And welcome to another episode of the Crucible Conversations for the Curious.
It's good morning from me and it's good evening from James because I'm chatting with him from New Zealand.
James and I got chatting recently and he is a storyteller.
He is a songwriter and a producer from the other side of the world.
And he has got a remarkable story of being wise when it came to all sorts of things.
Unlike me, who went head first into
into chaos and drama.
James spotted things in his life and he's got a remarkable tale.
So James, thank you so much for turning up today.
I really appreciate this.
No worries Hamish, thank you for the invitation.
Lovely.
Can you please tell me a bit about your story and how you make sense of life?
Because I think it's quite an interesting approach.
So, born and raised in Sierra Ham.
Parents separate when I'm six.
I'm on the autism spectrum so I have to try and navigate life which, that on its own is tough.
And then, throughout life I struggled with mental health, anxiety, depression, and trying to find a way to...
make things make sense.
So I started writing things down, playing music.
I would be in a few different underground and independent projects and all of that trauma and all of that stuff that I went through, even as an adult, has brought me to a place
where I'm now releasing my first studio album, Lost and Found, as a solo artist.
and I've been able to overcome all of that personal stuff to find hope and joy in all of the seasons that life brings, including the hard ones.
There's lots to dive in there.
Tell me how being on that autism spectrum has made life complicated for you.
I know, know, on discussions before going live, you said it was, it's made your life difficult, it's made it interesting, it's made it illuminating because you just see things
differently.
So explain to me how.
Growing up, that made your life complicated.
sure things so when I was growing up it was understand trying to understand why games at school were played a certain way or trying to be creative or trying to put myself out
there is sometimes I didn't quite feel like I was part of the equation got better at that over time and thankfully had a very good group of friends
who we saw at kindergarten went right into Deanna High School and they would help me out a bit.
As I got older and you get the other emotions in, becomes who am I?
Where do I belong?
What is this feeling?
I don't like myself right now.
I want to lash out.
I want to do all these things.
And that was tough, but...
The autism spectrum has also blessed me with a different ability on creativity and being able to look at music and songwriting and creating things a lot more differently, which
has been very beneficial in my life.
It still causes headaches once in a while, but my toolbox is a lot more refined now because of that creative side.
Had it not been for that, I would have been in massive trouble.
Hmm.
Okay, can you...
So tell me a little bit about these tools that you have collected to help you make sense of things.
You've mentioned this lashing out and obviously there was anger and frustration at some things.
So how did you spot these problems?
How did you manage to make sense of them and turn them around to not have to react badly, but to be able to respond and make sense of things?
So one of the things is breathing in and breathing out and taking a stop for a second to let myself assess the situation even when there's a time constraint.
Part of it is writing in my journal, which is how these songs came about for the solo album.
Part of it was just painting, playing guitar, getting somewhere creative.
having that good support network I can talk to, good counselling and ultimately just continuing to move forward which is the tricky part right because when you're in that dark
place you want to say that you don't think there's any hope that as hard as it is putting one foot in front of the other and taking those steps forward just like how a river runs
that's how you get through.
It's not always easy and the answers that worked for me may not work for someone else watching this but that's what helps me get through it and it's just one day at a time be
here at the moment.
Fab.
So tell me about your writing, because obviously, you know, writing the words, writing the music, writing the songs has been a tremendous outlet.
How have you used that to make sense of stuff, make sense of life, make sense of not feeling you can fit in and things like that?
Yeah, so with the writing I've done bits of it on and off as a kid Some of it would make you think wow This 10 year old he he kind of has issues But As I got to 16 17 I started
writing a bit more seriously Studying songs not just as a music lover, but as a music
player.
I'd taken some guitar lessons and some piano lessons.
I'd tried figuring out the other stuff on top of the basics for myself by learning to play by ear, going to jam nights on a Monday night at the Future Tierra Sense where I now work.
And I just started using that as a way to try and put the pieces together in my own mind that
didn't quite seem to fit and wouldn't fit any other way.
I basically started using those instruments as a way to talk.
And as I said, went into several underground projects and several things that no longer in my life, but they helped me get to this point.
And it was not long after my dad passed away.
that I actually started revisiting that sort of mindset after having a few problems of my own and trying to navigate them.
So when it comes to writing, it's more or less just me trying to communicate and figure it out for myself.
