PRESS
QUOTES
"The finest new songwriter I've heard for 10 years."
TOM ROBINSON
“...shades of Jacques Brel and David Bowie in his early glorious prime... Philip Jeays is a real find, just the sort of discovery you're always hoping to make and rarely do.“
DAILY TELEGRAPH
“...tightly constructed songs which are by turn funny, touching, bitter and sad... Jeays doesn't just sing his songs - he acts them out.“
TATLER
“Songs delivered with a sometimes frightening intensity and an often gleeful amount of bile.“
FINANCIAL TIMES
“...only once in a decade do you see a songwriter with such a unique jaundiced line.“
GUARDIAN
“Quite simply, 'October' is the sort of album which will be rediscovered in ten years time and treated with the same respect as the likes of Nick Drake.“
GOLDMINE (USA)
“A fresh fearless young singer songwriter whose artistic potential is scary...vulnerable, vitriolic and cruelly observant... Jeays in full, unforgiving flight is some sight.“
HERALD (GLASGOW)
“...superbly crafted songs, written with a poetic sensibility that is imbued with bitter irony and mordant wit... Jeays is unique on the contemporary British music scene.“
MORNING STAR
“He is, without doubt, the best songwriter in the country.“
NEWBURY WEEKLY NEWS
“...a singer songwriter whose darkly comic songs, with Sondheimesque tongue-twisting lyrics, have projected him to semi-cult status.“
LONDON EVENING STANDARD
REVIEWS
Philip Jeays Trio
Cafe Royal, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
22 August 1996
Performed with wit and flair, Philip Jeays' songs move from caustic satire to sentimentality, and never hit a false note. The music is good stuff, but this outfit have got more than tunes going for them - Jeays delivers his material with real showmanship and a deft comic touch. Jeays has a rich, dark voice, like Tom Waits, which can turn sardonic or pleading. Both storyteller and musician, he belts out the songs while David Harrod on keyboards and William George Q on guitar do a fine backing job. Some of the numbers are tirades. Others shift a gear into confessional mode, but still keep the dry touch, recalling lost innocence or speculating, none too optimistically, about love. The lyrics are half the fun - witty, unpredictable, self-deprecatory, and boy, do they rhyme. This is real cabaret, part song, part theatre, part stand-up, and uplifting and quirky brew.
Alison Mercer
Philip Jeays Trio
Cafe Royal, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
22 August 1996
Auntie Kay's Good Gig Guide
You need all the help you can get to find your way around the Edinburgh Fringe - but I never thought it would come from my dear old Auntie Kay. "Here," she said over Sunday lunch in suburban Surrey, thrusting a flyer in my face. "I think this chap is Gary Glitter's younger brother. You ought to see him." Auntie had got her wires crossed. Philip Jeays is no relation of Mr Glitter, but he is a real find, just the sort of discovery you're always hoping to make in Edinburgh and rarely do. Looking like a young and less dissipated Keith Richards, he is a singer blessed with a strong and expressive voice who writes songs of sardonic wit and often wonderfully histrionic drama. There are shades of Jacques Brel here, and also of David Bowie in his early, glorious prime. If Jeays was dismayed to be playing to an audience of fewer than 20 in a tatty room above the Cafe Royal (an oyster bar without any oysters when I lunched there earlier in the day), he didn't let it show. Occasionally he could be tediously arch, recalling the Bowie of The Laughing Gnome rather than Aladdin Sane, but he performed some terrific love-gone-wrong songs, moving between sneery snarls and throbbing romanticism to potent effect. He is backed by a pianist and a guitarist, but what he needs is an efficient, driving band, which could turn his no-holds-barred songs into floridly over-the-top-pop.
Charles Spencer
THE HERALD RECOMMENDS
Music Still Playing the Fool - Philip Jeays, Cafe Royal, Edinburgh Fringe Festival
THIS is the sort of discovery the Fringe should be all about, a fresh, fearless young singer, songwriter and performer whose artistic potential is scary. In fact, Philip Jeays can be pretty scary already. His songs combine the French's love for macabre storytelling with the European art-song tradition (Jacques Brel's shadow hovers throughout then materialises in the finale's mad last tangle in Paris) and a very English eccentricity. By turns vulnerable, vitriolic, and cruelly observant, Jeays's carefully honed lyrics come crisply and often comically to life through a theatrical, beautifully judged delivery, partly Peter Hammill, partly Hugh Grant but mostly a snivelling, hectoring, gloriously cursing persona of Jeays's own devising.
