In a parallel universe, Roy English is a professional Egyptologist.
“I’ve been fascinated with Egyptian mythology and other ancient cultures since I was a kid,” English shared with The Knockturnal. “Becoming a firefighter or doctor—those typical kid dreams—didn’t interest me at all.” But this dimension had different plans for the impossibly laid-back pop crooner and placed him here: Beside me, in one of Atlantic’s swanky lounge rooms, far away from imposing temples and pyramids of Giza.
Although fate brought him to the stage and not to the dig site, English’s childhood passion still informs his approach to music-making. Known as the frontman of collaborative project Jagwar Twin, English, who rocked blonde dreads, mountains of silver jewelry, and a fur coat during our interview, is quite tapped into his spiritual side. When he was recording his most recent album, Subject to Flooding, with his team, which included well-known engineers S1 and Linus, their day-to-day process resembled that of a daily schedule at a summer Mexican peyote retreat. “We were doing ice baths and saunas and guided meditations all the time. It was amazing!” he exclaimed. “The crazy part was the change that happened within us. The process of making the music transformed after these sessions. All these things made us look inward. I think to make good art, you have to learn about yourself first, and all those experiences combined helped me do that.”
While his alternative-rock inspired pop songs might not evidently be inspired by these bohemian, third-eye techniques—no psychedelic sitars or trippy synth arpeggios here!—English’s attitude towards life is. Whether it was recalling his high-school bullies or god-awful high-school band jams, each story always ended on some moral through line, the same way a yoga instructor might use a personal moment of mental weakness as a lesson in the value of patience and hard work. “For a large majority of my life, I was a misfit, an outcast, really thinking negativity,” he later shared. “I just thought I was weird and different and that was wrong, but once I got older, my perceptive changed. Those people who bullied me…I have no anger against them. They were just projecting their insecurities. Taking ownership of my being was this really cool thing, and it definitely comes through in my music. I know that other people feel my confidence too in my music, and I hope with songs like “Loser,” they can also find confidence in themselves for their uniqueness!”
What is most endearing about English is his deep sense of empathy and relentless optimism. “I just want people to feel good. Subject to Flooding sets out to do that. Creating happiness is all I want to do. Who doesn’t deserve to be happy?!” After our interview ended, we hugged it out and parted ways—and as I sank back down to the ground floor in the elevator, listening to some of our conversation on my phone, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit lighter and a little bit braver. Apparently, positivity is contagious.
Jagwar Twin is about to go on tour with Avril Lavigne this fall.
A Conversation with Jagwar Twin
The Knockturnal: I’m curious if there was anything unexpected that sort of happened this past week, this past week since the release of Subject to Flooding.
Jagwar Twin: Yeah. Honestly, everything’s unexpected. It’s been really cool, being on tour and all. It is good to see that we are reaching a whole new kind of demographic, seeing how people are responding to the songs live because when you’re in the studio for so long, you’re kind of in a vacuum, you know? Seeing it translate and seeing the eyes of people during live sets is really special. I keep telling the lighting guy, “Turn the crowd lights up!” again and again because it so interesting to read people’s faces. Even if it’s their first time hearing you, they might not know the words, but you can tell how they react, what works, and what doesn’t, and I think that’s very valuable. But it’s been really cool seeing people catch on as we go and start singing along and picking it up. It’s been great.
The Knockturnal: Before jumping into more current events, I want to know where you got your start.
Jagwar Twin: I was probably in junior high, a young teenager at the time. I started messing around with the guitar and playing so bad. I was trying to sing, and my mom wanted me to take lessons. I don’t know if I had an authority problem or what it was, but I was like, “No, lessons aren’t for me.” So I kinda just learned my own way of playing guitar and singing, and I didn’t do it properly to the point where I couldn’t hit a note singing to save my life. I thought that the louder that I sang, the closer I’d be to hitting the note, which is not how it works: So obviously really loud and really bad. Then, I got to high school, starting playing in bands with my friends. I was always really serious about it. I always knew I wanted to do music for the rest of my life, but I didn’t really know what that meant. I also knew I was bad—so bad to the point where the older kids in my high school made a blog site devoted to how bad I was as a singer.
