James Bay will be returning to Australian shores for his ‘Chaos And The Calm’ tour in 2016.
The UK soloist will be touring Australia with his full band. James skyrocketed to fame after a fan posted a video of his solo performance in a Kentish Town pub to YouTube, which was then picked up by a Republic Records A&R Executive.
It was this life-changing night that kicked things off for James and saw him jet setting to New York to record in Blackbird Studios with Kings Of Leon’s long-term collaborator, and Tom Waits engineer, Jacquire King. “It’s a mad story,” James discloses to Craig McLean from the Independent.
“But it’s such a cool set of images as I think back through that journey: me, in the window of a dark pub, London buses going past behind me, that going up on YouTube, then, 'fuck, I’m in New York City!' And six weeks later we’d done the deal. It’s mental. It’s hard not to make it sound cheesy.”
James was on his dream rollercoaster and experienced many ‘pinch yourself’ moments. “In my first week, I stepped out of the studio for a breather. I was thinking, ‘this is all a bit nuts. I'm recording my first album and I need to just calm down’ and then Willie Nelson pulled up in the car park!” James tells Mark Savage from BBC News.
Almost a year after beginning work on his debut album, James released ‘Chaos And The Calm’ early this year and has received critical acclaim with it peaking at #1 in the UK, #3 in Australia and #10 in New Zealand.
Familiar with the intimacy of open-mic nights from his humble beginnings, James communicates that intimacy through ‘Chaos And The Calm’, but also strives to show his many musical layers. “As a singer-songwriter, a solo artist with a guitar, I can only write so many weepie, little, bedroom songs,” he admits to the Independent.
But when adapting the album for the stage, James tells Liana Weston from Teen Vogue: “I'm trying to create a massive show in the tiniest, whisperiest ballad.
“But my music is about both ends of the spectrum—the solo troubadour's quiet, single, spotlight moment blended with enormous rocking-out vocals and a big-guitar sound.
“Both Springsteen and Michael Jackson, who had these huge productions, could always scale them back down to just a song and a melody. All of that influences me. I also try to be a fictional writer and sometimes I get close, but the things that resonate the most with me—and with everyone else—is what's real. So how I set myself apart is by creating the sort of real and honest music, which is who I'm also trying to be," he explains.
Never seen without his trademark Fedora, James’ first true love is art. “Music came along and then we fell in love, but art was way before that,” he states in his official website biography.
"Up until the last minute, it was art and drawing for me. That was the first real and natural thing I thought I was good at and loved to do. But I developed a similar kind of love for music,” James explains to Teen Vogue.
“Growing up, when I was at live shows, I was always hoping someone would come out on stage and say, 'the guitarist is sick and couldn't make it; does anybody know how to play all the songs?' That was always my little dream. It was a massively inspiring thing to be in a space with live shows. I get that feeling now. It always drives me.”
James grew up surrounded by music but didn’t come from a necessarily musical family. At a young age he was in bands with his brothers and friends but was never the frontman we know him as today. “I always had it in my mind that I’d do something where I was at the front one day,” he says on his official website biography.
He told BBC News his uncle’s guitar and ‘Layla’ by Eric Clapton inspired him to teach himself guitar. “There was a guitar that my uncle owned and never learnt to play. He sold it to my dad and when I heard ‘Layla’, that was the tune that really grabbed me. I said to my dad, ‘wait, there's a guitar, right?’ I was a pretty obsessive kid and when I held it in my hands for the first time, I was away.”
Still relatively new on the scene, James has a lot to prove but isn’t afraid of the challenge. He spoke to Tim Lewis from The Guardian about some of the criticism he has received from critics comparing him to other UK male artists such as George Ezra and Hozier. “Is it that they go, ‘He’s got a look and that’s why he’s where he’s at?’ That’s a shame. I understand that because it’s the world we live in, but I’m more than pleased to show them I can play. Just sit down and have a listen and I’ll show you.”
James Bay 'Chaos And The Calm' Tour Dates
Sat 30 Jan - Fremantle Arts Centre (Fremantle)Tue 2 Feb - AEC Theatre (Adelaide)
Wed 3 Feb - Festival Hall (Melbourne)
Sat 6 Feb - Hordern Pavillion (Sydney)
Sun 7 Feb - Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre (Brisbane)
