Langley Arts Alive: Jet touches down on Showcase Stage

Take being by her boyfriend Hugh Barbour’s side in Glasgow, Scotland out of the equation, and here’s no other place Jet Tangerine would rather be this Saturday than on stage at Arts Alive.

Also known as Jessica Mailhot, the Brookswood singer/songwriter/guitarist hits the Arts Alive Showcase Stage in McBurney Plaza bright and early, at 10 a.m.

Featuring a mix of covers and originals, the roughly 40 minute acoustic set will be a swan song of sorts for Jet, when it comes to playing at a local venue.

That’s because next month, Jet takes flight, literally, to Glasgow. On Sept. 2 she’ll reunite with her beau, who is already in Glasgow doing geology work while pursuing a career in music.

A visual artist who dabbles in cartooning and painting, Jet’s true passion lies in music and entertaining.

Influenced by Avril Lavigne, Vanessa Carlton, Ed Sheeran, Alanis Morissette, and LIGHTS, the 2008 Langley Fine Arts School grad has had an affinity for music since she was a little girl.

Jet said she’s been singing forever, started writing songs at nine years of age, and began performing regularly at 18.

The 23-year-old’s genre of choice: “Pop,” she said.

She loves writing her own music, calling it the “most satisfying thing.”

“It’s so honest and I think song-writing is so powerful, too,” Jet said.

Speaking of pop, Jet and Barbour performed their own unique rendition of Firework, a song by pop songstress Katy Perry, during the Langley Has Talent finals May 10 at Christian Life Assembly.

It didn’t work out quite the way they planned.

“Unfortunately we had some technical difficulties and it didn’t go very well,” Jet said.

The couple had a very ambitious idea to use a loop pedal, because Barbour is capable of playing a variety of instruments.

“We wanted to make this big, epic, like ‘Look at all the instruments I can play!’ and the loop pedal makes it so that you can play four bars and it records and then plays it back,” Jet explained. “But we had some technical issues, some feedback, some off-timing issues… had we kept it simple we would have probably done much better. It was definitely a hot mess.”

So, Jet was asked, she wasn’t 100 per cent pleased with the performance?

“I was about two per cent pleased,” she said, laughing. “I was not happy that night. But it’s okay, it’s just one of those things.”

Keeping it simple is what Jet’s Saturday morning performance will be all about during Arts Alive. And she’s very excited to return to a festival that she last performed at in 2012.

“It’s what I love to do,” she said, regarding music. “I’m a big believer in chasing what makes you happiest and never letting that go. So this is what makes me happiest so I just do it.”

Her EP, Real Life, is available at bandcamp.com and her single Gold Mine, is available on iTunes.

“No full lengths, yet, but I’m working on it,” she said.

Check out Real Life by clicking here.

You can purchase and listen to Gold Mine by clicking here.