Time zones blur, and timelines bend. For a moment, I'm back on Myspace in 2010, scrolling past pixelated profiles, when James Vincent McMorrow's 'Early In The Morning' debut album quietly entered the scene.
It didn't shout. It didn't need to. When James appears on my screen for this conversation, it feels like sitting across from someone I've always known – maybe through headphones, maybe through time.He's calm. Open. Slightly amused. Like he's been here before too. De ja vu with some humans. "I'm not very nostalgic," he shares. "I think I'm probably nostalgic about my own life to a degree – everybody is – but I never really think about the music."
There's a pause. Not awkward – intentional. The kind that musicians carry between chords. I wait, and in that space, I realise this interview won't be a linear stroll through a back catalogue. It'll be something else: a conversation between the past and the present. Between burn-out and rebuild. Between pause and play.
The story of 'Early In The Morning' isn't one of fireworks or overnight acclaim.
It's a quieter, scrappier kind of arrival – one built in the margins, in spare rooms, in long years of trying and waiting for that break in the clouds. "It came out in 2010, but if an album falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
James grins when he says it, but the truth underneath is sharp. "I just wanted to make an album, and no one would let me. So, I just went and made it myself." This was pre-streaming dominance, pre-hype machine. He uploaded 'Down The Burning Ropes' to Myspace, then woke up to hundreds of comments, and something flickered to life. "That's all it takes – just one good song."
Even as people slowly began to listen, the climb was deliberate. "It was a long year of trying to eke out little wins." In 2011, he made his first trip to Australia. No fanfare. Just a room of 80 people, most of them not Irish. "That was like, 'okay, people do know it here'."
There was no time to marvel. There never is at the start. "When you're in it – what's the next plane, what's the next train – I gotta keep going. I didn't appreciate it at the time. You just don't."
Now, with space behind him, James can look back at that scrappy, quiet ascent and see it for what it was: the start of something rare. Not loud, not immediate, but real.
There's a moment in every artist's story when it shifts. Not suddenly. Not with fireworks, but with recognition. A room that's full. A crowd that knows the words. The kind of moment that says: you're not just making noise, you're being heard.
For James Vincent McMorrow that moment happened here, in Australia. "The first memory I have where I was like 'holy sh.t, I think I might be a professional musician,' was in Australia," he says, half-laughing. "People were showing up. It was always the marker for me."
The early shows had grown from 80 to thousands. One song got picked up in an ad. The momentum clicked up a gear. For James, however, it wasn't about numbers. It was about recognition, from strangers who got it. "I had songs on triple j that were eight minutes long, and people still listened."
There's a weight to that kind of reception. It doesn't happen everywhere. "Australia felt like it understood me early on, and that stuck." James' upcoming anniversary shows in Australia early June are a return to that space. Not a greatest-hits victory lap, but a revisiting of what sparked it all in the first place.
A reconnection – not just with the audience, but with the version of himself who first wrote those songs. "I want to remember that time and place," he says simply. "I feel like I need that in my life right now." No set lists. No layers. Just James, a guitar, and a room that listens. Breathing it in. The way it started. The way it still should be.
Even with a career built slowly, there can be a moment when something breaks. For James, that moment came in 2017, with a major label deal. "I got offered a record with Columbia.
"I'll be honest, I was tired of paying insane money for recording and thought 'why not', especially since you know Columbia has history with Bob Dylan, and you know it's the only one I wanted to go with," he says plainly, "but I lost my agency. It kind of killed my spirit."
For someone who once sold albums from the trunk of a car to then signing with one of the most influential record companies in the world, that's a big shift in gears. "Everything I'd made up until that point was very scrappy in its endeavour. Being independent is a lot of work. So, I joined the label and I started making music for other people. Writing songs for them too."
The pressure to produce, to scale, to satisfy the machinery of the industry – it worked against the very thing that made him want to create in the first place. "After the pandemic, everything was just fast release. It was like, 'go go go'. It didn't feel good. I knew that. I lost my way."
It's rare to hear an artist speak so candidly about this kind of disillusionment, but James doesn't dress it up. He says it as it is, and underneath it all, you sense the longing: not just to make, but to mean something again. This isn't the part of the story with applause. It's the part that clears the ground for the return.
Some artists return with a reinvention. Others with noise. James came back with a trowel. "I love laying concrete," he says, eyes softening. "I love building things."
After years of making music that was hard to measure, hard to feel, he needed something he could touch. Something that stayed put. "In music, it's super hard to see the fruits of your labour. You don't always feel the wins, but when I build something, I see it. I'm proud of it. People come over and comment on it, like 'you did that, wow!'."
His move back closer to home in Ireland and building from scratch has definitely brought James back to the foundations again. He's playing old songs again. Revisiting what used to light the fire, back before the noise. "I want to clock back in by playing songs I haven't played in 15 years."
He's building again now. With his hands. With his chords. With care. The goal isn't to go back. It's to go forward. James Vincent McMorrow is hitting the road again, but this time it's different. No band. No noise. No set list. Just a guitar, a voice, and the weight of his own words returning to meet him.
"I just wanted to do something where I could actually appreciate the record," he says, "and play a show where I know I'm coming back to a place that's been very good to me."
He's not trying to replicate the past. He's not here for nostalgia. This is about coming back to what mattered before the industry noise, before the algorithms, the charts, the burnout. "I get what I did. I get what I love. Now I want to make it better."
It's rare to hear someone speak this plainly about process, pain, and purpose, but James does; and as he returns to the road, those early songs – once carried from car trunks to crowded rooms – feels old kind of new again.
All these years later, he hasn't forgotten the vow inside that 'Burning Ropes' lyric: 'I will not hang myself with burning ropes.'
James Vincent McMorrow 2025 Tour Dates
Tue 3 Jun - Metro Theatre (Sydney)Thu 5 Jun - Northcote Theatre (Melbourne)
Sat 7 Jun - The Princess Theatre (Brisbane)