Rob Adams
Cafe Royal, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Still Playing the Fool
Singer/songwriter Philip Jeays knows how to write a tune. But it's his words which count. This is an hour's worth of songs, each of which is a short story in its own right. Some are just that, whimsical or humourous narrative stories, but the best songs are those, such as Richenda or Geoff, which pick an emotion and take it for a walk. It helps that Jeays' material is highly personal, but his distaste for organised religion and the use of uniforms to create those who "live their lives in little swarms" certainty has the ability to offend. At his best, Jeays' pale, thin figure and warm, honey-coated voice are reminiscent of David Bowie in his golden years. His band - piano, guitars, flute and cello, played by David Harrod, William George Q. Kari Hide-Prince and Lowdy Brabyn respectively - provide tight backing, in arrangements which pick up and echo the timbre and syncopation of the voice and words. If anyone needed a late-nineties rock opera, Jeays would be the one to call.
Thom Dibdin
Still Playing the Fool
Cafe Royal, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Music ****
Let's get the comparisons out of the way. As a singer, Philip Jeays places and Anthony Newleyesque voice inside a mime artiste's body beneath a Keith Richards hairstyle. As the storytelling writer of bitter-sweet songs of an often racing, melodic pull, he's like a British Jacques Brel. Still, Jeays has an avid, charismatic cabaret style all his own, dipped in theatricality. He combines a critical, acrid wit (listen to him lambaste [sic] all Idiots in Uniforms or send out a big F... You to everyone, including death) with a streak of self-pitying sentimentality via ballads (the ravenous Say You Love Me) and songs of memory. The sometimes harsh, insistent bleat in his voice can be a tad wearying and in this programme of songs his vocal range doesn't exactly startle. It is, however, a strong voice with perhaps a greater warmth than his material wrings from it. On top of that, Jeays seems like he'd be a slyly fun person with whom to hang around. His back-up band [sic] comprised of keyboards, guitar, cello and flute, serves him well.
Donald Hutera
25 Aug 1998
For all that Mansfield has awakened me to the glories of Piaf, I still incline more towards the cynical romanticism of Jacques Brel. Philip Jeays, performing at the Cafe Royal (venue 47), neither impersonates Brel nor performs a tribute to him; he simply wants to be the man's musical heir. To all intents and purposes, he succeeds. Still Playing The Fool is an hour of Jeays' own songs, delivered with a sometimes frightening intensity and an often gleeful amount of bile. The height and depths of love and loss (more often the latter), the black frustrations of failure, the defiant settling of old scores, the dark impulse to stab one's best friend in order to seize his car, house and wife (in the self-parodically Brel-titled "Geoff") ... Jeays covers the whole waterfront quite delightfully, looking more than a little like the David Bowie of 30 years ago and fixing his gaze above our heads in a transport of emotion. One of the less widely know gems of the fringe.
Ian Shuttleworth
Cafe Royal, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
THE FRINGE can be a cruel place, especially if you are trying to do something different. A couple of years ago I chanced across a singer called Philip Jeays, performing his own material with an excellent band at the Cafe Royal. There were only about a dozen people in the audience, but Jeays gave his all, singing his splendidly dramatic and well-crafted songs with tremendous panache. He's back at the festival this year, his flyers quoting my own rave review and pop singer Tom Robinson's description of Jeays as the finest singwriter he's heard in 10 years. This time, surely, it would be a big venue and audiences roaring with approval. Er no, actually. Jeays is back in the small room at the Cafe Royal, and on the night I attended he was playing to 13. He seemed sheepish rather than bitter about this, and says that part of the problem is that his work is in the Jacques Brel tradition, which has never been big in England. To subsidise his singing he works two days a week in a bookies and helps his brother run comedy clubs. Does he ever get depressed? "Not really, because I really love writing these songs. I know I'll never be really huge, but what I would like is to be able to make a living out of it and not to have to work in the bookies any more." If there is any justice at all, Jeays will one day do better than that.
