I’ve been on a journey. You know. There’s a road you’re on and it’s long. Really I’ve been on two journeys. Really a multitude of journeys, but let’s not get lost in the multiverse yet. We’re trying to release an album in this universe right here. In two weeks! Two weeks from today! Happy Friday.
The first journey was me developing as a songwriter over the last 40 years of my life, all of which have been spent in great part, in private, developing a songwriting style I felt comfortable sharing with the world. That journey took a major turn in 2008 with the indie release of Sweet Violin, an EP of three songs that defined a lo-fi sound I fell in love with after trying the first four-track iPhone app. I had to jailbreak the iPhone to download it. This was long before anyone at Apple thought of putting GarageBand in the App Store.
Between that limited indie release and 2022, I released two more EPs without any press or promotion. Six more songs that explored where my lo-fi sound was going as it adopted higher-fi textures and rhythms.
Then, in the summer of 2022, I began the process of birthing the Stephen Jaymes persona and learning how to work it and make it sing for me. This was the start of the second journey. My attempt to reconcile myself with public performance and giving my songs the production and performance I imagined and believed they deserved.
Now, at the start of the summer of 2025, that journey is culminating with the release of King Jaymes. And then the journey continues, as I get ready to make more official videos for the tracks that don’t already have them, and as I begin dropping all new singles that will likely end up on album number two. But again, I get slightly ahead of myself. It’s the vision thing.
What we are celebrating right the funk now is the release of my long-dreamed debut album King Jaymes. In what is developing as a tradition here on PARTICLES, I thought I’d share with you what we are saying to the press about it.
THE OFFICIAL KING JAYMES ALBUM RELEASE BLURB
KING JAYMES is the debut album from Stephen Jaymes, the folk punk hero hell-bent on saving the human race. It contains a number of tracks that were released as singles over the past 22 months to critical acclaim, and a brand-new song called When I Was Young.
As such, King Jaymes represents the culmination of two histories: the history of Stephen developing as an artist, and the history of Stephen tracing a path of unique singles and standout videos across two years to arrive at his debut album’s release already firmly established as a gifted songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.
The journey from the summer of 2023 to the summer of 2025 chronicled the birth of the Stephen Jaymes persona, the establishment of a unique and artful music video style, and the ongoing development of a sound.
As this development progressed, Stephen and his mixing engineer, Zsolt Virag, continued to hone and define what they agreed would become the sound of King Jaymes. It’s a folk-rock album with a pristine shine and a standout vocal performance, shaped and perfected with a few iconic records in mind, the most prominent being the Gordon Lightfoot and Lenny Waronker collaboration Gord’s Gold.
Those who listen to Stephen’s 2023 and 2024 singles will find all new mixes of them on King Jaymes. For example, the song Chief Inspector, released at the outset of this journey, feels like a whole new beast, its piano and guitar dialogue shining with new details and a wide open aural vista that defines the whole album: a carefully controlled and expansive universe of texture and rhythm.
On the way to the release of King Jaymes, Stephen’s fans got an unusual opportunity to know him intimately. Abandoning the deliberate anonymity that defined most of his development as an artist in Los Angeles, he purposefully made his 2023 singles visual spectaculars. He collaborated with the LA-based director Ross Kolton to produce three experimental films investigating an artist coming to terms with his own emerging persona.
The 2024 singles were accompanied by slightly more traditional music videos that featured more performance and more video effects, but they were no less fearless in their experimentation, and they ultimately provided even deeper looks into Stephen’s intimate world. The culminating video, for the single Stranded, is a psychedelic romp across the wonders of the world in a style he describes as Elvis Lebowski.
Then, in 2025, a whole new side of Stephen Jaymes emerged through a project he came to call VISION2025. He launched a blog called PARTICLES and embarked on a series of popular TikTok videos to explain his vision of peace on Earth achieved in our lifetime and the cultural and spiritual questions raised by the mission to feed, house, and provide medicine to every human being on the planet.
His thoughts on everything, from the phenomenon of time seeming to slow during crisis moments to how to shield yourself from toxic news, find an audience resonating with his calm defiance in the face of extinction. VISION2025 provides the perfect complement to and vehicle for Stephen’s folk punk attitude.
The final track on King Jaymes, When I Was Young, won’t be released as a single. You’ll have to hear the album to catch it. It is a standout work that transcends the torch song genre to lay bare the irony of growing older in an age that is refusing to allow humans to grow old anymore.
Life is a dirty trick, and it’s sad, but in the hands of Stephen Jaymes, life is a miracle of light in the darkness, and a hint that there’s more to this particular apocalypse than meets the eye. When I Was Young is a crowning achievement of a track, lavished with mixing details that make all the dark corners sparkle. It is the wry but hopeful observation of a king who has learned humility, and who has survived through music to assume his rightful place on the folk punk throne.
LISTEN TO THE ALBUM BEFORE ITS RELEASE!
Hello again. Down here. If you’d like to hear King Jaymes early, that’s easy. Just sign up for my newsletter in the footer. I’ll send it to you. Because it’s good for us people who make it to the end of things to stay in touch. Hey, have a good weekend and take ‘er easy. I hear there’s a new album coming that helps ease the pain and lift the spirits.