Musician, reality star and one-time Canterbury doorman Charlie Jeer is heading home to play Canterbury Live

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Musician, reality star and one-time Canterbury doorman Charlie Jeer is heading home to play Canterbury Live in August and he is super-excited. An international performing artist, model and saxophonist, it’s fair to say there are many strings to this lad’s bow. He is also a thoroughly nice guy. We got in touch to find out a bit more.

We know the Canterbury Live guys very well and they told us that you used to work with them. And now you’re playing the first Canterbury Live…

My Canterbury journey, man. I went to school at Langton Boys, around the corner from the cricket club, so I’m gassed, mate, I’m gassed to come back and play it.

Supporting Becky Hill, this brand-new event, like the biggest stage they’ve had in Canterbury, or something like that. It’s pretty f***ing big for Canterbury. I know that because I grew up there and there was never anything fun to go to. Do you know what I mean? I’m from Kent. I’ve lived there my whole life.

Where did your musical journey begin?

There’s videos on YouTube of me playing on the stage in Langton’s assembly hall over 10 years ago, so this has always been my thing, ever since I was 11.

When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was play the sax and it was one of those instruments where you can’t be too young to start because otherwise you have to stop and then start again if your teeth fall out - and so I was always begging my mum ‘I want to learn the sax!’.

When I was in year six, she started getting me lessons and I just did it all through school and got to grade eight when I was in year 10 because I wanted to do it before my GCSEs.

What was it about the sax?

How I try to describe my perspective of the sax to people who don’t get it is I think sonically the saxophone is the closest instrument to the human voice. It takes your breath and the reed that vibrates - when you look at it on an audio file, it looks the same as a human voice that’s singing. But it doesn’t have a language and so, rather than telling you what you’re supposed to feel or what it’s about, it just completely lets the music be subjective and speak for itself. I think that was something that transmitted to me when I was a kid and I kind of understood that and felt that.

Were you listening to a lot of sax music as a child?

There were particular songs by Kenny G, which is hilarious, that my mum used to play in the car on the way to primary school, and I just remember being blown away by it and just thinking it was the coolest thing ever.

I was maybe ahead of my time thinking that when I was like a little kid, and it really wasn’t cool - I can’t double down on this enough - like it was not cool for a long time, but I always had a way with it. I’m not the best technical player in the world, there’s better jazz players than me, no doubt, but one thing I can do is put my emotion into it. Play with my heart, and that’s the main thing that I love to do.

Were there songs that you loved to play?

I used to love playing Ain’t No Sunshine and If I Ain’t Got You by Alicia Keys, and I just put these songs on and I’d play the melody and then I’d just tinkle around it a bit as well, like that’s how I started improvising. I learned how to play a slightly more freestyle and that was all while I was at school because I wanted to do my grades before I did my GCSEs so I could focus on them.

What came next?

I didn’t know what I wanted to do, really. But I went to uni for an economics degree, made sure my Indian dad was happy! But as well as doing that and music, I did a lot of boxing, just always in the boxing gyms in those circles, and that’s how I met the guy who owned Akon Security.

I got my licence to do security - it was never like a career prospect for me, but it’s something that’s really good you can do part-time alongside your degrees and I wanted to always be able to work wherever I went. When I was in Canterbury, I just used to smash out security, which is where I met the Canterbury Live guys.

This is a great full-circle moment, then! So how on Earth did you end up on Too Hot to Handle?

I kind of got started on social media at uni and in my last year of uni, where I’d been posting so much, I got scouted for a modelling contract and I thought ‘That sounds fun, let me give that a go’. So I signed this contract in London and that was kind of the door opening to the city. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to be in the mix of it and I was doing that for just a few months, but at the same time I was getting hit up for so many reality TV shows. I think it was because I was putting out my personality on social media - they saw that.

I was 21, just finished uni, filled with life and energy and adventure, and I was just like ‘F*** it, if you want me to go on an island with a bunch of beautiful people, I’m there, man’.

What was it like being in a Netflix show that always has a huge audience?

I had a crazy experience. I had a great time and did my thing on the show.

Afterwards there was like a period of time in between filming and it coming out, and in that time my economics brain started to work and I was like ‘Right, you’re gonna get all of this attention, give them something’. When I was doing TikToks, when I was at uni, I used to make loads of videos about being a doorman and sharing that perspective on life and some of the things that I’d seen. So after the show was filmed, I thought ‘What can I give people?’.

I’ve been playing the sax my whole life - let me make a song.

Was that something you’d always wanted to do?

I’d always sung a bit in private, like in my shower and in my bedroom, but sax or performing was never something I believed in as a career as such.

But I was just like ‘I’m gonna make a song and I’m gonna release it, and I know exactly what the song is going to be about’.

I had a girlfriend off the back of the show, we were together for a year afterwards, she was a model from LA and I was a boy from Canterbury.

