Jamie Walters

Most people are familiar with Jamie Walters as his character Ray Pruit on "Beverly Hills 90210." Jamie Walters the person is articulate, verbose and grounded. Undoubtedly this is the result of a growing up in New England. This should crush the images of him battering poor Donna. That's acting. This is the real thing. The 27-year-old Marblehead native considers himself a serious musician. He just released his second album, "Ride," and plans to take a break from acting to concentrate on promoting and touring to support it. He recently returned from an extensive tour of Europe, Scandinavia and South Africa. Walters was also one of the numerous acts at the spring KISS 108 CONCERT. Walters is not just another pretty face, but a multi-talented artist. I recently talked to him by phone from New York.

INSTANT: So you're just back from a big tour.
WALTERS: I'm actually really glad to be home. It's easier to get motivated to do things in my own country.
INSTANT: Why do you think that is?
WALTERS: I think the fact that most of my friends and the people I hang out with live in the United States. So you feel like the work you're putting out here, you're going to get feedback from it. You're going to hear about it. It's going to be more in your life and in your daily world. In Europe you go and do something and you leave. I have no idea what's going to happen. When I leave a country, I never hear anything about it. The whole language barrier thing and doing days of interviews where you have to speak... really ... s-l-o-w-l-y and people aren't really understanding you. It's frustrating. My English got really bad over there. I was so used to being spoken to in broken English, that I started to speak that way myself.
INSTANT: Do you speak another language?
WALTERS: I speak Spanish and Spain was ok. I don't speak it well enough that I'd feel comfortable doing an entire interview in Spanish. I'd be afraid to say the wrong thing.
INSTANT: You grew up in Marblehead. What was that like?
WALTERS: I look back on it and I was glad I grew up there. I had a really normal upbringing. My parents were divorced and I lived with my mom. I saw my dad on the weekends and had a good balance between the two of them. It was strange because no one in my family for generations was ever in the entertainment buisness. To me, growing up, specially in a place like Marblehead, the whole music world, acting world and entertainment buisness in general was so far removed from me that I had no concept that it was something you could get involved in. It wasn't until I moved to New York when I was 17 that I was playing in a band and meeting a lot of people. And trough school (NYU film school), I was experiencing the acting side of things. I decided it was something I could get involved in. For the last ten years or so, it's been my life.
INSTANT: You've played guitar since you were 12.
WALTERS: Yeah, I've played in a lot bands growing up in Boston. I was into the whole hardcore scene when I was a teenager. I was going to the Channel and the Paradise all the time for the all-ages shows. I really liked growing up there. I thought Boston was a really cool city. It wasn't too big or too small and that gave me a good perspective on things.
INSTANT: Do you miss the East Coast at all?
WALTERS: I do. When I first moved out to L.A. about five and a half years ago, I couldn't stand it the first year. I had a really hard time meeting anybody and I'd never been in a city where everyone drives everywhere. After that, it started to grow on me. And now I look at it as a great place to live because I'm not ever really there. I go back there for a few weeks and know exactly what to expect. The sun is shining. Your house is going to be nice. You've got a yard and dogs. It's a different lifestyle.
INSTANT: I've really only been to L.A. for a weekend.
WALTERS: Did you grow up in Boston?
INSTANT: Outside of Boston.
WALTERS: I think Boston's got a good scene. There are a lot of good bands that come out of there.
INSTANT: So you wanted to do the music before you wanted to do the acting?
WALTERS: Yeah, the music is kind of what got me into acting in the first place. The first fim I did was "Shout" with John Travolta. It's a sweet movie, one of those feel good movies...
INSTANT: And you worked with John Travolta!
WALTERS: (enthusiastically) I worked with the man! I had grown up watching this guy in "Saturday Night Fever" and "Urban Cowboy" and "Grease." I'd seen all those movies tons of times. So he was a huge movie star for me. I got a call to audition for this part because they were looking for a guy who could play guitar and sing. This guy had seen our band play and remembered me and asked me to go in on the audition. I brought my guitar, played a few songs and next thing I knew I was on a plane out to L.A. and got the co-starring role in this film with (Travolta). Doing that film gave me the reputation in L.A. that I could do both (act and sing).
That led to doing "The Heights" which icorporated music and acting together. We had this big hit song off it (the song you could never get out of your head- "How Do You Talk To an Angel?") which opened a lot of doors for me in the music buisness. It helped me get a record deal. So i see that they helped each other out. The music definitely has gotten me into acting and the acting has helped get me a lot of exposure. It's been a great promotional tool for my music. Being on "Beverly Hills..."
INSTANT: Yeah, you got to showcase so many songs. It was always "Here's Ray with another another new song" at the Peach Pit.
WALTERS: (laughs) At the same time it's a double edged sword. I write music that has nothing to do with TV. So seeing them performed on TV, people see the songs in terms of the characters that I play. It's hard to get people to listen to stuff with an open ear and not relate it to Tori spelling. And that's kind of a bummer for me. That's why i haven't been doing any acting in the last six or seven months. I'm really just going to concentrate on this record through the summer and see what happens-hopefully get people to give it a chance without me being on TV every week.
INSTANT: So being a musician it wasn't much of a stretch to do acting..
WALTERS: Oh yeah, it wasn't much of a stretch at all. To me it got to be kind of boring after a while. There really wasn't a challenge. I'd literally walk onto the set in whatever I was wearing, play my songs, say a few lines and I'm out of there.
INSTANT: You sound like a pretty nice guy and you got to play a jerk which must have been fun.
