James Hollingsworth is a British musician who has been in the music business for a very long time. I guess not so strange if you know that he makes music since his childhood. However strangely enough only a few people do know that he has released the last couple of years some progressive rock albums as well. Lost In The Winds Of Time (see review) he released with Steve Griffiths in 2024. And his latest solo album Thirteen Moons (see review) was released in 2021. Reviewing both albums in 2025 did led to an interesting conversation with James. A conversation which did finally end up in the interview you can read below. An interview which will probably introduce a lot of readers of Background Magazine to this musician and his music for the first time!

Can you introduce yourself of telling where you are coming from and how you became a musician and can you make a living with what you do or do you have other work as well?
"I'm originally from the south east of England where I learned to play bass and acoustic guitar, and grew up listening to a lot of classical, Prog and rocking Blues, regularly going up to London to see gigs as a teenager. For a few

James Hollingsworth

years I lived in Swansea (Wales) where I got a taste for acoustic music and psychedelia, and then London (where I saw Jeff Buckley play a solo set in 1994) and eventually settled in the south west about 30 years ago. While working various 'temp' jobs I saved up for a car and PA system and started regular gigging around 1998, and set about building a gig circuit. I went full-time as a musician in 2006 when there were more paid gigs for original musicians and many people bought CDs. As the economy changed and streaming took over I adapted, playing more covers gigs when required and taking on students to teach guitar, voice and even harmonica. I also adopted new live-looping tech which allowed me to play bigger shows, especially my Pink Floyd Nights, and Psych Rock Nights (classic Psych/Prog with more originals than 'Floyd Nights). I also have a reliable agent these days who gets me (mostly) covers gigs at a pubs chain owned by a big brewery, so I'm grateful to still be a full-time musician after nearly 20 years."

Do people mix you up with James Hollingsworth the country musician from the USA with roots in Texas swing and blues? Will the real James Hollingsworth please stand up?
"A few short years ago I got a message from one of my many step-brothers asking "have you released a new single, James?" To my knowledge I had not done so. So I checked my spotify etc and sure enough I had released a single called Trouble, with evidence of a photo-shoot I had no memory of, wearing my favourite dungarees, shades and a stetson hat, my elbow on the side of the truck, beer in hand.

Of course, it was another James Hollingsworth, what should I do? So I informed my distributor and each JH soon had our own space in the online world. Meanwhile I quite got to like James' troublesome song and, after finally tracking him down on Instagram, I asked him if he'd mind if I covered his tune (he was delighted). It's easy to play, and I've played it quite a few times at my gigs, it's got a great riff and people love to hear the story.
But, if anything, I've had more people confuse me with Swedish folk artist James Hollingworth (no 's'), and actually had folks turn up to my gigs expecting to hear songs from their childhood in Sweden - but they stayed around to listen anyway and tell me about their mistake."

How did you become a multi-instrumentalist and did you learn yourself to play on instruments such as guitars and basses or did you have some lessons?
"I began making music early, mimicking sounds and singing and taking lessons with piano (age 6) and violin (age 8). I only achieved 'grade 2' in violin, but it covered the basics, later moving on independently to bass guitar, guitar, harmonica, and eventually relearning the piano from my knowledge of the guitar. Most of my musical knowledge is self-taught, from reading, observing other musicians and from jamming with friends, apart from 6 lessons with a guitar teacher for a deep dive into theory and jazz modes etc (he said I gave him a headache!). In 2007 I was given a double bass, this is what happens when you keep feeding a violin (!) - you can hear it on The Nautilus Flask (bowed) and Nine Bones (plucked) on the Lost In The Winds Of Time album."

Some live-looping show-reels:
(I'm preparing right now for the Wish You Were Here 50th anniversary shows beginning in May)

In 2011 I got my Boomerang III looper, so I was able to bring in more instruments in my live performances, including drums, flutes, bells, singing-bowls and whistles. So 2011 marks my real voyage into being a performing multi-instrumentalist. Still, despite my daily piano practice at home, I haven't yet extended this to keyboards - I'll really have to get a roadie!"

Is Lost In The Winds Of Time a concept album and if so what is the story about?
"Yes, Lost ITWOT is indeed a concept album, it's a kind of allegory for the democratisation of our true history on this beautiful living jewel of a planet, with a picaresque tale woven through it. Personally I feel it also describes the people of the world shrugging off of the shadowy secrets of the age of Pisces, and the beginning of the more egalitarian age of Aquarius, but I'm more into astrology than Steve.

