Excerpt from ART IN MENORCA – August 2024
In July (2024), singer James Kirby, originally from The Wirral, UK, arrived in Menorca, to play a series of concerts across the island as part of his 2024 World Tour. In April he performed in venues across the USA from Florida to Los Angeles and in June he travelled through Germany and Switzerland before arriving in Menorca via Girona.
Menorca is where James’ professional musical career began and from where his fan base grew from small beginnings to a worldwide network of admirers and contacts in the music industry. He is a multi-instrumentalist, with a mellow voice and distinctive percussive style of guitar playing. His music is a blend of folk, pop, blues, and indie rock, and his songs range from fast and furious to heartfelt and melodic. We caught up with him before his final concert in Menorca, at Es Claustre in Mahón, to find out more.
How did your professional music career begin?
In 2012, at the age of 26, I was working in an office but I was determined to make my living from my music. Every lunch break I was sending out emails trying to find work and one day an agency in Brighton came back to me and asked if I could sing cabaret as they needed someone to work a tourist season in Menorca. I was given a 6-month contract with TUI as a resident musician, in a number of hotels around the island. I worked 2-week cycles at different venues and my first live performance was at the Barcelo Hamilton hotel singing and playing the guitar for just two old ladies! I was expected to sing and play covers of well-known songs to please the audiences but from the beginning I mixed in a few of my own songs and by the third season I was playing all my own work. For those three years I lived at The Audax hotel, Cala Galdana.
I used the experience to learn the trade of a musician, how to read audiences and interact with them between songs. I tried out new songs as I was writing them and then at the end of each season, in the winter, I would return to the UK to record an album before bringing it back with me to Menorca the next summer. Sometimes it could be tough, one lady told me to ‘shut up’ as she was trying to read. Another time I looked on Trip Advisor and someone had likened my performance of cover songs to ‘porridge’. It was the latter remark that spurred me on to drop the covers and only
perform my own music.
Which instruments do you play and when did you start writing songs?
I started playing the guitar at the age of seven years old and I also learnt the piano and drums. I played in a number of bands ranging from indie rock to jazz orchestras. My father was my biggest inspiration as he was a church minister and there was music in our family life. At the age of 18, I applied to music colleges but was rejected and so I went off travelling around the world, busking, and playing my guitar whenever possible. I started to write songs in my early 20’s based on my experiences. The melody and the riff usually come first and the cord progression and then I home in on the lyrics and the meaning of the song. On stage I play the keyboard and acoustic guitars and I use a stomp box, a kick drum and looping to layer sounds. For this reason, I like to travel with my own rig as it is different to the equipment used by others. I like to use the guitar as a percussion instrument as well, surprising people by finding new and unorthodox techniques to make music from every part of the acoustic guitar.
How did you build up an international audience?
Just one example, I remember one evening I was playing on the terrace of the Port Mahón hotel and my music drifted down to the boats on the pontoons below. There was a group of Americans on a sailing yacht who liked what they were hearing, and they climbed the steps up to the hotel to find me. After the gig, I went on board their boat and they suggested I went to visit them in Florida where they helped me to find gigs, including some concerts in private homes. I find that his happens a lot in Menorca. When I am playing in calas for example the sound bounces off the cliffs and people come to find me. I was playing on the beach in Cala Galdana when Giles, the skipper of ORCA, a Menorquin llaut, heard me playing. This developed into a lasting friendship and led to us organising sunset cruises onboard ORCA, where people can listen to my music in more intimate surroundings out on the water. I find that
wherever I go in the world, someone who knows me from Menorca will get in touch to ask if I have somewhere to stay. My gigs around the world have pretty much all come about through people in Menorca.
After visiting Florida, I travelled around the USA. There are many live music venues with open mic sessions but in the good ones you may have to wait for up to 5 hours to play one song. In Nashville it was worth the wait as I received a standing ovation for my performance of “Rising” and people came up to me with their contact cards. I ended up writing songs at Dark Horse Recording Studios in Tennessee where the likes of Dolly Parton and Taylor Swift have written and recorded their hits.
Tell me about some of the songs you have written inspired by Menorca and the people here.
I released my “Foreign Land” album in 2017 and it’s a collection of songs about travelling, love, loss and people I’ve met along the way. The track “Delayed Again” was written at Mahón airport when I was trying to get back to the UK at the end of a long season playing 4 gigs a day; starting at the pool, then cocktail hour, followed by the main stage and then onto a late night bar somewhere around the island. The “6 Euros in my pocket” refers to the money the airline gave me to buy some food, although the shops were all shut as it was so late. Many listeners can relate to it when their flight is delayed and the song gets tagged in social media posts.
Pau Romero, who runs the Beat Garden studio in Barcelona, has become a good friend. I stopped off there first to record a single called “Hope” before catching the ferry over to Menorca in my camper van. My 4th Studio album will be recorded in Barcelona in early 2025 and Pau and myself will produce the album together ready for release in spring, ahead of another World Tour.
How do you see your career progressing from here?
I once sat next to a marketing man on a flight back from Mahón and after talking to me he said, “When you know why you are doing what you do, come back and talk to me and I can help”. I know that I want to help people either through teaching guitar and music or through my songs and lyrics. I like to explain a little bit about my songs when I am on stage. It is so rewarding when people come up to me after a show and say that a song has “given me hope” or that “I now know what I need to do”. In the pandemic I started to teach guitar online but even when I was working in Menorca, I liked to give lessons for free in my own time.
My big dreams are to win a Grammy award and to play on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury but also it would be great to play to a big audience in Menorca at a summer festival.
There is still time to catch James in concert if you are in the UK with performances around the country until December; or he will be back in Menorca next summer with his new album. You can find all his songs on Spotify and a list of his concerts on his website jameskirbymusic.com
