james hollingsworth - singer / songwriter / guitarist / human

"The much-touted young Bristol-based guitar wizard" - 5 best gigs - The Independent Read more Quotes

England-based singer/songwriter/guitarist James Hollingsworth has a unique, complex guitar style, reminiscent of Andalusian guitar as well as modern rock. Click for James' setlist - a Living Repertoire

"What a Singer!" - John Burns, Producer Genesis, Burning Spear, JEBO & others.

As well as being known as an inspired solo singer/songwriter/guitarist, James gained a strong reputation as lead singer and frontman with rock band JEBO from their first gig until he left the band in Spring 2009 to pursue his solo work and spend more time with his houseplants.

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Collaborations and Compilations:

JEBO | Sean McBride | Sandro Granda | Xavier Panades | OpenMikeCafe
Art for Lands Sake | Wayfaring Strangers | Earthstars | Figure of Speech

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28/01/10 - James has been confirmed to play a set on Saturday 13 March @ Winters End Festival, in Stroud. Also on the bill are Magenta, Galahad, Touchstone as well as fellow Bristol-ites Crimson Sky (Bristol) and Andonova (based in Cheltenham). The festival website annouced: "James Hollingsworth is a Bristol-based singer-songwriter with an exciting guitar style. He will be best known to prog audiences as the former lead singer of Jebo. We are thrilled that James has agreed to play a short afternoon acoustic set at the Festival." The very same evening James will play a full set at The Prince Albert, also in Stroud.

08/01/10 - James now has a Facebook artist page - James Hollingsworth (Musician/Artist) - please show your support!

02/01/10 - Happy New Year! Download the taster mp3 from the forthcoming second disc of James' double album Eight Your Nature here. It's called Deny Denial, released today at 5.12 pm GMT, 512 days (8 x 8 x 8) after the release date of the first disc, 08/08/08.

04/11/09 - James' performance of words and music at the Garden of Awen event at the Chapel Arts Centre in Bath was a great success. Host Kevan Manwaring said in his blog (where you can read the full review):

"The evening ended with a blistering set from guitar-shaman and sublime songsmith, James Hollingsworth. He was ‘resurrected’ for a stunning encore of Led Zep’s classic ‘In My Time of Dying’ – a suitable way to end our evening themed on ‘Death & Rebirth’."

18/09/09 - James has been made Artist of the week by Lemonrock, the live music website. Nice.

09/09/09 - Free mp3 Download - get it here! This is an instrumental exactly 9 minutes and 99 seconds long called Paradise Lost (Book One), inspired by the work of John Milton, the 17th Century English poet, where the multitude of fallen Angels wake up for the first time in the lake of fire. Milton wrote "Nine times the space that measures day and night to mortal men, he with his horrid crew lay vanquish'd, rolling in the firey gulf". This is the first track of an album called Narcissus, each track will be available for free download until they total 9 tracks and they become a CD release costing (yes, you guessed it) £9.

02/09/09 - Great News! James' music has been played on BBC 6Music's BBC Introducing show, hosted by Tom Robinson no less. They contacted James asking for a copy of his song Way Down South and played it on Monday 24th August along with a phone interview with Rachel, the lady who recommended James to them via the link on the promo page of this website.

Rachel and her partner Ade came to James' recent gig in Polperro (Cornwall) after a friend of theirs, who'd witnessed a Hollingsworth gig in Wales, told them he was a 'must see'. Live on the air, she praised James' unassuming approach and the passion in his performance, saying his music "captures your soul!!" Here's the tracklisting for the show.

03/06/09 - 'The Joyful Returning' – new CD released today! It's a compilation of Journeys, more than 72 minutes of music, available from today for £6. This cd comprises a load of far-out music almost guaranteed to bring you back to where you are already. Go to James' MySpace Blog to view the track listing or just press the Buy Now button below.

19/05/09 - The West Sussex County Times did a nice piece on James last week in anticipation of his successful gig at the Boar's Head in Horsham. The venue described the set as "simply magic". Read the preview here, or click the picture.

