An Interview With Clementine Is My Sunshine

A good friend of mine, Jonathan Wu, has something of an alter ego. But not really—Wu just doubles as a singer-songwriter, going by the moniker Clementine Is My Sunshine. Wu plays a brand of folk music that I would unhesitatingly characterize as wonderful. You can find him on Bandcamp here; I’ve also embedded three demos right below.

A long time ago (in the spring semester of 2010), I sat down and interviewed him for an article in the Hamilton Spectator. The published interview, however, was far shorter than I would have liked. There were still lots of interesting bits about Wu’s life and his songwriting that I still wanted to share with the world. So…this is coming out of the vaults, so to speak. Enjoy!

TC: How did you first get interested in music?

JW: I’ve always had a musical background. My mom was very involved in music; she played the piano was younger and she kept on playing. She went on to get what would be like the Masters version of a piano degree…so she went very far classically, she went through voice lessons, but when she went to college she applied for the music school at Chinese University—it’s one of the bigger universities in Hong Kong—but she couldn’t get into the music school, so she opted out for business school. [laughs] So she went to business school, got into business, basically hated it, but she’s been doing it her whole life. So I think it’s from that—from the fact she couldn’t get into music school—that she encouraged me and my sisters to really pursue music and work hard at it so we didn’t have to suffer through business.

So your siblings are musical too?

Yeah, my older sister plays violin and piano. I play violin, piano, and guitar. My younger sister plays cello and piano and my youngest sister plays violin and piano. And she’s picking up guitar now too. We’ve all gone through this regiment of classical music. Another big thing is actually the church because my dad is a pastor at a church. I played a lot of hymns. I love hymns. I’m a massive fan of hymns. So I played a lot of those and that kind of got me the basic chords and I learned the basic kind of progressions from that. Learning hymns is a great thing, so if you’re learning guitar and if you’re learning to write songs learning hymns is a wonderful thing because hymns are one of the best genre of songs—melody and progression and musicality—it’s flawless.

How do you go about writing songs?

It’s a mess. Sometimes I get kind of this riff going or progression that I like and I’ll add a melody over it. Sometimes I have a melody in my head and I’ll try to find the progression and the key that fits best for my voice. Sometimes I have words first…so it’s just whatever. But I’ve been thinking about that recently. The best image I can think of is…you know The Old Man and the Sea?

Yes.

So basically the old man goes out, catches this big fish he can’t see for the longest time, tries to reel it in, finally reels it in, bring it back, but by the time he brings it back it’s just bare bones. It’s not what it was before. [laughs] I feel like that’s a really good image of the creative process. A lot of the times when I start—in the shower or some random place—I hear this awesome piece in my head and then, as I start trying to translate it into a song—words and progressions—things get taken away and it just loses some of it. At the end it’s just totally different…like the bare bones of what you had before, but you’ve just got to hope that that’s good enough.

["Gamble" - Clementine Is My Sunshine]

What inspires you to write?

People call me a very positive songwriter in terms of the things I like to sing about—but the way I see it is when I sing these things I’m really talking to myself. I usually write these songs when I’m in a very low moment in my life and it’s kind of like, Come on! Pick it up! Try to keep your head up. And that’s kind of where a lot of my songs come out of. And also just…girlfriends…parents…life. One of the songs I’m most proud of came out of this project where me and a group of my friends in Hong Kong got a lot of local musicians and songwriters to come together to record an album for North Korea, to raise money and awareness for North Korea for the refugees there. So I wrote a piece called “Have You Heard.” I did research for that song which is kind of fun. I read through a lot of news articles, a lot of journal pieces. So I’ve written a song like that. And I think I really want to do that more often, but I just don’t have time.

Who do you write love songs for?

The first CD I made—it’s called Suzanne, that’s not the person I wrote it for, that was a friend of mine who was leaving, her family was moving somewhere else, so I named the album after her. That album I wrote for this girl I liked in 8th grade…I liked her for two or three years. She was a really good friend of mine and things just never worked out…she just broke my heart.

Did she know?