Charles Spencer
Cafe Royal, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Star rating: four
Imagine a deranged David Bowie with a punk attitude, singing numbers from a major musical devised by Steven King, and delivered with the venom of Alice Cooper. Got it? You're still well short of the mark. What Jeays offers is 60-minutes of remarkably clever material that covers such topics as love, death, childhood, madness and murder - all delivered with manic energy, wit and malevolence. Every gesture, leer and raised eyebrow is meticulously pre-planned and executed to perfection. Listen and watch as he delivers the ingenious Geoff, a song that vocalises his half-baked plans to murder his lifelong friend in order that he might claim his possessions for himself, you'll find yourself wondering if he really is crazy. Crazy or not, he is a songwriter who delivers his carefully crafted material with a fiery dynamism, a malevolent glint in his eye, and his tongue firmly in his cheek. He gives everything he has, and the audience - many of whom were seeing the show for the third and fourth time - clearly loved every minute of it. Jeays? He's quite, quite, mad, of course, but not as mad as those who miss this show.
Drew McAdam
Cafe Royal, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
At his best, this talented British singer-songwriter has a ravenous charm. Think Jacques Brel reincarnated by an intense cross between Anthony Newley and David Bowie. He is tall, thin and pale, with an attractive smile, great haircut and a strong-voiced, often strident delivery of original material that has nothing to do with the simple-minded singalongs or innocuous background for cocktail bar chatter. Alternately casting himself as romantic fool, sneering devil and irony-streaked sinner, Jeays produces a neat, hour-long set mixing wisdom and sarcasm, self-reflection and self-dramatisation. He is a dab hand at concocting eddying elegies for lost youth, dashed hopes and dead friends. But he has an even greater penchant for bitter comedies of hypocrisy, cultural pretension and amatory desperation. Jeays is almost too good at taking a song by the throat. You may occasionally pine for a gentler, more relaxed and wide-ranging exhibition of his gifts and a tad less of the show-stopping cabaret troubadour. Still, he possesses the sort of securely high-strung appeal that can grow on you.
Donald Hutera
Photo Credit: Steve Best, www.stevebest.com
ARTICLES
Philip Jeays - Who the hell is he?
When the lights come down before your first Philip Jeays gig, you cannot know what to expect. A friend has told you that you have to come but hasn't been able to say quite why. "A Jacques Brel for the 90's", say the leaflets. Well yes, and all very well, if you know of the Belgian chansonnier with the shining eyes and break-your-heart lyrics, if you haven't been put off by second-rate interpreters; a man at my table had seen Brel in 1964 and reckoned Jeays was his equal in "intensity of performance". But that doesn't quite capture it. Brel's Gallic melodrama can seem overblown to the cynical British mind; but Jeays is doing something that is oh so English. Then again it will never be Britpop. When, in the opening number, The Man from Delmonte, Jeays casts a withering look at contemporaries who "go straight to number one, miming to a song they've never even sung", you can't help loving the dismissive arrogance of his persona. If Withnail was a singer-songwriter, this is how he would sing. The evening is not all biting wit, though. With his two piece band, Jeays also leads us into the deepest of emotional waters. The melancholic magic of 'The Last Dance' comes as a surprise after the sharper numbers, but it works its spell well. And, at the heart of the set, the operatic splendour of Only This High never fails to sweep the audience into its tumbling reverie: a rich poetic tapestry of childhood, with memories of a first kiss, of adult sorrows seen from a child's viewpoint, of committing your first simple sins "that Jesus forgave every Sunday at ten / so that by twelve o'clock you could do them again." And the voice, oh the voice of the man, as he stands in the spotlight gesturing boldly; he could have held a crowd of thousands, yet you felt you alone were privy to his inmost emotions. They kick back into high gear with Idiots In Uniform and my personal favourite Madame, about the posings of a society culture vulture: When she says, "Oh, how I love the Dutch," I say, "Madame, these are not the Dutch as such, But more south and west of the continent," She says, "I know. That's what I meant." And so they take us through an hour of supercilious highs and deep romantic lows. William George Q provides the framework with his guitar, alternately spikey and harmonious; his fretless bass on the slower numbers adds a gorgeous warmth. On the piano, David Harrod gives body to the songs with orchestral countermelodies and dramatic syncopations, at home both with the symphonic opening of Oh To Be A God and the rolling Tom Waitsy blues of Richenda. As tight a trio as you could wish to see, their pleasure in performing and commitment to the songs were infectious. So, as his fliers ask; who the hell is Philip Jeays? And how can I describe his show? It's not pop, but it's very accessible; it's not songs from the shows, but you'll go away humming the tunes; it's not cabaret, but it gets you tapping your feet, laughing your head off, and drowning your sorrows. As he closed the show, with a couple of numbers about drinking and falling in love (or not), Jeays seemed unprepared for the rapturous applause that greeted him. He'd better get prepared, because it seemed quite clear to me there's going to be a lot more of it coming his way.'