Some of these songs that I've put out over the years and even on here, it was never planned.
It's just me trying to figure it out and now
I hope that other people can use those songs to help them out.
I love that creativity and that way that we can tap into it.
I remember when I left university before I'd managed to get a job, I would wander around.
was very frustrated and I wrote poetry and I read it now and it puts the hairs on my back up and it's frightening.
It really is just that.
that rawness and that not rage or anger, but just a lack of understanding what's going on and trying to make sense of things.
So I'm really looking forward to listening to your album.
I know you shared me a few songs which I really enjoyed.
So I think I'm really looking forward to that.
So winding back, I mean, you said you had a great group of friends and lot of support, which obviously is incredibly important and helpful.
How did they, I want to say look after you, but that's not quite for us.
How did they sort of support you when you found things difficult?
Well, one of the things they did, which I found helpful, maybe not necessarily at the time, was they would call me out on my rubbish.
They would go, hi, you're starting to push the limits a bit.
And they would include me in what they were doing, even if I had trouble trying to figure it out or understand it.
They were patient.
They tried to teach me.
They try to teach me sports as well, but we don't talk about that because it was pretty bad.
There's a couple of Olympians I went to school with and I'm still bad.
But they would be patient with me.
They would tell me if I was getting close to that line or if I'd gone over it.
For my 15th birthday.
They were originally planning an intervention on my mental health because it was the first time it was getting really out of hand and they were getting really concerned so they'd
made an arrangement of some kind to go, hey, happy birthday, by the way, this is an intervention, we are worried about you.
It thankfully didn't come to that because I was able to figure it out mostly on my own.
But even when I was having blue days and dark days, they would just sit with me in the storm.
Even if they didn't know what to say or what to do, they would just sit there and talk with me through it and I could not have been more thankful for that.
It helped keep me alive.
You see that, that's the scary bit, isn't it?
That last line, it helped keep you alive.
Can you explain to me a little bit about what was going through your head?
The mental illness, if you want to call it that, but just what you were really struggling with.
Yeah, there was a lot of struggle around acceptance, trying to find my place, navigating a lot of changes, and that's just on your own as a 14, 15 year old.
That's not including the autism and ADHD, which some days is like static, some days it's crystal clear, some days it's a bit of a blur in the middle.
And there's other days where I don't even know what to call it because it comes for a moment and disappears.
But at 14, 15, it was a lot of the static, a lot of the blurred lines, things were just going out of hand.
And I had actively contemplated disappearing.
And it was a lot of my friends that stopped me from going through with it.
A lot of my family.
Not all, but some that stopped me going through with it.
It was faith, finding God at 15 that stopped me going through with it.
And it was wanting to be here, but not wanting to be what I was that made me want to stay in the end.
Yep.
And looking behind you over your left shoulder, be yourself because everyone else is taken.
There we are.
Thank you.
Yeah.
That obviously is very important to you, isn't it?
Because, you know, I guess that that kind of thing has helped you realize that we are all different.
We are all unique.
We all have stuff to deal with.
We also have lots of superpowers and magic.
So
Tell me how, you you've said the faith, your friends, your family, how did all that give you that foundation to keep you afloat when life didn't make sense?
Because I think this is quite important.
I'm really getting the sense this conversation is where we're going with this may be really helpful for some people.
Yeah, so obviously you've got all those things that.
stick together on their own and help make the foundation.
It sort of got to a point where it was going to be one day I'm going to get better or this is day one of getting better and day one as I'm sure you know from experience is not an
easy day.
It's the first time you confront and go hey I'm not okay here I'm struggling the water's getting too high here I need help
and in 2011 tiara hud that was very taboo it's like if you were in the high school or even the small town set of thing if you were actively getting help usually that would be the
end of you but thankfully me going to get help lessened that taboo a bit which i'm glad is a byproduct
But ultimately it had to get to that point naturally of this is day one of me getting better and not getting consumed by my nonsense.
I'm trying really hard not to swear here, but you get the gist.
This was day one of I've got to get help and I've got to get treatment and get into a program or I'm going to be no good for nobody.
I think that is quite remarkable.
mean, you've you you realize there was a problem you were able to ask for help.
And as you said, in a a in a small town, that's that's hard.
So what was the outcome of asking for help?
How did
people respond.
