“I’m locked outside myself
My torn, unraveled self
I’m locked outside myself
I see me shiver”
“Windows” by Georgia St. Jones
Georgia St. Jones released her intimate acoustic guitar, soothing vocals and hard-hitting lyrics solo EP “PLAIN.VIEW” in March 2017 recorded entirely on her phone and dedicated to those struggling financially to reach their dreams.
“These songs are dedicated to everyone who found their own way despite the odds being against them, and to everyone out there who is poor like me. We live in poverty, but we must keep our heads above water and our eyes on the dreams ahead.”
Her lyrics will hit a spot in you that only comes out when you’re alone after midnight. If you’ve been needing a good cry or need someone to hold you, her songs will embrace you. Below is an interview with Georgia St. Jones about marrying herself, why she chose to record her songs on her phone, creating beauty from nothing and advice on managing your mental health.
Tell me about yourself.
I’d like to be an artist in every way that I possibly can. Even though right now I’m just working on music and writing short stories and poems I’d like to also do collage art, mixed media and just a lot of different things to express myself, so that’s mainly the goal.
I don’t know if you just saw my post about marrying myself?
S: *laughs* OH YA I JUST LIKED IT!
I was just thinking about how in order to accept love and love other people you really gotta start with yourself. I think that’s the best way to love other people. I was thinking about that while also thinking about going into performance art so I was like wow I could marry myself as a performance art piece but also be making this commitment to myself and showing other people the steps that you can take to really love yourself, whatever you have to do.
S: I love it!! Are you going to get a cool dress and everything?
Yeah! I’m trying to convince my friend right now because he has a really big backyard, so I’m trying to work it out with him to throw it there, whoever wants to come. I’m gonna try to decorate, I’m getting myself a dress, I’m getting myself a ring, the whole thing! I’m going to perform my spoken word as my vows. It’s gonna be for real like, this a step to really commit to myself.
When did you start playing music?
I first picked up a guitar when I was in the 7th grade, but I didn’t stick to it really. I went to a couple of free lessons at Washington High and they kept switching up the people doing the lessons, it was this program called Kids Teaching Kids and it was high school students volunteering to teach middle school students. They kept switching up because one kid gets busy and doesn’t want to do it anymore and this other kid steps in and they just kept switching up so it was hard to get in the groove of it and made me not really play so much anymore. My dad is a musician so he was pretty excited and got me an acoustic and then he went out and got me an electric and a little amp and I ended up not really sticking to it at the time.
So it was years later when I was graduating high school that I ended up on drums and started a band with a couple of my friends, I’ve been doing music consistently since then.
What kind of band was it?
It was like comedy punk.
S: Comedy punk? *laughs*
Yeah like we really didn’t take ourselves seriously but we had a punk sound, we were pretty aggressive but if you actually listened to our lyrics it was ridiculous. Our band was called Molly Don’t Piss No More and we had a song with the same name that was just about a badass chick who didn’t give a fuck.
When that band had ended I got into a band with this other girl who was just like walking art pretty much. She was a bassist and we would write goofy songs too because normally she was a really serious artist and so I think she liked making songs with me because it was just fun. We called it Go Gay Go.
S: Go Gay Go *laughs*
We had one song called Lonely and Watching Porn and another one called I’m Not an Alcoholic I’m Just a Drunk, it was just super goofy stuff.
I gradually started getting into the guitar again and when I got into the guitars it was when I was really sad and depressed and that’s when I started writing serious music because it was more of an outlet.
Has your dad heard your music?
No…typically I’m just not ready to show them [my family] stuff like that because they don’t know how sad *laughs*. I don’t want the questions like, “why are you so sad?” like, “what’s been going on?”
When did you start writing songs?
I’ve been writing in general since I’ve learned to write. I used to really like how pens felt when writing so I would just write all the time, sometimes I would just write random words and letters just because I liked how pens felt on paper.
The first poem I ever wrote, it was in third grade and it was an assignment. It was something to do with “faces faces everywhere, I can’t get these faces out of my hair” or something like that, and I drew little faces all over and my teacher was like, “oh!! It’s so good!!” *laughs.* And I think at the time I’m pretty sure I meant it to be super innocent, because I was drawing happy faces all over the place, but then when I say it out loud as an adult it sounds so creepy!! *laughs.*
How does music help or not help your mental health?