Yeah, she knew. We both kind of knew we had a thing going on and it just didn’t work out…a lot of problems emotionally…just think Gossip Girl but way worse…and in middle school. It’s embarrassing! That why I can’t listen to that album. It’s just…what was I thinking? And the next album I wrote…a lot of those songs…honestly, they were just in my head. I feel like they were more like writing exercises for me in terms of thinking up metaphors and thinking up similes to use. So it wasn’t so much directed towards a specific person as a kind of muse in my head. And the third album, my girlfriend now, one of them is specifically for her.

Be cute and tell us.

[laughs] It’s called “She Makes Me Smile.” It’s near the end of the album. That’s pretty direct because I talk about winter storms and all that kind of stuff because she lives in Kingston, Ontario which is in Canada and it’s really cold there. I have pretty direct references if you know the situation so in each album I have really specific people I write to. So one of the songs is for my girlfriend. A lot of the songs I write are directed to my friends. When my friends in Hong Kong listen to this—my high school friends—there are a lot of moments where they’re like, ‘I know when that happened. I know why you wrote that line.’ A lot of them are directed to something specific I experienced with a buddy of mine. Like “Mong Kok,” I talk about two weeks. It’s kind of a motif in that song. It’s because for two weeks—every single day—a friend and I just sat every day in this area in Hong Kong just people-watching and talking about how we’re afraid to go to college and that kind of stuff.

What was your first gig like?

My first real gig was in 8th grade at a place in Hong Kong. It was an extremely small room on the second floor of this office building. In the back, in the bar, there was nothing but beers. You couldn’t get anything, no water. Everyone was smoking, there was no ventilation. And my mom was with me, so she was freaking out. So that was my first show. And it was fun! I played like a half hour set or something like that.

You’ve opened for a number of big acts. Who have you opened for and what were those experiences like?

Okay. Avril Lavigne, Jose Gonzalez, Feeder, and a couple big names in Hong Kong. And now the Morning Benders! In that group, I enjoyed opening for Jose Gonzalez the best just because he was very kind. He made an effort to come talk to me and he just shared his experience with touring and music whereas Avril Lavigne…that was a good experience in terms of I got to play a massive arean in from of 13,000 people but she…like when I went out to soundcheck, her PR lady came up and said, ‘When Avril gets here go in your room because she doesn’t like people talking or staring at her.

But you were the opener!

Exactly! At least come say hi or something. So, yeah, I enjoyed Jose Gonzalez the best. And Feeder, it was more like a festival, so I didn’t really get to talk to them.

But what was your favorite performing experience?

Performing experience I guess it would be Avril Lavigne. For one thing, it was in front of 13,000 people. Another thing is I really had ot win these people over…I mean, they’re Avril Lavigne fans in the first place so it was tough. A lot of people were like, ‘What the f—k?’ in the first couple minutes. I got a couple boos. That was encouraging. A lot of ‘We want Avril’ chants. So I just kind of bantered and talked back to them which was fun. So I think that was the best experience just in terms I was playing for so many people that didn’t necessarily expect to hear me which is a great experience for a performer.

Where does the moniker Clementine Is My Sunshine come from?

Nowhere really. This is one theory: people think of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind because a girl in it was called Clementine…but no, it’s not. I’ve just been obsessed with the name Clementine for a long time. So I used to be called Natural City, with my buddy. When he left I figured I needed a new name. So the first show I played I needed a name so I’ve always liked Clementine and sunshine rhymed. [laughs] And that was kind of in the stage where I was really into long band names. Now not so much. Now I feel like if I’m going to change it, it would be something shorter.

Do you have any ideas for a new name?

No. Not yet.

So you’ve played in a duo setting. Have you played in a band setting?

I have. In Hong Kong I would go every year to this acoustic songwriting competition and that was just an exercise to perform so I would take advantage of that and just get my friends to come play with me. Like regardless of skill level or whatever. I love playing with a band…it’s just that I have yet to meet other people as interested in music who are willing to pursue it. I have a lot of friends who are musically talented who could probably do some good work but they’re all engineers or…you know…their heart isn’t with music.

How did the recording of your three albums come about?

