JAMES BAY: "Leap"

Published Jul 26, 2022, 7:00 AM

Young, fresh, and fabulous, James Bay joins me today on LOVE SOMEONE to talk about his new babies; daughter Ada, and a brand new album titled "Leap".  We laugh ironically at how both of us thought the pandemic would be a few weeks worth of inconvenience... and how it turned into so much more. That it fostered the creative process in James and led to another whole body of work is one of the positives. 

Join us for a delightful chat and get to know the charming, but very down-to-earth, James Bay. ~ Delilah  

So, how's your summer going. I have to laugh at how as adults we are so preoccupied with the temperature outside in comparison to how completely uninterested my children are. All they care to know is whether or not the sun is shining, can they get wet today? And is it too early for the first popsicle? Remember those summer days? I hope you allow yourself to revisit that time, even if it's just for a few stolen hours after a long day at work, or if you're lucky, maybe you can escape back into your childlike attitude towards summer for an entire glorious day or weekend, go on a camping trip, and suddenly you will be back in your childhood. Allow yourself to remember how wonderful it was to lay in wait for a grasshopper to come your way as he chewed on the end of a piece of tall grass, or how you would squeal in delight when the cold water from the sprinkler hit your bare back the first time. Play some music that reminds you of your fourth grade crush, and revel in summertime once again. Today's guest on love to someone may provide our children with memories of their favorite summer. He's a three time Grammy nominated and britt Award winning multi platinum singer, songwriter, producer, and guitarist who hails from the UK and that you have heard played on my show quite a bit with hits like let It Go and Hold Back the River. His music is soulful and stirring and speaks to that in all of us that yearns for and believes in the power of love. I invited him to join me today because he's got some brand new babies to brag about. The first is his new daughter, Ada, who made her entrance last fall. That's a hard act to follow up, but apparently it inspired some new music. His third full length album, Leap, was released on July eighth, and he's getting ready to hit the road on his much anticipated North American headline tour in August. I'm so looking forward to this conversation with the delightful James Bay, But first I want to do a little bragging myself on one of my podcast sponsors. I absolutely love everything that comes out of a box labeled Balsom Hill. They're huge sail this month will let you save big and bring home the magic of Christmas all July. You can get up to fifty percent on that dream tree you've had your eye on for so long. I've been using Balsom Hill decor in my home in my studio for years now, and everything still looks as fresh as the day it arrived. I say, it's never too early to get in the Christmas spirit, So I wait, find everything you need at Balsom Hill dot com, but hurry. The mid July Sail ends on Monday, August one. Welcome to love someone today. James Babe has kind of taken the world by storm, which is kind of weird because you seem so laid back, thank you so much, and so not about hype, and yet there's all this energy swirling about you right now. I think personally, I think because your sound is so unique, well, hype is pretty stressful, yeah, right, so, and you know, I've had my I feel as though I've had some experiences with it this far, and it's pretty it's pretty stressful, so I try to keep a little distance from it if I can. And it's kind of cool because everything I've read about you, or seen about you, or followed about you, you're pretty down to earth and laid back and I love that. Thank you. No, I appreciate what you're saying, and I understand and like, there are so many different ways to approach talking about this and to think about it and to approach it just myself as an artist, and I you know that those ways change. They kind of change as I grow and over time, you know, I'm I'm looking at it right now, I'm coming into I'm obviously I'm on album three. And it's been nearly ten years of sort of operating as I guess a professional artists, recording and touring because I signed a record deal about ten years ago, and I've been touring a little bit before that, and then I got really busy with that and recording once I signed, and then twenty my first album came out. So it's not quite been ten years of sort of putting albums out yet, but still I've been through different versions of like how to approach it, and of course on the first album that you are when you're brand new, and there's this thing they refer to as the shock of the new, which is always a very enticing and sort of delicious prospect for any music fans around the world. Myself included when I'm experiencing other artists, you know, debuting UM it, a lot of hype comes with it, and there's and and and there is the machine. You know, there is the music industry machine that that really kind of rears its head. And it's all a lot to take on, UM and a lot to deal with. And in my experience now, since then and since