They are one of the iconic bands of the 1980s and they are back. Battling through illnesses ranging from the sniffles to slipped disks, James are putting on one hell of a show for us all.
As they finish a tour in Manchester this week and begin another next week with special guests the Pigeon Detectives this is something special, and something most definitely not to be missed!
If you're an avid fan or new to the sound, James have something for everyone. There two mini albums The Night Before and The Morning After were released this year with some new sounds...and if you're a little nostalgic like myself, get yourself introduced with Sit Down, it guaranteed to get you on your feet!
And where are you at the moment?
We're in Glasgow tonight.
And the weather isn't affecting your travelling?
So far so good. We're travelling straight after the show tonight to get to Manchester in case there is any problems. We're not staying here on anything, it should be alright. I think we've missed the worst of it, it's a bit icy round about and you can see snow on the hills but I think the roads are alright, touch wood.
The sound in this tour? What sort of music are you playing?
A mixture, really.
New stuff is it?
Yeah, a bunch of new stuff and some oldies that we've not played for thousands of years and some stuff that will be new to a bunch of people that come.
I'm a big fan of Sit Down so...
Are you? Yeah well that and some of the other big hits as well, we're playing for two hours basically so we get plenty of time to get most things in so...we've got a huge pool of songs. When we started this tour in the middle of October/November we started the tour in the States so we were playing a lot and we ended up a playing a pool of songs that we can now dip into.
And do you still enjoy touring?
Yeah, that five week stint was quite hard.
Tiring?
Yeah and also it was like we were all crammed on one bus and we were like back to basics touring and some really long bus journeys, like 16 hour bus journeys. Your day off would be sat on the bus waiting, there were no night in hotels and we were in the bus every night and hardly ever in hotels. Its alright when you're 18 but when you reach a certain age where you need a bit of space.
It was fine, everyone stayed in good spirits and the gigs were excellent, which was the shot of adrenaline you need to get you through it. But this kind of tour like when we're in the UK is quite leisurely, drives are always short and we're in hotels virtually every night so it doesn't have the physical impact on you that somewhere like America does.
So I believe that The Pigeon Detectives are special guests on the tour, how did that come about?
They were just suggested and I like them and my girlfriend is a huge fan of the Pigeon Detectives. I've seen them a couple of times and they were fun and entertaining, just kind of do their own thing and I think that they're good contrast to us. It was as simple as that, that's kind of how these things come about. We've got an extra band playing with us in Manchester tomorrow. They're a Manchester band on the tour called the Fraiserkings. They're just really small coming band but they're brilliant so its Frasierkings, Pigeon Detectives and us.
Its just nice to help bands out, we've found through the early days of James we've had bands that have given us a helping hand.
I believe that you supported The Smiths?
Exactly, that was our big break. They took us on a six week tour and played over 30 shows right around Britain and it was their big tour of the year. That was kind of the start of our career proper. New Order took us on tour in the early days when we were on Factory. Neil Young took on tour in the States, so we had a lot of helping hands. Its good to have music you like and bands you like, especially when your playing you can return the favour and then try and give someone else a helping hand.
That's cool...so this year you've released two mini albums. How did they come about, what was the thinking behind that?
The main reason being when we write for any record we tend to just write and write and write kind of look at what we've got at the end of it and make a record out of it, so we're constantly writing loads of things so I think for these two mini albums we ended up with 120 songs to look at and they seem to fall into two distinct areas. And when myself Tim and Larry write, we tend to write with a drum machine, they tend to be more soul based and have the drums going on they tend to be more up-tempo and then there's time when you switch the drum machine off and play and its much more low key, musical and atmospheric. We have to try and work out what to do with the songs that fit into that area, and you have to be careful if you put them on the same record it'll go up and down so we tend to kind of leave them and they get left alone. Or put one on the end of the record.
This time we thought we've got such a strong group of song in the area, we thought lets make two records and approach them very differently, so lets have one thats upbeat and one that much more on the low key. That was the plan anyway, and then we had the idea to record them very different aswell.
When we recorded The Night Before we kind of recorded it all virtually, using a website to put the tracks up on and each individual person, because we're all scattered at the four corners of the wind, Tim lives in California, two still in Manchester, two in London some in Wales so it wasn't easy to get together so we kind of used the website as a communal area if you like, we people put the songs up and take them down, listen to it and change them and then others can take up the baton.
