Roswell Riverside Sounds: Early James

Alabama’s native son, Early James, released his sophomore album, Strange Time To Be Alive, on August 19th, 2022. The lyrical wordsmith conjures the ghosts of great southern gothic writers from Eudora Welty to William Faulkner, while channeling the haunted spirits of Tom Waits and Townes Van Zandt. The album evokes a timeless amalgam of forsaken blues, wistful folk, and Tin Pan Alley crooning, anchored by the singer’s unmistakable voice that sways from gravel-filled shouts to pained, forlorn whispers – and songs that tread in the waters of darkly themed broken hearts, with the wry humor of the sad clown.

James first started writing songs as a teenager growing up in the small Alabama town of Troy. “I had a Nextel flip phone and I’d use my voicemail to record all these blues songs I’d written,” he recalls, listing Fiona Apple, Hank Williams, Nirvana, and Tom Waits among his formative influences. At the age of 15, he played his first gig at a biker rally in nearby Luverne, and soon began booking four-hour sets at local dive bars. Not long after finishing high school, he moved to Birmingham and quickly became a fixture in the city’s melting pot of a music scene. Within several years, a video of James opening for Nashville-based singer/songwriter Katie Pruitt caught the attention of Auerbach, who promptly signed James to his burgeoning indie label Easy Eye Sound.

Genre Inspiration: Roots Rock, Americana, Blues

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