With a slew of releases like Moderación and I Don’t Miss You, and preparing to tour with John Mayer, JP Saxe is making a lot of noise right now.

Though the year is still young, JP Saxe certainly has big plans for 2023. With an opening slot for John Mayer (who cowrites & plays guitar on the newest single) in his pocket and many more stellar collaborations with world-class musicians in the bag, the ultra-talented artist is getting ready to release his next album. With juxtaposition and duality in mind, JP Saxe sets out to explore a wide spectrum of emotions, sonic ranges and personal yet relatable stories alike.

1883 Magazine catches up with the sensational songwriter right after the release day of his first single in 2023, Moderación, a beautiful, balladic, emotional outburst of a song with the Colombian megastar, Camilo. On April 7th, JP Saxe releases yet another heartfelt single, I Don’t Miss You. Tender as ever, the bittersweet, bluntly honest ballad echoes both nostalgia and hope, a pretense that doesn’t fulfill wishes and admittance of meaningless distractions. 

Sitting down with the artist captured a snapshot of yet another particularly busy day for the artist. From collaborations to upcoming touring and album release plans, JP Saxe shares his creative process with an honest and reflective lens.

How’s your day going? How have you been? And also, what’s one song you’re currently obsessed with?

Well, today’s just getting started, although I did get up kind of early to sing this charity thing that I did a horrible job with because my voice is like 30 percent in existence. I’m not entirely sure why. Usually if I lose my voice, it’s because I’m either sick or have been yelling, and I’m not sick and I haven’t been yelling, so that’s the mystery of the morning. The song I’ve been listening to a lot lately… I mean, at the risk of just immense narcissism, I did have a song out yesterday, which means I’ve listened to it a lot of times in the last 24 hours, so to give you any other answer would be an inaccurate attempt at humility.

It’s a very good song.

I like it so much.

Do we want to talk a little bit about this collaboration with Camilo? What is the single about in your own words?

Well, I think in young love, it’s very alluring to fall for the mystery of a person; the challenges of a person, the potential of a person. But I’m over it. I think falling in love with someone for any other reason than who they are, the way they love you and the kind of life you want to create together, isn’t the kind of love I’m interested in anymore. This song is a pontificating on that philosophy. Both Camilo’s and I’s perspectives are that love is a more beautiful mission when it’s something you’re fighting for together. Not something you’re fighting for alone from someone.

Do you remember the moment you wrote down the line “Please don’t want me in moderation” because it feels like that line coins the song very well.

Yeah. It was something I said to someone and it made me chuckle, but I wrote it down.

Do you often write lines down just in conversation so that you can follow back on it later?

Usually not mid-conversation because it makes me hate myself. I just leave it up to the risk of my very hole-y memory, like they have a lot of holes in it. What do you call something with a lot of holes in it?

Spotted…? I know what you mean, though.

Yeah. it’s like a sifter. Yeah. Holy doesn’t mean hole-y. Holy means like, holy. That might be a gap in the English language. 

You’re going on tour with John Mayer. Are you excited about that?

Fucking wild, right? I am excited about that. Several things about that tour make it a surreal sentence for you to say. John Mayer has been one of my favourite artists since I first fell in love with songwriting as a preteen. We’re playing in the arena in my hometown of Toronto, which I had never done before. We’re playing Madison Square Garden, which I had never done before. It’s all right around my birthday. Which makes it particularly celebratory.

I like to ask songwriters about this because I feel like out of everybody, songwriters are particularly observant people. It’s a compliment. You probably associate a lot of things with different things, like the fact that you brought up your hometown and your birthday and it feels monumental, in a way that you’re stepping into a certain era as a songwriter for yourself.

There’s a different kind of feeling to the dreams that you had as a kid coming to life versus dreams that maybe are a little bit more recent. Opening for John Mayer is the kind of thing that if I told my 14-year-old self about he would fucking faint.

