Jackson Roy is on the rise

Every underfunded state school in the UK has that room with the busted-up piano, a rinky-dink acoustic missing two strings, and the half-jaded music teacher who’s happy for you to hang out every lunchtime so long as you don’t make trouble. Jack Chandler’s scruffy haven was located on the boundary of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, and the teaching – like the equipment – was pretty dire. But he isn’t complaining: without these spaces, where would artists such as Jackson Roy, his musical alias, be allowed to incubate? “It forces you to take a little bit of ownership and be like, I can go and do my own thing. I’m not relying on the teachers to tell me how to do it,” Chandler tells me. We’re in Peckham, around the corner from his studio. He headed down here after school, maybe a decade ago. It wasn’t so much for the bright-lights biopic vibes but because there was only one university that accepted him. “I wasn’t into the idea of moving to London; I was into the idea of moving out of Birmingham,” goes one quip among many from the affable songwriter. I’m not surprised that the admissions officer at London College of Music took a shine to him, which he tells me happened in spite of iffy ...