Chris James 1956 Welsh singer/songwriter

I am a Welsh singer/songwriter from Cardiff, South Wales. I moved to The Netherlands when I was 17 years old and have lived there ever since.

After a short musical carreer travelling around Europe playing in various bands like Bobby Barry & The Wild Ones, Sin Of Igor and Felicity Jane, I finally settled in The Netherlands and formed a new band there together with my old Horwardian school friends Steve phillips and the late Ian Moffatt or Moff as his closest friends would call him.

We had some initial succes as a punk rock band called The Shades and did some recording for EMI with producer Pim Koopmans, however we missed our big chance and nothing came of it. Our succes as a band was limited to a small but friendly group of followers and playing regional venues in and around Holland.

When The shades broke up, Steve and I formed a new-wave band under the name The Sisters. This band was quality wise a bit better than The Shades and we got ourselves a great bass player in Feico de Leeuw. Feico also turned out to be a very talented pianist. He was talented at practically everything he did except for some organizational aspects. The band was further complimented by Paul Bearding on Sax and a long list of drummers who didn't seem to last very long with us. After the Shades I started a band called Dicky & The Fruitcakes, Dicky was a prick and soon had to exit the band which continued on as The Fruitcakes and later in a different line ups under the band name “Not The Fruitcakes”. The last reunion of the band was held in 2011 in Medemblik. Many bands followed like Red Point and much later the soul bands of Dennis Burke. The Soul Survivors and also the Amsterdam edition of that band The Dennis Burke All Stars. Finally in 2008 I gave up playing in bands, mainly due to the damage it was doing to my hearing which I certainly didnt want to fuck up any more by playing at loud volume with a brass section.

Around that period I decided to re-start my songwriting activities which had been fairly low key up until that point. Together with a songwriting friend Laurens Reij we decided to collaborate together and concentrate on expanding both our song catalogs. The collaboration worked out well and we are still working and performing together as a singer/songwriter duo Chris & Laurens. Also we restarted the Lakeside Stories singer/songwriter project which had initially been setup by Steve Phillips and Feico de Leeuw in the 1990's.

Together with Laurens Reij we now organise a monthly Singer/Songwriter event at Theater Het Park in Hoorn near Amsterdam. It has been quite succesful and it attracts an audience of about 100 people every month. The full agenda can be found on www.lakesidestories.nl

My songwriting has certainly progressed over the last 3 years and together with Laurens we have over 80 titles in our song catalog. Most of my songs are based on stories, some of which are true stories and experiences of my own while others are based on compelling stories I have heard about via the media on within my social circles. The rest is pure fiction or fantasy and I am always looking for new ideas for songs.

Hence feel free to contact me if you have any good ideas for songs. I cant promise anything, but I love experimenting and collaborating with people to produce music. I have posted some rough home recordings on this website under the tab Song Catalog, should you be interested to listen to or wish to read about my material. I have added some background information about some to the songs in order to give the reader some insight and perspective into the song and its origin. I hope you enjoy some of it!

With all my love, Chris James singer/songwriter