 20s, so it kind of gives me hope. I can almost look at her and see myself 10, 12 years in the future, and say, “Okay, Charlene is killing it. She's doing great. I will be fine!” [Laughs].
TB. Listeners are getting a feel of what your music sounds like with your two singles, Unfold and After 10PM. What was the inspiration for these songs?
Jamee. I was entering my first queer relationship and both of those songs were written as I was falling in love with that person. Surprisingly enough, Unfold came first, and After 10PM came after, and then I still dated the person [laughs]. But yeah, it was all drawn from very real experiences, having so many emotions that I wanted to express, and feeling overjoyed to be fully diving into my queerness.
“And if it was unclear, Unfold (and all of my upcoming music) is explicitly queer. This song was written as my first queer relationship was unfolding, and I can't wait to share more music w y'all very soon ;)”
TB. How different is the music-making process for your music versus Michelle's?
Jamee. It's similar and different in a lot of ways. It’s similar in the sense that I’ve learned a lot of my songwriting processes through writing with MICHELLE. The process is very melodically driven, where a lot of the time we'll write the melodies first and then write the lyrics afterward. For After 10PM, that chorus was just a melody and then I filled in all the gaps later [laughs]. It was like, "All right, here's what I guess the song is about."
But it's different in the sense that I think I take a lot more time to write my own music. With MICHELLE—because we have so many people—we can kind of roughly finish the song that day and then revisit it later to make some edits. For myself, I don't like to put pressure on myself to finish the song that day if it's not coming to me. Sometimes I'll just write melodies on the day of the session, then sit with it for a couple of days, even a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll write a verse one day, leave it alone, and write a chorus a couple of weeks later. I really take my time with my solo music. Sometimes I'll challenge myself to sit down and write, but a lot of the time, I just wait until it feels a bit more natural. I don't try to force it if it's not coming. With MICHELLE, there are so many of us — if one person isn't getting it, another person’s going to get it.
TB. Have you been collaborating with anyone on these songs and upcoming projects?
Jamee. I haven't been collaborating with other solo artists, but I have with other writers. Layla from MICHELLE actually wrote on Unfold with me, and we've been writing some new music together for my artist project. Then I work on all of my music with my two producer friends, Nick and Maya and they both have their own solo projects too: Maya Polsky and benchwarmer.
TB. I know After 10PM has just been released, but what could fans expect in the near future from you?
Jamee. I actually am dropping an EP in June and those are just the first two singles! The project's called Crawling Out The Deep End, and it's a five song EP. All the music is done, I just have to shoot the cover art, then we're golden!
TB. What’s the meaning behind the title?
Jamee. It’s the first lyric I wrote for this body of work, and it’s from a song called Georgia, which isn’t out yet. Georgia is a song I wrote — it’s the first song I wrote for the project, and it’s about the first time I had gay sex. I wanted to write about it because, honestly, it wasn’t really about the sex itself but about feeling so fundamentally changed as a result. I thought like, “Wow, there are so many more possibilities for my life. I never even have to look at another man again.” It was awesome. I felt like my third eye opened [laughs].
In that sense, The Deep End was about crawling out of compulsory heterosexuality and realizing I don’t have to subscribe to that. When I zoomed out and was trying to name the project, it felt like it resonated on multiple levels. It was a metaphor for coming into my queerness, but I was also writing this project during a time when I was very depressed and unsure of myself, both as a person and as a songwriter. This project helped lift me out of that in a lot of ways, so it felt like the perfect title to encapsulate the whole project.
TB. Now for some rapid-fire questions. You’ve toured a fair amount of the world, but what’s your dream city or venue to play at?
Jamee. I would love to play Red Rocks! Huge, huge. I've visited, but I've never played a show there. I’d love to get to a point where that’s possible. I also would love to play a show in Seoul, Korea. I’ve never played any shows in Asia before, and I think it would be really special to play in Korea since my mom is Korean.
TB. Where has been your favorite place to perform at?
Jamee. Oh, I love performing in Chicago! I mean, I love performing in New York too, but that feels like an obvious answer because all my friends and family are there. Chicago has always been really special. There’s this intensity and electricity in the audience, and everyone is just so hyped to be there. All you’ve got to do is yell, “Chicago!” and people go crazy.
TB. Your Spotify bio says “sapphic stoner,” me too! Sativa, Indica, or Hybrid?
Jamee. Honestly, I love a hybrid. A little bit of this, a little bit of that.
TB. Do you miss summers at Camp Onas?
Jamee. Oh, my God, yes and no. I had a lot of fun there. It was special at the time to have a place where I could get away from home and feel like a little adult. Now all of my friends who I worked with there have left camp, grown up, and now all of my campers are running the camp. So it was time for me to let go of the range and let everyone else take over.
TB. Now this is a new part of Basement Finds where I ask you, who’s your Basement Find? Who’s an artist or band that is smaller, or you don’t think enough people are listening to?
Jamee. I would say ggwendolyn, with two G's. It’s pronounced Gwendolyn. She's so sick. She opened for MICHELLE on our West Coast tour and I have just been listening to her music nonstop since. She's awesome. Her lyricism is great and her melodies are infectious. Definitely recommend!
Keep up with Jamee here and MICHELLE here.