The first thing Marcus Jade asked me was if I was a cop.
“Well I’d have to tell you if I was,” I said, taking it as a joke.
Then he asked me again.
I looked down at myself and I realized: I’m a white guy with a tucked-in, gingham shirt, long pants and loafers. Marcus is tall— well, taller than me— long-haired, casually dressed; a practitioner of an old school Blues I haven’t heard since the recordings of Robert Johnson, simple, pure, often just a man with a guitar and a voice that can pierce your soul over 3 chords. He’s looking down at me, and it's sensible that he's actually wondering, am I a cop?
As much as I’d like to think that a shared love for the Blues would make the two of us the same, we come from different worlds. I don’t think I’ve had an interview I’ve enjoyed as much as mine with Marcus, and maybe that’s because it got me out of the house for the first time in months. But I’d like to think it’s because of how well it speaks for itself:
Jake: Are you from here originally, or from New York?
Marcus: Neither, brother, I’m from Indianapolis. Born and raised. I moved to New York in 2014. Obviously, for reasons like this, this pandemic, I wouldn’t move back to New York right now, but I’d say that it’s been home for 6 years. I like it for what it’s worth, to be fair. Not being from there, I can’t really tell what was vs. what is. And I know the city has so much going on, it’s not like how it used to be, where you could go there and just make it. But if you can, then you really can; that’s still true. It took me 2 years up there to take my music seriously, and I can’t explain it any other way besides to say that it snowballed.
Jake: So where would you say you’re at right now?
Marcus: I mean, I don’t think I’m big. I think I’m hustling. I work hard at my music. I get up every day and eat it, breathe it, you know, and try to deliver some kind of packaged product, but at the same time I’ve never really thought about it hard.
Jake: Speaking of thinking about it, what’s your writing process look like?
Marcus: I went to school for journalism, and my writing process starts there in a way. Knowing what’s going on. I took creative writing classes and what that taught me was this process of just letting go. Then the rest is just letting that mechanical process take over.
Jake: Would you consider yourself more of a reporter, or writer, than a performer?
Marcus: No, I’m still a performer, and I like that. I like the endurance, the challenge. Learning musicianship was always an extension of physicality for me. Getting up and stretching and making your body move with the music. There’s the creative aspect, but the music is what you hear in the end.
Jake: Why do you think now is an important time for the blues, especially yours, that’s so true to the original spirit of it?
Marcus: It’s out of necessity. Not to come off as a traditionalist, but that music still has some sense of meaning,some sense of relevance to now. Blues isn’t outdated, at least for me, and I know because I felt like I had to do it. Like someone had to help keep it up.
Jake: And what does the blues mean to you?
Marcus: I feel like I always wanted to be an individual. To express my individualism, and I think any music black people make expresses that, on some level. And I play Punk, and I play Hardcore, but the Blues speaks to me on this deeper personal level. The truth about Blues music is built into the fact that the people who made it suffered. Suffered a lot compared to the people— the white people— around them. In a way, Blues is Punk, is all that. It’s all about liberation. There’s this thing, I guess, of knowing the right words to say what’s going on, but then there’s this other spiritual, intuitive approach of conveying what’s going on. And the Blues spoke to me in that. It’s what goes unspoken. I could also relate it to Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop is full of competition, and so is the Blues, and both have their pantheons, but the Blues also has space for someone like me to innovate in this way, with a guitar and a voice.
Jake: Can you elaborate on that?
Marcus: As Hip-Hop has become so popular, everything else that a black man does in the industry has become an afterthought. There’s an expectancy, like if you’re a black man who picks up a guitar, there’s a built-in hustle to that. The guitar isn’t in vogue among black people like it was; I don’t know why, but there’s another layer to it. Like you don’t just have to prove you’re a good musician, you have to prove that you’re just as black as anyone else. It says something about the landscape of America, that there’s this tokenism. I can show up on a bill with a bunch of white kids and there’s this choice, like you can either come out as some kind of caricature, or you can come out as a titan. I mean how many Bon Ivers or Jason Mrazes do you know? There’s just an extra level now, even though it used to be the whole thing, the whole place it came from, when a black man steps up on stage with just himself and a guitar.
Jake: One of the things I feel like sets you apart from a lot of Blues singers is your higher vocal register. Is that a purposeful choice or just a natural one?
Marcus: Just a natural one. I was always a choir boy. All through high school. So I was always used to exercising my voice and finding where I fit in the most naturally.
Jake: Your song, UniverSoul, was an artistic departure from that classic Blues. Was there a special reason that song needed to be sung differently?
Marcus: I think I was trying to get more poetic, which is a direction I’m comfortable moving in sometimes. Getting lyrical. That one blends Bob Dylan with, like, Musiq Soulchild. There’s a lot of different songs I’ll do that aren’t straight Blues, they’re drawing from the ideas of Blues and expanding. I’ll always hesitate to call myself a “Blues” artist, you know? I’m an artist inspired by the Blues.
Jake: What have you been doing to keep up with your audience during isolation?
Marcus: I’ve been doing these things called the Quarantine Sessions. The last 12 weeks, I’ve been dropping a song a week. Well, this last one will be the 12th.
They’re all new songs. Some I wrote before the quarantine started, but they’re all new releases, all coming out live on my social media. Then after that, I’m dropping a poetry album. Just spoken word. I feel like subtraction, in this case, subtracting the guitar and just getting it down to what’s being said, is another form of progression.
Listen to more of Marcus Jade’s Quarantine Session Recordings and see them live on @marcusjademusic