10/05/09 - After a long and committed term as singer and frontman with rock band JEBO, James has now left the band. He was last seen outside the Wellington pub in north Bristol driving a gold-coloured Vauxhall Astra into a red-ochre sunset.

29/04/09 - Click here for the BRFM Video interview and studio set. Included in this 65 minute video is a new song, 'Get back to the Here and Now', which James wrote an hour before the interview using a mandolin he took down from the studio wall, dusted off and repaired. Other songs include 'You're not the only one' (from the Coming Home to Stay album), 'Deny Denial' (from the forthcoming second disc of James' Eight Your Nature album) and the frequently requested Arabesque instrumental 'Dervish'. Versions of the songs encoded at higher quality will be posted on YouTube and Myspace in due course...

12/03/09 - Get the new CD, Precession of the Albums, here! For just £5 you get 12 songs hand-picked from the live favourites so often requested at gigs. There's more information on the album page here including track-listing, or just press the button below to order it immediately:

11/03/09 - BRFM The Vault - Live Video Netcast, will broadcast an interview with James and a live performance tonight. It will be repeated at 13.30 on Sunday 15 March and also go out as a Radio broadcast on 97.3 FM in South Wales. You can watch the Netcast AGAIN here.

18/02/09 - Tonight James will be live on-air with BCfm Drivetime Show, the local Bristol Radio station at 18.30 GMT. Also! A new £5 cd is available - comprising 12 songs hand-picked from the live favourites so often requested at gigs. It's called Precession of the Albums and it's a bargain. More details to follow!

08/01/09 - Happy New Year! This site has recently been updated with Song Pages, including live favourites One Saturday and Way Down South. James plans to use these pages to showcase his songs, and as a platform for expressing the thoughts that inspire him.

Summer Festival bookings are starting to come in including Two Rivers Festival in Chepstow on the first weekend in July. All gigs up to September this year have now been added to the Gigs Page.

04/11/08 - Good News! James received a call this morning offering a gig at the prestigious St Georges Hall supporting Cara Dillon, who Q MAGAZINE describe as having 'Quite possibly the world's most beautiful female voice.' The other act fell through, so James is happy to fill in at the last minute, it's very short notice: tomorrow! Wednesday 5 November. James is on at 7.30pm, tickets are from £16 in advance (£18 on door), you can book online here. Details are on the gigs page. Meanwhile, James is planning to upgrade his studio facilites asap so he can release the second cd of his Eight Your Nature album.

30/09/08 - Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, the second disc of James' first double album is not ready to be released as scheduled. More details on James' Blog. On a positive note, the tracks are sounding great!

08/08/08 - the first part of James' new double-album Eight Your Nature is now available! The first cd is packed with 80 minutes of archive and live material, including the much lauded Rumi, which appeared on the Wayfaring Strangers cd in the US. It's available for download on Soundclick or click the Buy Now button to order the cd. CD Two of studio material will be released in a simple sleeve and booklet to complete the double-case for all who buy CD One during the initial first 8 weeks. The mp3 cd of 8 albums will be released with the second phase so that it may include this double-album.

22 July 2008 - James had a great live review this month in the Wiltshire Ocelot, you can read it here.

The acoustic band's performance at Priddy Folk Festival on July 13 was brilliantly received to great anticipation from a large gathering of festival goers. The band will be playing more gigs after a period in the studio.

James has announced the release of his 8th album, entitled 'Eight Your Nature', which will be an album of 8 songs released on 08/08/08. Continuing with the concept heralded by 'Seventh String' on 07/07/07 (with 7 songs), James plans to release similar projects until 12/12/2012. There will be a close artistic/symbolic harmony of artwork, and musical and lyrical content (both personally and culturally) with each of these 'numerical' releases. The 'Eight Your Nature' album will be released in two phases, separated by an eight-week interval (marked by the eighth day of the concurrent Mayan Calendar month). The initial release will include a double-CD case with one CD packed with live recordings, archive material and demo's of songs to be included on the second CD which will later complete the double-album. Actually there will be 8 albums on 08/08/08, as James will also be releasing all 8 of his solo albums to date on a single mp3 CD. [nb meanwhile, the originally planned follow-up to Coming Home to Stay will be released at a still later date]

30 May 2008 - James' music is now available for a limited time only for FREE download (in the USA only, sorry) from Amie Street! Also, you can claim a $5 electronic "gift card" <= click the link to download James' music or songs from tens of thousands of other independent artists. It's a promotional thing... make use of it while ye may!