In short:
A book preserved in Argon as is retrieved from an abandoned library of lost histories by a hired crew, whose captain eventually surrenders it to humanity - but without alerting his paymasters (who are jealous of the knowledge it contains) due to the existence of a strangely providential key which opens the argon-filled flask. The tale hinges on the friendship and commonality rediscovered between the travellers and the local indigenous people who save them from drowning. After completing the first mix of the title track and basic versions of the others, I realised that every track needed to have the same instrumentation for the album to flow and bind together, this album is the result."

How did you come up working with Steve Griffiths and are you planning to work with him again?
"I first met Keyboard wizard Steve Griffiths on the Swansea music scene in the early 90's, but it wasn't until 2016 that we got into the studio and began work on the first song and title track. There was a narrative thread in the lyric about a 'castle flanked by the trees in the sheltering mists', so we pulled on the thread and this double concept album fell out of the creative ether. I just asked - 'what if the castle contained a library

Steve Griffiths & James Hollingsworth (r)

which was filled with all the lost, redacted, burned and rewritten texts from ages past?'

Steve and I are planning rehearsals for promotional gigs this year and next year, we have a tremendous drummer on board from the band I first saw Steve play with in 1992 - The Green Inspiration Band (they're on Spotify/youtube), and a local (actually Dutch) bass player, Jan Antonius. I think I might have landed an awesome second guitarist (tbc!). Ideally we'll also need a pickaso guitar bow player as well (and a second keyboard player, a percussionist and Sean Mcbride to play sax (nb track 2), harmonica and flute/ocarina) but a 6-piece would carry the sound of the album's ensemble."

Who inspired you writing the music of this album? Musical influences?
"For me, the work of Graham Hancock, Terence McKenna and others opened my mind to how much knowledge has been lost, distorted or destroyed. The tremendous change we are experiencing globally also helped drive the story. My musical inspirations and influences for this album go back to Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds, Yes, Genesis, Rush, Jethro Tull, as well as common ground with Steve: Ozric Tentacles, Gong, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Hawkwind.

Steve's musical influences extend more into metal, such as Black Sabbath (of course) and he's a huge fan of Opeth. As a trained organist he's influenced by Bach and broad classical music structure/arrangements and has two Korg Wavestations (an EX and a rackmount SR) once owned by his friend Alan Davey who used them with Hawkwind."

Did you release both albums on your own label?
"Essentially the album is independently released. We added the Absoluteness logo to the physical products, a virtual label founded by Andy Hunt (aka Solar Bud, also a guitar player and singer in the Green inspiration Band)."

Thirteen Moons is not a concept album but an album of individual tracks. Right?
"Thirteen Moons is not a concept album as such, but it is part of a loosely conceptual album sequence which began on 7/7/2007 with Seventh String, 7 songs for £7, with seven designs of seven-fold mandalas in the artwork. After that, each year was marked by a similar music release, some uncompleted (!), with Eight Your Nature on 08/08/08, Narcissus on 09/09/09, Tetraktys on 10/10/10 and One on 11/11/11, until Midst The Point on 12/12/12 - after which , with no more than 12 months in the year, where should I go? I discovered the number of annual moon cycles and knew the answer was: Thirteen Moons, of course!

I had just relocated in 2013 and needed a new release to take with me when I got back on the road so I compiled what songs I had at the time, intending to come back and remaster them so they flowed as an album, and kept selling CDR's of it for years, mostly at my regular gigs until the lockdowns in 2020. Thirteen Moons 2021 is a lockdown project' - I'm so glad I finally finished it. It's a smorgasbord of everything I do: Acoustic, Prog, live-looping and some Rock n Roll."

Why did you record for Thirteen Moons a Rush inspired tribute track and why didn't you not record more of this kind of compositions?
"The Rush pastiche (Clouds Begin Their Reign, track 12) was written with my voice in mind by Jason Flinter (who recently helped us film the whole album in front of green screen). He invited me to sing it, then I adopted it for my album, helped mix and later remastered it for the 2021 release. We wrote 3 songs together, all of which are on Thirteen Moons. Of our collaborations, Sea Of Enrichment sounds way more like Rush than Privately Minded (which was originally pop, at double the tempo, but an mp3 conversion glitch halved the speed and I loved it, so re-recorded the instruments and vocals as smooth jazz instead of pop and invited Sean McBride to blow sax on it). I believe Jason has made more Rush-inspired songs with other musicians. Breathing It In was written by Jason Flinter (music) and Jackie Spindley (lyrics), to which I added my tenor-style acoustic rhythm guitar and ambient bird-song (my field recordings not samples), it was the first project Jason invited me to sing."

