E192 - Jax Jones: The letter I wrote that changed my life

0:00Hi there, I'm Jake Humphrey and this is High Performance, the award winning podcast that reminds you it's already within. Greetings to our listeners right across the world who tune in to us every week so we can be your armour, your partner, your guide in a world that often feels so negative, so divisive and so confused. Look, we really hope these conversations remind you of your power, of your potential, what all of us are capable of. So right now, please allow myself and Professor Damien Hughes to unlock the mind of a fascinating musician. today this awaits you i've noticed like as i'm chasing these ideas there's always this ghost behind me like this dark shadow that's like trying to tell me all the usual things now you're not gonna do that like you're not good enough you're shit i was just mad depressed i was did brixton academy i by that time sold like i don't know 35 million records or something but I just like felt so uninspired and I didn't like music anymore.

1:06I think abandonment was important for me because you learn to self-sustain. My abandonment started I guess you could argue when my biological father dipped but what moves the needle is making music and that's how we speak to people. That is what gives us the most joy so I follow that joy and I make the critical decisions to allow me to be in that joy as much as possible. So today we welcome to the High Performance Podcast, Jax Jones, or to give him his real name, Timachin. Now, Timachin or Jax is best known for being a DJ and working with the likes of, well, basically everyone. Whitney Houston, Demi Lovato, Ed Sheeran, Mark Rontz and Mabel, years and years, you name it, Jax has done it.

1:58He's also been selected recently to work with the Princess of Wales campaign, supporting the development of young children. He owns his own record label. He's also a parent, a partner, a son, and he's so much more than you think. This is a really moving conversation. This is not a conversation with a musician about music. This is a conversation with a human being who just so happens to produce music. We talk about his upbringing. We talk about some really difficult times. It's an incredibly moving conversation. All three of us had tears in our eyes at one point. I just want to say a really big thanks actually to Timitian for being brave enough to come onto this podcast and tell the real truth.

2:37The real truth about life in the music industry, the real truth about facing challenges, the real truth about vulnerability. There is still not enough vulnerability in this world. The more vulnerable we are, the more honest we are, and the more honest we are, the more people can get to know the real us. And I think getting to know the real person, not the image that is shown publicly, is what this podcast is all about. So once again, I can't thank you enough for coming along for another episode of the High Performance Podcast. You are going to get plenty out of this one. Honestly, it's an absolute cracker.

3:10So sit back, enjoy, as we welcome Timothee Lamb, aka Jax Jones, to the High Performance Podcast.

3:28thanks for being with us pleasure man what in your mind represents high performance you're gonna ask me this first start i was getting ready for it at the end uh high performance to me is now in 2023 because it kind of changes because i don't think i'm finished figuring things out but giving everything you have to my family and my career and the people around me even when you don't feel like you have anything left just keep going so let's talk about that then because the first thing you say is high performance now represents something to me so how different would the answer have been if I was talking to you and you were 18 years old 18 year old Jax Jones was similar but I could be more selfish because I didn't have a family so it was all about spending hours and sacrificing like a lot of different experiences that your normal 18 year old should be having to chase something that a dream that everyone kind of didn't want you to have really what was the dream I wanted to be a musician when people talk about being a musician they say like oh do you know I just fell in love with music or they have a memory associated with it like yeah when my dad gave me this guitar or I heard Bob Dylan and it just changed my life music to me was a way out it was a way to mean something in this world and a way to change my circumstances really so what were those circumstances well at 18 years old I had quite a turbulent family relationship so kind of your classic story I didn't really know my dad early doors and it was me and my mum for a few years and then I had a stepdad and the family structure was a kind of a gift and a curse and that's kind of like the paradox that runs through my life and at 18 I was going to uni because I was academic I was very academic but at home every day was incredibly chaotic and turbulent between me and my stepdad basically and I was kind of like the butt of most of the problems in in the house and I had this idea that if I could get rich if I could be successful no one can touch you no more man and so like kind of the reason why I call it a gift and a curse is because you're kind of it makes you just an absolute warrior because it just buries this like desire so deep so intertwined with your like sense of self but at the same time i remember when i got like later in life when i all kind of like i was like shit i've kind of done it now it kind of like fuck what what was it all for do you know i'm saying so it was a it's a it's an interesting thing to look back on now and it's sweet because i can i've got the benefit where i can kind of look at it and with achieving certain things but yeah 18 was a mad time and we'll talk about reflecting in a minute because you wrote this amazing manifesto um which we're going to talk about and talk about in detail where it came from and why you did it but this energy from the sort of traumatic experiences as a young person is really interesting i i saw a quote the other day from someone saying people have been through a trauma or had really deep challenges in their life if they channel it in the right direction can have an energy and a desire that people who've lived a simpler life just can never recreate do you understand that yes i'm exploring that still i've personally believed that and i've anecdotally in most of the successful like highly charged i guess high performing people it's not just like it's people that you just like how do they just where did they get all this energy from why are they so good do you know i'm saying why is it they deliver usually there's some sort of stress or trauma that's occurred that's caused them to be like that and it becomes the driving force for everything and so i wholeheartedly agree with that man and if it's like a point because like we often talk about that energy either comes from moving away from something that might be traumatic or harrowing, like you've described, or it's moving towards something that you're really passionate about.