Surprisingly really well.
Most my, I confided in a couple of friends at first and said, look, I think I need to do this.
And they're like, thank God someone has got through to you because we've been worried for months, almost a year now because of what's been going on.
and that was when they filled me in that they were about to hold an intervention and they were dead serious about it.
So then as it goes in a small town, I said, you can tell my friends, I haven't told my family yet.
And that was a very touchy subject because they were going through their own problems.
So by that point, it basically became one thing got to another.
Thankfully, I was able to tell my family in time.
because you did need parental consent to do it.
And that was a tense conversation, but I got the help I needed and the ones who cared enough, stuck by my side and if they weren't by my side, I knew they didn't really care or
they cared enough from a distance.
So let me do what I needed to do.
I don't think I can stress how important it is to actually ask for help because I had to, you had to, I've spoken to lots of people who have done that.
And we are our own worst enemy there, aren't we?
We're afraid that every people will judge us and shame us and all that.
And yet, as you said, people are going, giving you a hug and saying, thank God, well done you, all that kind of stuff.
You realize that...
So much of that fear was your own projections and worries.
And yet when you do ask for help, that's when the magic happens.
Exactly, having been lucky enough to mentor some people and talk about the story a bit, I've also learned that you cannot force people to get help because that doesn't have the
right reaction.
The person who needs the help has to want to get the help and it's not easy to get to that point.
If my friends had a choice, as I said, Olympians, artists, farmers, all these kinds of people, if they could, they would have tied me up and dragged me to the council's office
months ago at that point.
But they had to let me get to that point of what I was going to fight back and resist and...
dig the hole even deeper.
And as much as it would have been nice of them to intervene, I'm glad they did it the way they did because I got to come to that decision for myself and be able to get the suitable
help.
So what happened after that?
Once you had that support you needed, how did you manage to start moving forwards and start to manage the mental health, start to manage what wasn't working, and start to build
your own foundation where you could really begin to thrive?
Yeah, so starting that journey, as I said, I had to start from day one, looking at yourself in the mirror.
And there's some people who think that going to counseling, going through rehab is a bit of a holiday.
It was the complete opposite for me.
I had to break everything that I knew about James before.
that was not healthy and go right back to zero back to the ground one unlearn some bad habits dismantle some thought processes and it is hard to dismantle that it's hard to
replace it with different things but in the process of dismantling you got to that ground zero so okay we've knocked you down
Here's some of the stuff we like.
Let's start building a new James out of it.
And so that process carries on to this day.
I still go to counseling.
I still need a support network.
I still do all this and the other.
But we got to that point of, okay, here's some of the bits we like.
Let's start building the skeleton from here and then we'll flash it out as time goes on and you're ready to weather those storms and go through those seasons.
Brilliant.
Yeah.
Brilliant.
I like that.
It does make sense.
And I'm just looking back at my time in rehab.
was, you know, I cried for three or four weeks.
I literally didn't stop because I was, I was able to drop all those masks.
As you said, I was able to go back to ground zero and look at those, the good things in Hamish, which I didn't realize.
I didn't spot them.
So yeah.
Okay, so you went into that process of getting help and how did music help you?
Were you writing at that stage?
Were you actively writing?
Were you writing music and songs?
definitely testing the waters.
I had been through some guitar lessons and piano lessons from about age 10 on and off to try learn some music.
15 I knew I was going to write something but I wasn't quite ready yet because I hadn't got to ground zero.
I hadn't got to that point where I could start anything.
Then in little bits
My partner at the time, Kerri -Ann, would encourage me to pick up the guitar, play some music, just put some chords together and see what happens.
So she planted the seed.
Then from there, it became, okay, I'm feeling something here.
I would grab a notebook and write it down.
and not again not intending to write any songs but just to get it out of my head so it doesn't stay there eventually i started pairing the two together with kare -ann's
encouragement and the encouragement of my friends and a general hey do this because it's better than some of the alternatives and i started writing songs from them
Yeah, isn't it.
You're just highlighting that power of creativity, the highlight of...
doing something, making sense of writing it down, journaling, singing, howling, screaming, dancing, anything to sort of just allow it to flow out.
And I guess you haven't really stopped since then, those days, just writing and playing and things like that.
No, it hasn't stopped and if I stopped, I mean there was a brief period where I slowed it down a bit, but even the slowing down I found very scary.
