For Jojo Orme – known both for her gothic post-punk stylings and love of military aircraft – succeeding in music has been a long-deserved, hard-earned passion project. Born in London but raised in the rural pastures of Gloucestershire, she moved back to the capital for uni, making the regular trek from her home in Tooting Broadway to her job in the cloakroom at Camden’s Roundhouse. “Every time I did something, like work at Roundhouse, I thought it was such a big thing,” she remembers fondly. “I was always so excited about what I was doing, I never took it for granted.”
Her drive led her to study production as one of only a few girls in her class, as well as tentatively stepping foot in the Windmill (“This isn’t the countryside – this is really fucking cool!”), and working as a photographer – but it was a serendipitous meeting on Tottenham Court Road that brought about one of her first breakthroughs.
“It was like a movie,” Jojo recalls, a hint of disbelief still in her voice. “I was crying on my own because an ex upset me, and these three people came up to me.” Those three people, as it turned out, were the London-via-Newcastle artist Imogen, her manager, and producer Rob Brinkmann. “We went to McDonalds and I was talking about how I wanted to work at RAK Studios because I wanted to be a studio engineer,” Jojo says. “This guy literally said ‘oh, I used to work there’. I worked for him in his private studio in Battersea and I helped record Automotion’s first EP, which was crazy!”
When she wasn’t checking coats in Camden or fielding job opportunities in McDonalds, The Windmill – wrapped up in as much mythology as the bands it’s helped establish – gave Jojo a scene to immerse herself in. That doesn’t make her a hard and fast ‘Windmill artist’, though; “It motivated me to do, but it didn’t define who I was,” she says firmly. “I don’t like it to define me because a lot of who I am has come from way before. Windmill was there to push me and motivate me to get what I wanted.”
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It seems to have paid off in 2023: Jojo’s debut EP, ‘A Comforting Notion’, was released in March; she played her biggest headliner at Village Underground in November, and followed it swiftly with a slot at The Netherlands’ Zeitgeist Festival. “Last year, after I played Zeitgeist, we went to the bigger room to see Squid. I looked at my friend and said ‘I’m gonna play this stage next year’,” Jojo grins. “And I did!” She’s also announced a supporting slot for The Kills’ American tour in the summer, as well as a full-circle moment opening for fellow Windmill alum The Last Dinner Party at Roundhouse. “It’s really strange!” Jojo says of her journey from the cloakroom to the stage. “I will always say to myself that I deserve it, because of the amount of hard work I’ve put into it.”
Indeed, her experience wearing so many hats – venue staff, photographer, engineer – has given her a unique omniscience when it comes to the industry. “I think way too much about everything, and analyse way too much,” she admits. “Even if someone has nothing to do with my music and they’re doing lights or something, I feel like I need to work with everyone – it’s kind of a curse! I forget that’s not my job anymore.”
Right now, her job is focused on putting her first album together. Unsurprisingly, given her existing catalogue, it’s a project set to spiral far beyond the music itself. “I want each song to have its own character, kind of like what Michael Jackson did for ‘Bad’,” she explains. “The songs come first, and then the rest forms from that. When you listen to those songs you feel the characters, and you feel the story.”
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Words: Caitlin Chatterton
