December 10, 2012
JOSÉ JAMES ANNOUNCES 2013 U.S. TOUR DATES
JAMES SET TO MAKE NATIONAL TV DEBUT DEC. 18 ON TBS CONAN;
BLUE NOTE DEBUT NO BEGINNING NO END TO BE RELEASED JAN. 22
José James has announced his winter 2013 U.S. tour dates in support of his forthcoming Blue Note Records debut, No Beginning No End, which will be released on January 22. The tour will kick off January 23 in his hometown of New York City with an album release show at the Highline Ballroom with other stops along the first leg including Washington DC, Boston, Chicago and Minneapolis. After a month-long tour in Asia and Australia throughout February, James will be returning to the U.S. in March for a run of West Coast dates that includes Oakland, San Francisco, and a Los Angeles show at The Del Monte Speakeasy on March 12.
James is also set to make his national TV debut on December 18 when the singer-songwriter will make an appearance on TBS Conan performing his song “Trouble.”
JOSÉ JAMES – 2013 U.S. TOUR DATES
Jan. 23 – Highline Ballroom – New York, NY
Jan. 24 – Howard Theatre – Washington DC
Jan. 26 – Scullers – Boston, MA
Jan. 29 – Cedar Cultural Center – Minneapolis, MN
Jan. 30 – Lincoln Hall – Chicago, IL
Feb. 10-Mar. 6 – Asia & Australia Tour
Mar. 9 – The New Parish – Oakland, CA
Mar. 10 – Brick & Mortar Music Hall – San Francisco, CA
Mar. 12 – The Del Monte Speakeasy – Los Angeles, CA
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“It’s not nearly enough to say that a musician mixes jazz, soul and funk, because so much has been built around that intersection since the 1970s,” wrote Ben Ratliff in The New York Times earlier this year. “The singer José James lives around that intersection too. He’s a romantic baritone with a deep-funk band, stretching out songs, evoking both the ’70s of Roberta Flack and Gil Scott-Heron and the ’90s and oughts of J Dilla.” Ratliff continued, “But Mr. James, who has revealed himself in stages over the years, is a very different kind of singer than D’Angelo. He’s a little more acoustic singer-songwriter, a little more delicate. He’s clearer, more disciplined and lower key; he can move you with silence and the pure strength of his vocal tone.”
The Minneapolis-born, Brooklyn-based James is a musical omnivore whose career path has steadfastly followed its own rhyme and reason. He is an artist that resists being pigeonholed, equally at ease on stage with a jazz legend like McCoy Tyner as he is in the studio with electronica pioneer Flying Lotus. No Beginning No End is a seamless musical experience that moves between different styles with remarkable fluidity, bound together by James’ transcendent voice. Conceived, recorded and produced independently, the album is James’ most personal statement yet and boasts collaborators including noted producer/bassist Pino Palladino; pianist/composer Robert Glasper; R&B singer/songwriter/guitarist Emily King; international French-Moroccan singing star Hindi Zahra; and the 2011 Thelonious Monk Competition winner pianist Kris Bowers.
“No Beginning No End sums up how I feel about music right now,” says James. “I don’t want to be confined to any particular style. I decided I didn’t want to be considered a jazz singer anymore and that was really freeing. Once I realized that jazz singing is just something that I do and it’s just a label, it freed me as an artist to just write without any boundaries.”
