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Visiting America to meet Jason Mraz

By Walter G. Meyer

September 11, 2006

San Diego--If most Americans have heard of Southampton, England at all, it’s as the port from which the Titanic embarked (not Ensenada as James Cameron would have you believe). Now, Southampton has launched another endeavor toward the U.S.—the music career of Joe Brooks.

On one hand, free music downloads are killing the industry. On the other, they are raising up new stars like Brooks, who are building their platforms in cyberspace. His My Space page (JoeBrooksMusic) has a cult following of more than 5000 fans and an average of 900 hits per day.

He is as skilled a student and practitioner of My Space as he is of music and has mined the web site for all it’s worth, using it to find his manager, a photographer for publicity photos, and places to stay in California. For many older and more established musicians, My Space is an afterthought. For Brooks, it’s his genesis.

Networking on line, he booked gigs in San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles, sight unseen, getting the venues to check out his music on line before they scheduled him. Fans who only knew of him from My Space showed up at each of his San Diego dates, demonstrating the remarkable power of the new medium and his ability to manipulate it. Although the audiences were small, he was welcomed at Javanican in Pacific Beach, Hot Java on Carmel Mountain Road, and Twiggs in University Heights.

Playing the coffee house circuit was a step down for Brooks who has played to crowds of hundreds in Britain, but he is willing to pay his dues to get his foot in the door and gain experience playing in the U.S. He returns to the U.K. in October to tour, opening for the popular U.K. band Journey South, who made their name on the British forerunner to American Idol.

He makes love to the microphone with the innocent sex-appeal that attracts pre-pubescent girls. Having a British accent and looking like a boyishly-cute 14-year old, he’s something of a cross between Davy Jones and Jesse McCartney. As his guitar-playing gets carried away on his more raucous numbers, he his flails his elbows like a baby bird attempting flight. His repertoire runs from the expected soft, lost-love songs to a surprising protest number in a voice that sounds much older and mature than his years.

His last night in San Diego, capping off a day of parasailing at Torrey Pines—part of his plan to taste all that California has to offer and soak up all the experiences he could—he got to see Jason Mraz up-close and personal in the intimate setting of Twiggs. Mraz was playing in an unannounced show with local talents Billy Bushwalla, Todd Carey, and Keith Benton, who were clearly playing for their own fun. It was like watching some of your buddies get stoned and jam just for the hell of it. They played funky and funny songs that will never appear on any CD (for good reason). Bushwalla can give up music any time and start doing stand-up with Mraz as his sidekick.

Between sets and after the show, Mraz and Bushwalla talked music with Brooks, who on his My Space page listed meeting Mr. A-Z as one of his goals. Brooks manages to get what he wants quickly—within a week of landing in California, he could scratch that goal off his list.

Brooks’ California tour has moved on to the Bay Area but returns to SoCal with gigs in L.A. on September 29^th live at the Lounge in Hermosa Beach and September 30^th at Genghis Cohen. For more information on Brooks, visit www.joebrooks.co.uk

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