8:04And it seems like you met somewhere with that sweet spot of wanting to escape from your circumstances, but you've also discovered an identity that you wanted to move towards. I think it's the kind of like the things that are around at the time. And it's kind of why I'm doing this, that kind of nostalgic tinged music that I'm doing now. because it's like during the late 2000s around 2005 onwards and so this sort of i finished secondary school going into uni and all that kind of stuff this was the rise of the super producer this was i used to be reading the source magazine xxl and these were hip-hop import like magazines and hip-hop for me was like my dad do you mean these were like men that you'd see looking like they've just won do you know i'm saying and the music like people like jay-z or there was pharrell from the neptunes and it was around the time that people who made music especially the producers were the front of it i remember the neptunes had like at one year like 25 songs on the radio at like one time and they were they had the world applauding them at the same time whilst being able to kind of live their life to a certain extent so to me i was chasing that idea whilst trying to run from everything else because i've noticed like as i'm chasing these ideas there's always this ghost behind me like this dark shadow that's like trying to tell me all the usual things now you're not gonna do that like you're not good enough you're shit do you know i'm saying oh you've upset that person that person's gonna hate you for the rest of your life or you didn't deliver on that thing so now you fucked it do you know i mean you never and but the the wonderful thing about that shadow which is why i call it a gift and a curse is because it makes you go extra hard so i'm never not prepared i'm always thinking about how i'm coming across i can read the room because of my experiences growing up my analysis of body language is so deep in me i can like sense the temperature of a room so in my job as a music producer like i can work with people and get the best out of things and really build beautiful relationships very quickly yeah but at the same time that same voices can rip them apart do you know i'm saying because it it doesn't it will always drive me to whatever it thinks is my goal at that time ruthlessly and so it causes this effect where you burn hot and then you could just disappear basically i mean there's so much to unpick on its own but like have you got a week yeah bro no but we're here well i mean one of the things that you spoke up there about being able to read the temperature of a room sort of takes me into the area of exploring the ghosts of our childhood that often rattle around our adult bodies and I'm wondering is your ability to read body language so acutely down to the fear of upsetting people in your own environment and making a mistake and the consequences of what could follow from that that's exactly it like it through my teens so we had my stepdad is nigerian and my mum's chinese and then i'm turkish and chinese and i have a younger brother who's nigerian and chinese so it's a it's a mixed household with that comes cultural differences and also just stepdad things and all of that i want to make sure as well when i do these things i don't talk bad on people because they i think when you're exploring your truths publicly sometimes you can't take back something you said 10 years ago so i only want to give you facts do you know i'm saying so in the house they used to argue and it would be a lot my stepdad his feelings about situations would control what we did in the house do you know i mean a lot of it would be between me and him so perhaps i haven't done something to an optimum level for his or he it would be could be the smallest thing and it would be create this cycle where he would just take it all out of me or my mum and so there would become this idea where all right my mum would say to me I need you to go and apologize or I need you to go and make this right so that we can continue to be a family and so it just gets you it just seasons you what age are you time this is from like from eight to like it was still happening in my adult life to be honest with you only recently i've started to trim it down that is an incredible pressure responsibility and an emotional weight around the neck of an eight-year-old to say this family is reliant upon you going and doing the right thing when you've got two adults in the house who yeah we all now know are the first ones that should turn around and go let's solve this not not us the eight-year-old to solve the problem yeah i hear that and i've got a daughter now and um you know i'm always checking my the way i approach things because it can creep out but i child and i'm doing my work with the you know the prince and princess of wales about shaping us with these young minds and i understand the psychology of a child where they even up to 21 you ain't got the cognitive ability to deal with certain things you're still impulsive you're still working out the world you're you're not an adult yet you know so yeah eight years old it was a lot of stress I one of my earliest memories was being like in the therapy when I was like I had to draw a picture or something in King's College and talk about how I feel and all that how did you end up in therapy was that my mom took me there your mom took you yeah my mom was what you'd call like a tiger mom she has her own story do you know I mean she come here she came when she was 18 and she's from like a really nice middle-class background in Malaysia but she came here and just didn't go back to Malaysia really and she met my dad and then you know we got to where we were so for her the idea she said to me was you need to be successful do you mean like you need to give everything this is a common thing you know whatever you do you smash it you be the best in that room you work harder than everyone else you are smarter than everyone else but the gift and the curse is then you've got this idea where well if i'm not then i'm fucked yeah and so i'm shit do you know i'm saying so that there's no middle ground for me do you know i'm saying well even that comment you said about if we're going to function as a family depends on you doing it it's quite it's quite a dramatic it's it's an all or nothing comment isn't it yeah yeah it might be uncomfortable for a few days it's this family can't exist unless you unless you do no like middle of the road conversations happening here is it there's either horrendous you're awful or tim you're amazing what you can do with it that's this is it that's a challenge yeah and that becomes a story of your life would you be sitting here if it wasn't for those messages at that age no which takes us on to this manifesto right because i feel that this document that you created is all about this upbringing that is the energy now that drives Jax Jones.