releasing you know, other music and other albums UM, I've had too. You have to kind of grow a thicker skin UM. But you have to learn which parts of it too. I've decided that there's parts of it that have been worth sort of embracing UM and kind of owning, and there are parts of it that I've had to learn to distance myself from because they can be I think it's actually kind of fair to say that there are there are versions of sort of hype and excitement that can get a little toxic and a little intense. Uh So, I'm so I'm trying to really UM see these sides of my life and work, and the line between those things blurs enormously. UM from from a from a hopefully a slightly more kind of wise perspective, but that's always relative to the amount of time you've been doing something, and I guess maybe I haven't been doing this that long in the grand scheme of things, and you know, next to how long I want to be able to do this for. Yeah, and if you configure that balance out now, you'll get to do it a lot longer because you'll live a lot longer, I hope. So you know what, let's just like, let's just touch on the kind of the pressures. There are so many different evolving pressures, um, and the music business is a good number of decades old at this point. If we if we look at, you know, the pop music business really kicking into gear some time around maybe the fifties, then it's then then it's it's it's it's not old now because it's clearly going to kind of last a lot longer. But things have sort of changed and evolved over that time. And yeah, i'd really like, I know, even at what I think is the beginning of my career, still I know i'd love to do it for a long time yet, So I'm gonna I've got to I've got to be I've gotta stay savvy in any way that I can stay savvy and stay grounded and uh, and you have a little one. I understand that kind of helps with that grounding process. Now. I mean, so my daughter Aida, she is nearly nine months old and um pulling herself up on the edge of the coffee table yet correct and the be table it is far too sharp. So that needs to go. M. Duct tape, duct tape, and um. Pool noodles. Yeah that I feel like pool noodles. Nice pool noodles are the answer for toddlers for everything. You can put them on the edges. You just slice them open. You know, go to a dollar store and get a pool noodle, slice it open, put it on the edge of everything. Oh, I love that. That's a great Yeah, that's a great one. So that's going to be happening as off tomorrow. But she so yes, what a way to bring everything back down to earth for me as an artist and you know, as a human being and now as a father, but like just the artist part. And you know, I've already mentioned about how that there's a line between my work life and my and my sort of personal life. Um, and there's a very blurry line as as a as a songwriter, M. The things sort of come very close to each other all the time, but having a baby really does bring everything back down to earth, and abuse took full wave, but in a very sort of stark and real way as well, because she doesn't understand even now, she doesn't have a clue what I do or what what what it's about. When I get like at some point in the in the in the early hours of the morning, or some crazy time at the random time in the afternoon or late at night. She wouldn't know about the late at night one. But suddenly I might be all dressed up and walking out the door to do something, to make a video, do a show, and like that's gonna you know, her her like approach to understanding that is going to change and change and change. And I have to stay with my feet planted strongly on the ground. Um as I as I kind of help her kind of understand what I'm doing, and so as not to like I've been trying to do all this time, so as not to just exist in my head in the clouds. Right, you don't impress me as somebody who would ever exist with your head in the clouds. I could be very wrong. Like I say, all I see is what I read and what Manny has shared with us, your record guy who has been a dear friend of ours for the years. But you seem, um, I'm not saying you're not affected by all the popularity, press and and sweet things people write about you. You know, we've changed the spelling of your last name from bay like bay watch like go out on the Ocean to bay as in babe because you're you're adorable. And I saw one article about why you are every man's man crush right now. Yeah, yeah, well, look, you know, I don't know that there is a very tiny percentage of a bunch of that stuff that is, if I'm being really real, is probably worth accepting as I moved through this life and try and carry on in the capacity that I have been doing for the rest of it, I need to just leave it. Because you've been in a long term relationship with somebody. I heard you say that you don't need women flirting with you, hitting on you, You don't need any one liners because you are with the person that you want to be with, And I thought, I love you for that. Oh, thank you so much. I feel as though I am I really do. Me and Lucy, we've been together since we were. We grew up in the same town. Where is that a small place right in the really I know England, the UK is a very sort of strange shaped country. But