On Monday 21st of August, 2023, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ceejay, a bouncy and upbeat musician from a picturesque little town on the outskirts of Leeds. I’ve known Ceejay for about two years now but my interactions with him have always been through other friends. I first met him through my good friend and fellow busker, Chubby Chubbsta, who introduced us outside the Trinity Centre, Leeds – a popular busking spot. My impression of him was that he had a lot of confidence in performing, wrote some really good songs with a soulful/bluesy undertone, and he was a pleasant guy who seemed wholly focussed on his goals. He became more of an acquaintance than anything, and he would occasionally pop up at music events and say hello.
Last week, I went to The Pack Horse in Hyde Park to watch Ceejay perform with his “Band of Misfits” – a relatively new musical collaboration featuring my friend and ex-bandmate, Katie Gittins, whom I recently wrote an article about. I was pleasantly surprised by Ceejay and The Misfits, if not a little jealous to see them all having such a good time – especially after I just broke up my own band a few months back! The band consists of Ceejay (on guitar and vocals), Shaneen Mooney (on bass), Katie (on viola), and Jack Hunter (on drums). The band itself deserves an article and, as I know most of them already, I hope to interview them individually over the next few weeks. I was lucky enough to get some time with the frontman and driving force behind the band, and the following is my attempt to sum up what Ceejay is all about, where he’s from, and where he’s heading.
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Overcoming Obstacles Through the Power of Music
Ceejay was born and raised in Aberdeen, which can be heard in his accent at times, though I wouldn’t describe him as having an overpowering Scottish accent. He’s quite pleasant to listen to, in fact, and the time he has spent in Leeds has morphed his accent into a sort of “Leedserdeen” accent, which sounds reminiscent of “West Country” at times, too. His “vocal image” bubbles over with enthusiasm and he talks in an animated and expressive fashion. He comes across as someone who is happy and outgoing, a sort of social butterfly, perhaps.
“I’ve always loved singing”
Despite this, Ceejay tells me that he has struggled with dyspraxia since childhood, a condition that affects your fine motor skills and coordination. As a result of this, he has had to overcome a lot of doubt and he says that from a young age there was an awareness that his physical limitations would make it difficult for him to learn an instrument like the guitar. Because of this, he told me that he decided to sing instead “cuz I’ve always loved singing”.
Growing up in the 90s, Ceejay said some of his earliest memories of music were dancing to his mum’s record collection, which included the song Spaceman, by Babylon Zoo, a song that every kid of the 90s was singing in the school yard at the time. He gave me a quick rendition of the song’s punchline “Spaceman, I always wanted you to go into space, man” right there in the Corn Exchange where we held the interview, apologizing for his alleged “out of tune” version. He also mentioned that he was adopted as a child and described his real mother as a hardcore raver and punk. He didn’t go into any details on this and, tellingly, didn’t have much else to say about his childhood after the adoption.
During his teenage years, he got into his first band, called Exception. All of his band mates were in the year above him at school but they struck a chord in performing rock music and by the time Ceejay was around seventeen years of age he tells me that “I’d already done like fifty [to] sixty gigs.” This is quite some experience for someone so young to have racked up! He seems very comfortable in front of a crowd and his repertoire contains a few call-and-response numbers, a classic technique for developing rapport with your audience.
“This is what I was put on this earth to do”
It feels like Ceejay has always been a natural on stage, however, and he tells tales of performing at venues as a fourteen-year-old kid and being surrounded by adult bands. He recalls how he jumped on stage, grabbed the mic and just took it away. He was awed by the reception he got and told me that it was a real buzz playing in front of hundreds of people. In that moment he realised that “this is what I was put on this earth to do”.
But at that time, he was still a young man trying to find himself in life and he considered for a while going down the “normal” route of getting a mortgage, marrying the “dream” wife then turning out a couple of kids. He told me how he’d thought about going into the oil industry to make a bunch of money, as this was a popular career in his home town of Aberdeen. He fell off the musical band wagon for some time and he says that “…my love of music changed. It went from performing in front of people to going and listening to Techno music”.
From Southwest England to Southeast Asia
Thankfully, he came back to music in a creative setting as he realised that some part of him was missing, and the techno days of “munching mysterious mushrooms” were a pretty low time for him. But before that happened, he trundled off to the southwest of England to serve a stint as a manager at the Co-op, which might be the reason behind the subtle “west country” twang in his accent. But ultimately, the monotonous life of a manager took its toll, and he decided to save all his money and go travelling. He ended up in Thailand, a place I also lived for a number of years!
“I fell back in love with it”
He says that he was put in a situation where he was surrounded by creative people again and there were lots of opportunities to perform. But his old troubles with playing the guitar came back to haunt him and he said that it took him a long time to get the hang of the guitar. Despite these difficulties, once on stage, Ceejay came into his own, and the lessons he’d learned from his teenage years as a frontman of a band came back in full swing. He told me it was in that moment that “I fell back in love with it”. He spent several months in the north of Thailand in Chiang Mai and Pai; both beautiful places with a vibrant scene of travellers and creatives that no doubt fuelled his creative drive once more.
He returned from Southeast Asia having spent all his money, and wondered where his life would take him from there. He decided to move to a new place and that’s when he made the move to a town on the outskirts of Leeds where he had a few family members nearby. He was looking for a fresh start and he didn’t want to go back to the 9-5 office life, and so began to wonder how he would continue from there. He had seen how other creatives had made their passion their profession and realised there was nothing stopping him from doing the same. That’s when he began to dedicate his life to his music career and it was around that time he wrote the song Human.
