MCD Presents Mitch James
Saturday 27th May | The Workman’s Cellar
Fresh from the release of his acclaimed second album, patience, New Zealand singer-songwriter Mitch James has announced details of upcoming EU tour dates which include a date in The Workman’s Cellar on Saturday 27th May 2023.
James lives in Mission Bay, a coastal suburb of Aotearoa’s largest city, Auckland, but he has strong connections to the bohemian hub of Dunedin, one of the country’s southernmost cities. His parents, meanwhile, live in Queenstown, another South Island locale.
In recent years, the personable James has toured the world alongside Six60, who he regards as not just friends, but mentors. The same goes for Ed Sheeran, who James supported in front of 100,000 fans across three nights at Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium in March 2018.
But while he still doesn’t have a firm concept of home, James returns a wiser and more polished performer than he was in 2018. “I feel like I know what I’m doing now,” he says. It’s a contrast to how he felt around the release of his debut album, which James characterises as a “baptism of fire.”
Mitch James is renowned for his open-book candour—it comes across in his social media posts and at his live shows, and this sincerity also underpins James’ emotive and compelling songcraft. After realising what needed to change, James dragged the session files for his would-be second album into the trash and started again with a sharper creative objective. “The whole focus of the writing was to be brutally honest and brutally vulnerable,” James says.
The bulk of the album was written and recorded in early 2022, after James travelled to Los Angeles and met up with writer, producer and former Tonight Alive guitarist, Whakaio Taahi.
James and Taahi struck up a creatively stimulating rapport, which allowed James to access new creative territory and fully embrace his position as a pop front person. Crucially, Taahi gave James the freedom to be himself.