if there's a center point right in the middle, that's where we're from. Um it's called Hitching. There's about thirty thirty thousand, sorry, thirty thousand people there, so it's not a big place. Um, it's pretty suburb sort of suburban and suburban, suburban, what's the word whatever, Yeah, one of those words. It's pretty suburban. It's it's it's about an hour outside of London, which is kind of good when you're a kid. Sort of eventually it's not too far to get to that big exciting city. But like beyond that, it's, um, it's pretty run of the mill. It's not it's not incredibly exciting. Um, it's very easy to kind of grow up there. It was a pretty safe place. Everything's very local, so it was that was cool. But then they get to the point when when anybody's anything between sixteen and sort of nineteen years old, like myself, you gotta go, I gotta get out, I gonna move. I went when I was eighteen, Um, I moved away to sort of kind of discover myself eventually as as a as a solo artist that I wanted to be um. But yeah, no, that's where me and me and Lucy met there. We grew up there, and now we're living in big, scary London and traveling the world now and again, which is crazy. So I read in one of the articles that you found a guitar in the house that you were living in. Yeah, somebody just left a nice guitar lying around and you discovered in the basement. Kind of it's it's pretty much that. So my my my uncle owned a guitar for probably ten years, never learned to play it, and sold it to my dad. My dad owned that guitar for probably fifteen has never learned to play it, and put it in a cupboard in the spare bedroom in our house. And when I was eleven or maybe even younger actually, but I found it. I knew it was there, so probably I was like seven or eight, two years past, and I always thought about it being there, and I didn't think sort of too much more than that about it because I was interested in other stuff. And then I heard fantastic guitar riff a brilliant record called Layla by Derek and the Domino's Eric Captain's Band in the early seventies. It blew me away and I knew. I sort of felt this like lightning bolt shock of emotion rushed through me, and I sort of said to my dad, I have to don't help, I have to learn how to do this. I have to know. And it's that's how sort of sensational intense I guess kids are supposed to be. And I remember it sort of vividly. It's like, no, I gotta do it right now. I'm gonna learn. And I know there's a guitar in this house, and I didn't put together in my mind that he was playing that riff on a fired up, plugged in electric stratocast that like Fender electric guitar um, and that all we had in the covered upstairs was like a nylon string, a classical like acoustic guitar that you play like Flamenco music on. So I rushed to it and I just, you know, cut to the next cup year or so. I was just giving it my best shot. Eventually, one thing led to another, and I got a little bit better, a little bit better and then I got an electric guitar, and then I was off and away by the time I was twelve years old, Wow, I was. I was not much older when I started playing with a shape recorder and pretending I was on the radio. Really, so you should have been, you know, it was a different time even for me. Went back at that age, like we did have a computer in the house, but like it was a couple of years until like the Internet was so like accessible and YouTube existed, and when that stuff came along, I was I had up until that point, I've been listening to records UM and just picking out the notes and like learning to play by ear, which was a pretty invaluable sort of skill to to to build up. And then by the time YouTube came along, I'd already bought like a billion DVDs of my favorite artists, and then I was watching on YouTube and rewinding and slowing it down all my stuff and trying to learn from sort of watching people in every way that I could. Because I didn't have the patients for lessons, I tried lessons for a little while. I didn't have the patients for being so I was moving a little faster than that UM and then eventually a lot faster than that. So any all the like kind of I didn't have like a cell phone or anything either. I'm not quite the generation that that with like twelve year old had cellphones. I didn't have one of those until later. So all of that, like idle time. They say it's so important for creativity to just have hours where you don't actually have anything to do. Well, you've got like free time, and I really used that and to sort of mess around with the guitar endlessly. Can I give you some some motherly advice, Please do not give your daughter access to devices to distract her when she's little. That that that so me and Lucy both are really keen to do exactly what you're suggesting that. I know it sounds old fashioned, and I know I'm the mean mom. And I made the mistake with some children that I raised that are older now of allowing them to have devices, you know, when they were twelve, thirteen, fourteen. I will never do that again. Never. Well, I get it. I get it as much as I can. You know, I would just love for for for Ada not to be you know, obsessed with technology too quickly. It would be great for that