“In my mind, each of the songs is a tiny boat I constructed, which I now hope to launch across a glassy pond, or -more like it- a turbulent sea," said multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, session player and performer James DiGirolamo in a recent press release about his new EP titled "Paper Boats."
Growing up in the Philadelphia area, he like so many others became involved in the Philly and surrounding area music scenes but James thought he would take a different approach with his writing talents and as he discovered; things don't always work out as planned.
"I wouldn't recommend my career path to anybody; it has been pretty much all over the place. I guess some of that just goes with the territory but when I was younger and just coming out of college I really thought I was going to write film scores and concentrate on stuff for TV and motion pictures. I moved up to New York, probably very overconfident; I got a few pieces on TV and I did a bunch of stuff. It was all work made for hire and it didn't take off the way that I thought it was going to and at the time I don't think I realized what it was really going to take to do that. New York City is a tough place to struggle so, I moved back to Nashville and just kind of started to get in local bands. I never really set out to do that so it came as a bit of a surprise to me that I was being asked to join bands and at some point in there, I think that my early exposure to the great singer-songwriters of the 1970's that my dad was constantly playing; I think that all sort of started to seep out and I very tentatively started to try my hand at songwriting."
The question which then comes to mind is; how does one transition from writing for film and television into a songwriter, a session player, a live performer when called upon and how does he pen his catalog of songs?
"I was a piano major in college and have since taught myself enough guitar and bass and drums to; I don't think I'm ever going to get a gig as a drummer but maybe eventually as a bass player and the guitar is probably second after the piano. I'm comfortable enough on rhythm guitar basics where I could conceivably add that to my list of side-man skills at this point," he started with a laugh. "Once again, I didn't start out to become a songwriter or a performer and those are interesting and very good questions. I think what tends to happen now, because I've been writing songs for a long time and it has only been in my last couple of projects that I have been getting any kind of real confidence in what I'm doing. I mention that to say that over this long period of time, I've been through the process of just writing a song going all the way through; whether it's the greatest thing I've ever written or whether I feel particularly good about it or not; let's call that the exercise of writing. My current way of doing it is still a little mysterious but I'll encapsulate it this way; I typically sit down with the guitar or at the piano and play a few chords or notes and sometimes something I play will strike my imagination or a melody will suggest words of a certain number of syllables or a certain phrase and certain things just tumble out. You have probably heard people say that they, "Write from the sub-conscious" a lot, I really think that's the one sentence way of stating my process, I write from the sub-conscious. I sit down and some days it feels like I've been struck by lightning and I have an idea and it almost feels like I'm just channeling it and I'm doing very little work; those are the best times. There are exceptions to that too, there are times when I have some part of it or an inkling that there is something there and if I dig a little more I'll find it; it can be done where I get the germ of an idea quickly and then spend quite a long time tinkering until I find just the right words or phrases or just revising it enough times until I really feel satisfied but most of the time it happens fast and it's a delight when that happens."
"Paper Boats" is a song or two shy of a full-length record and when asked as to why he stopped short of going for the gusto of a full-length; he responded quickly and confidently.
"It's six songs and that's a great question," he said with a laugh. "I had this material and some of it was kind of "Hot off the press" so to speak and a few of them I had started recording just before the pandemic, some of them I was kind of working on and tinkering with over a long period of time and I was trying to decide what to do with it all. There is quite a bit of diversity between the six of them and for some reason I was starting to feel like they were a document of a moment for me personally and I kind of like the way that they all relate to one another and I think that's why I landed on the six of those. I think I could've waited to expand it but I've moved on and written a whole bunch of other stuff since then and I'm going to try and do it a different way; I'm going to try and record in a more cohesive way. There are a couple of exceptions to this but on a lot of this stuff I played all or most of the instruments and that can take a really long time; you save money but you pay for it in effort and time. So, I think that is why I didn't try and expand it into a full length record."
"I recorded it here," he continued, "I live just north of Nashville in a suburb called Hendersonville. The majority of it was recorded just by me at home. There are two tracks where I went into Joe Pisapia's private studio, he is a great producer, guitar player and multi-instrumentalist and songwriter himself; he was kd lang's music director for a while and he was in Guster. Joe is from New Jersey originally but I can't remember what part; he had a band called Joe Mark's Brother and it was he and his brother Mark and a guy named "Hags" Haggerty and they all moved down here to Nashville like 25 years ago and never looked back and they're all doing really well. So, we recorded "Girl Who Has Everything" and "Top Of The World" on the same day at Joe's place with just me, Joe and a guy named Lex Price who was co-producing the tracks with me; Lex is a great producer and bass player himself who has also worked with kd lang, Shemeika Copeland, Rodney Crowell, Lee Ann Womack and Neko Case and he is also responsible for hiring me for other things as well."
James plans on doing whatever he can to promote the new release but he will do so with caution and claims that return to the stage as a solo act will be well thought out.
"Hopefully I'm going to hit the road. I'm not sure on what scale and I mean that right now but the plan is to start doing some shows. I have been very cautious about re-entering the world so to speak; I've got some irons in the fire on that right now so stay tuned because hopefully there will be some shows announced soon. It feels exciting, like I can't wait to do it because I've taken an extremely long hiatus of playing shows of my own; I'm talking like 15 years since I've even gone out to a writer's night. I've played with lots of other people in the meanwhile, so, it's exciting."
To discover more about James DiGirolamo, please visit https://www.jamesdigirolamo.com/.
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