So I try and write something in a journal every day, whether it becomes a song or not.
The general idea is somewhere in the chaos, this thing will be used for something good.
So I'll write it down before it does something to even try to destroy me.
And that's how I work through it with faith, work through it with music, work through it with any of the other things I do.
Because if it's stuck in my head too long, it's not a good ending.
And it's better to sit with it and externalize it.
rather than let it eat you internally and you have to go back to ground zero and start the whole thing again.
I think that is really interesting, isn't it?
So you've basically, you've got a series of tools or resources that you almost check in like, hey, it's Monday morning.
Have I done this?
I've got to do this just to keep you floating.
So it's almost like every morning you've got to pick up some paddles, hoist a sail and things like that for one of better metaphors.
Pretty much.
I've got my daily routines, my weekly routines, and if something's off, I will know and then I know, I've got to go back through this and reassess it because even when you're as
far along in recovery as you and I, we still need to sharpen our tools once in a while.
We still need to refine them a bit in order to keep the ship running.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's, I think that is really important.
And sometimes I get resentful about that.
why can't I just exist?
Why can't I just go?
And then I remember, yeah, that's why, because I found a coping strategy that worked.
Alcohol was lovely just to numb everything and just allow me to forget, however it allowed me to forget life as well.
So I like that I have to go, can't do that, want to do that, must do that.
but it brings awareness in.
It allows me to be a bit more aware of me physically, emotionally.
And I find that really, really empowering.
I find that a really good way just to align my moral compass a little bit more.
And I think it's worth the effort.
It really is worth the effort.
Absolutely, like if we were having this conversation when I was 14 this wouldn't be happening because I didn't have that knowledge and To know that you can be in recovery and
still not be fully okay and still have to refine things That's okay because recovery is a journey.
It's not an end destination and even
13 years on from first seeking help I'm still adjusting things and I'm still working through my baggage and I never claim to be a saint about it but it's that getting up in
the morning taking those steps it's okay to have a bit of a down day once in a while as long as we don't sit with it for too long so absolutely what you've said I agree with 100
%
Yeah, I think it's, it is okay.
And it is okay, those down days are important, those rest days are important.
And those days when everything works, you can get in the studio at six in the morning, keep on going till midnight and can't go to sleep because you're so energized and you've,
you've created you've created a masterpiece.
And I think that's, that is lovely.
But so you, I guess like me, you also
When you tune into yourself, you've got a better idea of when you feel energized to do something and when you need to sort of hunker down and hibernate for a little bit.
you find you flow with your energy rather than your emotions or your thoughts?
As it is, I'm always very analytical about myself, not in an egotistical way, but in a way that I can actually go, okay, how am I today?
I may not love myself, I might like myself, what kind of things do we need to address on the journey today?
So I'm very analytical about it and I'm very careful with emotions because...
We are human.
Emotions do happen.
When your emotions get out of hand, can take you on a one way street back to things that came before.
So if I'm not feeling okay, I find out right away.
And instead of sitting with the emotion, I try to make friends with it so I can say, right, I can walk with this.
And of course if with faith as well You've got a little bit of a higher power that you can say hey, I can't do this on my own And whatever that is for you Or whatever it isn't for
you There is that freedom in saying I need to take care of this.
I've done what I can with it I'm gonna hand it off to you
For me, it's God and Jesus.
For you, it might be something else.
Whatever that higher power you believe in is, it does help.
It really does, doesn't it?
Yeah.
No, it makes lots of sense.
what's fascinating is the more conversations I'm having, the more there is this pervasive sense of a higher power, whether it is, as you said, God, Jesus, whether it is any other
religious God, whether it is a sense of spirituality.
And
I think that understanding that there is more to life than just being human is allows us not to give up, not to give away our responsibility, but rather to understand that, you
know, we're still children.
There is an awful lot more out there that is available to us.
Yeah, I think that's exciting.
I really do.
I want to go back a little bit.
What you said before, before you mentioned your faith, this whole thing about spotting things before you start going down that slope.
How would a listener who is struggling with stuff and they're getting angry, they're doing this, they know that it's not healthy for them.
How can they start to spot these emotions and rather than react at them, lash out, cry, get angry, whatever, isolate, drink, numb.
