What is a successful music career?
When I started promoting music it was deemed as failure not to have at least 3 hit singles off of any album, something against all the odds and big label budget Love and Money where never successful at, much to a young James Grant’s chagrin, I know I was there up close to his then very chagrinliness!
low and behold fast forward half a life time and James Grant has now been making his living in music for over 30 years, that in these post apocalyptic music injury times is by all possible measure a successful music career.
The hip but hitless Love and Money were also against the odds and norms of the time regular room fillers for this fledgling promoter back in those heady halcyon days. I remember one particular show when I was booking Jings In Dingwall that sold out 700 Tickets in one day, no online booking then, people had to go to a ticket outlet and physically get a ticket, travelling from all over the Highland for that and for the show on the night.
James was popular then and has endured now because of his smokey quality of performance and song and to extrapolate a whisky metaphor till it gives out all it’s flavours, he is now matured in the oak barrel of a very Scottish music scene into a true Scottish classic!
On the very point of critical collapse of the industry that had
contrived against him he was flexible and talented enough to
reinvent himself, turning funk into folk forming an enduring
musical symbiotic friendship with Gaelic singer Karen
Matheson bringing cool to the then very traditional Celtic school,
just as the Celtic Conections were all heading home to his native
Glasgow in a heady Big Bang festival boom that now defines the
start of every year for the city he help introduce an eclectic element
that has fuelled that boom.
I had the pleasure of inviting him and Karen for the first ever
Belladrum Festival In 2004, his and her polar popularity and
disparate cult Highland following doing much to establishing
that event and setting a president of eclectic excellence the Tartan
Heart is now well known for too.
I’m delighted to see I’ll catch up with James again at the March
Into Pitlochry Weekend (what a treat) tickets as you would
expect are selling fast! https://www.marchintopitlochry.co.uk/
Editorial
Rob Ellen