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SALT LAKE CITY — Local musician Joshua James has worked tirelessly over the past several years to make a name in music. His unique voice and storyteller qualities have helped his songs reach impressive heights: his debut album, "The Sun is Always Brighter," reached the No. 1 spot on iTunes’ folk genre list in 2007. Both it and the follow-up, 2009’s "Build Me This," were named as “Best of iTunes” selections.
James, who makes American Fork his home, tours aggressively and has shared the stage with the likes of David Gray, John Mayer and Ani DiFranco. He has performed in many countries around globe and taken part in legendary North American festivals like Lollapalooza, Bonaroo and South by Southwest.
On their recent tour of the United Kingdom, James' band spent an ill-fated night in an abandoned mansion. I sat down with James and two of his bandmates, multi-instrumentalist Evan Coulombe and bassist Isaac Russell, to hear firsthand how that experience nearly derailed the tour.
“For this UK tour, we couch surfed nearly the whole time,” James said. “First night of the tour, in a town called Darlington, this lady offered us a place to stay. So we get there late at night. We’d just got to Europe, you know, we’re tired. And the place that we stayed was supposedly haunted. So it’s this huge, abandoned house that used to be an art school. Multiple people had committed suicide and died in there. Just this big, dark place. And she was living in it. I don’t know if she was the caretaker or what.”
“That first night, we went to bed pretty late,” said Coulombe. “And then the next night we played a show pretty close to there. Then we went back there to sleep.”
We decided that night we'd go on a ghost hunt in this place. It was massive and a lot of people had died in there.
–Joshua James
“But we weren’t tired after the show,” James said. “We decided that night we’d go on a ghost hunt in this place. It was massive and a lot of people had died in there."
The band’s ghost hunt took them into some of the mansion’s most remote rooms. James' drummer, Scott Nementz, was more on edge than the others after two long days. Their UK hosts noticed and began to pick on the drummer, jumping out of the darkness to scare him.
“He took it kind of personally,” James said.
“Yeah,” added Coulombe, “he was pretty riled up by the time we were done with the ghost hunt.”
“So after a long night,” explained James, “there was an argument that went on between Scott and a UK resident there, that was a big fan of The Who and other UK rock-n-roll bands. And Scott is more into jazz, I guess you would say. The argument went on. Scott got upset, because the guy said that they were kind of the birthplace of rock-n-roll. He ended up, at 5 in the morning, punching the wall and breaking his hand. First night of a month-long UK tour. He’s the drummer. Punched a brick wall. But he didn’t tell anyone. Woke up in the morning and I see him just nursing his hand. And it is swollen. It looked so bad.”
“He looked it up on the Internet and self diagnosed,” said Coulombe. “He was convinced it was just out of socket, so he would have Isaac pull on it as hard as he could. All he was doing was pulling on a broken bone."
“It was the grossest thing ever,” exclaimed Russell. “That was gnarly. He’d read stuff online and say, ‘Nah, it’s just boxer’s fist. People get this all the time. Boxers get this.’ And I’d say, ‘No, dude, I really don’t think so.’ It was, like, swollen out to here.”
With the drummer’s hand growing more swollen and deformed by the day, James feared the tour had been doomed. But Nementz persevered and finished out the month. He even used his broken hand to disarm an enraged bar-goer during a brawl in Dublin.
“He would wrap his hand every night,” James said, with admiration. “Played the whole tour. Near the end, he went to a hospital and they did x-rays and it was broken.”
Joshua and his band are currently preparing to embark on a US tour in support of their new album, "From The Top Of Willamette Mountain." While they’re sure to have adventures on their travels, they hope there won’t be any bone-breaking incidents like that fateful night in Darlington, England.
Grant Olsen joined the ksl.com team in 2012. He covers travel, outdoor adventures, and other interesting things. Contact him at grant@thegatsbys.com.