The controversial Mr Philip Jeays!
Keith Haworth talks to the singer, Philip Jeays
Keith Haworth talks to the controversial Mr Philip Jeays about being the countries best kept singing secret.
CDX. Despite critical plaudits you are still regarded by many fans as being their own personal secret obsession. In fact you seem at times to be wilfully perverse in your maintenance of an under the radar profile. Is that an accurate description?
Philip Jeays. I don't think that it is a completely accurate description; I just think my energies are directed more into being creative than being famous. Some people are absolutely hungry for fame and money, and good luck to them, but personally I see art as being sacred - nothing on earth (beyond human decency and compassion) is as important as the art we leave behind us; it's all that remains of great civilisations, and more often that not we use it as a yardstick in our judgement of them. Someone once put it like this - if aliens came to this planet and said 'give us three reasons not to destroy you', you wouldn't take them to the Bank of England and show them the money, they'd say 'but this is just paper'; you wouldn't take them to Fort Knox and show them the gold, they'd say 'but this is just metal'; and you wouldn't take them to the diamond mines in South Africa, they'd say 'but these are just stones' - no, you'd show them Van Gogh, or Rembrandt or Rodin, you'd play them Beethoven or Mozart or Brahms, you'd read them Shakespeare or Dylan Thomas - these are the only real reasons for our existence, and all an artist can truly hope for, the greatest accolade, is to be a link in the chain of their art. Having said that, I do try and get out there when I'm asked - I shall be singing one of my songs as part of the 'Godless' variety shows with various very famous people at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London on Dec 18th and 19th, and again at the Hammersmith Apollo on Dec 21st - and I'll be on tour supporting comedian Robin Ince in the new year, so I'm not being too perverse about it right now... I think I can best sum it up like this - I would rather die one day completely penniless and unknown having written the songs I've written, than die one day as rich and famous as Robbie Williams or Bonio having written the songs they've written, because if I had, I'd feel like I'd wasted my life. The art is everything; I want to feel that artistically I've done something worthwhile, even if it doesn't make me any money.
CDX. You inhabit a unique area of popular music that owes far more to the chanson tradition and artists such as Jake Thackray and Jacques Brel than say other artists whom you have also been compared to, such as Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon. Why is it that you think that you have failed to cross over to a wider audience?
Philip Jeays. Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon never crossed over anywhere, they were already there - they both come from pop/rock traditions, and may have been influenced to some degree by Brel (or more likely the fatuous American 'translations' of Brel that are in the main appalling), but they didn't start out as purveyors of 'Chanson', whereas both Brel and Thackray did. As for me, I had never thought about singing at all until I was directly influenced by Brel when living in France in the early 80s, so I came into the music industry wanting to do my own English version of chanson - and that's what I'm still trying to do today. Any attempt at 'crossing over' for me would simply be to dilute what I'm trying to do, and that I think could only weaken any potential impact, so I'll just have to wait for people to cross over to me instead. And I only tend to get compared to singers like Jarvis by people who've never heard of Jacques Brel.
