Jessie Ware: ‘Hopefully everyone can get hot and sweaty and romantic’

The summer season of concerts have become an annual highlight at The Piece Hall since Halifax’s Grade I-listed architectural jewel in the crown reopened after a £19m restoration, so it’s perhaps little surprise that singer Jessie Ware is excited about opening its 2022 edition this weekend.
Jessie WareJessie Ware
Jessie Ware

“My crowds up north are really special, and to think that I’m going to start the summer series is such a treat,” says the 37-year-old Londoner. “The show is great, it’s full of energy and dancing and I think actually it’s the perfect time to be doing it too. In the summer it just feels right, so hopefully everyone can get hot and sweaty and romantic.”

Ware believes she will feel “incredibly at home” in the Italianate surroundings of the former cloth hall, joking: “We can all pretend we’re in Italy – but the rain will remind us.

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“When you’re in those surroundings it’s incredibly inspiring, and to bring disco to that, I hope people will approve.”

A run of summer shows will be the first opportunity Ware has had to tour the songs from her most recent album What’s Your Pleasure? since Covid curtailed a run of shows last December. “It was really bittersweet because I was just finding my stride but then it stopped, so it’s nice to add dates that I didn’t think I was going to be able to do. Halifax wasn’t part of the conversation in the first tour, so to be able to do that in such a beautiful place is really nice.

“It makes sense that it will be two years later (from the release) that I will be able to perform it because of Covid. The record came out during Covid and it will be the final hurrah and celebration of it that I think means quite a lot to lots of people.”

When making What’s Your Pleasure?, Ware consciously harked back to the dance records she made with the likes of Disclosure, SBTRKT and Sampha over a decade ago. “I think it was like a return to the beginning of my career but with loads more knowledge and input,” she says. “I loved being a featured artist on somebody else’s record but this time it was doing a dance record on my terms and owning all of it creatively, and also being able to give a nod and a respect to the people that really started off my career.

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“I always felt so welcomed by the dance community, I grew up listening to drum & bass and clubbing like that, but I needed (to make a record) to dance to, I was in a situation where I needed to just enjoy myself making music again. I don’t want to write about being a tired mother, I need to write about something else, and it felt good.”

Jessie WareJessie Ware
Jessie Ware

Ware has spoken in the past about struggling with the diminishing returns for her second and third major label albums, Tough Love and Glasshouse. Things reached a head with a fish-out-of-water set at Coachella festival in California which ingloriously bombed. In order to find her way back, she says: “I took a step back and reminded myself that I’m very lucky that I get to do this as a job. It was getting too taxing, taking too much time away from my daughter and my family for kind of no return. So I took a step back and thought if this is going to be the last record I make I’m going to go out with a bang and that I need something from it, forgetting about what record labels need, and it just worked.”

Having a successful podcast, Table Manners, that she had started five years ago with her mother, Lennie, helped out too. “That was a wonderful balance for me because it made the music feel less pressurised and then I felt like I could go and enjoy it again because I had these two hats,” she says. “I like doing different things and I felt the most at peace when I was doing more, I didn’t feel overwhelmed, I felt like I was thriving, so I think it was a combination of that.”

Around the time of Glasshouse, others around Ware began to develop serious ambitions for her as a mainstream artist. She, however, felt happier being harder to categorise. “It’s a funny thing,” she says. “I can be put into many different genres and maybe that’s hard for people to digest but I enjoy that, it means that I can do whatever I like. If I want to do musical theatre, sure; if I want to go and do an electronic soul record, sure. And it’s all my different tastes as well, so it means that I’m not pigeonholed.”

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When What’s Your Pleasure? reached the top three, Ware’s highest-ever chart position, she couldn’t help but feel vindicated for sticking to her guns. “It just felt good, the whole thing,” she says. “Wherever I got in the chart I was proud of what we’d done, especially given the fact that it was during Covid. It was a very weird way to promote a record and I was really proud of how we managed it. Yes, it was the cherry on the top getting a chart position. I still have things to strive for. I still need to get that number one.”

Duetting with Kylie Minogue on her 2021 album Disco was also something of a dream come true. “That was a very pinch yourself moment,” Ware says. “It stemmed from her being on the podcast and us making friends and being interested in each other’s music. For me to then make a record with her and for her to let me have free rein of what I wanted to hear her on, it was really fun and it couldn’t have been easier. She’s royalty and the fact that she let me be involved in that, just even watching her on set making a video, it was really inspiring and interesting and we had a lot of fun together and I hope that we get to perform it more than just on Jonathan Ross – that was amazing to be on his show and to be doing a disco tune with Kylie, I adored it.”

Ware’s cooking and chat podcast, meanwhile, continues to go from strength to strength, attracting a wide variety of guests from Paul McCartney and Robbie Williams to Twiggy and Jack Monroe to its 13 seasons. When we speak she has just finished a live tour with her mother; she has also published two books. Explaining Table Manners’ success, she says: “We struck a chord somehow. I can’t really work it out because it’s not like it’s wholesome. It’s slightly filthier than wholesome, I think, but people seemed to connect with it.

“I do think it’s something to do with my mum, absolutely, she’s a star, but I think it reminds people of their families and their quibbles with each other and their discussions. That felt familiar particularly in Covid where you were separated from your family.”

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The singer says she is “still patting (herself) on the back” for involving her mother, a social worker. “I didn’t go out to make a very successful podcast, I thought it was outlet to do something different to music and my mum’s a good cook and she’s really good at chatting. But it grew and grew and it keeps on growing and that’s a bit of luck and serendipity.”

Shadow Cabinet Minister Ed Miliband was one of the guests who most surprised Ware. “I feel like we didn’t realise how witty and also how much amazing work he does,” she says. “We were all surprised by him and really enjoyed his company. I also felt incredibly inspired by (cook and writer) Thomasina Miers and all her philanthropic work and also her work with sustainability, she was amazing.”

She is keen to get more politicians and sportspeople on as guests, citing in particular Marcus Rashford and his mother. “We’ll keep on trying,” she says.

New music is also “on its way”, she says, explaining she has “almost finished” her next album, which will be out next year. Watch this space.

Jessie Ware plays at The Piece Hall, Halifax on Sunday June 19. www.jessieware.com

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