James Mercer (musician)

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James Mercer (right) with his band The Shins at a concert
James Mercer 2004 in Cologne

James Russell Mercer (born December 26, 1970 in Honolulu ) is an American indie pop musician, who is best known as the front man of the band The Shins from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Life

Because Mercer's father worked in the United States Air Force , his family moved often. Mercer grew up in Germany and the United Kingdom . At the age of 15 he began taking piano lessons in England.

In the early 1990s he returned to the United States, where he played in the band Blues Roof Dinner. In 1992 Mercer founded the band Flake Music with drummer Jesse Sandoval, keyboardist Marty Crandall and bassist Neal Langford . Their album When You Land Here, It's Time to Return received good reviews and earned the band appearances as support act for Modest Mouse and Califone .

In 1999, Mercer in Albuquerque , New Mexico , the band The Shins . After initial success with The Shins, Flake Music broke up in the same year. In 2002 the band members moved to Portland , Oregon .

In addition to The Shins, Mercer is also active as a solo artist. At the 2004 Roskilde Festival , Mercer met US DJ and producer Brian Burton, aka DJ Danger Mouse . Together with Burton, Mercer will be producing first pieces of music from March 2008. Their joint project Broken Bells was announced in September 2009. The debut album Broken Bells was released in March 2010 and hit the album charts in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

On the 2007 released album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank by Modest Mouse , he took on three pieces of the backing vocals : Florida , Missed the Boat and We've Got Everything .

In 2010, James Mercer starred in Matt McCormick's Some Days Are Better Than Others . In 2011, James Mercer had a guest appearance on the comedy series Portlandia as a band member of Echo Echo (episode 5/1).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Intro # 200, March 2012, pages 72-74
  2. ↑ a b The Shins - Biography at allmusic.com, accessed on February 26, 2012
  3. ↑ James Mercer on the screen ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , somedaysthemovie.com, accessed July 22, 2010  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.somedaysthemovie.com
personal data
SURNAME Mercer, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mercer, James Russell (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American indie pop musician
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Honolulu