CDX. What is it that is so appealing to you about artists such as Brel and Thackray?
Philip Jeays. Lyrical genius. I was never a fan of dance music, and what these two did was always the antithesis of trite, boring, lyrically bland, chronically dull dance music. I refer to it as 'sit down, shut up, and listen to the words' music. Neither ever bowed to fashion, they believed in what they did and they just did it, regardless.
CDX. Your songs are also often very funny.
Philip Jeays. Real chanson has always been about entertaining people, that is making people laugh as well as making them cry, but sadly in this country if you sing a funny song you get pigeon-holed as writing 'novelty songs'. In France, Brel was known as much for his humour as his emotional songs, but true to form the Anglo-Saxon world only really embraced the 'doom pop' songs. I want to sing both.
CDX. You sell your own stuff through your own website, is this in effect the Jeays cottage industry?
Philip Jeays. I don't sell enough of anything to call it an 'industry', cottage or otherwise! But if you want to help, buy something at www.jeays.com!
CDX. I have frequently compared you to Scott Walker.
Philip Jeays. A common mistake, but people don't seem to realise that when they hear Scott Walker they are listening to a man who is just trying to copy Brel, in the same why that I am now. In other words Scott Walker and I are both pupils and Brel is the master - why would I want to listen to my fellow pupil when I can listen to the master? Scott Walker isn`t bad, but I often find him lyrically weak, and Brel is just so much better.
Posted on 6 November 2008 by Keith Haworth
Photo Credit: Steve Best, www.stevebest.com
Photo Credit: Steve Best, www.stevebest.com
This is from 'ALTERNATIVE ROCK - the essential listening companion' by DAVE THOMPSON - an American publication published by Third Ear
PHILIP JEAYS
BORN 6/24/62 (Taunton, England)
Singer-songwriter Jeays was living in France when he discovered Jacques Brel - just the latest in a long line of introspective troubadours to have fallen under the Belgian songwriter's spell in the years since Scott Walker snatched his muse back from the likes of Rod McKuen and re-invented Brel for the English-speaking doom-pop crowd. David Bowie, Alex Harvey, Marc Almond, and Momus have all acknowledged Brel's impact on their work, as both writer and performer. But only the pioneering Walker ever succeeded in truly translating homage into his own words, turning in a fourth album (1969's Scott 4) loaded with distinctly Brel-ian, but uniquely personal, self compositions. Jeays' debt to Brel, too, is heavy; like Walker, however, it would swiftly be amply repaid with a series of songs which, again, echoed but rarely aped the master's. After some years spent gigging around the southern English club circuit, Jeays' one man show erupted into mainstream consciousness in 1996, when he appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. (He would make triumphant returns there in 1998 and 1999.) There the Scotsman newspaper raved, "Jeays has an avid, charismatic cabaret style all of his own, dipped in theatricality. Alternatively casting himself as romantic fool, sneering devil, and irony streaked sinner, Jeays produces a neat, hour-long set mixing wisdom and sarcasm, self-reflection and self-dramatization." Other press was swift to follow. Comparisons with Bowie, Tom Waits, and even Stephen Sondheim, aside from the inevitable Brel and Walker, prompted The Morning Star to enthuse, "Jeays writes his own songs in a style quite unlike any other British songsmith I've heard. They are superbly crafted, written with poetic sensibility that is imbued with bitter irony and mordant wit. They can be funny and touching simultaneously and often carry in their subtext serious comment on human nature." 1997 saw Jeays make a similar impression at both the Salisbury Festival and the Canadian Vancouver Comedy Festival. Two years later, with a band comprising David Harrod (piano), John Peacock (guitar), William George Q (bass), and Ditton Pye (drums), he released his now much-anticipated debut album, October, backing it up with a series of live shows climaxing at the Talk of London in early 2000. Summer then saw the release of Jeays' second album, Cupid Is A Drunkard, launched during the Edinburgh Festival in August.
Philip Jeays LPs October (DPR - UK) 1999
A staggering achievement, even once you know what's coming next. Ten songs range from the droll "Madame" to the shattered "Remember me to the Roses", a rollercoaster of emotions which trips blithely from savage betrayal to unquestioning adoration, and still finds time to laugh at its own maudlinity.