We met on the show and kind of connected through eye contact - there was this, like, drill where they made us look in each other’s eyes and not say anything, and in that moment it was like I’d never experienced anything like it, really chilling. It was a very real moment for me that was played out in this kind of TV drama, which was crazy.

I’d written on my notes ‘she said she loves me just with her eyes’ and I was like I need to make this song.

So how did you go about it?

I was looking everywhere for a producer to work with. I was out in LA and then I got put in touch with Ben Stancomb, who’s based in Worcester. So I came back and had my first-ever two days in the studio, making a song with the intention to release it. It was my first time singing into a microphone to record everything. We released it completely independently after the show came out and then it just went viral.

Her Eyes has now had 88 million listens on Spotify - how does that feel?

It has completely changed my life. There was a moment where I was getting 300,000 streams every day! I was like ‘What is happening?’. Within the space of a year, I’ve gone from being a doorman at McDonald’s in Canterbury to being a reality TV star with a song that’s going viral, and all of these labels are hitting me up.

After that it was really quite difficult because I was faced with this issue of, like, how the f*** do you follow that up? What I decided to do was rather than, you know, trying to chase a hit or anything like that, I was like, right, I’m gonna do a bunch of studio sessions, I’m gonna make loads of music, which I did, and I’m gonna figure out what my sound is, what I like, what my vibe is, what I gravitate towards, what I can do as an artist. So I started getting vocal coaching and pushing my voice and creativity in ways I wasn’t doing before.

You’ve now dropped your EP and had your debut headline show - what was that like?

It was one of the most nuts experiences of my life.

You can have thousands of people making TikToks to your song, or messaging you, or millions streaming it, and it’s brilliant, but it’s never tangible.

The first time, putting on my socials that I was doing a show, felt super-vulnerable, it’s terrifying. Loads of my family came down, but more importantly loads of people I didn’t know came. I just remember being at Night Tales in Hackney and looking over the balcony at this huge line of people waiting outside to come in. I’ve literally got goosebumps now saying it. I just remember thinking ‘Oh sh*t, like it’s, it’s real!’.

You’ve got listeners spread across the world, too. Why do you think that is?

Like I said before, sax just transcends language.

Anyone can understand that it’s a universal language… you’re going to understand it. I think that is honestly a big reason why, and house music is similar in that way.

A lot of my sound is kind of built on more upbeat tempo stuff with saxophone.

I’ve got a headline show in Istanbul coming up - that’s going to be the biggest show I’ve ever done - and then I’m going to be doing this one in Canterbury and the week after I’m in Poland doing a festival out there on a 20k-cap stage or something crazy.

The time you took to discover your musical sound, your voice and everything else, have you found that it leans into that jazz-house genre?

My taste in music, I love going out to house music, but then also I have a background as a classical musician and I love listening to really soulful, real instruments and soulful vocals, and so it’s about blending those worlds together, and so that kind of lands in a world where people might call it jazz-house, but then also now it’s like with my first EP Everything is Temporary. I feel like I really did that sound and like it was really niched and really cool, and I love that. But now I’m starting to throw in some other influences on top of that to keep it interesting for myself, so maybe a bit of disco or some other more soulful stuff.

So, like recently working with Mahalia on Mona Lisa...

Exactly. Mahalia is a massive RnB singer and I wanted a female vocal on that song because it turned the song into a dialogue between me, the saxophone and her, and I just think that it made that such an interesting song. You just don’t get songs like that coming out. That’s what that whole project was about - trying out different influences, trying out different sounds. Also, I did a collab with this artist called Bloody Civilian, who’s a Nigerian artist. They sent me over to Nigeria to do a music video with her - that was crazy, too. But all of it is only possible because I was fortunate enough to be able to make music that people resonate with, and that’s the most important thing for me now, connecting with those people, the people who actually want to listen to my music.

So much has happened in such a short amount of time. Is it hard to get your head around it?

I try to ground myself. I just think that as long as you stay grateful and hungry and happy then you’ll always be able to do good things. Not even talking necessarily about music, but I remember back when I was working with Student Republic in security, they’ll tell you I went above and beyond as a security guard. I used to always chat, always smile, and always be nice to people when they came through the door. I did that job with pride because I enjoyed that job and I was grateful for it at the time, and so I just think sometimes it’s just about how you approach life.

So, Canterbury Live, have you got a lot of family and friends coming to watch that show?

I have goosebumps even thinking about it. I’ve got extended family coming and, naturally, I went to school a two-minute walk away so there’s gonna be people who I’ve known my whole life who don’t know me as this - they know me as Charlie on the door, or they know me as Charlie from school. I’m one of five siblings as well and my family runs deep in Canterbury, you know. It’s going to be very special.

Canterbury Live will take place August 7th-9th at the St Lawrence Ground.

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