Will James to Release Debut Album Unsuddenly on July 19, 2011

May 13, 2011 - PRLog -- Will James media page: http://glgpub.com/roster/will-james
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Will James to Release Debut Album Unsuddenly on July 19, 2011

PLAINFIELD, N.J. (May 13, 2011) – It is common to dream of becoming a musician. But it is rare to realize that dream and even more rare to take it on in mid-life.  This is what indie folk artist Will James has done, reinventing himself from businessman and suburbanite to active artist, writing and recording his own songs and working along side of some of the best indie artists and producers in the industry.

His debut, Unsuddenly, is a release that takes listeners on his personal journey through life crisis and new awareness. The album documents the failure of many false dreams and the surprising insightful moment of realization that came at the end of many struggles. “This is an album about the experience of breakdown and of breakthrough…what it feels like just as it happens,” says James. “I spent so much time struggling for life to work out or come together for me as I had planned… and over 10 years my façades slowly crumbled, and what was left behind the paint and porcelain of my external life was me, the unknown me, the first me, behind it all”. Unsuddenly, which showcases James’ high baritone and personal lyrics, is due out July 19.

In the album’s title track, “Unsuddenly”, James tells the story of an epiphany.  The result of a moment in which James had a new understanding of his life: the wrong choices that led to despair and the new openings that held hope and mystery. The song is delicately put together, burnished violins supporting a hopeful vocal from a transformed James, using his mellow high baritone ­ sounding at times like a combination of Tom Waits and Elvis Costello - to add subtle power to his emotionally charged lyrics.

James remembers the morning of Feb. 25, 2004, an end of a way of life built on career and anxiety, escape and excess, panic and unsupportive relationships. “In one moment, my whole life changed,” says James. “I became aware of myself from a different perspective, like a door opening to a new reality. I feel the experience belongs to the worlds of epiphany, satori and conversion, something deeply personal and life changing. It was like I realized I had lived much of my life in a dream and was suddenly seeing myself for the first time.” After this breakthrough, he turned to the guitar to express emotions, a daunting task for someone who had never learned music. “I was really driven  to try and understand what had happened to me, so I found an empty room at a local church and sat there day after day trying to paint my situation and my emotions with guitar sounds and lyrics,” says James. “The creativity had always been there, just not listened to seriously in my life up to that point. But within nine months of the breakdown, I had 20-30 partial songs. Still these were only projects in sounds and emotions. I didn’t know anything about music or what to do with the songs.”

He immersed himself in song writing, voice and guitar lessons. “Slowly over a couple of years I put structure to the music and, with the help of a songwriting coach, learned to finish the songs.” The next step was to record them. James teamed with his music teachers and enlisted the talents of Tony Maimone at Studio G in Brooklyn and Kieran Kelly, of the Buddy Project, the studio Sufjan Stevens used for his award winning Illinoise record and The Avalanche. Rob Moose (Sufjan Stevens, Antony and the Johnsons), Matt Johnson (Jeff Buckley), Chad Clark & Jean Cooke (Beauty Pill), Will Stratton, Arthur Fiacco (Pixies), CJ Manierieri (The National), and Aaron Lee Tasjan (Madison Square Gardeners) became involved in the sessions that produced the album [Unsuddenly. “Interacting with musicians of such high caliber opened me to the power of communicating with music. When they told me how much they loved my own music, I was simply amazed.”

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