The IMC Magazine Issue 16/June 2016 | Page 22

it. You’re going to do it on your own terms. Merle Haggard wrote eloquently much better than I do about that very same thing with songs like ‘I think I’ll Just Sit Here And Drink’. Nightly Suicide is about that sort of defiant active addiction kind of attitude. It’s also a little bit of an homage to the American poet Charles Bukowski

The second track released from the EP was ‘The Moon Ain’t Fallen On Me Yet’. Tell us how that song came about.

It’s my favorite song on the record, by the way. The Moon Ain’t Fallen On Me Yet came about when my wife and I were at a Diana Krall concert. I love Diana Krall. I’m a big fan of jazz. And she had this huge, gold shimmering moon up hanging above the stage. And about the middle of the show it starts to sway. And you know, audience kind of looks up at this moon swaying above Diana Krall’s head. She looks up at it and says, ‘Don’t worry folks. That moon ain’t fallen on me yet’. And I’m like, ‘Whoa, there’s a title, right?’ But then I had to build an RJ song around that title. And what I found was, I’m a night guy. You know, I like being up at night. Always have been. Again the theme in my music is always there’s this ray of hope.

There’s this possibility for redemption even in the darkest. And for me the moon symbolizes that. Always has symbolized that in my life.

So the moon is that light between the devil and the angel. And it’s that light of hope and it’s been my comfort and inspiration many a dark night.

How many other tracks on the EP?

In addition to the two we just discussed there’s four other tracks on it. Three more originals and one cover. And the cover is Ellie King’s ‘Ex’s and O’s’.

And all the songs from the EP have been released?

They are all released now. In terms of what we are sending out to the media we pick and choose.

Moon comes out next and I’m a big fan of the song ‘One Day’. ‘One Day’ is probably the most commercial of the songs. It’s the most upbeat. It’s the most family friendly. It’s not one that’s going to embarrass you if you’re driving your kids to school in the morning and you pop in the RJ cd.

You also have a large number of videos on Youtube. Do you have any particular producer you work with when making the videos?

Well, I’m the producer of all the videos. And I usually come up with the concept and then I go to really great creative people to execute the concept.

There’s a team I work with pretty frequently. Our favorite video and so far the fans’ favorite video, ‘I Wasn’t Born An Angel’ was directed by Tim Patrick and I’m going to bring Tim back to do another video soon. But he’s busy with his career making films.

There’s a team on Spain. Marcos Tinez is the actor and Guillermo Rodrigues the director. They made ‘Smothered’ entirely in Spain and ‘Nightly Suicide’ was shot almost entirely in Spain except for the parts I’m in which were shot in L.A.

The reason we do that is they’re very talented and they make great videos, but it’s a lot less expensive to make movies in Spain than Los Angeles.

Nobody’s producing them for me. I write the checks. And so I can get a lot more for my money in Spain. And I hate to say that but the fact is I’m an independent artist. I can’t spend five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars on a music video. I need to spend a thousand dollars on a music video. I like to tell stories with the videos too. It’s like I don’t see any point, you know, having three minutes of me lip syncing to the very same track you can download.

I want the video to be a real movie. I want to use the medium of cinema to tell the story of the song in a way that I can’t just by playing it.

You mentioned you’ve played in Canada and it just so happens that you’ll be performing at the Canadian Music Week in Toronto this May.

This is my first invitation to Canadian Music Week. So honored and happy to have been invited.

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