to sort of be a gentle and gradual thing over time. So we're going to try. You know, we're like a one TV household, but there's not a TV in every room, for example. UM, So we're trying to be We're trying to be real gradual with that because just what you said about the idle time, playtime, and and kids entertaining themselves and learning how to how to think on their own instead of constantly being entertained with media, it's so precious, it's so vital, and mom, you know me, as an adult, I'm already unhealthily kind of addicted and I hate to confess it, you know, to to to using devices, even though I'll tell it myself and anybody else. But it's all for work and this, that and the other. It's not. It's it's too easy to sort of waste an hour or four staring into a screen, UM, when you know that idle time is important to just just exercise the imagination. So your new album, UM Leap is number Is this number four, number four, three, number three? There has been a bunch of EPs in between, but yeah, this is number three, number three. UM just released a couple of weeks ago. July eight, and it's it's true to your um. I don't want to say a collectic artistic. When I listen to your music, it feels real. It feels real. It doesn't feel like, oh, okay, this is a great hook and I'm gonna, you know, play four chords so that people will get stuck in their head like an earworm, and it's it feels like you're really sharing a story, an experience, or an emotion. And I love that. Thank you so much that you know, I don't mind like a colectic and all of that. Like you know, I don't. I can't. I tried to fit myself into one box and I just can't do it. You can't. Everything I read about you, people are trying to compare you to other people, and I'm like, no, well that's okay. You know, I'm with you. I'm on your side of that that whole kind of opinion and argument or whatever. But but people are going to do that, and ultimately, if they want to talk about my music, that's cooled. I guess I'd rather that than they didn't want to talk about it at all. So yeah, you know, I you know, it's funny when I told you I I fell in love with an electric guitar riff, and I spent the best part of a year learning to play on an acoustic guitar, and in that whole moment, long drawn out moment, and I've developed a passion for many different sounds, fields styles. I love pop music. When I was a little kid, even way before I learned to play the guitar. As a small child, I had the radio when I was playing records. As a creative child, I was drawing in all those moments, but I was listening to pop music, pop songs from the nineties and the early two thousand's and even from before that. My parents had little cassette collections and stuff we used to play, like old motown stuff my mom had and all that sort of thing. So I'm obsessed with all different lanes of music. And I think a lot of my favorite artists have had so many different eras. Some of them have stuck more strongly to sort of one lane, and it's just very gently over the decades they've existed, um and and others have changed. You know. David Bowie is one who who has drastically sort of shape shifted through time. And let's Dance, which was such a massive record for him in the eighties. It's pretty different to like changes from what I think is maybe nine sixty nine Eric Clapton was in Cream, what a brilliant band or a psychedelic electric guitar experience, and then he had a huge hit with a song called Tears in Heaven that really sounds particularly different, So you know, and that's just that's just to name two sort of older artists, but there are there are there are way more up to date ones as well that that applied just as much. And all I can't you know when I'm making so leap, you know when I'm making a record, and it's the case for Leap as much as it has been on previous albums. I can't stick to one dynamic. There has to be kind of roaring and raging, racing kind of ultimately like rock music, because that's something I'm really into. There will be softer, slower, maybe more soulful songs as well. Some will feel look more kind of stripped down to just a guitar and a voice, and some will have a bit more going on um and I really embrace all of that. And actually it's funny leap was made. It really wasn't made in any kind of way that I would like to make a record again, because the pandemic arrived on the world and I started, all right, the story is that I've finished this album in March. Oh my perfect timing, dude, right that the pandemic arrived, and we all said, okay, okay, it's okay, it's all right. We'll mix the album. We'll have to do it over zoom, but it'll be okay. And then in a couple of weeks, when this whole thing's blown over, and a couple of weeks we'll hit the road, we'll be able to tour, we'll be back with the fans. And two years later, and it did, and it did exactly. It did not happen to two weeks later. Two years later, obviously it was a different story. But by the end of when we finally sort of fully understood, I finally understood that it was it wasn't just going to be a couple of weeks or a couple of months. It was going to take some kind of while I started to write again, because the world wasn't opening up in the kind