Well, the first album, my friend and I had the confidence to do it because of that acoustic festival in Hong Kong. The first time we ever did it—in 8th grade—we won the whole thing, the whole shebang. I wrote this song and he added some piano parts and we just went and did it and we won the whole thing somehow. We won Best Song…Best Performance and everything…so we were like, ‘Hey, I think we’re all right! Let’s try to make a CD!’ So we got our parents to split the money and we just went for it. I had some other friends who were doing recording at the time so I had an idea that I wanted to record eventually but I didn’t know when I would be ready to record…but when we won it was kind of our affirmation. Yes…we can do it. Actually, even before the duo, I was in a metal band. I was a metal head! Up until 7th grade…so basically from 5th to 7th grade I was in this metal-emoish band with a friend of mine and we kind of broke up because our musical interests just sort of went different ways.

Are there plans for future releases?

Yeah. I’m still writing. Constantly writing. It’s just a matter of when I think I’ll have a good enough collection of songs to put onto an album. In the future, I might actually want to pursue and write a concept album. Just because I’m interested in creative writing and writing prose and storytelling. I’m really interested in storytelling. I’ve yet to truly write a song that’s a story. I really want to aspire to be a storyteller type of songwriter.

Townes. Van. Zandt. Okay, I’ll stop.

What?

So what are your plans for a musical career after college?

I would like to continue playing…either by myself or with a band. Make enough money to support myself. My ultimate goal is to make a living. Make a living and possibly critical acclaim. But popularity isn’t so much on my mind. I don’t need to be on billboards. I just need to make enough money so I can keep playing music. At this point in my life that’s all I really care about. If I could do that, I’d be happy and I could live that way. Even if critics hate me, whatever. If people are paying for my music and I could keep doing it, then I’d be happy.

You’ve lived in Hong Kong, Toronto, and here at Hamilton. Do you think that international experience has any affect on your music?

I don’t really think about that. I think the biggest thing about living in so many different places or being more of a international type of kid growing up is being exposed to a lot of different types of music. And that’s helped me be more open-minded in the way I record and the way I write. I know if you listen to all the songs I have right now it doesn’t really sound like I try different genres or anything. But when I practice writing—on my laptop or something—I make an effort to do different styles…it’s just so far all these different styles I’ve been doing haven’t been the best [laughing]. The best have been my folk kind of things. But I make an effort to write a lot of different kinds of music.

What are some of your major musical influences?

Dylan, Paul Simon, the Hold Steady, Kanye West. I love Kanye West. Especially as a lyricist. He’s a very positive sort of dude even though he might be sort of egotistical. I mean I’m influenced by everything I listen to. Everything I listen to I always try to pick something out of it that I could use. So that’s why it’s tough. I have my pillars—Dylan and Paul Simon, these are the guys I always look up to—but whenever I listen to an album I always try to pick something out. Even some really poppy album, something you hear on the radio, I try to hear what type of hook they’re using or what sort of progression they’re using. Another pillar I would say is Ryan Adams.

If you had to pick one album of required listening for humanity, what would it be?

Humanity in crisis?

Humanity right now. Ignore culture barriers. Even one required album for Hamilton [College].

Hamilton [College] kids?

Yes. But you can’t say your own.

The first thing that comes to my head is Separation Sunday by the Hold Steady. It’s just such a brilliant album. I would make the world listen to that too. And learn to love it. I think that on first listen I think that a lot of people wouldn’t like the way that Craig Finn sings. I would make the world learn to love it. What I’m attracted to is all the positive energy and that’s something that emanates in the way that Craig Finn writes. It’s something that stands out to me. He writes a lot about salvation and the idea of getting lost in boos and drugs and coming out better or even just being able to come out from that.

When you perform, you tend to introduce songs with brief explanations and anecdotes, in your opinion, how much should your songs be identified with you and your stories over the listener’s own experiences?

Here’s the thing. I think even if I do tell the story behind a song—which I often do because I think that the way I write, I write very much from my own experiences—even when I do tell people about it, they tend to find their own meaning within the song either way. They might pick up a specific line that they think is really good or has a very personal meaning for them.

Would it bother you if someone misinterpreted a song?

Oh no! Unless they misinterpreted it completely…like they think I’m singing about some sexual act or something. [laughs] I think that the one thing about music and song right now. I think that poetry and novels…it’s so academic that people tend to just shift to ‘oh, this is the right answer because academics say this is it’ so they shy away from coming up with their own interpretation. I feel like song is the one platform people can still say ‘Hey no! I think it’s this’ or ‘I think it’s that’ and there’s no higher power to put people down and say ‘This is actually what it means.’