Hard work, outstanding talent and superb songcraft all part of the mix for Sligo Live headliner Gavin James
Gavin James who plays Sligo Live this Friday night spoke to Michael Daly about his music, song writing, making your own luck, hard work and some other singer called Ed Sheeran
THERE’S something very assuring about anyone who has a dog, and you have to double that for songwriter/singer Gavin James who has two. But better than that his two adored lurchers, one of them recently fostered, have appropriately brilliant names - Annie and Bruce. Annie, named after Annie Lennox and Bruce named after The Boss, are spoiled rotten by Gavin, a proud Dubliner, originally from Stoneybatter, now living on Dublin’s northside.
Speaking from there on a grey October Thursday morning a few weeks ago Gavin James, born Gavin Wigglesworth to hard-working parents Gerry and Phil, lit up the morning and happily spent just under an hour chatting to an increasingly awe-struck old hack from the Sligo Weekender.
Gavin James is a big deal in the music business, when he’s not out walking Annie and Bruce along the Canal, he keeps company with a few other singers/ songwriters you might have heard about, Ed Sheeran, James Blunt, Sam Smith and has played alongside a guy called Niall Horan who you may well have heard about too.
More about some of those connections later, time to get down to business. Gavin is coming to Sligo and he is looking forward to playing Sligo Live in the Knocknarea Arena at ATU Sligo this Friday night. He’s been here before, but not too often.
His last and only performing gig here was on February 17, 2017, when he played the HMV Sound Garden. His memory of that performance is brief but memorable - “it was mad but in a good way, it was very raucous. It will be good to get back to Sligo”.
James, 31, is another one of those ‘overnight sensations’ who has been slogging away for more than a decade playing in a mix of bands and growing his audience. He started singing while still in school in Cabra, although they didn’t teach music in St Declan’s he loved English “it was the only subject I was really any good at” and the song writing started from there.
Music came with like-minded friends, he bounces out the names of bands he played in while still a teenager - The Phases and The Problematics are two he name checks, there may have been others.
He goes back into his teens to chart a music road that would see him eventually playing to a packed 3 Arena.
“When I was at school the only subjects I was any good at really were English and Art. I did music outside school. English was always my favourite subject, and I always had a fascination with putting words together. It was more rock songs when I was a kid, screaming my head off, but then I got into Dylan and played with an acoustic guitar. I was doing cover songs for three hours a night and that helps you too, it allows you to know the way others write and approach a song and that helped me when I was writing.” So, when did Gavin James become a hit in the music business, when did the numbers on the download platforms start spinning?
The music industry bible says the good times started to roll in 2012, the year he released his EP ‘Say Hello’. It went viral in Ireland. He won Song of the Year at the 2013 Meteor Choice Music Prize Awards as a result of its success. It sounds just about right, and Gavin doesn’t disagree with that timeline in terms of lift-off, but there were gigs on Grafton Street too and Temple Bar was a regular stomping ground, he was singing there while he was in sixth year in St Declan’s. His family he cites as a huge influence on him, in particular his dad Gerry who has been there for him every step of the way. He gets his work ethic from his parents and is keen to explain that: “My da was a Custom’s man for 44 years and he worked his arse off since he was 15. My ma worked hard, and my family has that work ethic, and I have it. But singing never feels like I am really working, I love every aspect of it, the gigs, the promotional work - it’s all part of it. I’m from Stoneybatter and I think I have that sense of working, you can be lucky, but you also have to make things happen.”
Back in the day with The Phases and Problematics he and friends gigged for years as young lads. “I did a live album in Whelans which was all live stuff that I wrote in my gaff and my ma and da’s gaff. After that it all started going off.”
He mocks his early singing openly: “I had a really weird vibrato when I was a kid. My sister Emma is a Gospel singer and she taught me how to sing, I overplayed that vibrato thing, and she helped me get rid of that. Diction was always important. It’s important to get the lyrics out, they must be clear, that’s important. If you write you want people to hear what you have written, the words are important,” he says.
And then there’s making things happen and being lucky - it’s a fine line between the two: “Lucky? There is luck and there’s definitely that moment where you put yourself in the right place at the right time. The best example of that is the time I met Ed Sheeran in a pub in Dublin. I was on my way home at two o’clock in the morning and I met him by chance. If I had gone home, I do think things might have been different for my career. We had a ball and there it goes. The day after we met, he was on Twitter and he had nice things to say about me and my music and it was picked up by so many people in the record business who follow his feed.
“But it’s not all about luck, although that helps. I have put myself in ‘the right room’ or the right country as the case may be and that can work in your favour. But that’s not enough. You have to work at it, you have to push, and you have to put yourself out there - it just won’t happen unless you make it work.”
That combination of good timing, some luck and barrow loads of hard work have dovetailed nicely for Gavin in terms of success. And how do you measure success? Well, the numbers help answer that one. His international touring has resulted in 250,000 ticket sales for his headline shows across the world, including two nights at Dublin’s 13,000 capacity 3Arena.
Earlier this year, he made a triumphant return to the live arena, when he played to 40,000 people in Switzerland. Gavin released his third album, and he kicked off 2022 by headlining the New Year’s Day festival at Dublin Castle and he joined James Blunt on his UK Arena tour in February followed by tour dates in April.
A direct quote from the PR people makes a point worth repeating: “His songcraft has been the key to unlocking 1.5 billion streams, 6 million monthly listeners at Spotify, 32 Platinum and Gold records across the globe, needs no introduction. His new single ‘Greatest Hits’, which is in the top 5 radio airplay charts.” But like the kids in the back of the car I ask him ‘are we there yet’ and I opt not to define where ‘there’ is. He’s clear on that, he has the numbers, the success, but he wants more: “If you are comfortable where you are then someone will pass you by. I always want more - definitely in the most ethical way. I don’t want to be comfortable, if I am comfortable with being ‘comfortable’, I may as well stop, so of course there are new plans and challenges for me, new hopes for next year and right now, Friday night in Sligo is the gig and I’m looking forward to that.” *Gavin James plays the Knocknarea Arena this Friday night, October 21. Tickets are on sale from Sligolive.ie, Ticketmaster or from the Hawk’s Well Theatre in person or by phone (071) 9161518
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