Jeremy Newton Joins The emPOWER Breakfast's 'Be My Guest' Instagram Series

​The emPOWER Breakfast events may be taking a little summer break, but the conversations definitely aren’t.

This month The emPOWER Breakfast launched BE MY GUEST, a new series of Instagram Live conversations designed to make more room for the brilliant people and stories already sitting within the emPOWER community.

And for our very first conversation, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jeremy Newton aka Uncle Vibes music supervisor, DJ, co-founder of Backgammon & Wax and co-founder of new music supervision venture Holy Wax. Jeremy was, in many ways, the perfect person to open the series.

His career sits at the intersection of music, creativity, culture and human connection and our conversation quickly became about much more than music supervision alone.

It became a conversation about taste, community, play, analogue experiences and what happens when you create spaces where people from completely different worlds are given a reason to connect.

And that is very much at the heart of what BE MY GUEST is about.

Over the last three years, the emPOWER Breakfast has brought together people from every corner of our industry and beyond. Different jobs. Different ages. Different experiences. Different perspectives. The aim has always been to create a space where people can learn from one another, build empathy, create impact and, where possible, encourage real change in terms of policy and perspective.

That, for me, is community at its best. BE MY GUEST is an extension of that idea. So we wanted to throw the invitation open to the community.

Perhaps you are creating something. Perhaps you care deeply about an issue. Perhaps you have taken a leap, changed direction, overcome something or experienced something that has changed the way you see the world.

The criteria are very simple. You just need something you are passionate about!

And Jeremy rather brilliantly demonstrated why these conversations can be such a vibe. Jeremy has spent his career working in music supervision for some of the world’s biggest brands, operating in the space where music, storytelling and culture meet. Music supervision is not JUST about knowing a lot of music and actually Jeremy knows A LOT of music! It is about understanding what a piece of music can make an audience feel.

It is knowing when something is culturally right and when it is not. It is recognising when the obvious track is not necessarily the best track. And it is having the instinct to suggest something that may appear completely wrong on paper but becomes magical when paired with the right brand, film or brief.

That ‘human’ instinct came up repeatedly during our conversation…And it led us naturally into another part of Jeremy’s blossoming world: Backgammon & Wax.

Their tag line is 'Connection in a Disconnected World' ..Backgammon & Wax began in April 2025 with Jeremy and actor, rapper and comedian Ben Bailey Smith, better known as Doc Brown, alongside a wider team that has grown around this concept.

The proposition is brilliant. Backgammon tournaments. DJs. Strictly vinyl.

What started as a one-off event has grown into a fast-moving community built around the idea of creating connection in a disconnected world.

And perhaps its success, along with the success of emPOWER,  tells us something important.

We spend so much of our lives being told that the future is digital, faster and increasingly automated. Yet people are actively choosing to spend an evening sitting opposite a stranger, rolling dice across a board and listening to somebody physically put a needle on a record.

There is something beautifully analogue about it.

But more importantly, there is something beautifully 'present' about it.

What is particularly striking is the vast range of demographic of participants who turn up. Backgammon & Wax has attracted people of different ages (the oldest player has just turned 90!) different backgrounds, professions and levels of experience, there are even full generations of families attending. Complete beginners sit opposite experienced players. Friendships are formed. Business relationships emerge. People who may never otherwise have crossed paths suddenly have something very simple in common: a board between them. You only have to look at their deck to feel happy!

And there is something about that which resonates hugely with what we have created at emPOWER. When you get the environment right, the labels begin to matter less. Age, Job title, status, doesn’t matter. It makes room for authentic connection.

As we chatted there was more! Another thread running through Jeremy’s story. Curation. A music supervisor curates the music that helps tell a story. A DJ curates the records that shape the feeling in a room…and Backgammon & Wax curates an entire environment: the music, the game, the people and ultimately the space in which connection happens.

And now Jeremy is taking all of that experience into his next chapter with the launch of Holy Wax, the new music supervision venture he has founded with agency producer Tristan Baker. Tristan began as a long-term client of Jeremy’s, became a friend and has now become a business partner.

Jeremy also spoke about the role that Ben Bailey Smith will play around Holy Wax, bringing with him a huge network of musicians, artists and creatives and helping to bring another layer of personality, diversity and cultural energy to the brand.

It is a brilliant and courageous moment to be launching a music supervision business. Because at a time when so much of the creative conversation is being dominated by AI and algorithms, one aspect that can’t be manufactured is human taste. Finding music and understanding the zeitgeist attached to a song. AI can't understand the cultural reference that nobody quite knows how to explain. The nuance of emotional resonance that recognises a piece of music that appears completely wrong, but suddenly becomes so completely right, when it meets the right image, story or moment in time. Those instincts are rooted in lived experience.

Perhaps, rather than making human curation less relevant, technology is actually making us understand its value more. (also just to say I’m not a complete AI-phobe but I do value emotion and energy and that is something that you can’t get from code. Quantum or otherwise)

Excitingly, all the different strands of Jeremy’s world come together again this September when Holy Wax officially launches at Kinsale, home of the Shark Awards and one of the UK’s favourite longstanding meeting points for the international creative community.

And fittingly, it is not going to be a conventional launch. Jeremy will be taking Backgammon & Wax to Kinsale in partnership with BMG, curating an experience around the same ingredients that seem to run through everything he is building: Music, human curation, play and connection. Doc Brown and Jeremy will be heading over along with a full reggae sound system courtesy of their friends - the 'Wheel Up Soundsystem' and will be inviting some of adlands finest DJ’s / selectors to play on the sound - strictly vinyl, strictly vibes!

So keep an eye out for announcements about how you can book a board at Kinsale.

And in the meantime 'Be My Guest' continues... Which brings me back to why we started it in the first place.

We wanted to create more opportunities for people within our community to step forward and talk about the things they are creating, experiencing, challenging, overcoming or simply passionate about. The response since we first put the invitation out has been brilliant. What was intended as a couple of summer conversations will now continue once a month for the rest of the year. And already, the next conversation takes us somewhere completely different.

On 27th August, actress and producer Samantha Seager will join me to talk about Invincible the independent feature she produced and stars in.

The film has already received significant recognition, including Best Drama at the UK Film Awards and Best of the Festival at the 2026 Ramsgate International Film & TV Festival, while Samantha herself won Best Actress at Ramsgate and Best Supporting Actress at the UK Film Awards.

Invincible grew out of Torben Betts’ stage play, a story Samantha had previously performed in and felt deeply connected to. Years later, she made the leap from actress to producer to turn it into a feature film, shot between lockdowns and created through enormous determination.

We will be talking about what it takes to stop waiting (create don’t wait!) and to back an idea you believe in and actually make the thing happen.

Join us at 11am on 27th August to hear that story.

And if you are part of the emPOWER community and there is something you would love to talk about, I would genuinely love to hear from you.

Love Athene x

To watch the instagram interview with me and Jeremy Newton, click HERE.

To listen to Jeremy and Doc Brown talk on the Backgammon Podcast with Ed Hall click HERE 

And a subject close to my heart that we touched on: Neurodivergence and Backgammon - Jeremy referenced an episode on The Backgammon Podcast listen HERE

To be part of BE MY GUEST Email athene@theempowerbreakfast.co.uk.