About
Keith James
About me?!? Now there’s a thing…
In simple terms, I am an acoustic guitarist and singer. A somewhat tricky
Occupation at the best of times, although I have ‘been in the same business’ So to speak, all my working life.
During the ‘90s I rarely played concerts as I set up a recording studio spending almost an entire decade working as a producer and sound engineer
I have released a collection of my own albums on CD;
A few of my own material and a number that feature music of particular interest
that I have been involved in over the past few years. Most notably my interpretations of
Nick Drake’s beautiful songs.
I spent the majority of 2007 and 2008 working on two fascinating projects; that of setting
music to the words of the Spanish Poet Federico Garcia Lorca. The 2 Albums that come from
this are ‘Lorca’ and ‘Poet in New York’. I put the project to together with my great friend
and confident Rick Foot who plays amazing Double Bass (rather an understatement).
We toured the UK with both Lorca concepts to far greater support and enthusiasm than one
might expect for something so particular and esoteric.
Last year, due to tremendous encouragement, Rick and I toured the UK with a concert to celebrate
The music of John Martyn. The support for this was incredible and an enormous thanks
To all of you who came to support us. We purposefully haven’t recorded an Album of John’s
Music. Go and buy the originals! If you don’t already have them.
Last Autumn I presented a concert that is very dear to my heart; something I had been longing to do for sometime:
THE GREAT CANADIAN SONGBOOK my own interpretations of songs by
Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen
Across the first half of 2011 my concert tour will be THE SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN Music unprecedented in both beauty and integrity.
Please join me if you can. Thanks to you all for your continued support
You must read if you find the right moment in your life
Duende - Jason Webster
Residence on Earth - Pablo Neruda
Straw Dogs - John Gray
The end of the Affair - Graham Greene
Round and round in my car
Hand built by robots - Newton Faulkner
Hunky Dory - David Bowie
Led Zep III - LZ
Symphony No 3 - Gorecki
Came within an inch of certain death (all involving dilapidated vehicles)...
May 1981 Hampshire
Steering rack broke on Morris 1000 traveller. Drove through a farm gate at some speed, down a bank, within inches of a large tree, straight into a river (full PA system and guitars etc in the back)
Jan 1988 Brazil
Drove a beaten up Series 1 Beetle belonging to a nun in between two enormous USA style trucks on the A1 national trunk road from Porto Alegre (this road, at the time was were one is offered a carriageway for each direction and a middle one for dare devil overtaking in either direction - the poor little Beetle actually touched both trucks by a hair)
Aug 1991 Santorini
Parked a hire Suzuki Jeep in a gravel car park just outside of ia on the island in Santorini, Greece. The gravel car park is a the top of a sheer and vicious drop of hundreds of meters straight down to jagged rocks and dashing waves. At the very moment when I parked the bag of spanners I discovered that the hand break was entirely non functional - I can't bring myself to tell you the rest as it still makes me anxious to this day
