TAS In Session (SXSW Artist): James Vincent McMorrow
James Vincent McMorrow might be a late bloomer - he didn't begin studying guitar until he was 19 - but the Irish singer songwriter, who jumps on board the SXSW carousel in ten days, found that a more languid pace suited him artistically.
Nearly a decade later McMorrow finally self-released his debut album, Early in The Morning, in Ireland in 2010, which finally came out in the States on Vagrant Records this past January. His touring schedule has also become fairly hectic; McMorrow, who toured with Bell X1 last fall, will be supporting The Rural Alberta Advantage for a handful of Stateside dates around SXSW and he's also lined up his first lengthy UK tour this spring.
Earlier this winter, McMorrow visited The Alternate Side, chatted about the roles that both Sufjan Stevens and Tracy Chapman played in his musical life, and performed a set of songs from his debut, including "Sparrow and the Wolf" and "Hear the Noise That Moves So Soft and Low."
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdZxX6g7zmQ]
Alisa Ali: Congratulations on your debut album, Early in The Morning, shortlisted for the Choice Music Prize in Ireland, it’s been received to great critical acclaim. No pressure for your second album, right?
James Vincent McMorrow: The second album is going to be a while yet, I imagine. Have to sell this one first. By the time it comes out here it will have been out ten months in Ireland so that’s a considerable amount of time so now I have to repeat the same thing again.
Alisa: You’ve been living with these songs a long time.
James: I guess I have. When you keep going to new places and new countries, it’s like starting all over again so it doesn’t feel like I’ve been singing these songs forever and I’m jaded. Quite the opposite in fact. I’m enjoying it more and more. Like last last week I was in the Netherlands singing for a crowd of people who’ve never heard them before. This week I’m in the US, next week I’m in France. So everything is new.
Alisa: Will you be singing with a French accent?
James: I don’t think they’d appreciate that! (laughs). I’d find it funny, but I don’t think anyone else would.
Alisa: But when you sing, I don’t hear your accent.
James: No, no. Very few people sing with an accent. Once you start singing, you’re in international waters. Singing with an Irish accent is quite a knowing thing. I could sing with an Irish accent if I wanted to, but it wouldn’t be natural. I’d sound like the most clichéd Irish leprechaun.
Alisa: The single from your debut record is “If I Had a Boat.” That was the first song that you wrote that made you feel like you could make an album.
James: It was. It was the first thing I’d ever written that made me think, yeah, I could write a record now. Before that I’d been writing songs and there were a couple of things that I liked, but … I moved to London, was sitting in my house and I just started writing it. I was living on the top floor of this four story building and you could see all of the different windows; it was a really beautiful street. I had this balcony, I used to sit out there and I was singing [the song] and I thought, “This is good.” That was the catalyst. Then I came home [to Ireland], moved to the middle of nowhere and took that song and a bunch of other ideas. But it was the one, when I started writing, that I could hear in my head opening the record. I’d never been able to hear anything opening an album before. Everything was just bits and ideas and stuff.
Alisa: The other thing that was unusual about this song is that the lyrics and the music occurred to you at the same time.
James: Yeah, that doesn’t happen to me very often. It’s usually quite separate things. I was a bedroom musician first and foremost. Live is still a relatively new thing to me. It was always about recording idea and different sounds. Once that was settled in my mind then I’d think about words to go with it. Melody is quite a painstaking thing; I take a lot of time with it and see where it can go. Once it’s locked in, only then can I think about it. So that was the only song on the record where as I sang it, the first verse came and then the chorus and that was about it.
Alisa: Is that still very similar to the way you play it now?
James: Yeah, it pretty much is. The four part harmony intro wasn’t there.
Alisa: And how are you going to do a four part harmony today?
James: I wasn’t planning on singing that song today! It becomes a bit ridiculous at the end because there’s a big ending to it. From a really nerdy, technical standpoint, there’s eight high C’s above middle C at the end of it and they come right after one another so if I do it at a microphone on the radio it will sound like I’ve slightly lost my mind. The nature of my voice. You have to go for these middling songs on radio because otherwise I’ll sound crazy.
Alisa: There’s a mature sound to your music and it’s surprising because you started music relatively late in life. You’re a late bloomer. Is that fair to say? How old are you?
