Q: Where were you born, Jay P?
A: My parents were from Malta and I was born in Melbourne, but when I was six months old we moved to Malta. My dad was in WW2, and he moved to Queensland and came to visit his brother in Melbourne. He loved the laidback attitude of Australia compared with the English.

Q: When did the music start happening for you?
A: “All I always wanted to do was music from about the age of 4 or 5. Mum had an uncle who was a conductor of an orchestra who wrote a lot of symphonies in Gozo and was very well known. Her other uncle was a poet. A lot of priests in the family, a lot preachers and teachers and creative types. I guess that’s where my philosophical hypothesis on life comes into play. My mum’s brother was an actor/music teacher. I guess when my family members in the village found out this was the career path I was pursuing, they weren’t surprised at all. Like when I was 18 or 19 and gigging in places, they’d say, ‘Well, it’s in his blood, it’s in his genes’. When I was 4 or 5, I can remember seeing the organ pipes and I knew right then that one-day I’d be singing or something. But I guess my 12th Christmas was when it really started. I always begged my Mum to buy me an instrument. She (Maris) later on confessed, (laughing), she didn’t want to buy me an instrument because she knew I had it in my blood and didn’t want me to chase up a rock star career. She knew, from her brother’s career, you can put so much into it and sometimes it can ruin you. What happened before that, I was at mass and there was a priest called Father Carmel, my Mum’s cousin who was actually starting to become a priest at the time and every time we used to go to mass I’d be obsessed with watching these guys play the guitar. Even today, every time I see a guitar – I can’t get enough. Father Carmel (Carmelo Refalo) came up and said, ‘I see you watching and I see you analysing us playing’. I said, ‘I’ve always loved the guitars’. He said, ‘I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll teach you how to play the guitar for nothing. But you will come and join us play in church for nothing.’ I said, ‘What’s the catch?’ And he replied, ‘You’ve got to talk your Mum into buying you a guitar for Christmas’. And sure enough, when I was 12, I got my first acoustic guitar and I still have it. Within two or three months I picked it up so quickly I was gigging with my cousins at the churches over there. I can remember a blind man came up at the time and gave me 5 lira (Maltese currency) at the time. I couldn’t take it but he insisted until I explained that it was a deal I had with God. I just couldn’t take it.” (Father Carmel was to come to Australia when Jay P recorded his new album last year and sat in the studio). “To have the guy who taught me early on sit in on the recording process was amazing. It meant a lot to him to see what I was doing now and he said he was proud to have played a part in that’’ – Jay P

Q: It’s refreshing to see you’re an artist who hasn’t necessarily been influenced by the mainstream, but more organic things like church music. Anything else influence you?
A: “Yeah, well I guess that’s why I’ve never really been a covers artist, or really into doing covers. The one thing Mum did buy me was the Bee Gees Greatest Hits on vinyl and when Mum and Dad were having siestas, I’d be in the workshop, which was secluded from the house in Malta, and I’d lock it up. I’d get the water buckets, turn them over and get some sticks and start drumming to the songs – that was when I was about 6, I guess. And when I came back out here to Australia about 14, I came out with my guitar and again I felt that loneliness that I felt when I was 9. But this time I was looking forward to seeing the red and black (Essendon, AFL football team) again, kicking a footy. But again things had changed. Friends had grown up. But my guitar was there. I was all over the place for years but the most consistent thing in my life was that, my music.

Q: So you started exploring different sounds?
A: “Yeah, I did but I always kept coming back to the 1970s, even through the 1990s when nothing really struck me as much as that era did. The songwriting era. I never showed anybody, I was very private with my music, a kind of meditation to myself. As a 16-year-old it wasn’t very cool to go out and expose those kinds of emotions in song. Then my friends would come around and I’d be strumming to myself, playing and singing and their ears started to prick up. I attended a singing academy on my mother’s recommendation; she told me it would be good to learn how to use my voice, if I was to go down that road. I wasn’t really much into the vocal training, I tend to believe you’ve either got it or you haven’t and you’ll find a way. I’ve got a pretty natural kind of a voice. I did a talent quest at school in Year 12 and won. Then I sang at the Year 12 mass and had a good response.”

