Photo by Taahir Matthews
Jeremy Loops speaks to Helen Herimbi about songwriting, surfing and streaming
Jeremy Loops swaggers in with a guitar case in hand. The folk singer is fresh off a European tour that included him selling out and headlining a night at Shepard’s Bush Empire in London – the same venue that saw him as an opening act just a year ago.
When we meet up, he’s getting ready to go and deliver an acoustic set at a popular radio station. But first, the troubadour has to catch his breath and take me through the whirlwind journey that he’s been on between the release of his acclaimed debut album, Trading Change and his new, second album, Critical As Water.
“There was this honeymoon stage that I felt where you’re not really concerned about your second album, even though you know it has to happen,” he shares. “So you’re slowly writing songs. Because my first album did well, one song’s life cycle was anywhere from three to nine months. So I had to split my brain and perform those while thinking about what the next songs would be.”
While he was on the road, Loops wrote 70 songs – some of which were sketches and some of which were finished but still felt incomplete. He began to worry. Then he came home after a year of being a musician on tour and finally went surfing for the first time in a long time.
“I took six months and went back to the little town that I grew up in, Kommetjie, and reconnected with all my old friends and we went surfing and I was in the ocean all the time,” he smiles. “Waves was the first song that came to me about a week after I’d arrived home. It happened after I’d been surfing and had this big wave. I went out on a day that was much too big for my level of ability but I made it. I delivered!”
That is a metaphor for that stage of his life. Because ultimately, more waves came and more songs came. He took those new ones, along with the 70 he’d written before and played them for super producer, Will Hicks, who works with the likes of Ed Sheeran and Bastille. Hicks, who produced Critical As Water, confirmed to Loops that the best songs in that batch were the ones that he wrote when he was back home.
Critical As Water has catapulted Loops to Spotify superstardom as he is the most streamed local artist by local audiences. I ask him what he’s doing that other SA artists can try. “I think what I’ve done is that I built an international audience early,” he confesses. “When I started earning money, I didn’t spend it on fancy cars or houses. I spent it tickets for me and the band to tour.”
“I have done six tours in America and way more than that in Europe. I’ve also done two tours in Australia and the Asia side of the world. I started small – just me and my loop pedal – and that was five-and-a-half years ago. We play the Roundhouse next year and it looks like we’re on track to selling it out. So a lot of my online success comes from the fact that only about half of my audience is South African.”
In a few months, Loops will be back on the road again. In February 2019, he’ll be the first South African to headline Roundhouse in London since the venue reopened 12 years ago. That will be followed by an American tour with Milky Chance.