James: 28. Yes. I didn’t even attempt to write a song until four years ago. I always thought that if you were going to make music, you should have things to write about. When I was 19 I certainly didn’t have anything. If I’d written songs when I was 19 it would have been pretty shocking. If I’d attempted to write songs [then] and play them, and I didn’t like them, I would have just stopped. So I decided to spend four years just learning how to play instruments, learn the craft, production and stuff. It made sense to go off and learn the fundamentals first. I always wanted to write songs, but I avoided it for a while until I had the tools to do it.
Alisa: So when you were in school, you didn’t even write a little poem or anything like that?
James: I always wrote, I wrote a lot of short stories and I’ve always been a heavy reader; I read a lot of books. When I was a kid I devoured books. So I always wrote, but never in the context of songs. I used to write little, lyric-esque things, but they certainly weren’t, “Here’s a chorus.” It wasn’t until three or four years ago that I saw if I could put all these things to use, so that’s when I started.
Alisa: If it didn’t work out do you think you might have been a journalist or an author?
James: Yeah, when I was younger, journalism was always the thing that I thought I would do. But then as I got a bit older, school wasn’t really my thing. I studied marketing. I went to college in order to go to college, not to become some marketing guru. I went to college because it was offered to me and in Ireland, up until quite recently, it was free. I wasn’t really a school guy and the school system there really isn’t suited to someone such as myself. It’s all based on one exam at the end. Over here it’s different, you have a grade curve. We don’t have that back, it’s all based on one think and I was pretty busy when I was 18 doing nothing (laughs). When I was 16 or 17 I was fine, but when I was 18 I’d have a few drinks and relax (laughs).
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=latR39yG3aQ]
Alisa: You decided to go the independent study route and you decided to learn music all on your own. You never really thought to take music in school?
James: I’ve always loved music, I always wanted to sing, but I was quite loud. I had a music teacher at school and she didn’t really know how to deal with me. So I would sing when we were in choir and I would sing loud and high and she didn’t know where to put me. So she didn’t put me anywhere. And I was quite shy as a kid so at that point I thought, okay, this isn’t really for me. No one wants to get pointed out for singing high when they’re 14 and trying to fit in. So I didn’t study music after that. I played guitar to myself in my house and took up the drums. But the prospect of having teachers terrified me. I don’t know why. I’ve always kept myself to myself and thought if I could learn to play guitar, I could probably learn to play piano, banjo and drums by listening to records . I learned how to play drums by listening to At the Drive-In or all these bands that I loved when I was a kid. I learned how to record because I was a big fan of Kanye West. All of of the Neptunes stuff from about 2000 or 2001 always fascinated me and when I had enough money, when I was in college, I bought some recording equipment. Then hearing Donny Hathaway made me want to sing and I used to sing along to him. Why should I get lessons when I could learn from him? Who better to learn from?
Alisa: I’ve read that you really admire Sufjan Stevens.
James: He was like the alpha and the omega when I was a kid. Absolutely. When I heard the Illinois record, that was a moment. It’s so complete. I’d never heard a record up to that point that you listen to it and think that there’s nothing on that record that you could do differently. All the records I love, you still love them despite their flaws, but that record is flawless from start to finish. And to come from one mind - it’s kind of staggering. Someone asked me in an interview yesterday about Sufjan and I came across as such a superfan, but I really don’t care. He’s that one person for me where it just all connected: the voice, the lyrics, the production value, the aesthetic. Seeing him live - the wings. I went to see him in Dublin and he had cheerleaders. It was just so perfectly formed. Brilliant.
Alisa: Do you feel that you emulate certain things, like production aspects, from people like Sufjan who you really admire?
James: Yeah, I think so. Certainly the homespun nature of it all, but it’s not lo-fi. That’s something I always aspired to; that if you recorded by yourself it had to be some sort of small thing. I love when music sounds small, but I also love when it can sound big and overpowering. There’s always this thing where you need big expensive studios in order to do it, but hearing that record and seeing how it was made, borrowing equipment or in churches, it made me realize that you don’t need all of those things to do it. That record was the catalyst. It was the thing that made me want to make records by myself. You don’t need a producer, a guiding hand or a big budget. You just need the will to do it.
Alisa: Did you try to make this album in a big studio? The story about you is that you recorded the record in a cabin on the beach.
James: A house.
Alisa: It sounds more quaint if I say, “cabin.”
James: Yeah, it sounds more rustic! But it was a house.
Alisa: But did you try to record in a conventional way, in a studio?