You’ve collaborated with so many songwriters across the world and genres. Speaking from that experience, how was writing with other people different from writing on your own?

Writing with other people or for other people?

I probably meant for other people.

Well, I’ll answer both questions. I love the craft of writing. Think about an author — they’ll have their protagonist or they’ll have their character in the book that feels like it represents themselves. I think every author would say they find a little bit of themselves in every character, but I think story writers will often have a character that feels the closest to their own identity. But that doesn’t mean they don’t love imagining themselves in the voice of someone entirely different from themselves. So, for me, the main character in my stories will always be my voice. It’s the one I feel like I have the most authority to speak on. But as a writer, I enjoy writing other characters. You know, writing for Sabrina Carpenter, I’m gonna say things that I wouldn’t say in my own songs because I’m not a 23-year-old girl.

That is cool because I’ve never heard any songwriter use that metaphor before.

Writing with other people, for myself, differs from when I write by myself because I love conversational songwriting. To write conversational songs, you need to be having a conversation while writing them. If I’m writing by myself, I’m talking to myself; and if I’m writing with someone else, I’m talking to whoever I’m writing with.

Do you have any typical studio day routine at all?

It depends on the era of life that I’m in. There are writing eras, production eras, touring eras, promo eras, and song release eras. We are currently in a song release era. There will be a touring era. For this album that’s coming out this year, I wrote most of it by myself in Colombia. Then, after a month, I came back and then spent a few months in the studio producing those records and then bringing those songs to other writers to expand on them, make them better, prove them, and turn them into actual records. Starting from the bones of the process, which were just words and melodies, was a really important way for me to make sure that sincerity was centred on this next project.

There are a lot of touring and single releases happening from your direction. Since we probably can’t talk too much about an album at the moment yet, what are some feelings that are associated with the album that you can recall from the top of your head?

I think both in my life and my art right now, I’m trying to get as good as I possibly can at allowing multiple opposing emotions to exist at the same time and trying to grow out of the part of me that thinks that it never has to be one thing or another. That’s the vaguest yet realist summary tone of the album, just the recognition that multiple emotions can be real at the same time.

I read the word “juxtaposition” from a press release that went out with the single yesterday, would that be an overcompensating word?

Yeah, I would say there are lots of juxtaposition adjacent synonyms, that would function like the juxtaposition. You could use ambivalence, and what else was I saying again? There’s a lot of my brain being sift-y.

What would be a favourite line that you think you’ve written for this album? 

I mean, I have a favourite line in almost every song. I tweeted the line “What it means to follow my heart depends on the day,” I like that one. Because that piece of advice “follow your heart” has always confused me, because like, which fucking one? My heart at 10 am? Or my heart at 2 pm? Because they’re saying different shit.

Absolutely. What do you tend to write with? Typically, when you step into the studio, what instrument do you pick up first?

My notes app, I would say is my primary instrument first. Once I have some words, then I’ll bounce back and forth between the piano and the guitar.

I did not expect the Notes app, but I understand that. What is something that you’re currently excited about? 

Going dancing with my friends tonight, I’m excited about that. We’re going to Columbia on Monday. Excited about that. Then I’m excited about my birthday, and then I’m excited about my niece’s birthday. Those are the list of things from February, March, and April. Those are the things I’m most excited about.

I know that’s not what the song is about, but speaking on a topic of moderation — what do you do to help yourself to find a balance between being an artist and just being a person?

I’m very lucky to have a career that doesn’t create very much a distinction. There are a lot of artists that I love that have a persona. I think that’s an extraordinarily impressive and artistically meaningful approach to existing in a relationship with your art to create a persona around your art. A lot of my favourite artists have done what I haven’t. For the way I exist in the way I understand my brain, I think that would be rather something confusing for me. So, luckily for me, this thing within the construct of my artistic identity kind of just means existing. I’m grateful for that.

I Don’t Miss You is out now.

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