15:36Yeah. We've got it. Would you mind, for the people who are listening to this podcast thinking this manifesto, what is this? Would you mind just first of all sharing how it came about? So it's 2020, lockdown hit. And I remember literally I was performing at Brixton Academy. We'd sold it out. And I remember I made this valiant fist towards COVID. I said, well, it's not. i thought i was liam gallagher it's not gonna take us down it was a bit of a joke really and then the world stopped and then i took three weeks off and then i we had our my first daughter on the way and i started to think about being a father and how to approach that and then i was mad depressed i was did brixton academy i by that time sold like i don't know 35 million records or something but i just like felt so uninspired and i didn't like music anymore and i don't know i didn't know why i was doing it anymore and then i was up in grimsby which is where my wife's family's from and um it's super quiet there so i just started doing some therapy uh just trying to figure it out and also trying to unpack things so that i could be the best that i could be so when you say therapy what do what type of intervention so it started off as like some sort of training so it was like finding your values you know this kind of thing but then i realized i felt like it was a bit surface level like i just felt like i was given tropes that you could just find in a book so then i started with a therapist shout out to adam and he he's from a band so he understood some of the idiosyncrasies of the music industry and it was weekly sessions chat we explored we still explore just my upbringing my approach and i remember i said to him bruv why don't i like music anymore he's like i'm not a coach

17:38because at first i tried to like link it in to perform better yeah yeah yeah you realize when you go to therapy this person's not going to give me answers no i have to find this stuff out for myself well if what i see therapy is now it ain't nothing to do the answers that's what i was saying to you when we first spoke is like this is what i think today it's more about the physical experience of being in an environment where someone is safe and you can discuss things and there's no bias there it's just a reflection so you can kind of that biological shift it's like updating my parts to be like oh well i've had an experience where i can communicate this and i'm not going to get my head chopped off okay maybe it is safe and then you know that constant you know weekly regroup on it allows you to experience life with that counterpoint and it was it's sick man like now i like music again man i'm i'm banging out the songs again man i'm enjoying it so it kind of led me to that manifesto was it through doing the therapy basically so look we could read it out but it wouldn't be in our voice.

18:46Would you be happy to read it out for the people listening to this so they can... All right, cool. How does it feel doing this? Feels weird, man. I've extremely guarded, not in person as you can see, but I think I'm in guarding in my career because I think this idea of having to project perfectionism, so then in order to protect that, I don't say anything really. I don't want people to know what I'm really like because perhaps they won't like it. So it feels weird that I'm about to read this today. Why did this go public then? I was desperately trying to give a bit more of myself away to almost say to myself that it's okay.

19:25And it's led me to this moment. So it must've been okay. Shall we read it? Yeah. All right. Dear friends, it's Jax slash Timochin. I'm releasing a new song. It marks the end of the most transformative time of my life. From my debut single, I Got You, in 2013 to the snacks album in 2019 i've connected with billions of people built a beautiful music family around the world the young timochin could never have imagined that any of this success was possible because i was born at the bottom of the pile and abandoned multiple times music was the only way i could see to change my world for the better and now you guys have made my dreams come to life thank you what the do i do now i felt an urge to give back to my fans and i want my music to exist for a reason.

20:10So this past year I did a lot of soul searching, I became a father and faced down my past demons. These are crazy times when people are also rebuilding their lives around the world. We aren't out of this yet but personally when I broke through the other side of my darkness I found joy. Happiness is rooted in the circumstance but joy is unwavering. Next I started asking how do I put that feeling into music and how can I put narrative into music that's supposed to just make you dance so i listened to the music that made me who i am and i remembered how it made me feel the escapism hope and freedom welcome to deep joy brackets a new era the tunes come in a shape by joy not trends made for the good times and the bad and real soon we'll play all this music together in a field somewhere as loud as we can and dance like our lives depend on it everyone is invited this new song is called feels because this is how i feel right now it's emotional reading that how does it feel I feel slightly embarrassed I feel slightly liberated I feel like a part of me wants to box it in again I just feel but isn't this the the power of therapy the power of challenging situations the power of success the power of becoming a parent the power of trusting people everything that you've just read there you're not reading 5 10 15 20 years ago you know because you're being told at that point don't be you and if you are going to be you you is either useless and no good or you is amazing and wonderful and actually what that is doing is saying i am flawed i struggle i have bad times i have good times but i think the biggest thing that i get from hearing you read that is the optimism I am optimistic I hear you and it's funny I feel good hearing you say that I need you to say that for me to feel optimistic about it I think the question I was asking myself is was I doing music for me or was I doing it music for my mum or my dad or this idea do you know I'm saying and I think when I wrote that letter I realized that I I do love making people happy with music and I love the idea of a blank page and you can craft something from nothing and it goes on to be someone's favorite song or a memory that they have or a defining moment in their life that is incredible as a feeling so like I come back to that and that yeah that is what ultimately what drives me now but you could almost be describing yourself there.