James: I tried to make a record - not this record - none of the songs from this record were in my mind at that time even though it was quite close, October of 2008, when I went into the studio to try to do it. I accumulate a lot of songs over the previous year, but didn’t have much heart for any of them. I made a demo in my house, it passed from hand to hand, it ended up in London and I signed to a publishing deal quite quickly. They brought me over to live in London and the whole idea was that I was to make a record there of songs that I had on the demo and a couple more that I’d been writing. I didn’t really want to make a record but the will was to do it. Being quite naive to the whole business I went along with it, went to a studio and did three weeks. Tracked some drums. It was really painfully slow. Went back to Dublin with my tail painfully between my legs. I had no idea what to do. Then I did a tour with Tracy Chapman, I was offered one show with her in Dublin, and then she came, watched and offered me the next two shows. Her agent offered me the rest of her tour. I wasn’t that familiar with her work, but watching her night after night - she did a three hour soundchecks and knew every song that she’d ever written and was just incredibly on it. She has no reason to be, because she’s Tracy Chapman. So I looked at that and thought, wow, if I’m singing these songs that I have no heart for and this woman is out there night after night knowing every song she’s ever written and loving it dearly, it made me think I should go and make something I was actually proud of. So that was the reason to take the house and remove myself from it all, with all of these ideas that I had, swimming around in my head, of songs that I really wanted to make.
Alisa: So it was really Tracy Chapman who made you up your game?
James: It genuinely was. I’d never been around someone of that level and she was such a professional.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqFK6GPxad0]
Alisa: You went away with just one microphone and a bunch of instruments.
James: I accumulated bits and pieces over the years. My first drum kit was falling to pieces, it was six or seven years old, some guitars and a banjo that I bought for 50 euros. A bass guitar that I’d had since I was 15 or 16 that someone gave me that I’d never played and it cost about 100 euros when it was bought new. So it was problematic thing to make it sound good. But that was the fun of it for me, enjoying that whole environment. The notion of making these things sound good. Trying to record drums with one mic is a big problem. But there’s a solution to all these things. My dad used to say, “Necessity is the mother of all invention.” Learning how to record everything between the parameters of what I had available to me.
Alisa: Did you know how to play those instruments?
James: I didn’t know how to play the banjo. I learned that and the mandolin while I was recording. The accordion as well and a few other things on a very simplistic level. I couldn’t sit here and play bluegrass on the banjo but I learnt enough to do what I wanted to do.
Alisa: You’re so open to learning new instruments. But I’ve heard that it’s a little like acquiring tattoos. Once you get one, you have to get more.
James: It’s addictive. I bought all of those instruments when I had no money and now that I have a little bit of money, there are so many things I’m trying to buy. I’m trying to buy this reed organ at the moment which is something that the chaplains would use during the war; the legs fold up into itself. I’m buying one of those. I don’t need it, but I want it. I used a reed organ on the record that I borrowed. My house is going to be a nightmare. It already is. Guitars everywhere. I would like to better at a lot of the instruments that I play. Piano particularly. I’ve been playing a lot of piano in my live setup with my full band back home and I really love it. I love sitting behind a piano. It used to terrify me, the notion of singing and using your two hands, but I quite like it now.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVVpvZlbYK4]
Alisa: Things are going pretty quickly for you now.
James: Yeah, they are. The first few months it was starting to scratch [with the album] coming out in Ireland. Playing when I could and selling it when I could. It took a little while for it to catch because I didn’t have any marketing budget or anything.
Alisa: But that was your specialty in school!
James: Exactly! You’d think I’d have that locked down. I had not a clue.
Alisa: You should have stayed in school.
James: I know. It would have come in handy with this self-release stuff. It took a little while because I didn’t have the money to pay for ads and it was really people passing it around to each other that gave it its early life. And then a lot of blogs and things in Ireland came to me and helped me so much, then magazines came to it, and it got bigger and bigger as the year went along.
Alisa: And that’s how you got your record deal.
James: Yes, it’s how I came to meet the guys at Vagrant. Someone in London heard it … it’s a small world and everybody can hear everything. I’m happy. This is what I’ve wanted to do. In my mind I thought I’d really relish these moments, and I do, but I’ve seen 30 or 40 cities in the last three or four months and I couldn’t tell you anything about them, really. I guess that’s the nature of it. You have a job to do and it’s a specific part of the day and you’re just traveling between places. It is what it is. I had the best of intentions when this all started. And when I have days off, I sleep.
