A Trans-Pacific Collaboration Between JayLeonardJ and Jun Kung

When JayLeonardJ missed the birth of his third child earlier this month, he had no regrets. At the important moment, the Vancouver-based guitarist and YouTuber was in Macau for something else dear to him: the birth of his first solo album, a collaboration with Hong Kong drumming legend Jun Kung. 

“We were prepared,” quips the new dad. “We knew that the kid was supposed to come at the end of the month – but obviously in true fashion, it came early. The whole band, we all stayed up until 8am, champagne in the fridge, just sitting by the phone just waiting for the good news.”

Local listeners were rewarded for this sacrifice with a sneak preview of Aww Man, a labour of love for the two long standing session musicians. While the album won’t be released until next year, the two Js premiered the music live together for the first time at Hush! Beach Concerts x Yo~ga Wellfest 2024 on Saturday, November 9. They were all set to do the same in Hong Kong with a follow-up concert at Happy Valley Racecourse four days later – before a typhoon swept through town.

“It was the first time we played this music and it was actually a really crazy experience because we wrote this album in a fever dream,” the 40-year-old guitarist tells us. “It was just absolute chaos and coming up with these concepts and executing it and getting it done. Now we are coming to Macau a year later, a year removed from that experience, and rediscovering the music.”

While in town, the pair also recorded a “very Wong Kar-wai” music video for their forthcoming lead single, “Light it Up” in Kwai Hing, set to be unveiled early in 2025. “Because the album was birthed in Hong Kong, we wanted to give a Hong Kong flavour for [Jay’s] European and American audience,” adds Kung. While they were in town, they met up with Zolima CityMag at the brand new V Music Library, the Hong Kong Design Institute’s new audio archive, a treasure trove of free-to-listen vinyl, drawn from a collection of more than 1,200 LPs.

The collaboration marks the culmination of more than a decade of cross-continental fraternity between the two musicians, who met around 2010 performing with Cantopop legend Sandy Lam at Hong Kong Coliseum. Jay — whose real name is Leonard Juatco — is today best known as the star of his eponymous YouTube channel, which focuses on guitar advice, reviews and tech. 

Hong Kong-born, Macau-raised Kung, meanwhile, is a veteran of the city’s music scene who has performed with leading lights including Faye Wong, Eason Chan, Khalil Fong, Terry Li, Liang Bo, Eugene Pao, Danny Summer and Alan Tam, as well as producing numerous solo releases. “Actually, Jay participated on some of my records,” adds the 47-year-old drummer, “some of the songs that got really high accolades in the music industry, and awards and stuff like that. And we also wrote for other people for their albums. “We were always on the same wavelength. It’s very, very seamless, the way we collaborate with each other. It was always very easy to write music together.”

Evidence of this claim? Aww Man was recorded in a single week in Vancouver last February, after a frantic weeklong joint writing session in Hong Kong in late 2023. While it has been strategically credited to Jay to capitalise on his rising YouTube fame, all 10 tracks were co-written and co-produced by Jay and Kung, and feature the elder partner on drums and bass.

“We went into the studio and, you know, blank slate, nothing, no agenda, no nothing. We just started jamming,” says Kung. “And before you know it, we did two sessions and we wrote four songs. The music was just coming out really, really easily. We knew that we had something, we didn’t know if it was a band thing or if we were gonna write some songs to sell, or if it was gonna be for an upcoming Jun [Kung solo] album. We just wanted to write. We wanted to write with each other. And that was when I presented this idea: you never thought about releasing an album [in your own name]?” 

We took home a copy of the LP, and the result is a sharp, assured upbeat 10-track collection of radio-friendly rock-pop tunes, with a surprisingly broad canvas, taking in influences from punk and rockabilly to disco and funk. “It’s something that I would play in the car and my girlfriend would enjoy,” adds Kung, “and that [approach] was something that we agreed upon.”

Need your own proof? The dancefloor-friendly first single “I’m Gonna Make It” is now streaming – but the rest of the general public will have to wait to hear the complete album. Look out for our deep dive into this musically fertile partnership ahead of its planned release on April 7, 2025.