Iowa City alt-R&B artist Jim Swim has released dozens of collaborative and solo songs in his illustrious music career, but never a full-length record. But that changes on Friday, Oct. 23, when his debut LP TOWNIE will drop. The album challenges negative connotations around "townies" and “local” music.
“I think ‘local,’ oftentimes, among musicians and among fans, means ‘amateur.’ Means ‘hobby.’ Means ‘quaint.’ But when we talk about local food — like if you go to Italy and you get some local pasta — that's elevated because Italy does pasta, you know? Or local architecture — it's not diminished. It's rare, it's unique. It's flavorful of that area, and I think music has always been that way too,” Tyler James, the West High School language arts teacher behind Jim Swim, said.
James has been living and working in Iowa City, a college town known for its transient younger population, for 17 years now.
“People come and go. I've had so many friends come and go, and I think [Iowa City] is a place that's set up for young people and for prelude and prologue. My story was always that I was going to move as well, but it's just been one root after another that sprouted from my legs, and now I'm pretty rooted. I really like the school that I teach at, and I like being able to afford my rent in the old house that I live at. I feel like I'm probably gonna stay,” James said. “The album is kind of reckoning with what all of that means. It means certain things creatively, it means certain things personally, and I think some of it is cope. Some of it is a nice kind of acceptance. Some of it is disappointment. It’s all baked in there. It's a record about being honest about what's become of your life as a full-on adult in where you live.”
James’ solo music as Jim Swim, as well as his work in Sun Centauri and collabs with other Iowa artists like ADE and Soultru, has been more hip-hop-forward. On TOWNIE, he ventures into an indie bedroom pop sound, which is a genre befitting an album he wrote, played and produced himself at home.
“It was kind of this conscious decision of being like, ‘I'm gonna play [guitar] more. I want my hands on instruments more,’ and so I knew that was going to be a big piece of the album,” James said. “I started making music because I loved young Bob Dylan ... I just find that as I get older, I listen to a lot of more mellow acoustic music, like bedroom pop music. There's this band called Peter Cat Recording Company that I'm obsessed with that kind of blends cabaret, lounge, bedroom pop and a little bit of electronic. I've been influenced a lot by what I've been listening to, but also just kind of bringing it all back home to my original influences and wanting to play a guitar and sing.”
As a public school teacher, James’ capacity for creativity is at its peak during summer break. This year, he worked on TOWNIE religiously.
“This summer, I just really fell into a schedule in my day: Get up at eight, come in the studio, work ‘til about noon, have lunch, go back to the studio, work ‘til about four, go for a bike ride and then have my evenings,” James said. “I found that the pace I was moving at was working out to do more songs, and I felt like I had more things that I wanted to connect to the overall concept of TOWNIE. Some of the stories are not my own story, they’re from other people that either live in this small town or one nearby in Iowa, so I felt like I just had more room — both with time, energy and just things to say. My goal was to get them all written by the end of the summer, so that when school started I could focus on the mixing and mastering.”
James also made sure to include some Iowa City “easter eggs” in TOWNIE, like a mention of his favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Saigon’s Corner, and the mystical Black Angel statue in “Underground Man About Town.”
Like a true townie, James called upon local talent to market his debut LP. Iowa City artist Liv Heath created the album art, which is a bold ouroboros design that James said “implies there isn't really a beginning or an end, and in a college town there’s always a ‘stuck in time’ feeling.”
He also recruited Lua Brewing owner Scott Selix to create a limited-edition TOWNIE beer, which is a Hamm’s-inspired lager made from Iowa corn. The TOWNIE brew’s launch will coincide with the release of James’ album on Friday, Oct. 23.
TOWNIE’s album release show, complete with a full band, also takes place on the 23rd, at Gabe’s in downtown Iowa City. Fellow local acts Ahzia, Salt Fox and Alyx Rush will open.
“I'm interested in people writing about where they're from, and I'm a big believer that really great writing about specific places and people becomes universal,” James said. “The greatest novelists and the greatest painters have always paid attention to what's around them. Think about Ulysses, by James Joyce. It's one day in Dublin, and it's this timeless novel that holds the whole human experience in it. I think, in music, we should have a higher regard for music that is specifically about places that are not fancy places.”
