August James (senior) is a musician at Occidental who currently has just under 25,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and most recently performed at The Hotel Cafe in Hollywood Oct. 29. According to James, while the songs he makes now are mainly of the indie pop and indie folk genres, music first caught his attention in middle school when he discovered GarageBand and started creating his own beats on the school iPads.
“[Making music] slowly evolved into producing, writing my own stuff and the genre changed a little bit,” James said.
In addition to writing and producing his own music, James said he has worked alongside other musicians within the Occidental community and has more recently started to engage with other producers in the LA area.
James said that one of the musicians at Occidental that he has worked with the most throughout his musical career is fellow student and longtime friend, Teddy McGowan (senior). After meeting in high school in their home state of Minnesota, James and McGowan immersed themselves in writing and creating music with one another and have helped each other grow as musicians since the beginning, according to James.
“I feel like [McGowan] has always just been somebody I’m talking to about music, and I trust his opinion and feedback,” James said.
McGowan said he and James spent a majority of the COVID-19 pandemic together, writing their own pieces and sharing them with each other. Now living together, they said they are able to constantly support each other as they each continue to pursue music.
“He cranks out a lot of really cool, independent stuff and it’s fun to have him run that stuff by me and obviously draw inspiration from not only his music but also the things that we all do when we’re hanging out as friends,” McGowan said.
McGowan most recently supported James at his Hotel Cafe performance, where James and his band performed a set of his original songs.
“I remember seeing him perform in high school, and [the concert] felt like the next chapter in a sense,” McGowan said. “He had a great stage presence, and the band sounded great.”
According to James, he and McGowan have attempted to make songs together, but because of their differing writing styles, they find it more beneficial to separate their music careers and learn from each other in different ways instead. James said that it is also difficult to make music with people he feels closer to.
“I feel like both of our music is so autobiographical that it’s hard to be vulnerable in that way with somebody who’s your friend,” James said. “We don’t really have the same stories to tell.”
McGowan said that because he is not immersed in music classes at Occidental, he enjoys having an environment with James where he can have this creative outlet of writing music.
“It’s nice to be around a lot of people who are making music with me. It’s just sort of August because we are so close. I’m around him a lot and that keeps me sort of wanting to do more and more,” McGowan said.
James said that even though he is not a music major, he wants to treat music as a potential career path. He said he has begun to engage more with the business aspects, such as working with management and producers rather than just creating a song himself.
“I’m an [economics] major, so in some sense, maybe that helps me think about other things that go into being an artist, aside from the actual music,” James said.
James has also worked with Sophie Weil (senior), who he said has photographed a number of his concerts and created cover art for some of his projects. Weil said she also went to support James at his Oct. 29 Hotel Cafe performance, where she photographed for him and edited a video of the night.
Weil said she met James during their first year at Occidental. She said they have been able to work together on so many occasions because of their shared love for music and art.
“I think we have very similar aesthetics, so it’s easy for us to know how to create one vision together,” Weil said. “It definitely helps that we’re close friends, [too].”
James said that while it is hard to plan for a career in music, he hopes to continue writing songs and growing as an artist.
“I’m trying to give [music] some respect or at least pretend to treat it as a career for a year and see what happens,” James said.
Contact Amalia Rimmon at rimmon@oxy.edu
