James Kilbane Personal Profile
“I was being put up on a barstool in a pub when we came home to Achill from about 1975 to sing for my grandfather’s buddies at the bar,” says James Kilbane.
The Gospel and Country singer spoke to The Irish Catholic about his upbringing and his thoughts on faith.
He says from the age of three, when he was living in London, he would listen to music through the living room door or sneak in to watch Top of the Pops. His family moved to Achill Island where James still resides.
There he started national school where he sang in the school choir. He had learning difficulties and only was recently diagnosed with dyslexia. “The Mercy nuns down through the years may have gotten a lot of criticism but I often think of the order and when they came to Achill island at the turn of the 20th Century. There was nobody else at that stage, they were greatly needed to start giving a certain amount of education.”
Learning hymns was sometimes a struggle, he says, recalling a moment when he felt his Faith become connected to his music. He says that when he was aged seven: “I was put to doing a solo called Be Not Afraid and that was my first big solo, getting it completed and singing in front of a congregation of 400 or 500 people.”
He remembers at that age an elderly nun who, despite his educational issues, realised his talent for singing. She took him aside and gave a tutorial on how to sing and some exercises to practice to improve it.
“She did certain things that later on in life as an adult, I learned from speech therapists. They were amazed that this elderly nun was using these techniques way back in the 70s with me. She had an interest and she identified that I had something special.”
When he got into his teenage years James kept up with the music through singing in folk bands and the church choir. He says that at around age 14 he felt some depth to his music.
“There was a very young sister, Philomena was her name, she started a folk group with the secondary school ones and some of the nationals school ones and by that stage I was at secondary so I was going to the discos on the Friday night,” says James.
“I made my first pound, back in the day it was punts, from the age of 13 playing in the folk group.” They began playing for audiences and competing in Scor Na Nógs.
By the time he was 15 he started singing in some local bars. There he began to explore country music in different was: “In my teens I was listening a lot to John Denver, I would have been listening to Kris Kristofferson, his song Why Me Lord or Sunday Morning Coming Down. They were part of my nurturing of a certain amount of spirituality in country music,” says James. He would sometimes then play these kinds of songs if people requested a certain artist and he saw that people liked what they heard.
It took James some time to commit fully to his music, he first pursued his third level studies after being unemployed for a period of time. He trained as a typist, which was huge for him looking back now knowing more about his learning difficulties. He entered the course through the Vocational Training Opportunities Scheme (VTOS) and ended up performing to a high enough standard that he qualified to do a diploma course and then entered into a degree course in the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT).
One evening around 2001, James had recently been offered to do a Higher Diploma course, his wife Christine asked him if he was going to go ahead with it or down the path of music.
“I was thinking about doing something and I turned to her and I said ‘I’m able to sing everything Christine but what music is the key music that really reaches people when I sing it?’,” and she responded to him saying there was something special about when he sang Gospel music. He decided then that he would do a Gospel album, he felt he had something to contribute.
“I did research on recording Christian music. My college training came to me, where you just don’t sit down throw together anything, you think how you’re going to approach it and do it in a professional way.”
He said he invested a lot of money in it, and then put it in the drawer for a while. Until he auditioned for You’re a Star in 2004. He placed as runner up, and it kick-started his successful career in music.
“As history goes I remember coming out of the audition and Christine ringing me and me saying ‘I feel our lives will never be the same again’.”
Raised as a Catholic, James still practices his faith. However he says that he sees the benefits of understanding and interacting with different types of Christianity other than his own. He enjoys going to all types of Christian services, performing in different churches as well as writing hymns that are tailored to different churches and also fit them all.
This May he says he will be doing something for Mary’s month, whether that’s new music or something else online. “My life isn’t all about Gospel and Christian music because this is the life that God wants me to live. I’m convinced of that absolutely he has made things very clear to me at different times.”