A TEENAGER has signed to major music label Decca after her talents were discovered at a small B&B in West Wales.
Now Jodie Marie is putting the finishing touches to her debut album with producer and Suede guitarist Bernard Butler.
The 19-year-old, who is from Narberth in Pembrokeshire, was signed to the record company – whose roster includes Robert Plant, Paul Simon and Imelda May – by Simon Gavin, the man who also snapped up Welsh chart-topper Duffy.
He said: “Jodie is the first artist I’ve signed since signing Duffy. Management came in and played me three demos which blew me away.
“Her voice is the best I’ve heard in years and is the kind of voice that’s been here before. I offered her a deal on the spot.”
But Jodie Marie, who has already been compared to American singer-songwriter Carole King, said she first thought it might be a wind-up when she received a phone call about the deal.
“I wasn’t sure it was for real,” she says. “I never really thought about making a career out of music as it’s such a difficult industry to get into. I was shocked and amazed at the same time.”
Plumber’s daughter Jodie Marie, whose real name is Jodie Warlow, grew up listening to blues music.
She started performing covers at local gigs at the age of seven, and when she was in her early teens she began writing her own material.
But it was a CD of her singing covers that helped pave the way to her record deal.
Roy Langley – father of Toby L, who runs Transgressive Management with Tim Dellow – was staying in a B&B in Pembrokeshire when the landlady overheard him talking about his son’s music label. At the time, Jodie Marie’s father, John, was doing some plumbing work at the hotel so the landlady told him to hand over his daughter’s CD of covers.
“She played it to Roy over breakfast and it went from there,” says Jodie Marie. “He then got in touch with me and I met Toby and Tim.”
Transgressive Management took Jodie Marie under their wing, even though she was just 16 years old at the time, and within a few weeks she found herself in London working with Butler.
“I’d not played my own songs to anyone else before, so to be playing them to him was crazy,” she says.
“He could see how nervous I was but he was really nice.
“I’d been writing my own songs in my spare time just for fun. I’d been scribbling stuff down from the age of 10 and then putting the notes in a box.
“I started writing properly when I was studying music in secondary school around the age of 14.”
From then on, Jodie Marie would travel up to London in between her studies to work on songs with Butler. Since then, she’s also worked on tracks with Ed Harcourt, who’s behind chart star Paloma Faith.
She found out that Decca wanted to sign her last autumn, but it is only now that the label’s launching their latest star, whose debut single, Single Blank Canvas, is due to be released on June 13.
“Simon Gavin from Decca came to see me at home in Wales with Toby and Tim. My mum made a lasagne and we all talked about it. A couple of weeks later I went to London to sign the deal. It felt so right. It was really meant to be.”
Jodie Marie, who’s now dividing her time between Narberth and London, says there will no doubt be comparisons between her and Gavin’s last signing, Duffy.
“I think she’s great. Obviously being Welsh I’m going to get compared to her although we sing completely different styles of music,” she says.
As she prepares for the release of her single and her debut album later this year, a number of concerts have been pencilled in including a gig at the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay and her London debut. “That’s going to be a completely new experience,” she admits.
Jodie Marie, whose favourite singers include Bonnie Raitt and Janis Joplin, is now preparing for a whirl of press interviews.
“I never wanted to be famous but I’ll just take it step by step and appreciate everything that comes my way,” she says.
The 'Wuthering Heights' singer has revealed she has experienced a flow of creativity since she rested a bag of organic bone meal ' a garden fertiliser created from ground animal bones ' on her piano. And it could lead to her releasing her first studio album since 2005's 'Aerial'.