WALTERS: I got to be the evil, abusive guy. Which as an actor was fun and a challenge to do. As a musician, trying to perform and sell albums, it was kind of a drag because people would think of me in that way. I had to go out there and let people know I was a pretty nice guy in real life. i don't beat my girlfriend up.
INSTANT: There are a lot of actors that are in bands. Have you seen Keanu's band?
WALTERS: No, I haven't actually. If you're a performer, I don't think it's that much of a stretch that you want to do music. It all falls under the same category of wanting to get up in front of people and do something. I don't think there are a lot of actors out there who have a serious record deal and are committing themselves to it. And not a lot have had some hits. So i think that sets me apart from Keanu and Johnny Depp. That's kind of what I was doing in New York, playing in a band and trying to act.
INSTANT: Music came first for you anyway and then you wanted to do both.
WALTERS: When you're 18 years old and things start coming your way...Everything was so new to me at the time that I was up for doing anything. Being in a movie was just as exiting as getting to play on stage somewhere. It wasn't until the last couple of years that I finally had to say to myself what is it I really enjoy doing more? What do I really want to do? Start narrowing down things, prioritizing things and I want to focus on this. I'm just writing a lot of music and spending a lot of time going out and playing and recording. That's what satifies me most on a personal level. Now it's time to be a little more picky and do things that you really enjoy.
INSTANT: How do you go about writing?
WALTERS: Most of the songs on this new record, I wrote over the last two years while we were on tour. I wrote most of these songs on buses or hotel rooms. I think one of the most common themes on this album is being disconnected from everything and being away from home. It's inspired me to write a lot of things. I write most things on the acoustic guitar and then bring them to the band and fool around with what I've written so far.
INSTANT: Do you write the melody or lyrics first?
WALTERS: Whatever hits me. Sometimes I'll have an idea for a song from something that's happened in my life and I'll sit down and write some lyrics. Other times I'll come up with a good riff on the guitar and try to figure out something lyrically. There's not really a formula for me.
INSTANT: When you're walking around are you always thinking of things in terms of songs?
WALTERS: Getting a guitar at an early age was pretty important for me. My guitar was my form of expression. I don't mean to sound corny but I've always been able to express myself better through better through writing songs than actually talking. That had a lot to do with having the guitar when I was a kid and spending a lot of time alone playing the guitar. It was this total security thing for me. All through high school I played in a band and that's what I was known for doing. It was a part of me.
INSTANT: What inspires you to keep doing this?
WALTERS: More than anything it's the selfgratification. It's so satisfying and cathartic to take an experience and be able to put it down into the form of a song and be able to play it for people both live and recorded. I still get a huge kick out of hearing my song on the radio and even a bigger kick being on stage and seeing people sing along to my songs that I wrote on my couch at home. Like in South Africa, it always trips me out that people thousands of miles away from where I wrote the song are singing along to it and able to get something back from the experience I had. They have some sort of emotional connection where they can identify with the song. There's always been something about that which draws me in.
INSTANT: Is it hard for people to differentiate you from your character on tv?
WALTERS: I think for some people it is. For teenage girls who have grown up watching that show. But touring and talking to the crowd and letting them see that I'm not Ray Pruit- that's sort of the most important part for me.
INSTANT: Have you been working with the same band all along?
WALTERS: For almost five years.
INSTANT: Why did you want to be solo instead of being in a band?
WALTERS: Well it was really the situation I was in. When "How Do You Talk To an Angel" was a big hit, I was an actor and not in a band. I was part of that show "The Heights" but actually the only one who had any involvement with that song. When I went to get a deal, I was in the unique position of having a number one song, being unsigned and being alone. When I got to L.A. I stated writing because I wasn't in a band.
INSTANT: Do you like being a solo artist or do you feel like you're under a lot of pressure?
WALTERS: There are times when I yearn to be part of a band again and not have to carry the weight of evrything on my own shoulders. With me, I've got to do it all (the press and publicity) by myself so in that way it's kind of a drag.
INSTANT: What's your live show like?
WALTERS: This album I recorded most of these songs live in the studio, so the sound on stage isn't all that different from the album. This album is a little bit looser, a little bit louder. My songs are guitar driven.
INSTANT: Do you interact with audiences when on stage?
WALTERS: Oh no! (he jokes) Yeah, of course. I think it's important for me to interact with the audience because I want people to make a connection with me. I don't want them to think they're watching television. I want it to be a show that they had a chance to conect with me as a real person in real life. It's not going to be the same the next night.
INSTANT: Do you have a lot of young screaming girls at your shows?
WALTERS: Yeah, but "Hold On" was a big adult contemporary hit, so we did have your 20's and 30's crowd in there which is refreshing for me because I'm 27 and it's nice to play for people tour own age. Frankly, I think a lot of the songs that i write the little girls have no idea what I'm talking about.
INSTANT: So you actually went to high school in Northfield?
WALTERS: Yes, I went to school at Northfield Mount hermon.
INSTANT: Are you going to go to your 10-year high school reunion?
WALTERS: I think it's right now!... I haven't been home in three or four months and haven't recieved any notification of it. I missed my five year and I did want to go up there and see some people. I definitly have some good memories.
INSTANT: The entertainment buisness is really tough to get into but you really fell into it.
WALTERS: I've had a lot of like the say, "being in the right place at the right time!" I think moving to New York was the turning point for me - moving down here, throwing myself into it and luckily things fell in the right way for me. Making it in the entertainment buisness, there are so many variables that there is no real formula. My little brother, who lives in Marblehead, is 17, plays guitar and is acting in all his school plays. He's sort of following in my footsteps and I have these talks with him once in a while, "I can't say that this is what you should do." It's hard for me to tell him, "if you do all these things it's going to work out." There's no guarantees.