Park Theatre presents:
Early James wsg. The American Hotel System
Friday February 21, 2025
Doors @ 7:00PM | Show @ 8:00PM
18+ or with adult supervision
Tickets:
$20 in advance | $25 day of show | $50 VIP Premium Comfort Seating (balcony)
$75 Table for four GA UPGRADE (doesn't include tickets)
Fredrick James Mullis Jr. born June 2 1993 known professionally as Early James is an American singer-songwriter He is signed onto studio-label Easy Eye Sound the studio-label of Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach
Early life
James was born and raised in Troy Alabama At the age of 16 he received his first guitar from his aunt for Christmas He began writing songs shortly thereafter citing James Taylor and Johnny Cash as formative influences on his music
Career
James grew up in Troy Alabama where he was raised by the women in his family He realized he could seek a career as a musician at age six when he watched a local musician play covers at a family function and began playing the guitar at age sixteen when he was gifted one for Christmas His friend was the frontman for the local band Fire Mountain and told him that he could begin opening for them if he started performing original songs At that point he began writing his own music
At the age of 21 James moved to Birmingham Alabama to pursue music professionally It was here that he met Adrian Marmolejo and formed their band Early James and the Latest Drawing inspiration from Birmingham's diverse music scene James began to cultivate a sound containing elements of blues folk rock and classic country
Early James released some early songs on his YouTube channel and performed them from 2016 to 2019 such as Tinfoil Hat and Gravy Train
Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys discovered James while the songwriter was working in Birmingham Auerbach liked James' unique style and asked to produce his debut album
On December 5 2019 James announced his debut album Singing for My Supper would be released on March 13 2020 by Nonesuch and Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound He also released his first single from this project Blue Pill Blues Subsequent singles from this project It Doesn't Matter Now and High Horse were released on January 23 2020 and February 13 2020 respectively Early James described Singing for My Supper as being about disillusion in styles that glance back to the 1970s and before
In 2020 James planned to be on tour supporting Shovels and Rope The Lone Bellow The Marcus King Band and The Black Keys Many of the shows were cancelled due to the pandemic but James performed in several virtual shows including with The Marcus King Band In a performance covered by Rolling Stone for its changes to the Band's The Last Waltz James rewrote lyrics to The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down to reframe it as a critique rather than what some saw as a celebration of the Confederacy
James supported the Lone Bellow on their Half Moonlight Tour in 2021 He performed solo at the Newport Folk Festival in July 2021
On August 19 2022 James released his second studio album Strange Time To Be Alive One song Real Lowdown Lonesome featured Sierra Ferrell Songs such as Wasted and Wanting and Dance in The Fire had already been played live as early as 2018 In late 2022 Early James started his first headlining tour beginning in Texas which he showed his enthusiasm for by writing a song about the tour
EARLY JAMES: MEDIUM RAW
“It’s a house with a lot of character,” Auerbach says. “I’ve always loved it. I always felt inspired when I was there. I knew it would be a fun place to do something. It’s over a hundred years old. It’s got the old plaster on the walls, plaster ceilings, old wallpaper. There are big oak floors and an oak stairwell. The first floor has twelve-and-a-half-foot ceilings. It’s pretty awesome. But it’s not a recording studio by any means.”
“We had to drag all the gear in there. We set the little mixing console upstairs — this crazy, wild old ’50s Universal Audio tube console that I’d just gotten and fixed up, which was built by FAME Studios’ Rick Hall for his studio in Memphis — in a spare bedroom, and we ran the wires down the stairs. We set up James and everyone in separate little rooms downstairs. James’ little Princeton amp was right behind him, there were no baffles or anything, and so when he was Early James recorded his first two Easy Eye Sound albums, Singing For My Supper (2020) and Strange Time To Be Alive (2022), at the studio inside the vaunted label’s Nashville headquarters. But for James’ third release, Medium Raw, producer and Easy Eye Sound label head Dan Auerbach envisioned something quite different for the Alabama-bred singer-songwriter-guitarist’s rawboned, sometimes scarifying music.
“Day of the first session, I had my GPS routed to Easy Eye,” James recalls. “We ran into some traffic, and I texted [engineer M.] Allen [Parker] — ‘Hey man, sorry, we’re gonna be about 15 minutes late.’ And he said, ‘It’s OK, we’re still getting set up at the house.’ And I was like, ‘What house?’ ‘We’re recording at this house, it’s really cool.’ It was news to me! It felt unusual in the moment, which I think makes you play the songs differently. But I’m really happy with and proud of the results.”
