James Mercer
James Mercer
James Russell Merceris an American guitarist and musician. He is the founder, vocalist, lead singer-songwriter, and sole remaining original member of the indie rock group The Shins. In 2009, Mercer and producer Danger Mouse formed the side project Broken Bells, for which they released a self-titled album in March 2010, followed by After the Disco in 2014. Mercer has also acted, appearing in Matt McCormick's feature film Some Days Are Better Than Others, which premiered in 2010...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth26 December 1970
CityHonolulu, HI
CountryUnited States of America
Maybe it's just parenthood that puts you in a situation where you just have to develop a new attitude, I guess, about things.
Collaboration is something I missed at one point in The Shins. I really wanted to have that experience again, you know, not having everything rely on me. I wanted to have a partner.
For the longest time, I didn't even want to admit I was serious about music. Before the Shins, I would tell myself, 'Oh, I'm going to figure something out someday.' I had this romantic vision of being this old dude maybe making guitars or something.
There's not a lot of thinking that I need to do away from the studio on Broken Bells stuff.
My attempt at really doing classic sort of songwriting is Shins stuff.
I'm real happy. I've been lucky in love, and I've got a wonderful kid now, and things have been going well.
Lyrically, I think I'm frustrated with this whole process of trying to figure out what I believe about the world and life. I don't like to adopt a sort of guiding philosophy.
As a child, I lived in Germany at the Ramstein air force base, where my dad sang at a nightclub in Kaiserslautern. My parents couldn't afford a babysitter, so when I was, like, ten or 11, I would go with them to the bar until two in the morning.
The way I was brought up, there was a little bit of prodding to do something more practical, and I wasted a lot of time trying to be a practical person.
The part of modern pop music I don't know much about is hip hop.
I'm not really excited about the idea of committing to anything permanently.
Humans are social creatures that really crave intimacy.
I do like talking with friends about big concepts, you know, the stuff that will ruin a party. To me, the party hasn't begun until we're talking about the nonexistence of God.
I think that what's funny is that I seem to be taking up the roles that I remember my dad having - for some reason, I'm the one who makes the coffee, and my dad was always that guy. It's kind of shocking how closely I compare to my dad.