biography
James was born near the geographic center of the U.S. to a mother
from the Deep South, and a father from the Far North. His musical
heritage was the folk and country records his parents listened to
and the hymns he sang in church. "We'd have Bob Wills at breakfast,
Bob Dylan at lunch and maybe Patsy Cline with dinner." By the
age of five he was singing at family gatherings and holidays. "I
guess I was a bit stage-struck for awhile. I'd sing a couple tunes
and everybody would react favorably-great stuff when you're that young."
When he was ten his grandmother -who was heavily into Lawrence Welk--convinced
his parents he should have accordion lessons. "I hated everything
about that instrument especially how heavy it was and the fact that
I had to walk a mile and a half with it to my teachers house. Along
the way I passed my friends doing all the things I wanted to be doing
instead. I'm happy to say that I'm now in recovery and love the accordion-though
I still can't listen to Lawrence Welk." The experience kept him
from picking up an instrument for a long while. "I didn't play
anything, I just kept on being the singer. My first paid gig was on
the back of a flat-bed truck in a cornfield for a biker rally."
But when the guitar player quit James learned the instrument himself.
After an assortment of bands and institutions of higher learning came
and went he moved to California and lived in the back of his station
wagon, surfing during the day, jamming at night. As his playing got
better so did the gigs. He began touring the USA and then the world
as a sideman and vocalist. He performed with many of the great artists
from the 50's and 60's as part of Dick Clark's Old Time Rock and Roll
Review. Along the way two things happened: "I realized that although
I'd gotten quite technically proficient, I was just going over ground
that had already been covered. When I was a kid I used to make up
stories and songs all the time and I wanted to get back to that. Second,
I'd seen the elephant, so to speak. I'd been touring for over a decade
and found out the world is so much bigger and more astonishing than
a kid from the Midwest ever imagined. I heard other musics, started
seeing the world from a whole different perspective." He began
working small clubs here and abroad, finding his voice and developing
a unique style with both his playing and singing. The results are
songs that speak to the universal condition but are firmly grounded
in the country-roots idiom he grew up with. His two CDs to date are
stripped down austerely instrumented gems with voice and guitar mixing
like smoke and shadow. "I'm trying to do what an oriental watercolorist
does-define the essence of an idea with as few brushstrokes as possible."
As London reviewer and critic Shaun Belcher wrote:
Tender,
poetic and marvellously well played. McSweeney has been around the
block with a checkered past that saw him playing as backup to Dick
Clark then a stint in a 'major' band before personal highs and lows
and a beat odyssey left him recharging the batteries north of Big
Sur on the west coast. A history major his lyrics flow down the same
rivers as Kieran Kane and Kevin Welch. Thoughtful and restrained and
with spoken elements bringing Mickey Newbury and Guy Clark to mind.
Erudite in a word.
James favors small-bodied
pre-war Gibsons and currently lives in the Pacific Northwest.