10 May 2008 - Final confirmation of Wayfaring Strangers - Tim Buckley Sessions, a double bill with The Mandrake Project at Bath Fringe Festival's wonderful Spiegel Tent have been announced, the date being Tuesday 27 May. James will be playing a set of songs by the late, great Tim Buckley with Sandro Granda (percussion), Zac Gregory (double bass) and Danny Shayler (Chris Jagger's lead guitarist). Also confirmed for the acoustic band (without Danny but with Sean McBride on flute/sax) are Friday 4 July @ Two Rivers Festival in Chepstow and Sunday 13 July @ Priddy Folk Festival. See the gigs page for details.

James' album Coming Home to Stay is now available for high quality download (320 kbps) at Tune Tribe.

19 March 2008 - James has a new interview posted on the TSM Radio website - it's here. Also! There are new videos on the images page AND JEBO have signed a deal with Öettemusic in Germany, who do everything a record company do except force musicians to sell their grandmothers' furniture in order to pay for 'costs'. JEBO will give finished albums to Öettemusic, who will take a reasonable cut of the proceeds from their marketing and sales efforts. We can confirm that Champagne was involved in closing the deal.

James' acoustic band is shaping up with the addition of Zac Gregory on Double Bass - the set at Priddy Folk Festival will include this new line-up. Meanwhile work proceeds on James' new album, which will include many new tracks as well as live favourites There's more to Life, Wondering where you're going and Time Rolls On.

31 January 2008 - James' song Way Down South, from the album Coming Home to Stay has reached number 3 in the Soundclick Acoustic Rock Chart. Click here to listen to this song!

28 January 2008 - Steve Parkhouse has kindly asked James to be his guest live on air and sing a few tunes tomorrow (Tuesday 29 January) at about 1 pm (UK Time) on BCFM (Bristol Community Radio FM). If you are in the Bristol area you can tune in on 93.2 FM and the rest of the World can listen online here. The show will be repeated the following morning at 1:00 UK time (8:00 pm US Eastern Time). Click here for Time Zones.

31 December 2007 - James' interview with Xavier Panades is now up on the Bristol Rocks Website!

New Year message from James: "Thank you all for your support in 2007! It's been a great year for me. I released 2 solo cd's (and produced Xavier's), relaunched this website and played many gigs including top venues such as Loreley with JEBO and a solo support for Hazel O'Connor at the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury. Plus my online Plays with Soundclick increased from 4,644 in the year 2006 to 21,891 in 2007... with the new JEBO album in progress and several solo festival dates already confirmed, 2008 looks set to be interesting! Happy New Year to you all! Peace, Peace, Peace!"

21 November 2007 - James' song Way Down South, from the album Coming Home to Stay has been made mp3 of the week on Lemonrock live music website, AND has reached number 4 in the Soundclick Acoustic Rock Chart. Click here to listen to this song!

16 November 2007 - Current holder of the office of Bard of Bath, Ash Mandrake, asked James to be one of the 3 or 4 judges of the competition to elect the 12th Bard of Bath on Saturday 8 December at Invention Arts Centre, Bath. Each Bard holds the position for 12 months. Of course, James is delighted to be asked, and pleased to accept the honour of being on the panel. ps the new Bard of Bath is Thommie Gillow

8 November 2007 - The support for Hazel O'Connor (Breaking Glass) on Sunday 4 November at Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury was a great success, there was a long queue of good people waiting to buy James' CD's, sign up to the email list, and offer congratulations. The promoter at the Theatre invited James to return and also, in his capacity as a tour-manager, to support a well-known artist on their forthcoming UK tour (subject to this artist's approval). Hazel and her band were most welcoming as were the crew.

