Meet jo from school, the London songwriter making brilliantly human folk music

“It’s such a stupid name,” Jo Geller says of her moniker jo from school, but the artist name that started out as a joke now “perfectly encapsulates like the level of fun that I wanted to have with my writing”.

This sense of fun and adventure is front and centre on ‘Chicken’ and ‘Julia Roberts’, the first two singles released from the London-based songwriter and BRIT School alumni. Rooted in indie rock but with the clear influence of folk, jo from school is already carving out a distinctive voice.

“I always knew I wanted to write something that included folk at its core, but also having fun in the world of production and playing around with electronic sounds,” she says. “I just didn’t know that that was possible for someone in the ‘sad lady’ genre to do, but as soon as I started properly writing more and getting in the studio with people, that’s when I was like, ‘Oh, this is a sound that’s possible’.

Ahead of the release of debut EP Grace, Flair & Distance (out August 7 via Chess Club), we spoke to jo from school about how BRIT School helped shape her artistry and pushed her towards individuality.

Read our Play Next interview with jo from school and listen to her music via our Play Next playlist on Spotify below.

BRIT School must be an inspiring place to learn and create – what did it teach you about the sound you wanted to develop?

When I was at my north London secondary school, I thought I was hot shit. I thought I was so special and just felt like I’m the only lone, queer songwriter. ‘No one gets me!’ The first year of BRIT, I was just always terrified, permanently trying to prove myself and solidify myself. I just didn’t realise that there were kids there that had been thinking about being a musician for a lot longer than I had and really taking it seriously, which I hadn’t done. The first year was a lot of flailing my arms about, and then the second year was when I really was like, ‘OK, no one’s out to get me here, and I can start collaborating, and I can start properly focusing on, getting music out to my friends and writing with them’. Because I didn’t know anyone that did music, and my music was not the best at secondary school, it was introducing me to worlds that I just didn’t know, even just different genres, which was embarrassing looking back that I didn’t know any.

Do you think it helped you in retrospect to be going down this indie and folk path when so much of that era of BRIT was producing pop stars and jazz musicians?

I was very easily influenced by my peers earlier on, and then it was about just growing up and refining my own taste. There was a lot of the jazz world going on, and it’s really funny now, imagining myself being a jazz musician. Not many people were interested in folk and in indie, but it was such an eclectic mix. I learned real musicianship and craft, and learning how to work with people you don’t necessarily want to work with and realising, ‘I want to do this, but I can bring that back into my world’.

How did you end up landing on the sound that we now hear, and do you want that to change again in the future?

I’m still finding my footing with what genre feels like. Not even because I think I’m above [it].. it’s not like my music is so groundbreaking it doesn’t fit. I just feel the same fear that I did when I was 16 – ‘Is this OK? Am I comfortable? ‘Is this me? Am I comfortable to show everyone that this is my work?’

The production on your songs especially is endearingly rough around the edges – what do you like about showing the seams of these songs and letting imperfections or ‘mistakes’ stay in?

Sometimes there’s a pressure for things to sound really like cohesive and gelled together, and a lot of my favourite projects are ones that you can really hear someone changing throughout. You can hear mistakes and things where they were like, ‘Fuck it, let’s keep it in’! At first I was really scared that it was too drastic a change, but I think in terms of my writing lyrically, I can really see a progression. More and more people, especially in the DIY scene and the self-producing scene, are leaning towards having more character and more emotion. Especially in the world of AI, no-one wants a perfectly [written] song. Mistakes make jo from school music pure!

Can you tell us about the origin of the EP title?

Grace, Flair & Distance was a game that my dad made up for my cousins and I in the summer holidays. We would do these things called home swaps. Because I live in north London and have done all my life, you get these crazy offers from awesome places, just because you live in London and they really want to go to London. None of us were athletic – one cousin is now an actor, and the other writes for The Guardian, all annoying creative kids with no like athletic ability! We were measured in grace, flare and distance for our swimming skills. My family’s super annoying where they think they’re all really funny, so if one good bit gets going, that’s it forever.

I was really stuck for EP names, and I didn’t want a lyric – I feel like it’s kind of a cop-out. I just thought it was cute [as a title], the nods to different things that I measure myself on, and that the things that I’m definitely trying to be but probably not succeeding at. I’m also super family-orientated. I know it’s probably not the coolest, as a lot of my influences definitely don’t fuck with their family as much as I do!