How can they begin to
get curious, as you said, befriend them.
How do we befriend that kind of stuff to realize it's messages, it's not us, if you like.
Exactly.
So we use a bit of an analogy here.
We go with the mountain because I live on a mountain town.
At the bottom of the mountain is the ambulance.
We don't want to go there because that means we've fallen off the mountain.
It's somewhere down the line and we need to go back and take care of ourselves that little bit more urgently.
but along the way up the top of the mountain, imagine that there's some nets going around it to catch you when you do try to stumble.
How you, I guess, find those things you need to resolve is where are the holes in the net?
Have you fallen down the stairs a little bit on your way to the top?
Is there a hole in your net?
Have you fallen through that one and you're about to go down to the next layer and fall through that?
It's kind of like a visualization of, okay, I'm at the top.
I can see that there's a net here.
I need to get some fabric to fill up that part of the net.
I need to actually patch it up before I fall off.
Very much the same kind of idea, because if we're at the top of the mountain or even trying to climb up, there are going to be things that are going to knock you down.
or at least make a good attempt at it.
So knowing what your triggers are, knowing what does make you blue, knowing what makes the world feel sunshine, knowing you and your habits and those sort of more behavioral things.
Knowing yourself helps you to know where those things you need to work on are.
And
by knowing yourself and knowing what your limits are, it does help you to limit how bad things can knock you down because there are moments in life you're still going to fall
down and that's okay.
The important thing in that's going okay we've sat with it now we need to get back up.
Yeah.
I love that.
Looking for those, looking for the holes in the net, looking for what isn't okay in your environment, isn't it?
and I guess you correct me here.
I guess being on the autism spectrum, you've, you've had to, you've had to look for those holes.
You've had to look for those steps, the climbing ladders, the rails and things like that, because it's, you know, your
I don't understand, I don't comprehend how you function differently to me.
But you've had to make sense of that, haven't you?
Because obviously your brain does function differently, the way you perceive is differently and things like that.
Absolutely, and that's where lot of that analytical side of me comes in.
Especially there were times I did have to fight those battles on my own.
There were points where both sides of my family were arguing with each other and some ways I fell through the cracks, some ways I had to figure it out on my own because there were
bigger fish they were frying.
And I...
had to do it because there was a point in life where I was pretty much a lone wolf.
I had to figure it out on my own, keep some people close, but keep others at a distance so they couldn't hurt me, or I couldn't hurt them.
And as you get older, you notice these things a lot more, you get more analytical about your behaviors and how...
Taking this to kindergarten terms for a minute...
your actions do have reactions and how you feel does matter.
So what you're saying with that, I absolutely agree with.
The difference with autism in ADHD for me is it takes a bit longer to do it.
It's a bit more brain work to try and understand it.
And it's trying to...
still be yourself while navigating the bits of the world you don't understand.
And that's something that I've had to do a lot of my life, something that just like recovery, I'm still having to do now.
Can you explain to me what being on that spectrum, what you find difficult?
What is it?
Is it reading people's body language?
Is it understanding their motivation?
What is it that complicates your life that you don't understand or perceive?
You just have to understand my language because I don't understand this.
I've not really met it.
Yeah.
How, how, what, what do you struggle with in everyday life that you've had to build a structure around yourself to guide yourself through?
understanding some of the societal norms and boundaries and barriers is one of them.
Trying to not just be a face in the crowd, but also not getting too loud.
trying to make a difference in the world but some days getting out of bed is challenge and like a spectrum it goes up and down and moves around a lot so some days you get more some
things than others that for me is where the struggle comes in with those ups and downs and where I've especially in my recovery have to be a lot more careful because if I'm
appear one day and down here the next, then that's a big drop.
Some people who are maybe not on the spectrum or maybe not dealing with it as severely, you've got that gray area where you've got time to stop and think.
I've had to build my own gray area because life is full of ups and downs.
But in my brain, it very rarely up until even a couple of years ago, stopped at that gray area to go, oy, think for a minute.
And those are the sorts of general things I struggle with.
And again, it goes up and down the pain on the day.
Okay.
So it's almost like your pendulum had two positions and there wasn't a thing in the middle.
It was either A or B rather than, as you said, that gray bit in between where you could go, Hey, there's a problem.
It was just like good, bad crap, excellent shit, whatever you, you.