22:49Yeah. Coming from nothing, creating something from nothing. You know, this idea of being an important part of somebody's life. Describing in many ways. It's a whole paradox, isn't it? But it's fascinating. I mean, there's so much to unpack on that manifesto. I'm interested for people listening to this on, well, how can I get to a place where I would feel able to be vulnerable or to make myself so candid in it and I'm interested in that phrase that you said about I was abandoned multiple times because I think one of the biggest predictors in this day and age is of mental health issues is feeling isolated and when you're writing that you're going through a period of isolation that COVID enforced on us but your abandonment whether it's from your family whether it's from the communities that you sought to grow up in tell us a little bit around what you've learned about abandonment and how we can overcome it i think abandonment was important for me because you learn to self-sustain i was literally talking about this the other week my abandonment started i guess you could argue when my biological father dipped and what age was that 18 months like apparently he took you know he cheated on my mum they were together 10 years and then I was born then he left like within a couple of years and apparently he took all like the presents that I got as a kid uh you know the jewelry you get a lot of jewelry and then he sold it and got that as his ticket to get go back to Turkey and I remember like just hearing them stories like now it's like well what happened there and then we went to Malaysia because we were homeless basically stayed my grandparents there and then a new guy comes into my life and I remember you know that feeling of it and I remember when my mum changed her surname and just all of that you just felt very isolated do you know what I'm saying and you kind of you having to navigate that and then even into my adult life like that narrative follows you like so when I finished uni I got back and it was just so bad at home that I just had to leave we had a friend family friend that had a converted garage that they'd made into like a studio and luckily it was a family friend I didn't have to do any credit checks or anything I had like minus two thousand pound in my overdraft luckily no interest big up the uh they pick up halifax and uh i had my student loan order and i just went and lived there i remember the rent was 500 pound and i managed to negotiate to 495 fucking five pounds off and then um i was just in this garage like on my own and i just i think i felt really betrayed that just no one stood up for me you just feel abandoned you're just I didn't realise it at the time that that garage, I was healing myself at the same time.

26:01Do you know what I'm saying? Tell us about that. You know, like you're there in the garage, you're feeling betrayed, abandoned. These are all quite heavy feelings to have to process in your early twenties, but you obviously did to be able to use it as a springboard to go on to the success you've enjoyed. So tell us what kind of processes you went through on that healing journey. So for me, I buried myself into my work and I put all that energy of negativity into achieving what I needed to do. So it became my fuel. I tried not to think too much about it, really. I just would use every waking minute to try and have this idea that I was chasing to make it manifest itself.

26:52these are the practical aspects you know whether it was going out to meet people or practicing my instruments practicing my craft that 10 000 hours you know i did it leading up and then accelerated it in that point i never said no to anything any opportunity was an opportunity for me to go another step there was no ego in that really i didn't have any feelings of oh that's not me there was just no choice so I was playing in churches trying to you know make money to pay for the next day's food you know I'm saying I was sessioning at the time and I ran into an A &R that was looking after Ndubs or there it was their manager at the time and Ndubs became my first job and uh I was started playing guitar for them and I became the youngest like music director in the country for them like i remember their first tour i had neurovirus i was vomiting but i was programmed i didn't know what i was doing and i just we made it happen i was vomiting up the motorway to get to the gig and we played this show and i went and vomited straight afterwards you just kept going and i lifted myself out of my overdraft to like 40 grand that year do you mean so i'd used it for fuel you know i mean and i just what i'm good at when it comes to these feelings is i just bury it and i get very i got i can be very cold i can be very aloof because i'm not sure if you're gonna abandon me so those remnants are still there but there is power in being comfortable with isolation and perhaps feeling like you can only depend on yourself yeah so yeah my advice to someone who has been abandoned is if you can use it positively you kind of have a special power because you're like you you don't look for anyone to help you you're just gonna do it do you mean enough and it's because life or death at that point really this phrase you just gotta do it right let's talk about what just doing it looks like from your perspective because i think one thing that maybe we're guilty of on this podcast is not talking often enough about hard work real genuine hard work i think sometimes there's a fear that it's an unhealthy thing to discuss, like, you know, to push people and drive people in this way.

