About the Author
Mike “Kerry” Jackson-Kay began piano lessons as a loud and hyperactive seven-year old, having spent the last couple of years abusing a toy drumkit and making up songs with titles like “Every Time I Die I Get Buried”. Music turned out to be the perfect focus for what would later be diagnosed as ADHD (as an adult), though support of that kind was rare at the time. He also took up violin (which he never mastered) and alto saxophone (upon discovering jazz), became fascinated with home recording and composing with synths and computers, took part in every school and county music group the Isle of Wight had to offer and played his first paid gig age 12, playing with every band that would have him throughout his adolescence, He developed his jazz chops on piano and vibraphone in the weekly jam sessions at the Sands Hotel in Sandown Bay, which brought him into contact with many professional musicians and artists appearing at the resort.
A county music award gave him the opportunity to travel regularly to London to study jazz piano with Nick Weldon, in 1995 he moved to Leeds to enroll in the BA (Hons) Jazz Studies course at City of Leeds College of Music, graduating in 1998. While there he formed, directed and was the main composer-arranger for the Great Escape Big Band, a 20-ish piece jazz orchestra which included many players who went on to successful international careers. After graduating he toured and recorded with blues band The Detonators alongside working as a solo piano vocalist, playing in the house band at the Duck and Drake jam sessions and side projects including a flash collaboration with a pre-Ego Trip Mik Artistik. He produced two self-released CD albums under the name Kerry Samson; Playing With No Friends and Proud To Be A Failed Waiter.
A career-stalling bout of tendonitis forced him to focus on studio programming and singing while he rehabilitated his poorly hands, as well as exploring darker and rockier themes in both his music and cultural explorations, frequenting the northern goth and alternative scenes. Under the name Miles From Anywhere he released the 1999 album Ending for Peoplesound and the 2000 Submission EP for an underground festival in Birmingham. Now going by the name of Quicksand Kerry, he recorded and toured with glam rock indie band Electric James and the Ladykillers, released the album Sick Parody of Normality on CD and MP3. His genderfluid identity emerged from the closet with gothic drag act Felicia Devile, the first of numerous female performance personas he would go on to develop, expanding his vocal range to meet the technical demands of these characters and the songs he wrote for them. When not performing he cut his teeth as a music educator, teaching singing, drums and keyboards for Leeds music centres and schools. In the late 2000s he was employed as a practitioner and consultant for the fledgling Musical Futures project, a national scheme seeking to redefine how popular music is delivered in the classroom with mentor interventions in place of strictly prescribed taught curriculum.
In 2003 he joined gothic industrial band Zeitgeist Zero, who at the time were working on their eponymous first album. He toured and recorded with the band for the next six years, including an appearance at the Wave Gothik Treffen festival in Leipzig and the John Fryer produced second album Dead To The World. In 2005 he began performing as drag escape artist and magician Helen Held (the Girl No Man Can Hold) in cabaret, theatre and street events.
He began teaching full time after relocating to Northampton in 2009, gaining full Qualified Teacher Status in 2012. He taught in primary and secondary schools around the East Midlands, acting as Head of Department in two of them. After starting the first iteration of the MABNO blog he moved to further and higher education, becoming the lead lecturer in Music and Musicianship on the BA Popular Music course for Leicester’s Echo Factory/University of Wolverhampton-Leicester.
He returned to the recording studio in 2013, releasing the PvX? EP as industrial metal project Player Versus X?. In 2015 he rebooted as a solo artist under the name Kerry JK with the album Songs From The Age of Human Error. The 2017 follow-up Human:Beautiful gained radio play on BBC 6 Music and led to him joining the moderator team on Tom Robinson’s blog Fresh On The Net as a reviewer and occasional feature writer. He curated and produced Sounds of the New Gender Nation for the National Theatre of Scotland, a compilation album featuring transgender artists involved in the Adam World Choir for the NTS production Adam. His third album as Kerry JK, Tales of Addictive Games and Exotic Pets, came out in 2020, following a live album Kerry and Joanna Live at the Ivy House and the retrospective Music Kept Me Sane: The Best of Quicksand Kerry 1998-2008.
The Covid-19 epidemic and family responsibilities frustrated planned live appearances in 2020-21, while Kerry dealt with personal issues leading to his being officially diagnosed with ADHD in 2023. He trained and worked as a lifeguard while becoming a qualified fitness, swimming and aqua aerobics instructor – as he put it, “my mission statement was always to use knowledge and technique to help and encourage people to express themselves, I’ve come to realise that fitness training is exactly the same: as much art as it is science”. This change of perspective gave him the chance to re-evaluate his music and teaching with a view to rebooting the MABNO blog as a resource for developing musicians.
Kerry lives with his wife and many cats in Northampton, UK.