Yeah.
basically it
That sounds tiring.
It is.
Even on medications and going through the therapies I do.
It is tiring.
It takes a lot of work.
There are some situations where I had to put in extra work like going on the road to play live.
I used to to really work on that and try not to be reckless.
Even now when I get the chance to play live.
It won't be for a few months but I know I have to put the work in so I'm trying to put some of those plans in place now.
When I'm traveling, I had to do a little bit of that as well.
And generally speaking, it's hard work when you're in recovery normally, never mind on the spectrum.
But you get up in the morning because you know it's worth putting in that work to stay clean, stay in a good place and not go back to where you were because if you went back
there you know you would detonate and have to start again.
And sometimes it does take people a few tries to go up and down and back through rehab.
I was blessed enough to be able to see
What that looks like without having to go too far down anything like a relapse So It's hard work.
Yes, but i'd rather put into hard work and stay clean
then let myself slide back down to where I was at 14 because if I did that it would be hard to come back to where I am now and it would take decades to try and put everything
back together.
I think that's remarkable.
I really do.
think you've been able to spot it, see the process, see that slippery slope and go, yeah, it's the luring.
It's there.
I know it works.
know alcohol takes the edge off.
I know this takes the edge off.
I know that bad behavior.
It protects me, but it isolates me so much that it's not worth it.
That's the important thing.
It's not worth it.
And when you slip, it's just like...
I'm human, get up.
You've got that other day's information.
You've got the new memories of that, the experiences, and you can keep going.
And it's not easy, but it does allow us to see how beautiful this life really is, doesn't it?
It does give us that little bit of poignancy.
even up to a couple of years ago i had a lot of sorry
Carry on James, yeah, there's a bit of a delay.
even up until a couple of years ago, I could see that the world wasn't as rosy and I just wanted to get out of it, but there are times where it's like, it's rosy, I wanna stay in
it.
You sort of have to get to that point where you can see neutrally without the rose colored glasses and without the darkness to go, okay, this is where we are now.
Things will be okay.
We had a bad day.
But the world's still a good place.
And we just keep moving as we can.
I think you've, you've expressed something really very profound there.
You said from that neutral place, from that very thin gray place that you've got, I've got other people have got just to be able to say, yeah, there's good days, there's bad days,
there's fun, there's sadness, there's all these things.
They just are, you know, it is that impermanence, isn't it?
There is life, there is death, there is all those things.
And when you're seated there, it's very powerful, isn't it?
Because you are you are stable, you're able to just observe.
Exactly.
Tell me about your music because I've listened to some of your songs and we've chatted about it previously.
But tell me what you write about and how you know it affects people and impacts people.
Because I think your music, your writing, your stories are really remarkable.
things so when I'm writing as I said earlier it often does not start as a song it's often memos or notes or talk to myself about things that I know I need to hear and in my daily
time with God sometimes things will come through that as well and I'll just write things down
And when I'm going to write music, whether it's for an album or something else, I'll be just sitting there.
I'll play for a whole bunch of stuff.
Some of it quite terrible.
And then I will land on something where it's like, okay, there could be a melody here.
There could be something to guide the ship along.
So I'll start writing the basic ideas and flesh out the rhythms.
That's when I send off some parts to the vocalist after writing some lyrics that I think will work and sometimes there's some back and forth to figure it out.
But then once I've got those vocals back, then I'll build the rest of the song around the vocal.
So there's an example of this.
on the album called Midnight Memories.
You hear the...
on the guitar which is your rhythm and then you hear a lot of...
delay guitars which sort of fill in the gaps.
Those delay guitars were written after the vocals were laid down which is usually in most musicians world not how it works.
You usually send all your music off at once and you more or less just put it together but I use the vocals as a guide for the storytelling and the music to
Inform how the story is told so sometimes I'll be listening to it back with those basic instruments going, okay We need those sorts of guitars here In Captain and the Kid which
was about the last time I ever got to speak to my dad I had the piano parts and a bit of the drums and then I was listening to some of the music he liked especially Bruce
Springsteen and
think it was racing in the street that came to mind and growing up how they had those rhythmic guitars that sort of helped gel it together.
So I knew, okay, I need some guitar bits in here.
So I got out my guitar, started playing and I came up with the...
similar to that spring sing sort of vibe if you were listening to the end of racing in the streets or Born in the USA or any of those other Really?