In fact, Hazel playfully taunted James that his dressing room was haunted with the ghost of comic genius Eric Morecombe who had his third and final heart-attack there 1984. Thankfully ill-circumstances did not repeat themselves and, perhaps rather disappointingly, no comic poltergeist activity was in evidence.

16 October 2007 - The site was updated to include the first compilation album from Open Mike Cafe, which includes James' song Cast Down from the Skies (from the 2007 album Coming Home to Stay)

15 October 2007 - The site was updated to include the compilation album Art for Lands Sake, which includes James' song Still Lights up the Rain (from the 2007 album Coming Home to Stay) and a track by the legendary Rory McLeod. The CD is a fund-raising venture for the buying of land to be nurtured using the methods of Permaculture.

18 September 2007 - the Promo and Gigs pages have been updated with loads of ideas on how you can help promote James' music and gigs. There's info on posting album reviews, printing posters, and html code for posting banners if you have a MySpace profile (or similar).

27 August 2007 - message from James - "apologies to anyone out there in the world who's never even heard of me for receiving spam from the jameshollingsworth.com domain recently. I know that this has nothing to do with my email list by the way, I do not share that information with anybody! It's not a virus either. I only know it's been going on because I've received more than a 1500 returned emails from System Administrators in two enormous batches. This gives an idea of how many emails went out originally, but no idea about who's using my web-identity as a return-path. Hopefully, the new contact page will protect me from such things in future."

11 August 2007 - the support slot has now been confirmed for Hazel O'Connor (Breaking Glass) on Sunday 4 November at Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury. James will play a 30 minute set to open the show. See the Gigs page for details.

28 July 2007 - James has recently returned from a tour in Germany with JEBO which included a show at Loreley, supporting ASIA, Jethro Tull and Fish. The trip was very successful, firmly establishing JEBO with their target audience. There's a tour blog kindly hosted by Bristol Rocks. Check out this video of the band's performance on YouTube!

7 July 2007 - James' new album, Seventh String was released

22 June 2007 - this Website was relaunched.

The new site features a redesigned song-page with lyrics, and clips (full-length versions of are available for high-quality download at a small charge on many sites around the world including i-Tunes, Woven Wheat Whispers and Soundclick), song and lyric pages, artwork, photo's and much more added content. The concept of including track dates on all of James' album releases as part of the biographical record of his catalogue been included on the new website.

“This has always been a plan,” James says, “songs often shed light on the meaning of other songs written at that time. As the website grows, it will relate and link the song pages together, not just showing songs listed in order of the album they were released with, but also showing them in chronological order of their initial inspiration. This is one of the advantages of the web – it's a dynamic medium and I plan to use it to present my body of work not just an advertising space for buying music, but as an integrated kind of 'gallery space', almost as a piece of art in its own right."

On Friday 1 June at 18.20 GMT James had another BBC interview, this time on BBC Radio Somerset's Drive programme with Jess Rudkin, who probed James regarding his art-driven approach to songwriting.

James has written a review of a recent benefit gig for the Stop the War Coalition - it's here.

James' song, Sooner or Later, reached number 4 (out of 10,450+) in the Soundclick Acoustic Folk chart. Click here to hear the track - join for free and vote!

Listen online to James' second BBC interview which took place live on air on Saturday 28 October 2006 with the lovely Faye Hatcher on BBC Radio Gloucestershire. James reports he enjoyed the interview which included him landing a job as a Traffic Bulletin announcer. Listen to the whole interview here! Alternatively, you can listen to just James' performance of his song, One Saturday, here.

JEBO's appearance at The Royal Albert Hall in April 2005, supporting The Musical Box firmly established the band as one to watch. JEBO were asked to support The Musical Box again at the end of February 2006 at Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall, which was also a great experience.