Three years ago, San Diego met Jason and Jane.
With near-perfect harmonization and songwriting, the duo’s JasonYamaoka and Jane Lui took the city by jazzy acoustic storm, releasingtwo albums and extending its audience beyond the borders of SouthernCalifornia. A growing reputation and audience added to high hopesthat the two would make it.
However, fate had other ideas.
Changes led Jason and Jane to go its separate ways earlier thisyear and Jason has gone solo to come of age in San Diego’stemperamental local scene. After a few months hiatus, his debut E.P.Turns was released in June under the pseudonym J. Turtle, and hasbeen relentlessly circulating around the city ever since.
“I was playing a lot,” J. Turtle said. “Everywhere – just forexposure. It was a good learning experience, but it was hard.
“I do this full time now,” the SDSU School of Music alumnuscontinued. “And it can be boring at times, but it’s getting better.(At first) I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just like, ‘Fulltime! This’ll be great!’
“But now I’m figuring out the process that I should be taking andwhat percentage of what I should be doing – like what percentage oftime should I spend looking for gigs? And how much should I spendpromoting? And I’m finally realizing that the promotion part isprobably the most important. That’s also the hardest for me to startfiguring out what to do.”
Luckily,dedication in the coffeehouse circuit has reacquainted J. Turtle’sname with the public. It has also re-drawn comparisons to the likesof Dave Matthews and John Mayer, neither of which he particularlyagrees with.
“I’ve actually been listening to Howie Day’s new album, and PeteYorn, Glen Phillips, things that I find more raw and emotional. Ijust saw Glen Phillips at Aroma (at UCSD) and he was amazing, and youhear him and go back to your room and just think, ‘Man, I suck.’Every once in a while you find someone that you like so much that youdon’t know if what you’re doing is any good just because you’recomparing yourself to that.”
J. Turtle’s own songwriting is often sweetly melancholy, drawingfrom a mixture of emotions that are more episodic thanautobiographical.
“I like to write about moments and how I’m feeling at a particularone. People have told me that I’m moody – not like pissed off andthen happy and then sad, but my moods change really quickly. It’s avery small shift, but the shifts happen all the time, so my songsdefinitely don’t sum me up. They’re very reactionary.”
His moods have taken a particular turn upon evaluating not onlyhis audience, but fellow entertainers and the pressures of fame’sbeginning stages.
“I’m around a lot more of the roots-type people,” he said. “Whichis cool because they’re a different sort of genre and focused on asmaller target audience and they’re not in it for the money. Thathelps me keep my head, as opposed to people that want to make it bigso badly they are willing to sell- out and don’t mind singing otherpeoples’ songs. If you hang out with people that just want to makeit, your mentality might change, so I hang out with a lot of peoplethat are really true to what they’re doing.”
That attitude has done wonders for the star-in-waiting, for thelower rungs of fame have been – and will continue to be – daunting.
“What it should come down to is you need to do this because youlove what you’re doing and you believe in what you’re doing. Youstart thinking you need to sing a different way or play a differentway so that people will listen more – but in the end, all thatmatters is how happy you are doing it, so you might as well doexactly what you love from the start and hope that people will jumpon the train with you.”
J. Turtle will play at 4:30 p.m. tomorrow in the Aztec CenterCoffeehouse. For more information, visit www.jturtlemusic.com.