Story based songs that he's very known to do So that's kind of how I write I use the Focus as a tool
along with the basic instrumentation that you need to send them.
Use that as the storytelling and work in the other instruments to guide how the story gets told and which way we're going with it.
Not just on its own, but as an album, does it play a bigger part?
And if so, how does it fit?
I like that.
As you said that last bit, was just seeing the writer writing in another character and another character.
So they're bringing in the backstories, bringing in the, as you said, fleshing it out, making it three -dimensional.
I really like that.
And why not?
You know, it works.
So you generally start with the words because you experienced them, your thoughts, your feelings, your comprehension of the day, the week, the month.
And then it goes from there.
basically and the best ones I've written have never started out as songs as you mentioned they are notes guides bits of advice or things in general that I need to hear and then
somehow I try to translate it from there if there's something in there that needs to be said writing this album there were 18 to 20 songs written only nine made the cut
And so you still had to put the right story together for that moment.
It doesn't discredit the other songs that didn't quite make it.
It just means that it's not their time yet.
Brilliant.
think that's, I really like that.
And I'm loving learning the experience of writing an album because I've never had a conversation like this and just, it is, it's a whole story, isn't it?
It immediately makes me think of Radio Chaos.
I guess you know that album.
It is a story all the way through from end to end.
Yeah.
I like.
best albums apart, I find.
Because anyone can write 10 songs and put them out as a collection.
Anyone can do that.
That's not particularly hard.
But when you're writing an album that's more of a story, you do have to think about the quality of that story.
What parts fit best, what parts don't.
and you hear that a lot with things like the wall, dark side of the moon, born in the USA.
Alton John writes songs and stories.
R .E .N.
just listens to Out of Time or New Adventures in Hi -Fi.
Bon Iver's first album was written about isolation in a cabin.
There's those underlying themes that tie it all together and that's what makes an album good no matter who it is.
If the story's not there, you don't have that magic that gels it together.
And I think what makes you remarkable is you have been dealt a hand that is tough, and then you write about it, which supports you.
And then you make songs about it and you're sharing your story, your inspiration, your hope, you're making sense of stuff.
And people love it, don't they?
resonate with it, they're learning from it, they're understanding.
Tell me a bit about what people, the feedback you're getting from your music and how it helps people make sense of their own stuff.
well the fact i'm not singing on it helps because nobody wants to hear my singing voice anyway because that's what i used to do in underground projects i used to sing or attempt
to sing and nine times out ten it didn't work and things wouldn't get conveyed this is when i was writing
underground music metal music Sometimes I'd write alongside a guy in a mask who was not very healthy for me but Coming into it now I'm older I'm Learned some things.
I'm a bit wiser I'm not the same James that was writing those kinds of albums for acts that went pretty much nowhere To James now
does not have any expectations that a song's gonna impact someone.
I can't go to someone and like, hey kid, you wanna be changed forever by a song?
You can't do that.
So all I can hope is that the music will resonate with people and that it might help them on their journey in some way.
But once it's released, as a songwriter, that's out of my hands.
I know that season's closed for me.
If it helps people, that is amazing and I've heard some really cool stories but it's ultimately not the end goal.
I'm writing to keep it out of my head and to keep help other people in some way.
How it helps is ultimately down to the listener and even if they have a really wacky way around it, the way it helps them is not
unequal or indifferent or wrong.
If it reaches people and it means something to them, I've done my job right.
Brilliant.
I love that.
That makes me chuckle, especially the writing music for bands, not that they didn't go anywhere, but just that anger and that rage and whatever it was in those metal days.
mean, it is music.
It is a way of expressing and making sense of stuff.
Yeah.
I listen to the Cure when I'm down.
friend of mine listens to heavy metal when she's down.
It helps me make sense of things.
I know whether it's comparison or what.
don't know.
Music is magic for me as well.
Exactly.
And not slamming heavy metal, there is some good metal music, there's some good rock music, there's good Christian music, there's good dance music, there's good in all kinds
of music.
I just found that things I was writing were not translating for me later in life.
Like a lot of the earlier songs, I cannot recognise myself anymore.
In New Zealand...
I was part of something called Play the Vetted Game, which was a metal show headlined by an act who if I utter his name I'm gonna get in some trouble.