“I wanted to try to find that power of when I first saw him, when it was just him and his guitar,” Auerbach explains. “After working with him a couple of times in the studio, I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to do it in the same kind of way. The comforts and luxuries of the studio, where you’re able to hear everything and make adjustments and changes, wasn’t right for this project.”
“Some of my favorite albums are those Arhoolie records produced by Chris Strachwitz that were recorded in houses, by Fred McDowell, Lightnin’ Hopkins. I felt like we might get better results if we did it in a house.”
The house in question, known as “Honky Chateau,” was an old Nashville property owned by photographer and artist Buddy Jackson.
soloing it was all bleeding into his vocal mic. Adrian Marmolejo, James’ bassist since the beginning, was in the hallway, peeking around the corner. We had these beautiful microphones sucking up the soul of the house. It sounded fucking amazing. When you have headphones on, you can hear that room. You can even see the room when you close your eyes.”
James notes that pretty much everything you hear on Medium Raw was, as its title suggests, cut au naturel.
“There are just two overdubs, on ‘Rag Doll’ and ‘Nothing Surprises Me Anymore,’” he says. “We had intended to get a violin solo on ‘Nothing Surprises Me Anymore,’ and Dan said, ‘Ah, I came up with something.’ On the trio tracks, it was a challenge. Jeff Clemens, who drummed, was two rooms away — I couldn’t see him. We didn’t have in-ear monitors, and it was the first time for him hearing any of those songs. I love his drumming with G. Love [& Special Sauce] and Kenny Vaughan so much. You can hear Jeff kind of tiptoeing through it, and it makes the song move in a really cool way. It’s not hyper-polished, but it has Jeff’s confidence, and you can’t teach that.”
In many ways, the approach harkened back to James’ very first recording, a four-song EP he cut in Birmingham and released in 2017. “Someone said, ‘You should just release an EP,’” he recalls. “So me and Adrian, on his lunch break, recorded those four songs. There was construction outside of the studio, so we had to do it in the console room, which is not unlike this new record. If you listen closely, you can hear power saws next door.”
Like that first quartet of recordings, Medium Raw lives up to its name, presenting its brace of smart, playful, and often fiercely rocking original songs to intimate life with a stunningly vital sound that thrives on its lived-in real-world ambiance.
Beyond seven James originals — six previously unrecorded numbers and the fan favorite “Dig To China,” which dates back to that first EP — the new album includes songs co-written with Auerbach and top Nashville songwriter Pat McLaughlin (“I Got This Problem”); Sheryl Crow’s frequent collaborator Jeff Trott (“Nothing Surprises Me Anymore”); roots singer-songwriter Langhorne Slim (“Go Down Swinging”); Irish songwriter Mick Flannery (“Upside Down Umbrella”); and James’ former Birmingham roommate Ryan Sobb (“Unspeakable Thing”)
The writing continues to display the hallmarks of James’ distinctive, one-of-a-kind style: whip-smart wordplay, upended clichés, humor both light and dark, and a deep intelligence that frequently reflects a literary sensibility.
The self-deprecating musician says, “I’m really good about picking up books and getting what I need from ’em. I’m really bad about picking up something and getting what I need and putting them back down again. I am a huge Cormac McCarthy fan. Some of his books are very hard to read, just because of the way they make you feel. I’m working on Blood Meridian now for the third time.
His musical sensibility has leaned toward the hard stuff from an early age: “I remember getting obsessed with the blues and getting obsessed with old country. My first favorite musician was Hank Williams. There was something about how dark that music was. I could listen to Hank Williams on repeat and never get tired of it. Hank Williams, Jr., lives in my hometown of Troy, Alabama, and he and my dad were hunting buddies. They still run into each other at Julia’s Restaurant in Troy. I listened to a lot of Howlin’ Wolf, and his guitarist Hubert Sumlin — I thought that was Howlin’ Wolf playing the guitar.”
With Medium Raw now ready to be served, James is embarking on touring (backed by Marmolejo and drummer Joey Rudisell) that will take him through the U.S. and return him to Europe, where he has developed an enthusiastic fan base, for dates in the Netherlands, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, and Denmark.
Like the rambling bluesmen of old, whose repertoires would mutate from night to night, James says audiences should expect him to work some new wrinkles into his songs on stage: “I’m trying to play dress-up with this record on the road. You never know what it’s going to be wearing. It depends on what thrift store we get to.”