Cupid Is A Drunkard (DPR - UK) 2000
The title track is reprised from October; otherwise, more of the moody, maudlin, marvellous same.
RADIO APPEARANCES
Singing In The Wilderness
Broadcast on BBC Radio 4
Part 1: 20 Apr 2000
Part 2: 27 Apr 2000
Part 3: 4 May 2000
This three part series was presented by Tom Robinson and traced the path of English songwriting through influences from American rock n roll, English Folk and European chanson particularly Jacques Brel. There was particular emphasis on the current English chanson scene which featured interviews and music by Des De Moor, Robb Johnson, Barb Jungr, Leon Rosselsohn and one Mr Philip Jeays etc.
Part 1 opened with extracts of songs by Des, Barb, Robb and Philip's "The Great War" which was played in full to close the programme.
Part 2 opened with an excerpt of "Say You Love Me"
Part 3 featured an interview with Philip about his songwriting influences with particular focus on the story behind "Terry's Dog"
Singing In The Wilderness
Broadcast on BBC Radio 4
Part 1: 20 Apr 2000
Part 2: 27 Apr 2000
Part 3: 4 May 2000
This three part series was presented by Tom Robinson and traced the path of English song writing through influences from American rock-n-roll, English Folk and European chanson particularly Jacques Brel. There was particular emphasis on the current English chanson scene which featured interviews and music by Des De Moor, Robb Johnson, Barb Jungr, Leon Rosselsohn and one Mr Philip Jeays.
Part 1 opened with extracts of songs by Des, Barb, Robb and Philip's "The Great War" which was played in full to close the programme.
Part 2 opened with an excerpt of "Say You Love Me"
Part 3 featured an interview with Philip about his song writing influences with particular focus on the story behind "Terry's Dog".
Chanson
Broadcast on BBC Radio 4
Part 1: Vive la Revolution: 14 Nov 2000
Part 2: Vive L'Amour: 21 Nov 2000
This three part series was presented by Tom Robinson and traced the path of English songwriting through influences from American rock n roll, English Folk and European chanson particularly Jacques Brel. There was particular emphasis on the current English chanson scene which featured interviews and music by Des De Moor, Robb Johnson, Barb Jungr, Leon Rosselsohn and one Mr Philip Jeays etc.
Part 1 opened with extracts of songs by Des, Barb, Robb and Philip's "The Great War" which was played in full to close the programme.
Part 2 opened with an excerpt of "Say You Love Me"
Part 3 featured an interview with Philip about his songwriting influences with particular focus on the story behind "Terry's Dog"
Chanson
Broadcast on BBC Radio 4
Part 1: Vive la Revolution: 14 Nov 2000
Part 2: Vive L'Amour: 21 Nov 2000
Kit Hesketh Harvey presented a two part documentary on the "French chanson" and its influence on English songwriters and performers, as well as its perception by audiences outside France. There are interviews and clips of Gainsbourg, Aznavour, Brassens, Brel.
Part 1 features a clip of Philip performing "Don't Walk Away" at the Edinburgh Festival, followed by a interview in which he describes David Bowie's "Amsterdam" leading him to discover Jacques Brel. He talks about how Brel's writing is unlike anything in the English language with reference to the structure and rhyming scheme of "Ne Me Quitte Pas". He distinguishes chanson as being songs about life - political, funny, sad songs; a tradition that hasn't carried on in the UK in the same way.
Part 2 - Philip describes audience reactions to performers of chanson, and the acceptance of hearing a sad song by a French audience is different to that of an English audience who may nervously laugh. He also talks about the impact of Serge Gainsbourg's songs and presence in the music scene and the reaction in France to the death of Serge Gainsbourg.
This three part series was presented by Tom Robinson and traced the path of English songwriting through influences from American rock n roll, English Folk and European chanson particularly Jacques Brel. There was particular emphasis on the current English chanson scene which featured interviews and music by Des De Moor, Robb Johnson, Barb Jungr, Leon Rosselsohn and one Mr Philip Jeays etc.
