JOSHUA JAMES
Aiken Promotions present
JOSHUA JAMES
Tickets on sale now priced €14.50 (including booking fee) from www.tickets.ie, www.whelanslive.com, www.ticketmaster.ie & Ticketmaster outlets nationwide. 0818 719 300 – Republic of Ireland customers 0844 277 4455 – Northern Ireland customers 00353 1 456 9569 – International customer
“This 25-year-old songwriter already has the wisdom to know that if you’re going to serve up a blood-drenched biblical allegory, you best have an old soul’s voice to sing it with. Every line rings with desperation and a desire for salvation.” – Esquire magazine
“With a hoarse, sweet voice that can fly from tremulous fragility to soulful roar, James brings a kind of grunge rock drive to rootsy folk, fueled by a gloomy existentialism and political rage.” – The Telegraph (UK)
“If you think Conor Oberst is the most interesting folky singer-songwriter in America, that just might be because you haven’t heard Joshua James yet…” – Sunday Times (UK)
“Fans of Conor Oberst could do far worse than giving this a listen.” – Q Magazine (UK)
“This is a man who can don and peel off masks with every track… The disguises are so convincingly worn that which one is the “real” Joshua James matters not one whit.” – Uncut (UK)
“A young American trailing his fingers in the plankton-rich surface waters of old American music; an album themed almost biblically, around the mystique of the US landscape and history.” – The Independent on Sunday (UK)
“Coal War starts life as a sparse, modest, orthodox gospel, and dies as ecstatic psychedelic epic.” – The Guardian Guide (UK)
“Purposeful and elegantly marshalled primal folk…” – The Daily Mirror (UK)
“James fills songs with images of burning boats and burning letters, blood on the floor, deep incisions and cancer. He delivers in a raspy voice that sounds wounded at all the right times” – Paste Magazine
“James is a songwriter with more than just a hint of beauty in his voice and his words seem to come from the ends of dusty roads and bottomless nights that just keep on stretching and stretching and feeling as if they’ll never turn.” – Daytrotter
“Passionate, bloody minded songwriting from a man on a mission.” – Pandora
“James specializes in lyrics that cut right through listeners with their sincerity and honesty. With a tender, scratchy voice that often cracks with emotion, and a clear understanding of the vivid storytelling that defines folk music, he commands attention effortlessly” – NPR
“A young Midwestern singer-songwriter who writes hard-bitten songs of family tragedies and sings them in a voice that’s as sun-bleached and wind-battered as a Nebraska cornfield.” – Variety
Joshua James is an American rock and folk musician currently based out of Provo, Utah and Lincoln, Nebraska often compared to Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joe Purdy, Bright Eyes or Ray LaMontagne. James is known for his intimate vocal style and bittersweet lyrics, often dealing with tragedy, religion, and substance abuse.
His original digital release of The Sun is Always Brighter on iTunes reached #1 on the service’s Folk Album list in 2007 and sold in excess of 25,000 copies by the end of 2008. The album caught the attention of the indie folk scene, with Paste Magazine naming him one of their “Next 25 Artists You Need To Know” in their September 2008 issue, prompting artists such as John Mayer, David Gray, Ani DiFranco, Third Eye Blind, and Brett Dennen to have him support their North American tours.
His second album, entitled Build Me This, which was released September, 2009 on Intelligent Noise/Northplatte Records. Paste Magazine dubbed the new work “phenomenal.”
Richard Swift is the producer of his highly anticipated third album due for release October this year.