My name is James Hardiment, I am a singer/songwriter based near Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, and I’m about to release my brand new album, “Rescue Me”, this summer 2023! 20 tracks in total, the record spans a little over 1 hour and 16 minutes in length, over double that of my original pop album, “Wine”, which was released in 2017. That album was 8 tracks, which equaled just under a half hour of music.
It will be available on most streaming services in the coming months, the ones I tend to shout out are Apple Music, and Spotify, but there are plenty of others out there too! Many of the music videos I shot for the various songs over the years can be found on my official YouTube channel. I’m also going to be doing a limited CD release, which to start with, will be available only at my live performances on a merch table. I will also get some shirts made too soon. Merch is probably the best way to support an artist in all actuality, considering you are paid pennies for 100s of views, versus 100 people buying a song for $1 off iTunes = $100 (obviously not everyone listening would buy but even if 25 out of the hundred did, $25, that would still be more than pennies!) The same logic applies for CDs, vinyls, cassettes, clothing, etc. Streaming is still great though, it just doesn’t pay as much, but by all means continue to stream, I do every day. A great way to help us independent musicians, is to build your playlists with your favourite mainstream or indie songs, and include one of our songs in that list. Somebody goes to a list to hear their favourite music, then accidentally stumbles onto our originals!
The world is changing so much, I think if I told someone 100 years ago in the business that you could build, and record music, using your phone, tablet, computer, with people by sending each other files over the internet, they would laugh you out of the room. Imagine the look of hilarity on their face, as you begin to tell them about how you can post a song instantly, and millions of people could theoretically listen right away if you were well known enough? Even I am blown away, and I’m living it, when I first started making videos for example, I was still using mini DV cassette tapes, if anyone remembers those?
The live show will consist of most of the songs from the album, plus the Wine album, and mixed in will be some of my favourite cover songs. Considering my big inspirations for my own music include Italo Disco, essentially a dance music from Europe in the ‘80s, and South African bubblegum pop from that era too, the majority of my covers are songs from that time. Many of you will have probably never heard of them, some are so obscure and buried at this point, so it will be fun to dig them out again. I feel like a musical archeologist, digging through the digital crates of YouTube to find this old school music. Most dance music from back then was largely forgotten, with a few exceptions, as soon as the ‘90s rolled around, and everybody moved on to that house sound that became mega popular in the nightclubs. I will also be doing some doo wop covers too in that style since I find that both the ‘50s and ‘80s seem to blend very well, considering many songs had those happier, nostalgic, chord progressions.
At first I’m going to start fairly small, I have my outfit, a white linen blazer, blue speckled shirt, white speckled tie, blue chinos, and a pair of blue, imitation crocodile slip on dress shoes with gold buckles. I also have a speaker, my laptop for the music, microphones, a mixing board, and various other equipment. Eventually I’d like to get some back up singers to team up with me, I’ve met a few potential candidates for the show, especially now that I’ve been hitting up the local Cornwall Karaoke scene.
My first confirmed 100% booked show (unless it is cancelled) is July 15th in Cornwall. It’s hosted by the White Knucklerz, who are local non for profit organization which raises money for a child with a life threatening illness, to buy them their dream toy! I’ll be performing from 12-3pm, hope to see you there.
That’s all for now, until the next article,
James