I remember the specific moment I found out about the blog: It was my junior year of high school, and I came home to go on the computer. We had one computer in my house. It was one of those old, clunky Macs. It was my mom’s computer kitchen. I remember going on this blog site and everything hit me right there. I mean, I knew they were right. I knew I wasn’t a good singer. But it was a turning point for me, and I was going to learn how to sing and do this and make this a reality—even if it kills me. But I’m not going to have any excuses of why I didn’t do it. So everyday after school, eight hours a day, every single day, I practiced. I didn’t hang out with people. I didn’t go party, I didn’t do anything. I just practiced, practiced, practiced and practiced. And then, you know, it still took years because I didn’t have the innate ability to sing, that technical skill. Persoanlly, I think you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it. It doesn’t matter how crazy it seems. That’s such a small, simple thing, but when you’re in high school, it seems like a big undertaking.
The Knockturnal: How do you go about absorbing criticism now?
Jagwar Twin: I believe that there’s always elements you can take away from criticism. Even if something is negative, you can always take a positive from that. If someone thought this album is the worst album I’ve ever heard in my entire life and here’s why, I might rethink that melody. What are they actually trying to say here? There are certain things where I’m going to stick to my guns. But there’s always room for improvement, so I try to play with criticism if possible.
The Knockturnal: I noticed that you sort of sit in between a lot of different music genres, and I’m wondering if you sort of identify with a certain style over others.
Jagwar Twin: No, not really. Now, everyone does everything. We grew up with endless music at our disposal, whether it was via Limewire or iTunes, iPods or the shuffle. In a sense, everyone’s shuffling. Maybe some people only listen to hip hop or only listen to country, but I don’t think that’s the norm.
The Knockturnal: I can tell that you’re a musician who’s constantly listening to new things, attempting to absorb a lot at once. I’m wondering when you were crafting the album, who was on your radar? Who influenced you?
Jagwar Twin: There were inspirations but more on a more metaphysical level. Things did creep into the music. I was listening to a ton of Beatles and Stones at the time. While the songs don’t necessarily sound like Stones, there are certain principles from those musicians I borrow and weave into my music.
The Knockturnal: Your songs are quite operatic—very dramatic and large—whether that manifests as a resonant bass drum or perhaps a very beautiful electronic melody. Can you speak a little bit more on why you settled on that sort of style for Subject to Flooding?
Jagwar Twin: There was a feeling when we were first making the album. We started it over two years ago, and at the time, we were asking ourselves, “Where is the culture going? What do we need?” Not necessarily musically, but the triumphant sound came in response to how the world is in a crazy place. No one’s going to disagree when you say that. We all agree on that. That’s one thing I think probably everyone can agree on, and with that though, sometimes people take the negative approach: Everything is going to shit. We don’t stand a chance. We’re victims of this. But I don’t believe that, and the triumphant kind of sound was battling that negativity. We were aware that the album was going to take longer to grow, especially when we decided on doing things a little outside the box. We could just drop it into a playlist and play to a certain demohraphic. But because of our approach, I think it allowed us the freedom to say what we wanted lyrically and also musically with a positive message. That message, that feeling, was optimism.
The Knockturnal: What was the production process like with S1 and Linus. Two years is a long time!
Jagwar Twin: Two years is a long time. It didn’t take us two years to make, but when we finished it, it was like, “Well, what do we do with this?” You know, the first step was S1 being a big part of it. I really needed him to be a part of it because he is such a positive person in my life and has been a mentor for so many years. I met him kind of through Jeff Bhasker and the Kanye West camp in 2012. He was one of the first people who believed in me. I had no money, no success, nothing to offer him. But he saw something in me that maybe I didn’t even see in myself, andh e became like family. So when it came down to making this record, I wanted to do it with him.
