What up!!

I’m sitting in my hotel room here in Indiana on a day off eating Jimmy Johns and watching TV. When you see the same SportsCenter for the 4^th time in a row, it is time to do something else…so I thought I’d drop you a little note to fill you in on what’s been going on. We’ll do it bullet point style cuz that’s how you roll…I think.

Summer Tour with O.A.R.: Absolutely insane. We were on the road for 7 weeks and played the biggest venues I’ve done to date, which included a show at Red Rocks! Marc (O.A.R. lead singer) sang “Standing on a Rooftop” with me for most of the summer and I ended up freestyling on their biggest song “Crazy Game of Poker”. Dope experience for a fan like me!

Corona Light Wide Open Beach Volleyball Tour: Been playing shows for Corona and getting introduced to the beach volleyball world – man do they like to party!

MotoGP at The Indy Motor Speedway: Played two shows this past weekend during the MotoGP race for Honda and Red Bull…if you’re not familiar with the sport it’s definitely worth a Google search and a YouTube video session.

New Music: I’ll be back in LA this fall working on new music for your ears…stay tuned…

Thanks for helping me make this dream possible…

Godspeed,

KJ

VIEW THE FULL NEWSLETTER HERE

This guy blows my mind with every video …

Every time I think “how cool could this actually be”, only to have my mind blown minutes later.

Enjoy …

Scottsdale, AZ – W Hotel

A’s Connor Jackson on Guitar – Giants Cody Ross rallying the troops

SF Giants: Ryan Voegelsong, Matt Cain, Billy Hall, Cody Ross and Connor Jackson

‘Sweet Caroline’

Team W Hotel Scottsdale

New flavor? Benitentiary! Bad joke. Sorry.

Pic via our boy Josh Madden at (http://mrmean.tumblr.com/)

I’m sitting in my studio procrastinating right now, looking at Facebook profiles, eating grilled cheese from In-N-Out and watching Justin Bieber videos (I’ll let you decide which one of those prompted me to write ya a little note). And yes, you can get grilled cheese at In-N-Out, it’s an off-the-menu order (sticks nose up in the air and pretends it’s no big deal). Anyway, I just finished up my latest EP called The Recent Future and I’m super excited for you to hear it. New music for your ears!

I’ll give you a quick little breakdown of what I’ve been up to this year, then you can tell me how you are (seriously, email me at Kelley@KelleyJames.com, I’m gonna be pissed if you don’t).

Started the year off with a headlining show at The Roxy here in LA and then bounced out to Park City, Utah to play a few shows at the Sundance Film Festival (reading that sentence back I apparently traveled by pogo stick). The highlight of February was performing two private shows for “The Great One” Mr. Wayne Gretzky in Las Vegas during his fantasy hockey camp. Usually, after more than one night in Sin City I start calling myself the “Not-So-Great-One” and screen all the calls from my bank asking me why I withdrew my limit on every card I own. This trip was no exception.

March’s highlights were shows at SXSW and MLB Spring Training parties in Scottsdale, AZ. Got to see my San Francisco Giants take the field as World Series Champions (shout out to the Bay) and had a few of the players come out to the shows and play on stage with me (we took ground balls for five minutes then did a song).

In April, I went on tour with Mike Posner and we tackled colleges for six weeks all over the Midwest – much love to everyone who came out to those shows. In May and June I played some shows and, most importantly, recorded new music for you. The song I actually wrote about you called, “Greatest Person on the Planet” needed a better triangle solo and will be on my next album. And now I’m about to leave for two months to tour with one of my favorite bands, O.A.R.

Hope to see you at a show soon! And, damn, you look good today!

Godspeed,

KJ

VIEW THE FULL NEWSLETTER HERE

There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found
While journeying east and west -
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best…

We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.

– Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Wishing luck to the boys this week at the Masters

Hoffman – Fowler – Barnes

“Sweet Caroline”

Californication

I wake up in a new city every day, but this is where my heart is.

Comma Sutra

Myspace Profile Pic


Ma!!!!!! Meatloaf!
Where’s my protein??!!
Also, do you think you could take a pic of me for my myspace profile …

Nightmares …

Was in Las Vegas this past weekend with my manager Jeremy for his birthday. Had a great time, but had to stay three nights, which to me, is too two nights too long in sin city. I flew in on Saturday to see our boy Nick Cannon kill it at The Palms for his Showtime comedy special they were filming there. He really did an outstanding job. We linked up with Kate Voegele and her boyfriend Brett Hughes for dinner and bounced over to Encore for Lil Jon’s residency at Surrender, which was a little wilder than I had anticipated. It all resulted in me hanging out with random Nascar fans at a blackjack table in The Riviera (aka The Motel 6 of Casinos) at 630am. Lotta stories. No comp’d breakfast.

Sunday night we went to Jon’s viewing party at The Wynn for the premiere of Celebrity Apprentice. