MySpace a place for friends

For a man who first picked up a guitar aged seven and taught himself to play, music was clearly a natural compulsion, and the one he was used to giving in to. Scott’s musical loves and influences now are one and the same as the varied bunch he grew up listening to.

From his mother, Jamie developed an appreciation of James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Carole King. “Tapestry was the first album I ever heard through my mum playing it in the house all the time. I was seven years old and I remember staring at the sleeve and listening to the music, just being totally mesmerised by the music. I didn’t know what it was about then but I was just touched by it.”

From his father, he took away a keen love of soul – Wilson Pickett, Donnie Hathaway, The Flamingos. “At school, mates would be talking about bands like Bon Jovi and I didn’t have a clue who they were talking about as I didn’t start listen to pop radio till I was 15.”

The previous comparisons to Jamiroquai that he once attracted seem pretty one-dimensional, probably an observation based on his dextrous and soulful voice. In truth, the Jamie Scott of Park Bench Theories is less easy-on-the-ear funk and, if comparisons must be drawn, somewhere between Jeff Buckley meets Stevie Wonder.