06 December 2016 - 0 Comments
We are very excited to introduce you to a brand new local artist, Mitch James, a 21-year old Kiwi who is about to take the country by storm with his debut single Move On set for release on December 9.
Written as a pep talk to himself, Mitch wrote Move On about ending a relationship that turned out to be a one-sided love affair.
“Move On is about someone who wouldn’t give me the time of day even though I would have done anything for this person at the time! It’s basically telling myself to move on through music as I couldn’t do it through any other avenues” says Mitch.
Mitch is originally from Auckland, but now resides in Dunedin so he can be as close as possible to his mates where they regularly get together to drink beer and play music.
Mitch started playing music at 14 while at school, where he would use lunch breaks and the school Music centre to teach himself how to play guitar.
After leaving school at 17, Mitch got himself a job cleaning cars with the goal of saving enough money to buy himself a one-way ticket to London – where Mitch had the dream of hitting it big like his influence Ed Sheeran.
Mitch arrived in London with a £20 note, zero contacts and no experience performing live – but with an unstoppable determination to give it a crack.
Without a place to stay, Mitch would attend Open Mic nights hoping to land a paying gig – which he eventually did for a short time, until the venue closed down, forcing Mitch to go home.
During Mitch’s time in Europe he slept 8 weeks on the street altogether, played 230 gigs, busked over 100 times, was robbed twice, beaten once and witnessed a stabbing.
It was this experience of working harder than most to survive, that has given Mitch a stellar work ethic, a thick skin and a huge creative pool of experiences to write songs from which is reflected in his recently released, and first original track No Fixed Abode - a song that Mitch wrote after being stopped by police in Amsterdam who asked him for his address, which he had to reply that he didn’t have one as he was living on the streets at the time.
Mitch has clearly intrigued Kiwis who are fast discovering his music, with No Fixed Abode being viewed over 50,000 times after only two days of uploading it onto his Facebook page as well as also being streamed over 70,000 times on Spotify in just one week.
The release of Move On this Friday marks the start of something very special and much more to come from this exciting new artist.
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