music
Little Fish
For a band, Little Fish are indeed small; there are only two of them. She’s JuJu who sings and plays guitar and he’s Nez who plays drums. As for strange?
Maybe just a little bit. According to JuJu, “I think I’m quite odd which is why I find it quite hard to relate to myself as a musician. But when I get on stage I am at my most free and I feel really confident. When I sing I give it everything.”
“When I was young I wasn’t into music at all,” says JuJu. “I found it hard to listen to it. Music was over powering, over bearing and it affected me emotionally so I ran away from it.” Then one day, she borrowed an old guitar, got a chord book and wrote a song.
It took two years to create Little Fish – JuJu, who as well as singing writes the songs, met Nez in an Oxford fish and chip shop – not the obvious place to search for the glue that will hold a band together. Nez is far more disciplined. He’s been playing drums since he was 5 and has developed his unique style by playing everything from big band jazz to rock. He’s JuJu’s backbone.
For JuJu music is a love/hate thing, it really affects her emotionally. Emotion is a word that is ever present when listening to JuJu delivering her poetic lyrics over their stripped down, ready to rock music. Her songwriting comes from her French mother who wrote songs when she was younger and from her granddad who wrote them while a prisoner of war. For JuJu doing other people’s songs was never an option.
It’s only now, having completed their first album with Linda Perry in Los Angeles, that she even feels ready to listen to other people’s music, confident in the knowledge of who she is and who they are. It was an unconscious need to keep it original. “I would hear music coming from the kitchen – a lot of blues because my father loves Ray Charles and BB King while my mum played Jacques Brel. It kind of seeped into my veins.”
People have said that JuJu’s spirit reminds them of Patti Smith, while others have mentioned Grace Slick; JuJu’s voice haunts and mesmerizes in a similar way. What’s in evidence throughout the band’s music is passion and intelligence, maybe even a little anger, but it’s melodic and true to the song.