I think music in general, not just making it, but just listening to it, puts me in a really calm place. Not always calm, sometimes I can be really pissed off and listen to something that’s really pissed off and just like be ten times more angry but it’s good, it’s a good anger, it’s passion.
With this last EP, I was going through my old iPod and I had some recordings that a friend had done, and he had just recorded it on his phone. He used to play under the name Honey & Wine and I was listening to it like, this sounds pretty good, maybe I shouldn’t…I had wanted to release an EP but I was thinking maybe I should wait until I can afford a recording mic and some software and I’ll record myself that way but just hearing him I was like, I think I can do this on my phone, so I just went with the idea from there, it was inspiring.
In terms of how it can be harmful, sometimes I put too much pressure on myself. Or I’ll compare myself to other artists too much, and I’m like “oh why am I not that good!” Well yeah it’s because I don’t practice that much so…that’s why *laughs.* When I make music it’s mainly for myself, as much as I’d like it to have attention I wouldn’t stop making music if people were just like, “we don’t care what you have to say.”
If you could change the music industry to offer more opportunity for low-income artists, what would you do?
I think things need to go back to the way things used to be. Producers and stuff used to actually seek out acts rather than oh whoever comes up in this related video, they used to have to go out to these bars to these clubs and open mics and sign people and I feel like it should go back to that because that so many artists right now aren’t humble because it happened so quick. You do one thing and then you can blow up because you went viral and you go from viral to getting signed and everything you could possibly want happens in like a month.
I also think music programs need to be back in schools. So many people who are famous now or who are successful musicians they typically started when they were young and they’re just stripping this shit out of the school systems and it’s really messed up which is why I think this generation makes such…I mean not all the time but…the music can be pretty shitty and I think that’s because they didn’t have access to evolve. I think in the next 10 or 15 years music is going to change because we’ll be better *laughs.*
What does the album title mean?
Because I did this in such a cheap way, that made me think of PLAIN.VIEW, everything is plain but when you look out at certain things in nature that are plain it’s still really beautiful and you can create amazing things from nothing.
Why did you choose to keep the songs that length?
I don’t force myself to lengthen a song, I just leave it if I like it. When it’s just acoustic, just me and my guitar, I don’t think it needs to be long. My songs are pretty to the point, like you get it, you feel it and then it’s over! Go to the next song *laughs.*
If someone has never played music and they’re going through a lot of shit, what would you recommend for them to write their first song.
I feel like my strong points are lyrics and melody, and so since my weaker point is instruments, I start there so I can build off of whatever my potential is there. I don’t know a lot of chords so once I get something I like then I start with the melody and that’s when I go with the lyrics. I would just say try to find your strong point and experiment with what fits you best because you’re not going to figure it out over night. Very few people wake up and turn into music geniuses over-night, we can’t all be Kanye *laughs.*
How do you manage your mental health today?
Basically I’ve gotten myself in the habit of being grateful of pretty much anything. Whenever I get to the point where I’m like, “oh I hate this, I hate that this is going that way,” and whatever, and I start to get stressed out, I will literally try to think of anything I can be grateful for, so say I’m laying in bed and I’m really pissed off with my day I’ll be like, “okay bitch you have a bed, like chill out, you have a bed to lay in, some people don’t have a bed to lay in so you do, is it really that bad?” And then it kind of chills me out. I don’t guilt myself for being upset but I know how to calm myself down and be like okay I was mad for a minute but now I need to chill out and stop being mad and get over it and do what I have to do to fix the situation. I let myself be sad for only a certain amount of time because then it gets tiring. Sometimes I’ll be really depressed for a week or two weeks but then I’m like, okay take a shower, go for a walk, count your blessings and that will get me out of it and surrounding myself with good people.
“Windows” Lyrics
I’m locked outside myself
My torn, unraveled self
I’m locked outside myself
I see me shiver
I sit outside myself
I’m getting bitter
Created by myself
I’ve painted better
Listen to her full album here.