of way that I needed it to to really the album I finished back in March. It wasn't going to do that, so I started writing again. I wrote through the end of twenty twenty through Christmas, and I got a bunch of songs together that a lot of those songs I felt were maybe a bit better than at least half of the songs on the album i'd initially finished back in So already We're We're, We're. It's like a it's like a sort of scrap book, you know, tapestry of different sounds. But I just the songs are the most important thing to me, and that they're allowed whatever production that they sort of are asking for. So what I've wound up with is an album that was half made in Nashville, all in the same studio, and then half of it was made over the Internet with different producers in different parts of the world. One producer was based in New Zealand, one producer was based in two based in l a, another one was a different guy based in Nashville. So, you know, one of them I did on my own in London. So but I love it. You know, it's the most honest a piction of making a record through those times. And I wanted to like, I'm sort of proud of the facts I've been able to document that and also going back to everything I've just been saying about, you know, staying authentic to myself and all the different music that I love and all the different sounds and kind of dynamics and genres that I love. It nods to that as well. There are there's there's like rock guitar music on this album. There's like softer, more kind of acoustic leaning singer songwriter, heartfelt emotional songs on there. The stuff that's maybe a little bit more kind of soul inspired. Um, you know, there's lots of different sounds because that's who I am and that's what I love, and that's that's how I make music, even in a pandemic. Even in a pandemic. Yeah, I I can't complain about the pandemic because I have a studio in my home and I have two homes. Actually I have a smaller farm and then I have a very big farm. So when when it's done on me that you know, this has not gone to be over in two weeks or three weeks. I took the kids and we went to the big farm. Because if you've got to be shut in. I'd rather be shut in on five thousand five acres with horses and cows, and I have a studio there. And it really brought out I think in me and my show a depth that that was a good thing. And the time that I had with my kids was so good, so good. That was beautiful and important. And I mean, yeah, look we I think we all got a moment to sort of check in with ourselves. And I know it was very difficult for for some people the last couple of years really particularly hard, and and and I feel lucky that, Um, I'm sort of fortunate that when they said, Okay, we're gonna have to sit on the sofa at home for a while, that was quite sort of straightforward for me to do. That was the biggest complaint for me is of course it got a little boring and little testing at times, but like, yeah, it was there was some beauty and quality to the time that we all kind of before to spend. So now pandemic is is still there, but different. You're going to be able to tour. Where can people see you? Where can they find a schedule, how can they see the dimples in person? Did your daughter get your dimples. We're still waiting. We're still waiting to find that out. You know, she's her face hasn't quite grown enough. I can tell you quite confidently that she's absolutely gorgeous. Don't get me wrong. But then that's what all parents say about their babies. But I stand by it. Um. We are going on toys, we are and uh, you can find all the dates and stuff on my website. I'm doing a bunch of shows in the States with a brilliant bank called the lumin Ears. I'm going to go and open up for them for a while. They're playing in places including a Wrigley Field, so like some big stadium spots, which is gonna be a lot of fun to to be there. The limin Ears, by the way, if nobody has ever heard of them or are seeing them, fabulous. They are such talented musicians. Oh my word, check them out if you don't know them. But so we're gonna go open up for them. And then that's through August and September, and in between those shows, I'm gonna be doing headline shows of my own And really it's all just like getting back to America, which is somewhere that obviously I've not been able to come to for two and a half years or something. I used to spend between five and ten um times a year I was coming to the States typically, So it's nice to finally get back, and I'll be playing a bunch of my own headline shows, and really it's all just to sort of get things going in the States again and revisit all my fans who I've missed so much. So don't rule out UM being a busy year for me in America as well. I'm looking forward to being back. We're looking forward to you coming back, James. James isn't the only one who has information to share with you. I want you to know about another one of my fantastic podcast sponsors. 