Jade Alston talks Indie, Hipster, and R&B at Smak Parlour

Rae: What is the name of your latest project?

Jade: It’s called “Sunday Morning” which is part 2 of “Single on a Saturday Night”. It was released in January. I’m actually working on the final installments to Single on a Saturday Night now.

Rae: What are some new things that you’ve been up to so far as far as your music?

Jade: I’ve actually been doing a lot more behind the scenes on the business end. I co-manage my self now and I started a company called “The Artist Label”. It’s several different things. It’s a paired brand to several ventures but all of which supports my initiative to support art education and young people interested in the arts in general. We have a blog, which covers all kinds of art and businesses that relates to the art. I have a t-shirt line called the artist label and my management company called the Artist Label so I’ve been doing a lot of planning and prepping behind the scenes just to ensure the success of my future prospects.

Rae: So on the Artist Label you promote other artist as well?

Jade: Yeah, artist of all kinds. Even though I’m a singer and I’m a songwriter our blog covers culinary arts, dance, photography, fashion design and just different kinds of art in general.

Rae: What made you decide to become a singer and how did you get your start?

Jade: I always wanted to sing but I didn’t have the courage to do it full time and seriously on my own until about 3 years ago. It came from this undying passion and need to do nothing but music. I’ve tried so many different fields, I was a nanny, I worked at a daycare, preschool, I worked in the mall, I worked in real estate. I did a whole bunch of stuff and nothing made me happy like being an artist and a creative person so I was like man I just have to do this full time.

Rae: How would you define your sound?

Jade: As of lately my sound is very R&B. When people hear my voice they think of Anita Baker or Toni Braxton so I wanted to pay homage to my tone, which is a very R&B tone. It also has my own influences, which include hip-hop, I love rock instrumentation and soul. Moving forward it’s going to progress and slowly it’s going to expand and broaden, which will mean some cool things.

Rae: What inspires your music the most?

Jade: My life. It’s my real life and my real emotions, that’s it. It’s so funny I always talked about getting dumped before, that’s what inspired my first project but really I actually just had another break up last week and it dawned on me that maybe I wasn’t ever really in love. Now that I was really in love I didn’t realize how bad it really hurts so now I’ll be really writing from the heart. I cried, I can’t believe I cried before, so it will be a lot of my life in general.

Rae: And what do you think inspires your style the most?

Jade: I like to play dress up! Right now I love all things from the 70’s. That could change in a couple of months, I don’t know I just king of go with it. What ever makes me feel like me. At heart I’m very much a hipster and I’m a total free spirit. People can’t tell because I have a joined personal silly girl thing, but at heart I’m a total tree hugger so I’m trying to show that more. I guess how I feel on the inside.

Rae: Is there anything else that you’d like to add about your music?

Jade: Support my kick-starter campaign. I’m launching my kick-starter to raise money for my first full-length solo album. I’m excited about that, I need all the help that I can get raising money because you know I’m independent and independent means that you always have to be creative in finding resources.

 Photography by T. Dogherty

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