Singer/Songwriter Jay Webber gives voice to his dream

By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor

A shaft of sunlight cuts through dark-bellied clouds and paints half of South Manitou Island with a lemony brush. Wafting aromas from the kitchen curry the breeze. As mellow as the evening beach, as bracing as the blue waves that lick the sand, Jay Webber captures this dreamscape with a song as delicious as a sip of benedictine and brandy after dinner. We are on the deck of Le Bear at the end of Lake Street in Glen Arbor, mesmerized by the languid urgency of this master musician. Jay coos dream songs full of longing and the joy of poignant epiphanies. You can hear that he lives his dreams deeply, and since February, when Jay left wage-slavery to pursue his singing passion full-time, he has brought that dream into the full light of day.
At the age of 6 Jay Webber got a ukelele from his Dad, and then he moved up to a guitar at age 9 or 10. A songwriter and singer almost since birth, Jay remembers “I won a 6th grade talent show in Wheaton, IL with an original song called ‘Day After Day.’ I could really jam on the bar chords then!” It’s like that song foreshadowed Jay’s life of working for pay while his artistic muse kept tugging at his sleeve and whispering in his ear to “Just sing, just follow your bliss!” For 6 years Jay was an agent near Detroit booking musicians, comedy acts, and dinner theater, but he was never the one who ended up performing. So in 1990 he and wife Julie made the first of their big “life-changes” by selling the business and moving “up north.” They bought 20 beautiful acres, a big house, and thereby acquired “big bills.” So Jay worked as a national sales manager selling infrared medical technologies and spending lots of time on the road. The singer’s dream of writing and performing stayed elusive.
“My songs are obsessed with breaking free, with traveling and hiding, because I always wanted to be a full-time singer/songwriter,” says Jay. Song titles like “Childhood Dream,” “The Journey I’ve Been Hiding From,” and “Startin’ Over,” reflect this lifelong desire. True artists have no choice, they must create and express or go crazy. The muse bites you young, and then it either gets to speak through you or it gnaws the edges of your soul into gristle. One of Jay’s songs is called “I Decided To Go Insane,” and with humor and irony it chronicles the result of repressing one’s artistic voice.
It was time to make another big “life change.” “Last year my wife Julie said ‘you gotta stop working and just do music,’” Jay says with a relieved laugh. “She gave me two months to make it big!” (pause, more laughter) “She said we could sell the house and 20 acres, so we sold it and moved into a little place near Sugarloaf. We like it, we like havin’ neighbors, and I can afford to just make songs.” Julie is in a business with her father Thomas Bender in Glen Arbor called Disciplined Growth Investors. “Jay had to have the chance now or he would regret it down the road,” Julie says. “He has a great opportunity and he has tremendous talent. And I’m probably his harshest critic. I really feel it will happen, that he will succeed as a professional singer/songwriter. We simplified our lives and it’s working out real well.”
Jay cites James Taylor, Cat Stevens, and Joe Cocker as his main artistic influences, along with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and Dan Fogelberg. His sometime singing partner Justin Trapp, who has the perfect voice for harmonizing with Jay, says “Jay is the most talented and the most fun person I’ve ever worked with. He is an amazing songwriter, and we are a good match style-wise.”
Jay’s first and only CD called Innocent Child “was done on a shoestring.” The title cut is a breathless diatribe against the murders of children at a Macdonalds and at a day-care center several years ago. “The jist of the song is that there will never be justice for such a crime, because you can never get your child back.” Jay’s daughter Lindsay made the cover painting for the CD. It is an intense tune, and Jay says it gets played in Leland at the Bluebird “all the time.” But the rest of the CD is more wistful and philosophical, tracing Jay’s pursuit of his dream. ‘Orion,” the first cut, captures the predominant ethos of Jay’s dream voice: “No I don’t want to spend my time watchin’ my life go by, don’t want to sit and cry. . . . .I got some blocks to build a sturdy foundation, build a life that reaches into the sky.”
Innocent Child has been a hugely popular CD, and it has become the daily sound track for many of his local fans. Mike and Becky Sutherland listen to Jay on the deck of Le Bear with me this night, and Becky says “We wake up to Jay’s CD everyday. There’s an intimacy you share with your favorite songs, and his music permeates the atmosphere of our home.”
Jay says a new CD is close. “I’ve got all the tunes, all the musicians, all the studios lined up, but I don’t want to do it half way. I want orchestration, a tastier, bigger production than Innocent Child. A good producer is costly, but they know how to get a certain sound.” Jay has been in Nashville several times, and he recently spent 18 days in Texas at the Kerrville Folk Festival “sitting around campfires tradin’ songs with other singer/songwriters.” When I ask Jay where this path is really leading to he replies, “I wanna tour and do festivals, do concerts when people find out who I am. Success is being able to do this and get by, not get rich, especially at 43 years of age. It’s gonna be tough, but I’m determined. It’s always been my dream.”
With poignant resonances Jay Webber captures both the work and the magic of love, the rewards of resilience, the harmonies of hard times and daily earthly experiences. His lyrics take you through meadows of goldenrod while horses canter contentedly nearby. There’s always an impending revelation in Jay’s songs, a miracle just around the corner or behind the next tree, and then suddenly it’s here, and it’s you! Jay Webber’s dream has been skipping around the next corner ahead of him long enough , and now he has got hold of it. Discover this marvelous talent at Le Bear on Wednesday nights, or sometimes at The Cove in Leland on Sundays or at North Peak Brew Pub in Traverse City on some Saturdays. Jay also performs regularly in the Songwriters in the Round series at Horizon Books in Traverse City. He takes you to that dreamland of fulfilled promises where Orion sprinkles stars like coins into your hands: “Out in the cold of night I look to see Orion out in the western sky. . . . .I talk to the stars as if they know just who I am. It helps me to get through the night. . . . .”
Jay Webber performs on Wednesday nights on the deck at Le Bear in Glen Arbor.