Allan Jamisen

Began writing and recording his own music after buying a Tascam Porta One cassette multitrack recorder in 1986.

In 1988, Gaynel Hodge; a songwriter and former session musician who wrote the 50’s standard ’Earth Angel’, introduced him to legendary producer Kim Fowley (The Runaways Gene Vincent, Modern Lovers) at an Arizona Songwriter’s Association meeting. Fowley’s ascerbic, and brutally humorous assesment of the music industry left a indelible impression. During the meeting, Fowley reviewed a cassette demo of one of Jamisen’s early songs and suggested that he send it in to seminal underground label SST (Black Flag, The Meat Puppets).

But ultimately, in 1991, a relationship with a Danish woman led him to Scandinavia.

After arriving in Copenhagen, Denmark, he met former Mega Records (Ace of Base) executive Claes Cornelius. They soon began writing and producing a variety of different tracks at Claes’ project studio. Over the next several years, sessions with other musicians and producers in Copenhagen such as Frederik Birket-Smith (DJ 2000F, OHOI) yielded a few decent recordings - but nothing was ever officially released.

Then in 2001, Jamisen began working with another DK producer, Andreas Mørck (2005 Danish Melodi Grand Prix winner). Three songs they produced together were signed with a Los Angeles based BMI publisher, and a four song EP was released on a limited basis in 2003 (The fourth song was written and produced with Danish electronic musician, Joachim Michaelis).

Jamisen’s new project, Reply Memo, reunites him with the guitar player from his high school band, producer Danny Saber (The Rolling Stones, Black Grape, Michael Hutchence, Joe Strummer, Garbage, and many others) on two new tracks. Even more significantly, Reply Memo has provided the perfect excuse to work with Saber’s former production partner, the inimitable John ‘X’ Volaitis (Tracy Chapman, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Korn, Whitesnake, and many, many others) on most of the rest of the CD.

Using various pseudonyms, Jamisen has also worked with other artists as a lyricist and arranger. ’It’s So Easy’, a collaborative effort, was signed to Brother Brown, a Copenhagen based production team that had established an international reputation by re-mixing artists like Madonna, Avril Lavigne, and Cher.

In 2001, Tonos.com (owned by Carol Bayer Sager, Babyface, and David Foster) featured one of Jamisen’s co-written songs, ’It Feels So Right’ (originally called ’Saturday Vibe’) on Tonos Radio program #22. It was also featured on a Tonos compilation CD.