Nineteen-year-old Jesse Sheehan is on the fast track to becoming the next big Kiwi music success. But how’d the singer songwriter the with the trademark ginger ‘fro get to be so good that major record labels are fighting to sign him to their books? Melody Thomas finds out.
JESSE Sheehan had his first foray into the show business limelight at the age of seven, performing Cat Stevens’ Moonshadow on What Now.
“I thought I was the coolest kid in school, but I got mercilessly teased for being a boy and singing… so uncool,” he says.
Sheehan’s parents were more supportive. Although NZ-born, his father’s father came from Ireland, and his mother’s mother was a Ukrainian refugee. Both cultures have strong folk roots.   
“I was bought up on old Irish war songs and Ukrainian folk songs; we’d have Ukrainian Christmas and Easter parties and that whole side of the family would come and eat that food and sing the old traditional ballad sing-along songs… The Ukrainian ones were all in minor keys, quite sad, and in free time, because Ukrainians have no rhythm,” he says.
At Wellington College, being a “pansy boy singer” was a bit cooler, and Sheehan’s first band Route 23 (named after his bus) took music very seriously.
“I was 14 and Tim Michaels, who was the drummer, asked me [to join]. I still remember him saying, ‘none of us wanna go into these business jobs, so we’re thinking we’re gonna go pro. Are you in?’” he laughs.
“We practiced for eight months, and then played one gig that went horribly wrong.”
Sheehan’s second band, The Stray Dogs, was more successful – winning Battle of the Bands and making the top six in Smokefree Rockquest in 2009.
“There was talk about taking it more seriously, and we had the musical potential, but we started to get sick of each other. We were young and stupid and arrogant, the third point holding us back from any real success outside of high school,” he says.
The band parted, (“you can’t tie down stray dogs,” he jokes), and Sheehan focused on solo undertakings. He entered the Play it Strange songwriting competition and came second, two years in a row. At age 17, he won Smokefree Rockquest, becoming the first solo act ever to do so, and successfully auditioned to play guitar in popular Auckland band The Electric Confectionaires.
“They were probably my favourite New Zealand band in the Route 23 era, so to get in was a pretty crazy feeling,” he says.
During his seventh form year, Sheehan was flown to Auckland regularly for rehearsals, and to work on the band’s second album. After finishing school, he moved there, but unfortunately, that album never happened.
“We had a second album ready, not recorded but with awesome songs and some really cool arrangements … We had the backing of a major label, who would’ve poured a lot of promotion and recording money into it, and then band politics happened. It was a dream story, until the end,” says Sheehan.
“It was really enlightening to see the way a professional band works. The Stray Dogs were good, but we never questioned each other; it was kinda like, ‘I’m the guitarist, how dare you tell me how to play the guitar’. The Electric Confectionaires were very critical of each other, and of every aspect of the song,” he says.
“That band was never going to be my career – I was always going to be a solo artist. That’s what I love doing.”
Focusing on his own music seems to be working. Jesse Sheehan and his band The Family of Actors been given a $10,000 grant to record a single and music video; his soon-to-be-released single Grandma’s cookies has been picked up by the NZ on Air Kiwi Hit Disc, which means commercial radio play; and record labels and publishers, both major and minor, are fighting to get him signed.
It hasn’t happened by accident.
“It’s hard living in Wellington to get noticed by [record labels]. I’ve been going in for six months and putting the pressure on them; they’re not proactively going to find you - you need to be in their face,” he says.
Now that he has their attention, though, Sheehan intends to play it cool for a little longer.
“I’ll be releasing the single Grandma’s Cookies by myself and I want to do the next video and single that way as well, even though [the labels] want to be behind it. When you’re signed you’ve gotta be very sure of who you are, and I’m still playing with concepts and sounds. I wouldn’t want to tie myself in with a label until I know exactly who I am as an artist,” he says.
Sheehan may not know yet where his ‘sound’ is going, but he’s firm on the underlying intention.
“I want to write songs that connect with people; that transform complicated ideas into something people can understand and relate to. You’ve gotta play the game… think about how your audience will connect with your work … But if song doesn’t come from a true place within yourself, it’s not going to work.”
Bob Dylan said, “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” By these standards, Sheehan’s already a winner – but we’ve a feeling there’s a lot more to come from this one.
Jesse Sheehan
& The Family of Actors, Bodega, June 4.