29:16But we have to talk about it, right? So you've been abandoned to the point where you're living in a garage, but you've decided to still follow your dreams, which is incredible. And there'll be so many people listening to this who either are at that stage now, and this will help them hugely, or people who perhaps allowed their dreams to fade at that point. And maybe this is the conversation that hopefully reignites the dreams for them because it's never too late right so you've gone through all of this then you start to get these little bits of success yeah it feels to me like there's no resting on laurels there's no oh i've made it it's almost the opposite it's like now i'm going to show you now all of those doubters now all of those haters now all of that criticism now all of that pain now you are going to see what i'm capable of let's go to that point in your life i mean when you talk about doubters and haters i literally have nightmares about some of those people sometimes i'll wake up even now yeah you've sold tens of millions of records no it still chases me i told you there's always that shadow around it's less so now i said to my wife i'm in that i think i'm in the happiest point of my life now uh but i'm still trying to get myself to understand that but i'll have a nightmare that you know i'm my stepdad's screaming at me do you know i'm saying or you know the amount of people that have said to me i think i started jacks jones when i was 25 20 60 amount of people that said like oh you'll never be able to finish a record i was in a band signed to after session and i joined a band and i remember the a &r said to the producers oh just keep jacks jones timmins out the studio he's not he doesn't know what he's doing and you carry all of that for me when i think about hard work there is an element of sacrifice that's the bit that I guess people when I see things now like little headlines like oh do you know you be who you are who you want to be and this like oh people's all about entrepreneurism now and all that and there's immense sacrifice with this and for me I didn't have any social life I still don't now you know it was the first thing to go because I would spend hours doing what I think I need to be doing to prepare myself yeah it can be very lonely you know because you're in a situation where other people perhaps don't have the same dream as you or they think you're being too ambitious I remember I used to get told like oh you know you're really arrogant about it because you're trying to do something that seems inconceivable it's the willingness to do it that keeps you performing again and again and again and sometimes i get tired you know i mean you know you're like i want to stop but i still have that energy

32:11so the success doesn't take away the energy of wanting to prove people wrong wanting to get that success that was that fire that was lit in you as a young kid the success doesn't take that away but it also sounds like the success doesn't make you happy i mean no i don't there are people listening to this wannabe musicians wannabe actors entrepreneurs whatever thinking how can that guy i mean like you put a jacks jones song on right every single person in this room would know it in my kids like when i said you were coming on the podcast my little dancer daughter So I had your do-do-do-do. That's probably cost us money.

32:45So the point is, like, people listening to this think that is where the joy is. That's where the happiness is. That's where you finally go, ah, did it. How the hell did you get to 2020 and not have any joy? There were moments of happiness, guys. Yeah. I remember that song that I talk about here, I Got You. it was my favorite times in my career is now actually but also that 2013 moment and ironically that time in the garage because so 2013 that we'd been I was signed to Atlantic Records and we'd been dropped and this was because from sessioning I felt okay session in i still have to go to work to get paid i'd never taken a day off until or holiday ever really until i was like 27 uh my wife convinced me basically we've been to my wife we've been together for 11 years so she knows me how did you guys meet i was in my band and we went to um she thought i looked like bruno mars and our friend introduced us we had a mutual friend and like she called me a dickhead when she first met me because i had a nose piercing in my i was doing all the shit that people in bands do like get tattoos because they're bored and get piercings and all that shit the cliche the cliches i was doing i was still figuring myself out do you know i mean and then um i remember she said i was so badly dressed as well um and then we went on three dates because i had this idea that um i could accelerate like the getting to know you process by going on three dates in one night oh god yeah yeah well i was like well it'll feel like you've known each other your whole life surely what did you do like go apart and then come no no no so we just go to three different places do you know what i'm saying like and then i remember yeah i just thought she was fascinating i still do she's one of the most secure people i've ever met in my life so it's so i like to watch her a lot to learn things but i'm intrigued as to like you said that you often like you can be cold you anticipate being rejected you know your heart you don't you find it hard to make friends what did she do to get over those barriers that you put up i think she allowed me to be i think and my wife is very very patient but also very confident in herself she was unwavering so i can push against her and she sees it all do you know i'm but then is able to able to hold amongst that and it just became very safe when i think of my wife it's so safe and it's very she comes from a very different background to me i can't believe i'm saying it's like grimsby was almost exotic to me it's like wow this is she has a beautiful family she's 30 people in their family in grimsby that small community kind of thing and i just thought this is amazing and they all love each other and they all work really hard on their relationships and she herself is like a linchpin we always say like if if if you're falling out with deondra then you it must be you because she's she's the bridge she's like she just will give it everything and so it it's it's just everything i never had really i love it when you say she just let me be me because it's like you know your early upbringing was either giving you yeah yeah over positive information or negative information is there a power do you think for people listening to this in just allowing people you don't have to have an opinion about them you can just let them be who they who they want to be that's the ideal yeah and i think within a family set up there is a balance because i've been thinking about this with my daughter she's got a very different life to me the only way i know is sacrifice and stress to get what you want so how do i let her just be and I think there is power in you being comfortable with the you as you are and the people around you but there's also power in knowing that you do have to offer value at points and step up to things and it's that middle ground not being so binary where your self-esteem is affected by such I'm trying to do it where it comes from a place of love so I think just being is cool but also sometimes you've got to be a bit greater than yourself then perhaps you didn't know you had to be that didn't know that you had it so I still subscribe to a growth mindset I still subscribe to the idea that I might I want to be better than who I was yesterday but it comes from a place of not for you it's for me tell us a little bit more about your relationship though because you speak about a narrative and the journey that you're on in terms of your career but it seems that it coincides with your relationship of finally finding a place where you could be you where you could belong where you could almost plug the gaps that you didn't have in your own childhood so we met just as I said I was getting dropped and I was trying to figure out what I was needed to do next and uh her dad was pretty successful and I remember I was telling you know i remember the first date we went on i brought out a 50 pound note and i paid for our little smoothie with the little 50 pound note i think i was trying to show off and then she says yeah yeah yeah that was all i had at the time um but she used to literally sit with me and tell me why i should give a shit about myself and we used to do 10 things to love about yourself do you know i'm saying and so we'd sit and she'd write me these letters for me to hold on to i still keep them i would reflect on them and i remember so 2013 i got you when i made that song it was about her really um i sampled whitney houston my love is your love which i think is a beautiful song and then i made it into this kind of baleric house record i made it on my birthday the demo was called the birthday song and i'd even sampled for the intro her cousins her little young nine-year-old cousin singing me happy birthday and it's in the record it's like buried in there yeah and i played it to her i remember she was in bed at the time just like it was like early i was like oh listen to this she goes i love that like it's beautiful and then i went to lunch you know as you do on your birthday and then that song ended up you know getting grammy nominated and brit nominated uh it was a number one record and i remember thinking it was just a really pure moment and i'd never done house music really that was like the second third house record i'd made i grew up on hip-hop on r &b as and like predominantly black music you know though like house is a black genre in its roots but dance music was very foreign to me in that respect but i put all that soul into it and like those chapters define our life do you mean like all the way so when we got married in 2018 uh that was the song you know that we first danced to man so nice there's a line in the manifesto where you said that the tunes coming now are shaped by joy not trends so i wonder whether you're now making music with more freedom than you've ever made it before and what that does for you oh mate the phys i am making music more freedom and there is a physical representation of it because when I'm in the studio with people that have known me for years they all say to me you seem happier bruv you just seem lighter I said I am I'm just doing me now you know I'm the most inspired I've ever been and that's because I started to search for the to take back the records and that time of my life in my teens I'm reclaiming it for myself.