We did most of it virtually if you like. We had a producer a guy called Lee Baker who oversaw the process who kept us from being distracted and also it didn't look to complicated because you'd keep adding stuff if you like. We took it and then mixed it...
It kind of shows a progression in the industry and change, because when you first started out you wouldn't have been able to do that sort of thing?...
No not at all, the thing today every musician has a multi track recording studio in their home, that's the bottom line. With a laptop, a home computer and software...
Yeah, its changed...
Completely and utterly. You don't have to be in the big, vastly expensive recording studio in a château in the middle of the country, you don't have to do anything like that...
Don't you miss that though?...
Well, the second album we did was a complete contrast to that. We did the UK tour and straight into 5 days in the recording studio and we recorded 8 songs in five days, in a live room. So we could all set up in the same room, and because we just finished the tour we were all playing really well and everything had to be finished in those five days, so that's backing vocals, backing tracks...and we did it, and the record's got a very different sound to the first one, and I like the sound of this one, its got a sort of grapiness to it and there's a live-ness and an organic feel to it. It really suits the more mellow style and moody songs.
The two contrasts in the voice of the records were very different and I love them both, I love the bravery and the attitude of the second record, I think you have to be playing well to get away with that, because you can't correct it, you can't things out late, you haven't got the time, so what you put down's got to be good. There's an excitement and a spontaneity that was really exciting, but having said that you know, as you said, having the beauty of the technology at your fingertips available is you can create music...
You can experiment too I suppose...
You can, of course you can! You're in charge of everything. You can speed it up, slow it down, change the drums and the tempo, you can do anything you like at that stage, you don't have to convince six other musicians to follow your plan for three hours while you're on a mission and there is something great about that. So I don't think that I've come to conclusion about that if its the way forward for us yet....There are two very distinct ways of working, which bring out different things .
Jenna Fordie
James will be starting their mini tour on 9th December and taking part in festivals next year, so keep your eye out... And look out for them next autumn, I predict something very special will be coming our way!
They are one of the iconic bands of the 1980s and they are back. Battling through illnesses ranging from the sniffles to slipped disks, James are putting on one hell of a show for us all.
As they finish a tour in Manchester this week and begin another next week with special guests the Pigeon Detectives this is something special, and something most definitely not to be missed!
If you're an avid fan or new to the sound, James have something for everyone. There two mini albums The Night Before and The Morning After were released this year with some new sounds...and if you're a little nostalgic like myself, get yourself introduced with Sit Down, it guaranteed to get you on your feet!
And where are you at the moment?
We're in Glasgow tonight.
And the weather isn't affecting your travelling?
So far so good. We're travelling straight after the show tonight to get to Manchester in case there is any problems. We're not staying here on anything, it should be alright. I think we've missed the worst of it, it's a bit icy round about and you can see snow on the hills but I think the roads are alright, touch wood.
The sound in this tour? What sort of music are you playing?
A mixture, really.
New stuff is it?
Yeah, a bunch of new stuff and some oldies that we've not played for thousands of years and some stuff that will be new to a bunch of people that come.
I'm a big fan of Sit Down so...
Are you? Yeah well that and some of the other big hits as well, we're playing for two hours basically so we get plenty of time to get most things in so...we've got a huge pool of songs. When we started this tour in the middle of October/November we started the tour in the States so we were playing a lot and we ended up a playing a pool of songs that we can now dip into.
And do you still enjoy touring?
Yeah, that five week stint was quite hard.
Tiring?
Yeah and also it was like we were all crammed on one bus and we were like back to basics touring and some really long bus journeys, like 16 hour bus journeys. Your day off would be sat on the bus waiting, there were no night in hotels and we were in the bus every night and hardly ever in hotels. Its alright when you're 18 but when you reach a certain age where you need a bit of space.
It was fine, everyone stayed in good spirits and the gigs were excellent, which was the shot of adrenaline you need to get you through it. But this kind of tour like when we're in the UK is quite leisurely, drives are always short and we're in hotels virtually every night so it doesn't have the physical impact on you that somewhere like America does.
So I believe that The Pigeon Detectives are special guests on the tour, how did that come about?
Tagged in James