San Francisco
James Hunter
Saturday, March 09, 2013 (9:00 PM - 2:00 AM) | 
Bimbos 365 Club 1025 Columbus Avenue San Francisco CA
James Hunter
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“An overnight success that’s taken 20 years” That’s how James Hunter describes the outpouring of praise and acceptance for his 2006 album, People Gonna Talk. Issued in March 2006 on GO Records/Rounder, the Grammy-nominated People Gonna Talk was the singer/songwriter/guitarist’s first Stateside release after two decades of performing and recording in his native Britain.
In support of his album, James and his skin-tight band performed everywhere from hole-in-the-wall clubs to the Hollywood Bowl; they headlined in smaller venues and supported the likes of Aretha Franklin, Los Lonely Boys, Boz Scaggs, and Van Morrison in larger ones. The mellifluous R&B of People Gonna Talk, with its affectionate echoes of Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson, became an airplay staple on some of the nation’s most influential radio stations. The Los Angeles Times praised James Hunter’s “extraordinary soul voice”; Rolling Stone called his album “a treat not to miss.”
By the year’s end, People Gonna Talk was among the Top Ten “Best Albums of 2006” as cited by Mojo, USA Today pop critic Ken Barnes, and the WFUV/New York listeners’ poll, to name a few. People Gonna Talk was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album and James himself was nominated as Best New/Emerging Artist in the annual Americana Music Awards.
No wonder James Hunter’s second U.S. album, The Hard Way was among 2008’s most eagerly anticipated new releases. In terms of both inspiration and quotation, James has taken much from the musical past as he will be the first to admit. But it’s his own infectious sound and inventive songwriting, blessedly free of slavish mimicry or retrograde nostalgia, that today’s audiences are responding to.
James himself wrote all the songs for The Hard Way and recorded the basic tracks with his working band, just as he did on People Gonna Talk. But now the instrumental palette is richer, the arrangements more detailed, and James himself is singing with more power and nuance than ever before. “We got further into our groove,” explains the singer, “and in two opposite directions simultaneously.”
“On the one hand, the sounds got a bit more sophisticated, a bit posher. Our tenor saxophonist Damian Hand and our drummer Jonathan Lee” both have played with Hunter for 18-odd years, some of them very odd years indeed “did all the string arrangements and augmented the instrumentation with things like the vibraphone on ‘Tell Her’ and ‘Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.’ “The upbeat tracks, meanwhile, are more rough ‘n’ ready, a bit wilder. I feel that on the previous album, we were a mite constrained. This time ‘round, we were able to let loose a bit more.”
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Saturday, March 09, 2013 (9:00 PM - 2:00 AM)
Bimbos 365 Club 1025 Columbus Avenue, San FranciscoCA