Time for original sounds
Graeme James learned the art of recording the hard way, writes
Mike Alexander.
Five years ago, Wellington-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Graeme James booked a recording session that was meant to deliver the flesh and bones of his debut album.
It was, by his own admission, a disaster – but proved a major learning curve.
Five years and two cover albums later, he’s turned that experience into one of the debut albums of the year – News From Nowhere.
James graduated from a primary school teaching degree at Massey in 2012, and immediately began playing music fulltime.
‘‘By the end of the year, I felt I was ready to hit the recording studio and release something,’’ he says.
‘‘My intention was to release an album of original material. In fact, a few of the songs on New From Nowhere had their beginnings at that time, though they are quite different from what I recorded back then. It was actually truly horrible at the time. I had the studio booked and the sound engineer got sick so I ended up having to cancel the recording session.’’
Instead, James went to Queenstown for the summer and busked.
‘‘I met a musician from Boulder, Colorado, who suggested I record some of my covers. He told me that’s how buskers all over the world did things. So I came back to Wellington and ended up recording the first volume of Play One We All Know.’’
A second volume was recorded a year later.
‘‘When you are busking in front of 200 to 300 people like you can be in Queenstown, if people like what you are doing they are going to want to buy your CD and they are going to want to buy what you are playing,’’ James says.
‘‘It was a fantastic opportunity to really cut my teeth in the recording studio. I am proud of those albums. Even though the songs are covers, I can definitely trace my progression in understanding what you can do in a recording studio. In a sense, it was like serving an apprenticeship.’’
If not for his parents – and his dad, in particular – James might never have ventured beyond the concert hall.
As a baby, his family shifted to Holland, where as a child he studied the violin and became proficient enough to join several orchestras. They moved back to Taranaki later in his childhood, and James and his brother played in the family band – his father sang and played guitar, and his brother – now a classical composer – played drums and tin whistle. James’ mum provided bass and vocals, and he himself, the mandolin and fiddle.
‘‘Although my brother and I were classically trained, a lot of the music around the house was traditional British folk music.
‘‘It was the time when world music started to really take off, and while there was a lot of bad taste things that came out of that whole movement, it also gave greater exposure to a lot of really talented musicians, such as Irish fiddler Mairin Fahey, who opened up a whole new world to me in terms of what you could do with a violin.’’
James is now touring his album, and is close to a sellout in some places – thanks in part to an appearance on comedy show Seven Days playing news-inspired cover songs. But thanks to his complicated route to recording, covers are otherwise in his past.