James News Archive January 2007

Tim Booth has confirmed to www.timbooth.co.uk that he is half way through recording the follow-up to his debut solo album Bone (buy from HMV) which he aims to complete during the course of the year between James commitments. He has been working with KK and Lee Muddy Baker as well as Phillip Shepherd, who worked on the Manchester Passion that Tim appeared in at Easter 2006. A new website will be launched to coincide with the release of that album.

Lee and Robin from Tim's band The Individuals are now playing with My Federation. They are appearing at shows at Brighton Komedia on 1 February, London Borderline on 21 February and Brighton Hope on 23 February.

LTM Records have released The Diagram Brothers album from 1981 entitled "Some Marvels Of Modern Science" which also includes an additional 10 tracks from the singles the band released in the early eighties.

The Diagram Brothers feature no other than ex-James member Andy Diagram.

The album can be ordered on Amazon by following this link.

Due to the extraordinary demand for tickets, James are likely to add a second night in Manchester on Sunday April 29 according to their manager Peter Rudge on a post on the official messageboard. Update 31/1 - no confirmation has yet been made though.

James UK tour sold out on the first day of sale. The rumoured extra dates at Glasgow Academy on the 20th April and London Brixton Academy on 26th April went on sale and sold out. The 27th Brixton night sold out in 10 minutes.

In true James style, the new opening night for the tour will be in Dublin at The Olympia on Tuesday 17th April. Tickets go on sale with ticketmaster next Friday at 9am.

Scottish radio station Q96 has announced that James will play a second date at Glasgow Academy on Friday 20 April, which will be the first night of the tour. There's no official confirmation as yet. The first night is not sold out as we speak, just the Ticketmaster pre-sale allocation.

We also have on good authority from a venue employee that a second night at Brixton is pencilled in for Thursday 26 April. Again, this has not been officially confirmed and will probably depend on demand for tickets.

Just a reminder, tickets for the tour go on sale tomorrow morning. Ticketmaster are doing a presale however for the Glasgow show.

The official site www.wearejames.com has now established a mailing list, and has added a message from Jim detailing the background to the reformation and his hopes for the future.

Various sites have confirmed the reformation including NME, XFM and Playlouder, plus this was also in The Sun today.

Tim spoke to XFM and said the following regarding the reunion and its background : "I don’t really know. If you had asked me in the summer would James get back together I would have said absolutely not, not a chance. It was kind of a load of synchronistic events that took place over about a month. And finally I ended up in Manchester and Larry [Gott] the guitarist who left in about ’93, had been ringing me up saying let’s meet. He’d been one of the initial founders with me and Jimmy [Glennie] and somehow I found myself in a room with with instruments and microphones and we just started jamming. We jammed for a few days and found that it was really fantastic, so we said ‘Alright let’s see how this goes’. We didn’t tell anyone, we didn’t even tell our manager. But it went so well musically that we felt we had to see how far it could go. And then the rest of it sprung from there really".

The official James site has announced the dates with the proclamation "James are back. Still fresh as a daisy. Ready to be the bride not the bridesmaid. With a back catalogue to die for and a bunch of new songs."

It appears that the James line-up for the reunion will be the Laid line-up of the band : Tim, Jim, Larry, Saul, Mark and Dave.

The official James website www.jamestheband.com has now been taken off-line and replaced by a placeholder for a brand new site at www.wearejames.com. No date has yet been announced for the launch of the new site. The new James logo appears on the left.

All content from the old official site, including the messageboard, has been removed. Some of it may reappear on the new site or I will try and host it here.

For those of you who still want to interact there is a messageboard on this site until the new site is up and functional.

Oneofthethree has it on very good authority that there will be a James reformation later in the Spring and through the remainder of the year. Rumours from Manchester suggest that some members have been working on new material as well as negotiating a new version of the Greatest Hits album.

Expect an announcement regarding some very special live shows in the next week or two. More as and when it is available. Please also check the messageboard or myspace as updates may be posted there if I don't have access to update the site because of work commitments.

There will also be some updates and stuff to this site over the next few weeks. Please join the messageboard and post any contributions such as news articles and the like and we'll get them uploaded to the main site as soon as we can. Thanks.