We’d like to thank all the people who bought those tickets. It blew us away. We couldn’t believe it would sell out in a couple of hours. That was incredible for us, it really shocked us. We’re not usually shocked.
We also want to apologise. We’ve seen on the messageboard how some of the fans wanted to get to the first James gig. We hadn’t anticipated that at all, that’s why the other gigs got put in. And just to say, there will be some warm-up secret gigs. After six years of not playing, we need some serious practice before we want to be judged on what we’re doing. So I’m afraid there will be some more gigs going in earlier, but they’ll be secret, last minute, very small, but I have no idea where they’ll be yet. They haven’t been booked. They’ll hopefully be announced through the mailing list.
This whole thing came about in November when Jimmy, Larry and I first met in Manchester. I was seeing my mum up in Yorkshire and I said I’d go along and see the guys. They’d asked me a year or two earlier and it hadn’t felt right. But now things were starting to happen and I felt as if my life was taking me towards them. James kept cropping up everywhere.
Larry rang me a week later and asked me to call in and meet up and I said “OK, but let’s meet up and jam”. That’s how we communicated best so it was “let’s go and do that” and we did it for a couple of days. And we came up with lots of songs or beginnings of songs. And it was great fun. We communicated very differently and we’d really moved on. The six years had done us good. We were really enjoying each other’s company which had not always been the case.
Peter (Rudge, James’ manager) heard about it and got excited and spoke to Simon Moran (SJM Concerts) about a possible tour. The thing just escalated like a snowball. And I was saying “yes” to most things that came my way at that point. Larry and Jimmy were first very against doing a tour, they wanted to get the music together, maybe get an album together and then do a tour. But it just kind of fell into our laps and we agreed to do it.
It was hard for a few weeks because the whole business side had to wake up again as it had been asleep for six years so a lot of business had to be done, a lot of relationships had to be formed and a new structure established with Larry back in. The structure has gone back to the three of us making the major decisions for this incarnation. But that’s the amazing thing about James is that the dynamic always changes.
We’re taking it one step at a time. It’s because we’re working on the music and seeing where it takes us. We’ve got lots of songs boiling, we’ve got two we’ve finished demos of and they’re cracking. They’re going to take us in a different direction. We might go quiet publicly to allow us to concentrate on the music but there should be more to come. The feeling is that we’re enjoying what we’re doing and the music is going in a strong direction.
It’s one step at a time. We would love to go out and play Portugal and Greece because we had so much fun and felt such appreciation and support out there. But we need to make a new record. We’d rather go out to play when people have heard the new stuff and can enjoy it a lot more. There will be other opportunities to see us though. We’d love to go to America as well, but that’s not dependent on us, it’s dependent on record sales and getting the support to do it and there being a demand.
We hope we’re going to be able to build on the tour selling out. We believe we put a lot into the records and people have relistened and reappreciated them and that’s why the tour sold out, in the same way as the Pixies did. We’re hoping to shift things around a bit, there will be the well-known songs but we’ve got a few weeks rehearsal and we want to look to play ones that people aren’t expecting and play a few new songs. It won’t be a repeat of the last gigs. We want to move forward and find new ways live to heighten connection. To see how far this new version of James can go.
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