Meet Jaguar Jonze, the business analyst turned indie-rock superstar
Welcome to CHEW THE FAT WITH…, our long-form profile series where we invite you to sit down with fashion’s next generation as they dig deep into their memories. To chew some fat - defined as an informal conversation brimming with small talk - we encourage you to pull up a chair and take a big old bite as we spill the tea on the life and work of the industry’s need-to-knows. Just remember to mop up after yourself.
Do you believe in life after going corporate? For 29-year-old musician and visual artist, Deena Lynch (otherwise known as JAGUAR JONZE), a career as a rock star was never on the cards, but now the Brisbane-based recording artist is celebrated for her eclectic mix of vulnerability and sheer sensuality in sound. So much so that the heady mix of guitars and raspy vocals in her song TESSELLATIONS makes you feel like the main character in an erotic-noir flick. “I have my own stories to tell, I know that I do have something to say and in my own different way,” she explains to me over Zoom. Undoubtedly, it’s time to make way for Jaguar Jonze and let her take over the jungle.
Not growing up musically inclined, when I ask her what she listened to when she was younger, she informs me that music was something she came to much later in life after being deterred to pursue a creative career. At 29 she admits it feels weird to only now be discovering great indie bands like the ARCTIC MONKEYS and Portishead, but if anything, I’m envious of her. It’s almost as though the singer is having a second adolescence - could you imagine listening to 505 for the first time again? God, that would be like nirvana. “It was scary,” Jonze admits. “Of course it was exciting but at the same time daunting because there’s that ongoing insecurity of ‘maybe I can’t compete because I entered the game too late?’ It’s something that pops up into your head a lot, ‘am I good enough?’ ‘am I worth listening to?’ ‘do I have something different to say?’” Despite all this, the last two years are a testament to the rising star’s musical talent and validity.
“I was a huge nerd, I say that like I mean it in past tense, I still am a huge nerd.” I ask about her shift to music, I was intrigued how someone so effortlessly charismatic and passionate hadn’t been singing and songwriting since they popped out of the womb. Prior to Jaguar Jonze, Deena Lynch studied engineering and worked as a business analyst. I know, I was gagged too. So now I’m imagining the gorgeous Jaguar Jonze having a total American Beauty moment and waking up one day and quitting her job out the blue. But true to life, Jonze schemed it all out. “Because I’m a nerd, I risk assessed it all. I stepped down to part-time, and then I took an internship at a record company and went from rock-bottom and interned in every department from sales to marketing to licensing. I gathered all this knowledge then moved over to an artist management role and was learning and absorbing the industry. Basically I put myself through boot-camp.”
Jonze burst into 2020 (before most of us knew what Covid was) by dislocating her left shoulder on live TV whilst competing in the television show Eurovision: Australia Decides. If this wasn’t chaotic enough, she was sent home from the SXWS festival in Texas at the start of the pandemic. Suddenly finding herself being booted back Down Under with almost all live shows cancelled, the icing on the sickly sweet cake was being diagnosed with COVID-19 and consequently bed-ridden for several weeks. Thankfully she made a full recovery, and as they say, bad luck can sometimes bring good. She recalls how in November last year, she played the best live show of her career: “It was at my dream venue that I’ve always wanted play, the venue I grew up going to, this beautiful theatre. I never thought I’d be able to play a show there due to the size of it but through sheer luck and reduced capacities I could play! After my whole Covid debacle I was finally able to get home and play this show. It was a perfect welcome home party from my town. It was very emotional and a lot of fun.”
The fans are everything to Jonze and got her through a turbulent 2020. “During this really disconnecting time for the whole world, it was an incredibly connecting time for me,” she recalls. Spoiling her followers with a series of opulent music videos and visuals, one of her 2020 hits, Rising Sun, received comments including: “I was literally CRYIN while i listened to THIS. omg its REAL masterpiece, U R real queen of EVERYTHING. PERIODT.”
It’s not uncommon for someone in the arts to find catharsis from their craft and Jaguar Jonze is no exception. “I definitely consider this to be therapy, if anything it’s my number one type of therapy,” she explains. “Sometimes it’s really hard to articulate into words what I’m thinking or feeling but music and art just helps me do it in a different way.” I ask Jonze what her favourite single is, and she replies with ASTRONAUT, the third single from ANTI HERO, an EP she recorded predominantly during her Covid hospitalisation. “That was the first time I talked about my anxiety and initially I thought I would never be able to share that song with the world. I found it a big deal to sing about my anxiety.”
So what’s in the pipeline for this nine-to-fiver come indie rock superstar? Is there ever a chance she’d go back to a steady corporate career? Fat chance! “It was definitely a lifestyle change and sacrifice but I would never go back,” she tells me. “Discovering music and art has changed my life completely.” So for 2021 and beyond, let’s roll on the gigs, concerts, festivals, travelling and more, as Jaguar Jonze and others keep on fighting.
Photography by GEORGIA WALLACE
Featuring JAGUAR JONZE
Styling by TAMZEN HOLLAND
Hair by LOUISE GRAHAM
Make-up by SARAH SMITH
Dana wears Sash by PIERRE CARDIN; Bespoke cape by Elizabeth R. Australia; Boots by GIARO; Hat by LACK OF COLOR