Jaime Wyatt

JAIME WYATT

“Just give me a chance/You’ll see/Nothing is impossible/All you’ve got to do is believe” “Believe”

Jaime Wyatt is an old soul in a young body who has lived a lifetime in 25 years, which can be heard in her words and music. Songs like “Believe” and “Walked Through Fire” tell a story of heartbreak, survival and ultimately, redemption. Jaime sings them in an earthy, slightly country twang, playing guitar with the swagger of her idol Keith Richard (“The Stones are the sexiest rock band ever,” she declares). You can detect dollops of the blues, jazz, soul, R&B and the beloved classic rock she was turned on to by her father, a Bruce Springsteen look-alike who wrote with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and legendary Stax guitarist Steve Cropper. Her mother, a ringer for Chrissie Hynde, sang back-up for Skunk Baxter, making up country songs on the spot while doing chores around the house, while an impressionable young Jaime, a self-declared tomboy, eagerly soaked it all in.

“Sometimes I can’t find the lightswitch/Sometimes I’d rather dwell in darkness/Sometimes I’m better off alone/Sometimes has become my home” “Lightswitch”

The product of a volatile marriage that eventually split apart when she was 12, Jaime remembers the long car trips between her Southern California birthplace and the home her family had on tiny Fox Island in the Puget Sound off Washington state, singing along to X, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, The Clash, The Stones, Dylan, Lucinda Williams and the Pretenders. By four, she was playing harmonica and at five, her life was changed by seeing Bonnie Raitt in concert at the Forum in L.A.

“It was the first time I had ever seen a woman play a guitar and be beautiful at the same time,” she said, taking up the instrument soon afterward, a ’50s Fender duosonic, on which she wrote her first song, “Don’t Throw Rocks At Me,” as music became the ideal outlet for her frustration.

“I’ve always loved the guitar,” she explains. “That was my vehicle. I was very shy as a kid. I only started to perform in front of people after I picked up the guitar, which allowed me to find my voice.

“From an early age, writing was my way of coping. That’s how I digested and took on the world. I made kind of a chant, a mantra, out of whatever feelings I was going through. It was comforting. And I saw later how it comforted other people. That was a big motivator for starting out to write as a teenager.”

From the age of 13, Jaime began playing the coffee house and bar circuit in Tacoma , organizing and booking shows. At 16, she started a band, Jaime Wyatt and Seventh House, made a demo in her dad’s garage and recorded an EP with a local Seattle musician from the aptly named PostStardomDepression. The following year, she was signed to L.A. indie label Lakeshore Records, known for its film soundtracks, and began writing with Gregory Butler as well as post-grunge artist and producer Pete Droge and his wife Elaine Summers. Wyatt’s subsequent five-song EP included “Lightswitch,” a song she wrote with Butler specifically for the feature film Wicker Park, appearing on its soundtrack alongside alternative mainstays Death Cab for Cutie, Postal Service, Snow Patrol, Mum and Stereophonics. She and her band toured on the West Coast and Arizona, then opened for John Mellencamp and John Fogerty at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in San Francisco.

It was at this point Jaime began collaborating with the brother-sister ream of Jane and Jonathon Sheldon, forming the band American Bloomers.After a recording deal was offered and subsequently fell apart, Jamie’s downward spiral into addiction accelerated, even as she continued to write and perform.

“I’ve walked through fire/Covered in ashes/Rising against the howling wind/Wanted to tell you/None of it matters/You can always start again.” “Walked Through Fire”

“Walked Thru Fire,” her new single, was the result of a collaboration with Barrett Yeretsian, writer/producer of Christina Perri’s platinum single, “Jar of Hearts,” and it has the same quality of coming directly from the heart.

“It has been quite a journey, but I’m grateful the way it’s gone,” admits the now clean-and-sober Wyatt after several stints in rehab. “Things were pretty grim, but today is a different story. It’s all about connecting with positive people, and making some really authentic friendships.”

“Have to see the light/Have to have the answers tonight” “Believe”

When Jaime Wyatt sings, you believe her. It’s an emotional connection that has been honed through the experiences she’s been through, and her willingness to share the bad. and now, good times.

“I had lost touch with the reasons I was doing what I was doing,” she says of that dark period. “I was playing music for the wrong reasons.”

She teamed up with longtime writing partner and producer Gregory Butler to write “Believe” about second chances and redemption.

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