40:59And there's a ways you could do it. Like some artists interpret that as I'm going to talk about mental health in my songs. Talk about my journey. Well, I'm a dance music producer and I'm not singing yet, perhaps. But like, as I said, how can I put narrative into this? And so for me, it's using that Andy Warhol approach of mashing pop culture. so taking those uh songs that were familiar to me as a 16 year old 18 year old those times of our lives they're so important to us yeah you meet people when they're 30 they listen to a record that's past that time of their life so taking all those sounds the fashion and mashing them together make it my own today in 2023 and it's allowing me to relive those experiences positively and it's been so liberating all those times because I used to use that music to give me fuel you know when it would get heavy at home I'd just go out on my bike and I would have my little Walkman I battered those Walkmans like and just listen to the music again and again and again And it was therapy for me.

42:14You know what I'm saying? So to be able to go and revisit those sounds, like whether it's the Eurodance vibes or the R &B, hip hop aesthetic, and putting it into my music now, it feels great. You used the phrase that the feedback that you've had in the studio from people that know you is a lightness, which to me doesn't seem like an accident because you've also spoken about the shadow. so casting light on the shadow is almost a metaphor for what you've described when you look back over what might have been a traumatic childhood through one lens you're now able to cast it in a more positive light shine the light on the benefits that you got from it how have you done that and how can our listeners that maybe are struggling with being able to carry that way or to live with that shadow how could they do it I want to frame how I say this by saying that it works for me yeah and I think being careful advice because my personality is different from yours but if there's some energy you can take from this take it for me it was about making decisions that I knew perhaps that were difficult but that would allow me to get better than what I had before so even if I didn't want to do it so and that sometimes is hard so it would be when I'm presented with a situation it's like oh I don't know if I'm good enough to do that I don't know if I can be in that room I don't know if I feel like doing this today but I know that if I do do that I'm going to get one step closer to an idea that I won't be in this situation no more I turn up and I just do it I still have it now you know where I'm traveling around the world and you know I'm finding less time to make music so I'm shaping my life now where my team thought I was mad I was like I only want to do 25 shows this year make them important but what moves the needle is making music and that's how we speak to people that is what gives us the most joy so I follow that joy and I make the critical decisions to allow me to be in that joy as much as possible so you have to design your life and that is tricky because they're going to be people that say you can't do that what about us you have to be so resolute in that respect I'm not saying be so cruel but you have to protect yourself in that respect follow the joy and know that it's a work in progress as well and you kind of to be compassionate to yourself at the same time while you're doing it i think that's an important point actually you know what we don't want to do is sit here and go tim had a really traumatic upbringing but then lockdown came and he had an epiphany and now he's happy like that's not real life right no no the shadow's still there the nightmares are there sometimes and you know everything passes you know things are great but that doesn't mean they will always be great but also it means that when they're not great then they can be great again they can be great look like it's all relative you can kind of there is a what's meant to happen in my opinion when you get to a certain age is it's meant to come together you're meant to have the idea is you build up these decisions and then eventually you get to a point where oh do you know what it's actually my life is working for me now i've got less negative people around me i've got perhaps the people that i found triggering for me i've drawn those boundaries and it's healthier or i've had to move on from those situations like i'm doing it now with okay how much time do i want to spend doing work how much time do i want to spend with my family what does that look like and believe me even within that in my little world it's hard like because when i'm spending time with my family which is super important to me because I want to be delivering on everything.