Part 1 opened with extracts of songs by Des, Barb, Robb and Philip's "The Great War" which was played in full to close the programme.
Part 2 opened with an excerpt of "Say You Love Me"
Part 3 featured an interview with Philip about his songwriting influences with particular focus on the story behind "Terry's Dog"
The Verb
Broadcast on BBC Radio 3
20 Apr 2002
Presented by poet Ian McMillan, this programme featured an exclusive performance of "Only This High" featuring David Harrod on piano, and an interview with Philip about the influence of Jacques Brel on him as a writer and performer.
This three part series was presented by Tom Robinson and traced the path of English songwriting through influences from American rock n roll, English Folk and European chanson particularly Jacques Brel. There was particular emphasis on the current English chanson scene which featured interviews and music by Des De Moor, Robb Johnson, Barb Jungr, Leon Rosselsohn and one Mr Philip Jeays etc.
Part 1 opened with extracts of songs by Des, Barb, Robb and Philip's "The Great War" which was played in full to close the programme.
Part 2 opened with an excerpt of "Say You Love Me"
Part 3 featured an interview with Philip about his songwriting influences with particular focus on the story behind "Terry's Dog"
Singing In The Wilderness
Broadcast on BBC Radio 4
Part 1: 20 Apr 2000
Part 2: 27 Apr 2000
Part 3: 4 May 2000
This three part series was presented by Tom Robinson and traced the path of English song writing through influences from American rock-n-roll, English Folk and European chanson particularly Jacques Brel. There was particular emphasis on the current English chanson scene which featured interviews and music by Des De Moor, Robb Johnson, Barb Jungr, Leon Rosselsohn and one Mr Philip Jeays.
Part 1 opened with extracts of songs by Des, Barb, Robb and Philip's "The Great War" which was played in full to close the programme.
Part 2 opened with an excerpt of "Say You Love Me"
Part 3 featured an interview with Philip about his song writing influences with particular focus on the story behind "Terry's Dog"
Kit and the Widow Cocktails
Broadcast on BBC Radio 4
23 Jul 2005
Kit and the Widow presented performers at the London Cabaret Convention earlier this year and featured Philip's performance of "Mr Jeays" including a spoken introduction, and accompanied on piano by David Harrod. The pair had also performed "The Great War" on the same evening but this wasn't broadcast. The 'official' reason given was that it was due to time restraints.... the irony being is that "Mr Jeays" is actually longer than "The Great War".
This three part series was presented by Tom Robinson and traced the path of English songwriting through influences from American rock n roll, English Folk and European chanson particularly Jacques Brel. There was particular emphasis on the current English chanson scene which featured interviews and music by Des De Moor, Robb Johnson, Barb Jungr, Leon Rosselsohn and one Mr Philip Jeays etc.
Part 1 opened with extracts of songs by Des, Barb, Robb and Philip's "The Great War" which was played in full to close the programme.
Part 2 opened with an excerpt of "Say You Love Me"
Part 3 featured an interview with Philip about his songwriting influences with particular focus on the story behind "Terry's Dog"
'South Live'
Broadcast on BBC Southern Counties
29 June 2007
A live session recorded for BBC Southern Counties show 'South Live'. Phil appeared with the Stapletons and performed five songs.
This three part series was presented by Tom Robinson and traced the path of English songwriting through influences from American rock n roll, English Folk and European chanson particularly Jacques Brel. There was particular emphasis on the current English chanson scene which featured interviews and music by Des De Moor, Robb Johnson, Barb Jungr, Leon Rosselsohn and one Mr Philip Jeays etc.
Part 1 opened with extracts of songs by Des, Barb, Robb and Philip's "The Great War" which was played in full to close the programme.
Part 2 opened with an excerpt of "Say You Love Me"
Part 3 featured an interview with Philip about his songwriting influences with particular focus on the story behind "Terry's Dog"
The Verb
Broadcast on BBC Radio 3
February 2011
Presented by poet Ian McMillan, this programme featured an exclusive performance of "Only This High" featuring David Harrod on piano, and an interview with Philip about the influence of Jacques Brel on him as a writer and performer.