James Pace Band is a guitar driven Rock N’ Roll act with shot of Blues, Funk, and Soul. The James Pace Band was born on the Asbury Park N.J. scene in the early 1990s out of clubs such as The Stone Pony, having performed with many blues legends such as Jeff Healey and many others for a brief period in the circuit. A stop in the Philadelphia area led to L.A. Producer and Engineer, Ted Greenberg (2-time Grammy winner) playing drums, engineering, funding and producing the debut EP “King’s of Groove”. The band has a red thread sound that is Root-Blues with what Pace calls a “Hendrix-inspired groove from the 1970 Band of Gypsies era”. The James Pace Band has toured with or opened for Jeff Healey, Los Lonely Boys, Chris Duarte, Savoy Brown, JD Simo, Philip Sayce, Anna Popovic, King’s X, Toot & the Maytals among others. 2020 will bring a new LP “The Sierra Madre Sessions” with the lead single “Touch the Sky” with Slash’s Snakepit Bassist Johnny Griparic and Walter Trout/ Edgar Winter Drummer Michael Leasure and Peggy Blu on backup vocals (Bob Dylan).
Blues-E-News recently conducted a 5 Quick Questions during the COVID-19 Quarantine with Pace, here’s how it went.
BEN: Now that the COVID-19 situation has engulfed the music business, how have your immediate and long-term recording and touring plans changed?
JP: As it pertains to recording: I was 80 percent finished with my new full-length LP just as this hit. I was tentatively scheduled to release the album in late Spring 2020. We were able to release one single “Touch the Sky” which should get us through a few months while I work to get the remainder of the vocals completed remotely. There is a plan in place for this and I am working with Billy Burke (producer and studio engineer) to get this arranged. I also have one more single I could release that is fully mixed and mastered entitled “Blue” which is an instrumental that has a Glimour/Vaughan overtone to it. That was planned for a later release, but with the times, I may release sooner than later.
As it pertains to the live shows, due to the pandemic, I had to give up a SXSW show, a big show at Ardmore Music Hall here in Philly and another show locally was moved out that I was scheduled to open for my old friend Chris Duarte in support of his East Coast tour. So, this has made an impact for sure, in the short term. I see it being a marathon, not a sprint, to our recovery in this business as well as the entire services industry sector globally.
BEN: Let’s say the bars and restaurants where you perform open back up soon. Do you have any trepidation about performing at these venues at the present time?
JP: I have mixed feelings about this. It is not my personal health I only have to consider, it is my band, the crew, and the good people at the venue. I have read every possible scenario, so I won’t bore you with that here, but I feel responsible for each person I bring into this, and for that reason, I will hold off longer than it’s probably expected. It’s the unknown – the information, for and against, (opening) is less than statistically accurate, because it shows absolute conflicting reports in each direction. Being an optimist won’t help with this situation – The realist with the right strategy will come out ahead.
BEN: What have you done, music/performance-wise, to keep yourself active and visible in the music community during the Quarantine?
JP: Thank you for asking. We have been doing feature sessions online about once per week where I feature one of the following: 1.) Feature a small business owner who makes pedals, pickups, guitars etc. 2.) Feature a local concert promoter 3.) Rig overviews and we often dissect my influences with my fans. We do a Q&A on these Facebook/insta sessions and often discuss the pedals and feature the companies and pedal makers. I feel the best use of my time now is to honor the people who add value to my career, and I demonstrate HOW they impact my success and I feature them. This is the best time in the history of Rock & Roll to help one another since the mid-to-late 1960’s where bands actually supported each other and worked together. The industry has a lot of disease and perhaps we can all work together to overcome this history. I am a firm believer we (the music community) should be doing more for each other – and we can. A simple “like” a “follow” of a band or a small pedal maker, pickup maker isn’t going to hurt your personal brand – This has been a mission of mine as we recalibrate this business. I will do all I can to help anyone, within reason and I hope others would do the same. Let’s come out of the other side of this even better. We can and we should.
BEN: Have you done any music recording, or created any videos, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and/or do you have anything planned/in the works?
JP: We have been releasing song clips from the new album on Instagram. Short clips up to 59 seconds. These are the new songs we have on the upcoming album (for example “Good Times, Hard Times”) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-KWhmyHDoB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
The plan is to continue finishing the album in the next sixty days. This is a physical and mental process since it is only vocals and I have been working at this point. This is where the mind/body connection is critical. One of my main areas of improvement is simply relaxing my body as I sing. Sounds simple, but it’s been a constant struggle – frankly, getting older actually helps in this department as I become more comfortable in my own skin.
As it pertains to videos, I will release the clips every other week on Facebook and Instagram as I have been doing since they seem to do well. The partner and endorsements that I have I will still feature, but I had done a few that also discussed my touring life over twenty-five years. We trace back from when we played with various bands and we do storytelling – We discussed our tours with Chris Duarte, and other shows we did with King’s X, Jeff Healey, etc. Storytelling brings out great questions and people seem to enjoy that. Also, I will continue to do a TONE overview and Amp, Guitars, Pedals etc. overviews since that is also requested quite a bit. I have more hours spent tweaking the amp combos for my tone than I do writing songs probably. This is a huge part of my story. I hope you like my tone on the new releases – It was years in the making!
BEN: What lessons do you think will be in the long-term, regarding the music and ascertainment business, as a result of the Coronavirus music stoppage?
ANSWER: JP – The longer this situation persists, the more change you will see across this industry. So, for every bad or difficult challenge historically we have had (i.e. royalties, drawing new fans, insufficient pay etc.) we will find a massive opportunity to recalibrate the game. It’s so hard to see clearly when the bread is taken off the table, but this is when the opportunity to create change happens and when the artist may have greater control to help create impact. Think like a startup because you are a small business. Pivot. Make faster decisions that involve people in the business world that perhaps would invest in your idea. That sounds counter intuitive, however, consider this: There will be such a big divide between “have” and “have nots” that those who “have” will be looking to invest in new ideas, new talent. I see this reset as a massive opportunity. So, I won’t be rushing into any quick decisions. I want to come out of this (or come back?) with a killer new show, with the best talent at my side and reinvent a category both musically and emotionally for our fans and fans to be. Thanks for having me…
More on the James Pace Band: https://jamespaceband.com; https://www.facebook.com/jamespaceband/; https://www.instagram.com/james_pace_band/; https://twitter.com/JamesPa40860742.