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Use Omega Xcel, Forward slash love to order this for yourself by one and get a second one free Omega xcel dot com, forward slash love or via phone eight hundred nine four zero zero five nine. That's eight hundred zero zero five nine nine. You know I I mentioned earlier a lot of things I read people try to compare you or put you in a lane with other artists. But when I first started listening to your music, the artist that came to mind not because you sound anything like him, you don't, but the honesty that I hear in your music reminded me of when I used to play Jim Crocy back in the day. I don't know if I know. Oh my gosh, you gotta look him up. He was um hm. He was ahead of his time in his authenticity and his vulnerability. And then he he died. It was very tragic, very solid. Um. But I do spot his last name is really here. Um. Yeah. And like I said, not not your style, not your voice, but your transparency. I guess that's the word I want to I appreciate that it's I'm learning constantly. UM. Here's a funny thing actually, so transparency and honesty and vulnerability. There's such important qualities to songwriting. And I find that just as a music fan, you know, in terms of the music that I love and I listened to um that I discover it. It's always the sort of the notes of honesty and vulnerability and that really kind of connect lyrically and musically really and like performance wise. Um, I'm also trying to unlearn as much as I can constantly. That's a sort of interesting angle that that might that might surprise. But like some of the most maybe the most brilliant and beautiful and best art that's created is born of some combination of passion and naivety. If you know, you can probably know too much about a process, and then all that's in your head during the process is that your your sort of knowledge of like how something is done. It's a difficult one because you can't turn back time, so trying to unlearn stuff is hard. Like, for example, one approach that's starting to fail me now is that I made all my music on the guitar, or I wrote all my music on a guitar, and I can do a few things on the guitar. At this point, I'm not too limited. Um, So I moved to piano, and eventually I'm starting to get okay at the piano. You know. Initially, like I was playing on a piano because I didn't know what I was doing, and it was all there was so much naivety, and and that brought its own sort of excitement in my writing. But yeah, like I said, you then you learned too much. So before long I'm going to be picking up a trumpet on to write songs on it because I don't know how to play that. Glenn Campbell learned how to play the bagpipes for the same reason. Wow, well there you go. I don't think my baby or or Lucia, neither of them are going to appreciate the bagpipes. Probably not if you practice them at home. James, I could speak with you all day. Thank you for spending time with us, and the best, the best to you and your family and your baby and your music. And I'm I'm looking forward to to just everything that you produce, that you that you share with the world, because I think you are changing the world one heart at a time with the lyrics of your music. That's a very beautiful thing to say. Thank you so much a lot of for having me as well. It's it's a joy. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Have a wonderful rest of your summer. Nice one. Thanks so much. I hope I see. It's some point comes to a shot. I will, I definitely will, and I will come backstage and give you a big hug and just bless you and your family in that world again. That is exciting someday soon, I hope. God bless you. Thank you, James Bay bub bye Hoamy. Summer is a time to make memories, a time to give into laziness, if only for a few moments at a time, and to savor all that is right with the world. Even though our cars now have a c it's still a perfect time to crank the tune ups, roll the windows down, let the wind catch our hair, and sing along to something that makes us feel good. I'm so glad there are artists like James Bay out there who continue to create just that kind of music, the dedication in the making, sort of stuff that will be requested by my listeners for years to come, and that the kids of today will hear when they are having babies of their own, and it will take them back to sweet summers of their youth, when all they cared about was whether or not the ice cream truck would come through their neighborhood that day, and if they could figure out if the boy or girl they had a crush on like them back. Catch up with James Bay on Facebook at James Bay and on Instagram at James Bay Music for all the latest news and get james new album Leap, available everywhere right now. You should also go to James Bay dot com to see if he'll be anywhere near your hometown while he's touring this summer, and if he is. Get tickets. In the meantime, join me on my nightly radio show, and I will do my best to help you get through the summer heat, taking your calls and dedications, sharing stories, and playing all your favorites. Give my daily podcast, Hey it's Delilah, listen to and come back and join me on Love Someone in two weeks, when I'll be setting down with another inspiring guest. I can't wait to spend more time here with you.

LOVE SOMEONE with Delilah

In a world that can feel divisive and bleak, it's easy to get caught up in feelings of hopelessness, 
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