46:25I remember Will Smith quote saying, people need to work as hard on their family as they do on their business. And if you did, you'd probably have a really good family life. So I give it my all. I'm thinking about how I can be better. But that ghost sometimes is shouting at me when I'm hanging out with my kid. What about all that work you got to do? What about all of this? So it's aggressive sometimes, man. And then you kind of half in, half out. So it's hard. The challenge is still. But the reason why I say it's the happiest because I've made some tough calls. And so the good outweighs the bad.

47:01Okay. But you operate in an industry that is dominated by chart position and sales, right? Yeah. You know, you will lose your job or you lose your deal if you aren't commercially successful because that's the world. So where are you at now with that? You said in the manifesto, happiness is rooted in circumstance. joy is unwavering is joy still unwavering if the new tim the new jacks jones operating with freedom finally telling the world the truth about his story which by the way i wish you'd done it years ago because it would have been freeing for you but i'm so pleased you have because it is an incredible story thanks for giving me the platform thank you for coming and talking to us but where does the joy sit if the new you isn't as commercially as successful as the tim who was driven by trauma i hear that it ain't happened yet do you think about you worry about it i do man if i lose that sense of identity that i have will i fall apart i can't give you the answer yet i still think my best work is yet to come because i'm removing where i drove my music to have perfection you know that's a big part of my process is trying to like think of my music a bit like a whiskey that's been aged in a certain way and everything or watch like you know this idea of everything works in a certain way everything in my music is there for a reason and so I'd like to distill it to its simplest form so that's why sometimes I get accused of being simple but that's actually the joy that i take in making music this idea of perfectionism now i'm interested in the idea of reducing that perfectionism keeping the flaws in there keeping the the human element in there and seeing what that feels like will that translate more or resonate more for me or with people and the the first foray into that was where did you go uh which came out last year and at the time no one was doing the euro dance thing no one was referenced i think my references for that was acon and like um like and then a period of music which sometimes you know dance uh chin strokers look down on do you know i'm saying like the 90s euro dance era and it was the second biggest song on radio last year you know just behind harry stars i do love that song as it was great record um you know and so it was a real moment for me because i was like you know i can do my thing and it can be successful yeah how far can i go with that but also now being a dad when i held my daughter in my arms it was the first time that i was living outside of myself i was like wow there's someone here that i have to give more than i'm getting and it's like as selfless act as i can do you know i'm saying yeah yeah and that has been really liberating for me because it was the first thing that i'm not serving myself so for me i guess i'll just do more that and try and you know and probably perhaps say do you know what yeah it's cool man i'm i'm not as successful as i used to be do you know i'm saying we're uh we're gonna move on to quick fire questions in a moment but before we do when you are making music i'm so interested in the instinct that comes with that but not just your instinct the people in the room around you how do you choose who gets to sit in a room with you and pass judgment over an unfinished jacks jones tune that's such an interesting question i like that i have actually some firm rules because you have to be careful i don't play anyone anything is that right and if i do it's the same people i actually also do not pass comment on people's music because i don't have all the answers i might not understand where you are but isn't it important also to take criticism feedback to feel feel like that's where you can grow right you know you've got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable absolutely it's funny feedback can be interesting if i do play something and to someone and it's finished i consider it finished or close to finishing like at that point where you know where we're fighting for two percent we're talking about margins here i like to share with people that don't have anything to do with the music industry and just live a normal life sometimes they'll go what do you want me to say just listen to it and i watch your i use i read your body language and i just like watching your face and watching how it makes you feel and I can tell if you're being genuine you know and the I like to play to those kind of people and then I know if I've got one that's great so what's been the experience when you know that you've got one then it's the greatest feeling in the world right quick fire questions are you ready for them let's go what are your three non-negotiables that you and the people around you need to buy into i i'm always developing myself growth mindset do what you say you're gonna do i hate it when people just are flaky bruv because it sends my my i'm up the wall and my back's up when that happens and look after your body because then that fuels everything else what's your greatest strength and your biggest weakness my greatest strength is my unlimited energy to chase It's my goal.

52:34And that's also my greatest weakness. Where were you? Where are you today? Where are you going? Right now, a dad, a music maker, and trying to be better at both of those things. And then in the future, I'm trying to be one of the greats. Say it. Yeah, come on. I can't remember what you thought. Do I say this? Do I say it? Five, ten years time. Where would you, when you close your eyes and think, what do you think? What do you see? I imagine being at peace with my family around me. Loads of massive hit records. And we're just taking a walk, man. I love that. You've had the success, but you're in the right place.

