INTERVIEW WITH JACKIE CHAMBERS FROM SYTERIA/GIRLSCHOOL

It’s been a busy year for Jackie Chambers. The Girlschool and Syteria guitarist will be releasing albums with both of her respective projects this year. Jax, as she is known by her friends and fans will be also performing with Girlschool at HRH Road Trip in Ibiza.

Syteria are presently gearing up to release their new album Syteria World in the summer. The band were running a crowdfunding campaign in support of the release and subsequently smashed their targets in no time at all. “We’ve got some amazing supporters, and they are very generous as well. People follow us all over the country, and you can’t ask for more than that can you? They are so loyal and so enthusiastic. There are some amazing supporters, it’s really cool. They will like this album, I’m sure they will because if they like It Hit Me, Pause for Peace, and Monsters they’re on there already. And of course, another eight,” she says. “So, there’s 12 songs and a bonus track.”

“We released three singles last year because when we released Reflection, it was the worst time in the world. It was the 21^st of February 2020. The lockdown was a month after,” she says. “We went out to tour in the UK, as usual. And we were doing lots of gigs. Because of COVID happening, people were buying tickets and not coming because they were too frightened. And it was like, wow, this is amazing. We had to cancel the last two or three I think, because the clubs said we’ve been asked to close down. So, it was just horrible. So that was a lesson for us. We had just spent all this money on PR and on magazine advertisements, and the usual things you do when you bring out a new album. And all these interviews that nobody ever heard,” explains Jackie.

The band’s experiences from their latest album resulted in a change of thought heading into their upcoming release. “We decided we would do singles in case it happened again,” explains Jackie. “So, we did It Hit Me, Monsters and Pause For Peace, and another one. Then we thought, well, we’ve got four songs done already. We’ll just go in the studio, and we went in this March and recorded the other eight.”

As a band, Syteria’s approach towards songwriting has evolved with each album. “The first couple of albums, I guess I generally wrote most of the songs myself because the reason I put the band together in the first place was because I had so many songs that we weren’t doing with Girlschool. I thought well, I might as well showcase this element to my personality, this pop/rock, punk stuff on the other side. The first album Rant O Bot was mostly my songs. I think there was one of Keira’s and me and Julia wrote one together. Then Reflection, Julia put one forward and Pablo put one forward. So again, there’s ten of mine and two for the band.” 

This time around Jackie had two albums to write for simultaneously. “This time, obviously I was writing a lot with Girlschool for that album as well. So, I said come on, you’ve got to put more ideas in. I’m not saying don’t write, please write. If you don’t bring anything to the table, we can’t put it in. So, they all started writing,” explains Jax. “I think Steph and Julia wrote together. Pablo gave me a drum track, and I wrote a song around that. I mean, most of them we’ve done on our own. I think there’s five or six of them on there that are mine.”

Jackie adds: “We get a full demo with the drums and bass because we all don’t play everything. So, we just put the drums, bass, guitars and vocals and all the harmonies on there and then just present it. And then obviously when we get to rehearsals, we just bash it out and it just comes out. We tend to change the harmonies to something more natural to ourselves because we’re all quite natural to harmonies. And then yeah, it just turns into a Syteria song. So, however, it starts off, it always ends up sounding like a Syteria song.”

One of Syteria’s recent singles, It Hit Me has been in Jackie’s repertoire for some time. “Well, that’s funny. I wrote that in 1993. So, I was still married. I’ve done it with about three or four bands. My ex-husband was playing bass on it because he was in Heat Wave and stuff. So, we played really funky. And I’d written a song and he just put a bassline over the top of it. And a few bands I’ve played with did it. And it was just one of those songs that’s quite catchy and it’s kind of punky as well,” she says. “Lyric wise it’s about, it hit me that you are missing me as much as I’m missing you on a breakup. It’s like, don’t tell me you’re not missing me, because I know you are – that type of song. When you’re young, you write about that kind of stuff.”

Earlier this year, the guitarist extraordinaire was out on the road on a co-headline tour with Girlschool and Alcatrazz. “It was great. There were eight shows,” says Jackie. The tour was built around the band’s date at the Underworld in Camden, which had originally been due to take place a couple of years back but was cancelled due to several members of the touring party catching COVID at the time. “This year, it was the first gap we had where we could all make it because obviously, the Alcatrazz guys are from America. So, to bring them over for one show would have been ridiculous. So, we booked another six or seven shows around it and just played the old favourites.”

Jackie adds: “So yeah, it’s been good fun. We are planning to go to South America in September. So, we’ve already started booking that, so that’s being booked as we speak.”You can see Jackie Chambers performing with Girlschool at HRH Road Trip in Ibiza. The new Girlschool album WTFortyfive will be released on July 28^th. The new album from Syteria, titled Syteria World will be released shortly after. The official release date of the latter is to be confirmed.

Interview by Adam Kennedy