FIGHTING A NOBLE QUEST: THE POSSIBLE DREAM
A CONVERSATION WITH BLAIR PACKHAM (THE JITTERS)
Blair Packham has been making music for a long time. Since being one of the founding members of The Jitters in 1982, Packham has been writing, producing and performing. The Jitters made their mark with two incredible albums, 1987’s The Jitters, and 1990’s Louder Than Words, which saw the band collaborating with Jules Shear. The band split following the release of their second album, and by 2000, Packham was prepared to release his solo debut album, Everything That’s Good.
In 2025, he released his fourth album, The Impossible Dream. I had the chance to talk with him about the new album and the journey to get this album released, The Impossible Dream.
“To me, The Impossible Dream is that I am 65 years old and still making music and hoping people will like it. To me that is the impossible dream. Now, you can leave it at that or, you can do what I did, and that came from the song “The Impossible Dream” from Man Of La Mancha. It is the music based on Miguel de Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote. It’s about an elderly man, who has dementia, who believes fighting a noble quest against dragons. He’s fighting this quest and it is pathetic in a way, but it is also noble because he is still fucking doing it. And this is what I sort of thought.”
And there is yet another connection to The Impossible Dream. “The Impossible Dream was my band’s name. I had a band, a trio, who never got the idea of The Impossible Dream. They were wondering why we weren’t getting a record deal, and I said, ‘you know, record companies aren’t signing guys in their ‘60s, not even signing guys in their ‘20s. One member said to me the name made the band sound like losers, but not losers, rather people who are still doing it anyway. That is the important thing. The band went their separate ways over creative differences.”
The album has been a while in the making. It was a bit of a journey for Packham to finally have it ready where he felt it was time for the public to hear what he had been doing. “There were a few things I was working against. The band was working with me on my songs, we certainly weren’t being paid. When we made money, of course it was split, but I couldn’t afford to pay them for recording, or pay a studio. So I have a studio in my home, but it is not big enough to accommodate a band, so I had to do things piece by piece and track by track. I wanted to make it sound like a band and intimate, and professionally recorded. I was fighting against budget restrictions.
THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM ALBUM REVIEW
“Once I was done, I reached a point where I thought ‘what’s the point of putting it out in this world?’ You know 100,000 songs go out to Spotify every day, get uploaded. The point is, there is a lot of music going every day and it is hard for me to compete. I had to get over the idea of competing. It took me about a year, I had it mastered and ready to go, everything done. But for a year I couldn’t bring myself to deal with social media and what’s the most strategic way of promoting this thing. Then I just thought, ‘I don’t care, I want to put it out there.’ One of the reasons is I am working on the next record. I am about 13 songs into the next record.”
The album also finds Packham collaborating with famed Nashville writer Naoise Sheridan.
“Those are old songs. We wrote a fair bit together in the 1990s. I decided to revive those songs because I really like them. Collaborating is never easy for me. I usually say no when people ask me and I explain to them that it takes me a long time to do anything. I get distracted easily. I am not a great collaborator in that regard. With Naoise Sheridan, at that point I was writing with a lot of people because I was thinking of maybe writing country songs, because those two songs (“Funny How” and “Houston, We Have A Problem”) are pretty country. I was thinking of maybe moving to Nashville or something. I was doing it a lot and I was much better at it then.”
And in terms of older songs, Packham did his own version of a Jitters’ song “Heads And Tails”, from their second album. “That album, I thought, was under-appreciated. All the songs are co-writes with Jules Shear, who is one of my favourite songwriters in the world. When I started writing with him, he upped my game. That’s why it takes me so long to write a lyric, I have a higher standard. If you listen to The Jitters’ first album, there are some really terrible lyrics. But they fit. I can sing them, and they sounded ok. But when Jules stepped in, it was like ‘oh these words have to mean something and they have to be clever?’ It raised my standards. Ever since I have tried to write better lyrics.
“Heads And Tails” was the opening song on The Jitter’s second record and was always too high for me to sing. We played it live maybe four or five times. It killed my voice. First song. So, I thought, what if we changed the key and what if we have the harmony become the melody and chorus, which is the strength of the song. That is what we did.”
Now that the album is out in the stores, online, streaming, what does Packham hope people get from the music he has created? “I hope they find some songs that make them feel something. I feel that is my job as a songwriter, to make people feel something. I hope there will be something compelling about it to make them want to play it again. And I hope they tell their friends. I want it to be meaningful. When you make art, you want to move people and connect. That’s really all.
“I get great joy in just playing and doing a show, just doing that. Of course, I want a million people to discover my songs and love them. But if one person loves it, it means a lot to me.”
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Photo Credit: Miriana Mitrovich
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