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INTERVIEW WITH ELLEN MALLERNEE
Singer-songwriter Jessie Baylin released her stunning major label debut Firesight just last month, but already 40,000 "friends" have fallen in love with her via MySpace. Many of them religiously return to the site to read Baylin's daffy biweekly blogs, in which she spills her guts about everything from her favorite foods (oysters, olives, and wine) to her travel destinations ("I've extended my stay here [in Europe]," she writes, enviably, in one entry). They pore over photos of her, all artistically shot and some with friends and past collaborators like, oh, John Mayer and James Morrison, and they listen to her beautiful, mid-tempo songs roll off her heart-shaped lips like cigarette smoke. Many of her fans may even get a thrilling, if brief, personal MySpace message back from the singer.
"It's important to have that intimacy with fans," Baylin says, unscrewing a pot of peppermint lip gloss during an interview in Manchester, Tennessee, just a few hours before she'll play the Bonnaroo music festival for the first time. "They’re getting to know me and no one can explain me better than me. I want to share my life with these people whether it's a song or a rant or the story of my latest horror or vacation or whatever. I'm a huge music fan, and that's what I’m interested in—people giving it to people. It feels good."
The iPhone on Baylin’s lap rings and blinks the name "Nathan Followill." She quiets the phone. Baylin is reluctant to admit that some of her fans find her through her famous associations—fiancée to Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill and best friend to actress Scarlett Johansson, who she went to high school with in New Jersey and now sometimes accompanies on red carpets. "These are just my friends," Baylin says, cautiously. "I've known these people for many, many years, and we support each other just like any friend would. But it definitely helps people to find me sometimes. There are a lot of people in the U.K. who would have never known about me if Nathan and I weren't together and that's really neat. However I can get the music out, you know?"
Not just in Tennessee for Bonnaroo, Baylin relocated to Nashville from Los Angeles this year to live with Followill. "It's our anniversary tomorrow," she reveals. "It's really romantic for us coming back to Bonnaroo because we met here two years ago in front of the ice cream man's truck."
After meeting Followill, Baylin returned to L.A. and promptly wrote the twangy, swoony love song "Tennessee Gem," along with most of the other Firesight songs. "Everything I definitely pulled from my own experiences and relationships. Even if I'm in a great relationship, I can draw so much from that one moment where there's a rough patch. Even if everything's not horrible and sour in day-to-day life."
Wearing a Prada purse she saved up for and has had since seventh grade and an expensive-looking sequin dress that she’s protecting vigilantly from the Bonnaroo mud ("I'm afraid I'm going to get mud on the back of the dress and turn around at my show and there's going to be this big brown spot and everyone will think it's something else," she says), Baylin bats her old-soul eyes and talks of cutting her new album in Nashville this past winter.
"I didn't know anyone in Nashville and that was strange," she says. "When it came time to go to dinner I didn't have anyone to eat with so I was originally like, 'What should I call this record? Eating Alone?' I missed the palm trees and the perfect 75 degrees and the cloudless skies. There were a lot of clouds and a lot of rain. It was different, but really good for the record. The focus was on the work."
Not that Baylin's enjoyed much time in any one place lately. This past spring alone she hit Sundance and SXSW, and traveled around the U.S. on the Hotel Café Tour, making friends of pop radio hitmakers Ingrid Michaelson, Cary Brothers, and Sara Bareilles. And she's already got her next album on the brain—"When you do something great, you just want to keep going," she enthuses.
Even a collaboration with Followill isn't out of the question, she says. "We maybe want to make an old country music record, but really lo-fi. He's an incredible singer. We might just make it for ourselves more than anything. It would just be fun to do."
The interview finished, Baylin stands up from the picnic table where she has been sitting and holds her dress protectively at her side. A photographer asks to take her picture and directs her to a director's chair, where she's positioned stiffly, like an elementary school portrait.
In the distance, Followill stalks up and stops to wait for her a few yards away. Suddenly, her cheeks are pink. (AWWWWWW my own note *heehee*)
"Gorgeous," says the photographer.
A few days later, Baylin uploads an album of Bonnaroo photos to her MySpace. Beauty shots they're not; instead, she's hoola-hooping, chomping into a piece of pizza, waiting for a port-a-potty with her dad, grinning widely between two stark-naked painted ladies. She's giving it to the people, and it feels good.
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