Jade Helliwell @ Nashville Meets London 2018
One day, last summer, I got a DM from Jade. Out of the blue, she said she really liked the tour stuff I’d been producing for Sarah Darling and was wondering if I’d be up for documenting her performance at Nashville Meets London.
It was hard to say no, when she’d asked so politely. Especially after talking on the phone to her the night before and seeing how easygoing she was about the whole thing.
So, I got out of bed early one morning, after signing a lot of intimidating paperwork from the people of Canary Wharf promising them I wasn’t going to be a moron, and headed in to the event.
Turns out, NML is a pretty big deal - which explained the paperwork.
It was about midday when I arrived, and the square was pretty packed already.
I finally met Jade and her band, just as they were waiting to go on for soundcheck, the guys were incredibly happy and upbeat even with their super-early start driving down from up North.
So I got to work documenting everything they did; the soundcheck, costume changes (check out Jade in her glam, glittery, get-up), the performance, and Jade’s hanging out with fans and press after the performance.
It was only during the performance that I really got a perspective on how many people were at the event, standing way at the back, hundreds - if not thousands - of people between me and the stage, they even had huge screens halfway back so people could see what was going on on-stage.
Shout-out to Nathalie and Simon from Countryline TV who I met there but keep bumping into on my adventures of the British Country scene - Nat’s always got the best sweets if you’re ever in need of a sugar rush.
It was a fun few hours with Jade and gang, they didn’t hang around much seeing as they had to head out to Portsmouth for another performance at another festival that evening. But we’ve kept in touch since, and we’ve done other things.
What I respect about Jade is she’s just chill, same as Luke - her partner - who I’ve got to know over time. She’s incredibly humble and happy to get stuck in with whatever needs to be done to get something done.