53:32What's the biggest misconception or thing that people get wrong about you? I've got everything under control. What's your final message to people listening to this about chasing their own version of high performance? You know, for someone who has had such incredible success, for someone who has such optimism about the fact that the best days are yet to come, but also has been standing alongside those people who come to this podcast because they're currently in the midst of the struggle that you've been in. what is your final message to people what would you like to leave ringing in their ears do what you need to do to make your life what you want it to be doesn't matter what anyone says doesn't matter what happened to you if i can do it you can you already have it in you just go listen can i just say thank you so much for coming on here and choosing this platform to share so much with us and uh part of me has this kind of feeling like i wish you'd gone and done this work so many years ago because you could have been free for so long but then i also at the same time i think things happen at the right time for people right if they just as you say you trust in the process and allow yourself to grow and develop and this was obviously the right time for growth to happen for you um you know a guy to take all that trauma from his childhood and a global pandemic combine the two to manage to create a positive outcome it's like you must almost feel bulletproof from what else the world can throw at you because you know to see that growth is uh it's humbling man and i really appreciate it i appreciate that means a lot coming from you guys man thank you so much i'm excited for what's to come next let's go man great amazing thank you

55:18damien jake how often are we going to sit here and say that was fascinating it's like it's a reminder that everyone has a story to share and in in the case of tim it takes real bravery to get to a point in your life where you're happy to share that story yeah i found it again a common phrase we often use in this bit of the of the review is how humbling it is that somebody is prepared to make themselves so vulnerable to come and share their story with us and by definition with anybody that's listening to this there's a lot of research isn't there into trauma leading to triumph. It's something that, you know, whether it was people being persecuted during the Second World War or guests who joined us on the High Performance Podcast, you know, there's a lot of research into the fact that really, really traumatic, difficult, hard periods can still lead to people finding fulfillment and happiness in the future.

56:08Yeah, it's referred to as post-traumatic growth. I think we're really familiar with post-traumatic stress, the idea of being stuck in a moment and it causing us damage or struggle. but post-traumatic growth is almost like the lesser-known cousin that says when you can make sense of those experiences you can ask the question well what is this going to do for me in the future and you can use it as a catalyst like what tim's described really powerfully to do that but i think the key is what he described there of one of our previous guests if people are interested in going back and exploring the archive was dr pippa grange who spoke about living a fearless life.

56:48And one of the techniques he spoke out there was to see, to face and replace. And I think what Tim described was what Pippa advocates of, to be able to see that shadow on your shoulder and rather than just run from it in the fear of that critical voice that he described, to stop and face it and to recognize who is this, what's it telling me, has allowed him to replace the shadow with the lightness. that has used it as a catalyst to go on and grow. And I think it's easy for people who either haven't had that trauma or people who haven't lived a life like Tim's to say, well, does it really matter?

57:28Does it really matter that he's managed to find the joy in this because he was already living a great life? He already had kids. He already had a successful music career. You know, what more does he want? But when he says that he got to the, you know, the pandemic and the world shut down, and for many, many people, that was the first time that they were forced to look inward. Yeah. And to not fill their lives with all of the things that effectively distract them from the truth, right? The first time he had to look at himself, he lost his love for music. He lost his joy. He, like, his exact words, I was mad depressed.

57:58Yeah. For people that are sceptical about, does it matter overcoming that trauma from the past? Well, there's your answer. Because he now talks about deep joy. He now talks about freedom. He now talks about the best is yet to come and he's excited about his future. before he'd done this work on himself he was still the guy that created Jax Jones and sold tens of millions of records but the joy had gone and that was nothing to do with not loving music anymore and not loving his partner or his newborn child or his life it was because of the shadows that he discusses being behind him yeah and again this is such a common thread and therefore if it's common enough we need to explore it in more detail do you remember when Max Whitlock came and spoke to us around he had a similar experience to what tim's described of you've won multiple gold medals and yet going for the paris olympics filled in with just apathy and inertia rather than the pleasure of going and doing something that you really love similar to tim's loss of music making and the joy that it gave him so i think there's enough of a pattern that we see through so many of our guests that we need to go and explore these areas of what brings us joy, what makes us happy and see the composite parts of it in our lives and make sure that he used that lovely phrase about I've designed my life to bring me more of these moments.

59:19And I think the idea of not just filling it with busyness and activity, but meaningful activity is the key element of what I've taken from Tim's message. I love that. Mate, it was a pleasure to sit alongside you again. The honour's mine. Thank you. And that's the end of today's episode. as always huge thanks goes to you for growing and sharing this podcast among your community huge thanks to Timitian for coming on this podcast and telling us the truth about his life as you heard hugely moving so much to take away from that if you want to watch as well as just listen to this conversation you can do so by checking out High Performance on YouTube and listen we only want one thing just one thing from you in return for the content that we're creating and that's for you to share it please remember there is no secret guys it is all there for you so chase those world-class basics don't get high on your own supply remain humble curious and empathetic and we'll see you soon thanks for listening

1:00:37Thank you.