Jamie T: ‘I can’t afford to tour Europe anymore’

In the early hours of 30 June 2023, Jamie T was hours away from playing the biggest gig of his career, a hometown headline celebration at North London’s Finsbury Park. It would be nerve-wracking for anyone – let alone someone who’s battled panic disorder for much of his life (hence the title of the Wimbledon-born singer-songwriter’s Mercury-nominated 2007 debut album, Panic Prevention). Anyway. Up with both the lark and the fear, the musician, born Jamie Treays, tackled the situation head-on in the manner he knows best: writing a song. He had in his back-pocket a sample, of “Tallahassee” by Canadian folk singer Leif Vollebekk. At this point, “I’d been thinking about sampling that song for a good year”, says Treays. “But I couldn’t work out how to do it.” Then, plagued with worries that he wasn’t worthy of a huge gig in a London park, “a lyric comes to me like a bolt of lightning: ‘I’m Paul Heaton, because the only thing you’ll ever hear round here is magic’.” The line is T to a t, both an homage and a fun bit of wordplay, referencing the sublime wonder of Heaton’s songwriting chops and his catalogue’s ubiquity on Magic FM. “As soon as I come up with that, I’m like, yes, can’t wait to finish this.” ‘Ghosts (100 Days of Morning)’ comes out this Friday Cue more hat-tips and more self-doubt: “I’m the soundtrack to your university years like Lily Allen… I’m Liam Howlett in 1991, driving round Romford in a Ferrari Testarossa / Now that’s iconic, but I’m nothing like them – I’m just a plagiarist.”“The Lily Allen one is something I get a lot on the street or outside the pub,” explains Treays as we speak, three years on, in a café near his home in Hackney, East London. “That’s the phrase people will say: ‘I love your music; you’re the soundtrack to my university years. You and Lily Allen.’” As for the mention of the Prodigy man: that derives from a story Treays thinks he was told by his long-standing manager Jonathan Dickins. Twenty years ago, he was Dickins’ first client at September Management. “Adele was the third or the fourth. It was Jack Peñate and her.” The story goes that “when the Prodigy had just kicked off, how cool it was for everyone in Essex that this kid, this boy done good, was driving around in a supercar, flaunting it with his bleached blonde hair and being cool as f***”. That said: after the song – a lovely, Mike Skinner-coded elegy to those “iconic” moments, also called “Tallahassee” – was released last month as the second single from Treays’ sixth album, Ghosts (100 Days of Morning), word reached the musician of Howlett’s response. “Liam said he loves it. But whatever car it was, it was not a f***ing Ferrarri Testarossa! That made me laugh!” Jamie T at Reading Festival 2026 (Photo: James Klug/Redferns) Newly turned 40 and married since the release of his last album, 2022’s chart-topping The Theory of Whatever, Jamie T has been doing a lot of reflecting. He looks back with mixed emotions on the fag-end of the so-called indie-sleaze days in which he came up. “I never felt part of a scene. But I was touring from early on, so I met bands and you’re all stuck together to some degree… Big crowds, tiny gigs, sweaty places, dressing rooms, toilets – all that’s not great when you’re living with panic disorder. But also it was fun. The sense of satisfaction of getting through things was huge.” That panic disorder “was no joke. I would have to go to the pub for an hour and a half before I did something, to get the Dutch courage up”. “That was a constant situation. Which was exhausting. I still suffer with quite bad anxiety and I still think about things before I go and do them. But I’m in no way in the same shape I was then.” That sense of a reckoning with life and career is all over the new album, from the punning title (that’s 100 days of mourning, too) inwards. “It’s hard to grow up as a musician when you start so early and you’re known for things you wrote when you were 17,” says Treays, whose first single proper, “Sheila”, was released when he was barely out of his teens (it’s still his third-most streamed song; his rollicking 2009 banger “Sticks n Stones” occupies the top spot). “So I was keen to make one last record that was looking back on those times. In order to tie it up in a bow, and maybe move on a bit.” The push-pull is there in first single and album opener “3310”. It’s a metaphorical ode to the tactile reassurance of an old-school Nokia 3310, a track that begins as folky acoustica before piling into a very meta, very Jamie T, syncopated indie-disco bop. Lyrically, though, it could have been another song entirely. Jamie T performing at Brixton Academy in 2016 (Photo: Joseph Okpako/WireImage) “It was originally based on something quite different,” he says, between occasional puffs on a Cola Ice-flavoured vape. (Two refills, Fruit Medley and Peach Ice, sit on the table between us: Treays has recently kicked a 25-year, 40-a-day cigarette habit.) “Do you remember in the ’90s that there was a recorded conversation that came out between Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles?” Um, the leaked private phone call in which the future King wished he could be as close to his secret lover as a Tampax? “Yeah! Me and my friends were discussing it. My mate was like, ‘Oh my god, this is mental.’ I was like, ‘No, it’s quite romantic. He’s saucy, isn’t he?’ “It got me thinking about this whole idea of lust and obsession for someone,” Treays continues. “And wanting to be an inanimate object to them, anything to be close to them. So the song started off about that. But when I came back to it years later, I wasn’t sure I wanted [to go with] that original idea. So I made it more about you how I’ll always be there if you need me. Like the old Friends [theme].” Treays has his own tight circle of musician pals and peers. The Maccabees are his ride-or-dies; the band’s guitarist Hugo White is a sounding board for ideas and co-producer on the new album. Fred Again is a newer mate, an old-school fan for whom a Jamie T gig at Reading Festival was a formative experience. This year, the superstar producer paid it back by sampling Treays’ 2023 track “Hippodrome” for “Lights Burn Dimmer”. “Just to be in his algorithm is f***ing mental,” says Treays. “I got a few phone calls from my friend: ‘You’re everywhere on streaming and social media.’ I was like: ‘It’s not me, it’s Fred!’” ‘I’ve been in it for 20 years. I’m happy to still be here,’ says Jamie T (Photo: Tom Beard) Only eight months since its release, “Lights Burn Dimmer” is fast gaining on Jamie T tracks that are now two decades old. It might just add to his streaming income. “I get some royalty cheques, but they’re not huge. We do make money from [concert] tickets. That’s the main bit.” The main bit, but also an imperilled bit. “Gigging is expensive, because I’ve got a band. I can’t tour Europe anymore. I don’t think we’ve been back there since Brexit.” He’d love to take Ghosts… on the road beyond the UK, “and we’re having a look at it, but it’s not adding up at the moment.” For Jamie T – domestically settled, lifestyle “moderated”, hopes and homages given brilliant musical form on his new album – that lack of gigging options in particular is “really frustrating”. “I want to keep the band working, too. And albums don’t go on as long as they used to. It feels like they get released and then disappear. Which is alright for me, because I mostly enjoy writing records these days. That’s where I feel happiest. “Yeah, it would be nice to tour more. But I’m getting older now. I can’t really complain. I’ve been in it for 20 years. I’m happy to still be here.” ‘Ghosts (100 Days of Morning)’ (Polydor) is released on 9 October