But basically it was, that was the season I was in.
It was helpful for a while, but it doesn't help me anymore.
I don't even recognize the 20 year old they got on that stage anymore.
And I'm nearly 30.
I'm 28 now.
So it's that growth and those changes in time.
I can still enjoy the music a bit, but I can't stay in those places because it served me for a season and there's nothing wrong with it.
But my life's taken a different direction.
I am Christian.
I am in a very different space in life now where I'm really good with my recovery and
singing about those things that I sung about when I was 20 does not translate now.
It's growth in time.
Absolutely.
Where can we find out more about you, about your music, about your new album?
And yeah, where can we find out more about the James and his music?
Okay, so lost and found has it's out now actually which is kind of mind -boggling The best way to reach me is brodystreet .net And that's where you can purchase your CD your vinyl
Go to your favorite streaming servers, buy a direct digital download from the site Merchandises on the way
and fingers crossed once I'm recovered from this car crash and some of the injuries from that from a few months ago I'm hoping to be touring next year and at some point I hope to
be playing in the UK and Europe and the States and New Zealand and Australia so there's some conversations around that
If you for some reason want to follow me on social media, I'm not very good at it, but my handle is at Brody is found on Pretty much everything that you can find if you can't see
me Using that handle.
I'm probably not there.
That's pretty much the best way to do it
I love that.
Now I've picked up on something.
You've lost and found as the album Brody is James is found.
Found?
Explain this thing around being found because that's obviously something important to you.
Yeah, so this transcends my fan songwriting for me.
In order to be found and to get to this good place, you first have to be lost and not know where you're going to get to that place.
The songs on Lost and Found started in 2020.
COVID would have been enough to trigger
and excess, excess in your crisis where you're wondering who am I, what am I doing, why do I exist now?
And I started writing the album a few weeks after my dad died trying to figure out okay, dad's not here anymore, who am I now?
While having to do some top -ups of counselling and up the ante a bit because a relationship I was in at the time fell through.
And life was just not on a good place.
So what you hear on this particular album is how I go from that into getting back to that place where things are okay, even if I'm not okay.
That's the journey from lost to found for me is you start at the end, you backtrack to where the story starts, and then
make your way back to the end and basically figure out okay this is what you learned on the way these were the experiences and you don't need a lot of tracks to do it lost and
found there's only nine songs but those are the songs that will tell you about my life from sort of july 2020 up until september 2024
and the next part of the story when I work on this second album it'll pick up from now and it'll sort of go okay this is where I'm at at the moment and I don't know what that
journey looks like it could come early next year it could be years down the road but the journey is going to be very exciting because I'm going from where I am now into wherever
we're going next
and it won't be easy, but it will be fun.
It will be fun.
Absolutely.
I think that's fabulous, James.
Well, we'll put all your information in the show notes.
We'll put where we can find your album and I'm looking forward to...
Now it's come out.
I'm looking forward to get that as well.
One last question.
What is your superpower that you have got from not having that intervention, but from making your own choices to make sense of life the way you have done or the way you are
doing that now?
Now, this is actually in one of the songs on the album and it's the chorus so I'm not sure if this is one of the ones you've heard or got to hear or won but it goes like this I'm
afraid of the changes and the ghosts of my heart The little things in life are all that I have Time makes you older Faith makes you stronger But it's just a moment These storms
will pass
and if you need context for that, the superpower is knowing that the storms will pass, but knowing that things will be okay in the end.
That's the superpower.
I think that is remarkable.
I love that.
And I haven't heard those words.
So I obviously haven't heard that track.
I will listen to that later.
Yeah.
James, thank you.
This has been a really fabulous conversation.
It's been considered.
It's been curious.
And I've learned so much about music, writing music, and just the way you make sense of life.
Because I think it's quite remarkable that you have gritted your teeth.
You have...
face stuff that people shouldn't have to and you've come out the other side going, what's next?
And you've got that smile and as you said, you know, it's all gonna be okay.
I think that is really remarkable.
So thank you for your time today.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you Hamish.
I've really enjoyed coming onto your platform, having a chat and adding to the toolbox that you're creating for people through this podcast.
I think that there's a lot of power in what you're doing and I'm just thrilled to be a very small part of that.
Well, it has been gratefully received and thank you very much indeed.