Q: So what was the turning point for you?
A: “Back in Australia, following a visit in the US and Europe, I didn’t want to get involved in the music industry after the experience of the 1990s, but wanted to continue to write. I simply went back to my bedroom again where it was just me and the guitar and started writing again. My Mum had always told me to just always be myself and I finally decided to do that. I started playing acoustic music at Hardiman’s Hotel in Kensington. Songs like Rain came from this period. I was perfecting my craft at this stage. I was getting experience I didn’t have in the 1990s, playing live and doing my own original stuff. It was around this time I met up with Gary Pinto and he was keen to do a bit of writing with me, we grabbed the four track and put together the song Love. He encouraged me to demo it. This is where I met Michael Zammit, through mutual friends. Michael is very talented, a gifted musician/producer/engineer. So we hooked up and recorded Love at his studio, Airwaves Recording, and he asked me what other stuff I had. I was enjoying the idea of having another go again but I knew there was a missing link. I was the songwriter, Michael had done all the music in the studio but we needed the mixing to be done by someone different, another set of eyes and ears to come in. Hence we approached Tony Espie, a veteran who has done several albums and is highly regarded. He was the missing link.

Q: And do you find your friendship with Kerry has helped your songwriting? Is that relationship and the connection with the spiritual world inspiring songs?
A: “Absolutely. I don’t really co-write with people, I co-write with Gary, but generally I like to write songs on my own. But with Kerry, maybe the next album could involve her relaying the messages from the symbols and signals she receives and putting them and the lyrics through me. Which is pretty much what I think is happening now anyway. I think you just have to go with your gut instinct and I never used to do that before, but now I do.”

Q: Your songs come straight from the heart and are honest, aren’t they?
A: “It’s me. They’re real. There’s no love song on here to be honest, they’re based on real issues and people. Life’s Too Short – Adam Basil, it happened. Love – it’s happening. Goodbye – it’s all about how we can be close to somebody and then when we part from them they don’t mean anything to you, the breakdowns of some relationships. Beautiful World – it’s a sort of sarcastic song saying, ‘Yeah, we are in a beautiful world, but how beautiful are we making it? Are we screwing it up?’ Track 6, Think Ahead To Go Ahead. Alzheimer’s Australia Vic are using it for their ad campaign. My dad, Chris, who suffers from dementia himself, used to say to me, ‘Think ahead to go ahead, son’, and that’s what inspired the song.”

Q: What’s your aim? What are you trying to achieve with the album?
A: “Just to get this music out there. There is a grain of positivity going through the album. A message to get up and move on with life because life is too short. Keep it real, do the simple things that make you happy. Get the most out of your life.”

Q: Tell us about your association with Alzheimer’s Australia Vic?
A: “As mentioned, my father suffers from Alzheimer’s so it is a charity that is close to my heart. Kerry decided to call Alzheimer’s so that we could organise a show to raise funds for the charity. My company Star Motion Enterprises Pty Ltd came up with a concept called Show Compassion: living with dementia. I got a line-up of musicians such as Mark Da Costa, Natalie Gauci (winner of Australian Idol 2007), Jack Byrnes, Dylan Yeandle and Jo Dawson ... we sold out the show which was held at Manchester Lane and raised about $8000 for Alzheimer’s Australia Vic. The relationship with the charity got even stronger when they approached me to write a song for their advertising campaign for the Mind Your Mind program where I wrote Think Ahead To Go Ahead. This campaign will be launched in 2009. We are also going to have another Show Compassion 2009 in October and hopefully make this an annual event.”

Q: What about the possible link with Britney Spears as a relative?
A: “All I know is that she is of Maltese background – one of her ancestors’ surname is Portelli, with a possible link to the village where my ancestors came from which is Nadur in Gozo, sister island of Malta. I have my family tree going back to 1675. There just could be a great possibility there might be a connection there. Who knows? (laughs)”