“Human is about being an individual and not a robot in society”
The song is semi-autobiographical and he talks of his struggle to find his path in life while balancing the need to work and make a living. In Ceejay’s own words: “Human is about being an individual and not a robot in society”. He talks about the struggles he faced in the beginning of his journey. This is reflected in the song’s lyrics and he says “You can hear the frustration at the start of the song and by the end I was telling myself no, you can do this! You can succeed and be free”. As a struggling musician myself, I have a lot of admiration and respect for Ceejay as I know how much determination and commitment it takes to keep working, day-in day-out, week after week in such a tough and unrewarding business.
Ceejay and The Misfits
But Ceejay is overflowing with optimism and good energy, which no doubt attracts the right sort of people and he certainly has attracted a lovely bunch of people in the “Misfits”, the band he is currently working with. It was fantastic to see a diverse backing band alongside Ceejay, which included two females and one transgender musician, Jack, who is an amazing songwriter in his own right. I asked Ceejay what he thought about the band and did he see himself continuing to perform with them: “One hundred percent. They’re amazing. I can’t speak higher [sic] about them. They’re beautiful human beings. I think they’re awesome at their instruments. And I just get on really well with them!”
They certainly seemed to “get on really well” with each other on that night at the Pack Horse and they sounded fantastic together. I remember sitting there and listening to Shaneen’s bass underpinning all the other instruments and thinking “Damn, that’s what my band was missing!” During that performance, Ceejay began spontaneously beatboxing and the whole band joined in, something I thought was an intentional part of the show. I later found out that it was completely unrehearsed and the band had just done what they do best: go with the flow.
Thoughts on busking and WTF happened to the music?
Our conversation turned to busking, something that we’ve both done quite a lot of. Ceejay said some surprising things about busking and put it in a light that I’d never seen it in before: “Busking is one the hardest things you can do cuz people haven’t come to see you. Busking has really helped me with fear of rejection cuz you’ve got to understand that not everybody’s gonna love your music. There’s gonna be people out there that hate what you do. Busking really puts you in front of that.”
I asked Ceejay what he thought about the music industry today. He made a point of saying “positive things” and focussed on how it’s easier in this day and age for independent artists to build their own brand without the need for a record company. It was quite a comical moment, however, as I ventured to read the slogan on his sweater while he was speaking. It was essentially a parody of the MTV logo, which had sort of been turned upside down and instead read “WTF happened to the music?”. He must have seen me reading it, as we both started chuckling. I asked him to expand on the slogan and what it meant to him.
“There’s a lot of really amazing artists, but also I think a lot of the music that’s being turned out on the radio isn’t done by people who really care about the music”.
I can’t echo that statement more strongly and we were both in agreement that capitalism has sort of ruined the music that is being put out in mainstream channels. We said a lot of anti-capitalist stuff that would probably have gotten us arrested during the 1940s, and generally bonded on our mutual dislike of modern, overly-produced, plastic, throwaway crap.
We could be heroes, just for one day
When I asked Ceejay to name some of his musical heroes, he named David Bowie without hesitation. I was thoroughly surprised by his answer as he didn’t strike me as a Bowie fan. He named Bowie as his favourite artist ever, and he talked a bit more about his dad who had introduced him to Bowie through his Bowie at the Beeb compilation album, when he was still young and also took him to one of Bowie’s concerts. He spoke of Bowie’s enduring legacy and how he continually reinvented himself throughout his career. As well as Bowie, Ceejay named Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Eminem, and Cat Stevens as influences. He jokingly told me that “I listen to a bit of Cat Stevens during my man period”.
I asked Ceejay if he had any upcoming gigs and he told me that Ceejay and the Misfits are playing at The Primrose pub on Meanwood Road on Friday 9th of September and that he is playing at a festival called Small World on the August Bank Holiday weekend which is held in Ashford, Kent. He tells me that the festival is a hub of creative people and upcoming acts, which no doubt keeps him in the loop and puts him in front of influential people. I asked Ceejay how he got into playing the festival scene in the first place.
“My first festival, I went with a production company called Break The Code. [It’s] a production company filled with poets, lyricists, MCs [etc]. I’m part of the tribe now and I’ve been going along with them and from that so many opportunities have come up.” Ceejay gave a shoutout to his “crew” there including “M9 Awakening, Miss Perspective, and everybody at Break The Code”. He tells me he’s also with another production company called Tribal Gathering and he gave a shoutout to Gaea Knight and Yap who both run the company. He finished off by giving a shoutout to Walter Mitty (not the one you’re probably thinking of) who he’s just produced a podcast about music with! (ooh, where does he find the time?)
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It certainly sounds like Ceejay is a busy bee and he is definitely putting in the graft to “live the dream”. I began to draw our interview to a close, as it felt like Ceejay could have talked forever and I started to imagine myself writing a short story about his life rather than a blog post! We finished our tea in the Corn Exchange and went for a little walk together in the afternoon sun. We talked openly about music and life in general and it felt easy to be around him.
I genuinely enjoyed meeting and interviewing Ceejay and I felt like I got to know him better. It was really nice when he told me that he thought I was good interviewer and that he got along really well with me. As we approached the train station, we could hear someone playing a harmonica down under the bridge that passes under the station entrance. The sun was shining and Ceejay was smiling. He gave me a hug and disappeared off into the crowds. It felt like a good ending to a good meeting. I wish him all the best with his music and hope to see him performing again, especially alongside his “Band of Merry Misfits”.
You can find Ceejay on social media via the links below. Be sure to follow him and give him some support!