I am the Other Person

Biography

„I am the Other Person started with a spontaneous recording one morning about 6 years ago, sitting at the breakfast table with John McK. For some reason I was paying particular attention to the sound of his voice. It has this warm, rhythmic quality to it and I asked him if it was okay if I recorded him for a bit. For about 5 minutes I just recorded our conversation, about what we do when we wake up and how our day unfolds. Later I listened to the recording again and heard the musicality in his voice, from which music started in my head. These sounds and John talking became the song "John".
The concept formed that I could turn conversations into songs that start with the question: What do you do when you get up in the morning? Over the course of 3.5 years I recorded another 10 conversations and turned each of them into songs.

"` Cause I am the Person“ is a line that Jamie W. said in the recorded conversation that we had in Holland. I understood it as: I do what I do because I am me, somebody else does something different because he/she is him/her.“
When I moved to Switzerland from The Netherlands I stopped playing in bands, which I had always done since I was a teenager. I still wanted to make music though, so I was looking for ways to give my creative urges some kind of form. Since I am no more than an average background singer I ruled out being a singer or something like a singer/songwriter. I also knew I wanted to make music that tells a story and can move between different styles of music, without being too experimental. So when I got the first song, "John", I knew I had found my vehicle. I make the music that I make because I am me, 'cause I am the other person.“

Jay van de Vlag is a musician who records under the name "I am the Other Person". When he is not making music Jay is a sculptor, based in Switzerland. He has played in various bands since the mid-eighties and toured in Germany and France in the early twothousands as a background musician for different artists.