How did you get in touch with producer John Burns (famous for his work with Genesis, John Martyn, Jethro Tull and others) on mixing/mastering and compiling the songs for Thirteen Moons into a new running order?
"Part of the reason I was interested to join rock band JEBO in 2003 was because their advert for a singer said they had a producer on board whose credits included Genesis etc. It turned out to be John Burns, who had produced my favourite Genesis album, Selling England By The Pound (and others of course!). I learned a lot from working with him and the band, we recorded Sinking Without You with his guidance. We supported The Musical Box at major venues in the UK (including the Royal Albert Hall) and Loreley in DE. But the band mainly played Rob Allen's (excellent) songs and I needed my own creative outlet, so I left the band in 2009.

Sinking Without You by JEBO: Click here to play

James Hollingsworth (balcony: Steve Griffiths)

Since then I've stayed in touch with Johnnie, he only lives about ten miles away, occasionally borrowing instruments from him and helping him to compose his responses to several interviews about his work, including with World Of Genesis and Dusk. He was happy to listen to my mixes for Thirteen Moons and offer advice, especially on my song Far Away From Home, which was one of two of my songs recorded with Johnnie and JEBO in 2008. The new running order of Thirteen Moons was my choice.

Thank you for the reminder, I must call him. Sadly his wife of many years had a profound health crisis in 2022 and since then he's been stretched and understandably stressed as a result. I gave him some early mixes of Lost In The Winds Of Time and he wasn't impressed. He did say that maybe his current situation might have clouded his appreciation, and that I was welcome to ignore him. Despite having produced these iconic Prog albums, his favourite music is more rock and roll (The Rolling Stones are much more to his taste), so I decided to carry on with the project since I believed in it so much. But he's a good mate and it's time I got back in touch to see how they are doing."

Did you play real drums on both albums or were they coming from a synthesizer of drum machine?
"Percussion/drums are various on Thirteen Moons. The Jason Flinter collaborative tracks (1, 2, 9 and 12) were originally compiled by him in Logic using sampled drums, but he replaces the sampled metalware sounds with his real cymbals. Sandro Granda played percussion on Faster Than Light. Jeff France was drummer in JEBO, with whom I recorded Far Away From Home. For the live-looping songs (4, 6 & 10) it was before my multipad day, even before my micro-drum set days (see video links below) - I just held up the individual drums to the mic and looped them by hand one at a time. I play hand percussion on the more acoustic Rumi and Mothership.

In Lost In The Winds Of Time, the first track's drums are heavily edited AI 'Drummer' tracks - but with two drummers! I converted the AI drums to MIDI and edited it all old-school. I later realised it would take ages to do the same for every track, so I recorded my playing on the Alesis multipad, which I'd loaded with Jeff France's drum sounds which I grabbed from a (so far) unreleased JEBO recording. In this way I could emphasise twists and turns without having to edit blobs on a screen. Whisperings Of The Shaman's Dream has a single take of my shaking a Rainstick instead of a second drum part. It was really a trial to discover the groove for this song, but after I did I jokingly renamed it The Poppadom Song because it goes ||: *poppadom poppadom poppadom poppadom* :||
By the time I got to the later tracks I had become skillful enough with the AI guide to not need to convert all of the AI drums to MIDI for editing. The ability of the software to 'follow' another instrument part really helped to gel the rhythm sections, especially on the double bass tracks I feel (7 and 8)."

What are your future plans?
Rehearsals for gigs promoting Lost In The Winds Of Time begin next month. We've put together an awesome band for these shows and I'm really looking forward to rocking out with these guys.

As well as one-off song collaboration (words written by one friend and music by another), and enough live recordings to put out a live album when I get a moment, I also have several albums of my songs lined up, the next one is a collection of my best songs recorded with my mature skills, as heard on Lost In The Winds Of Time, but more acoustically. Some are out there in one form or another but hopefully these will be definitive versions.

Also, as well as regular gigs to pay the bills, this year I have a series of Pink Floyd Nights in the diary, touring a solo 50th anniversary show playing the whole of Wish You Were Here, with various more Pink Floyd and some of my own tunes."

Thanks for doing this interview!
Thank you for your kind attention and interest in my/our music!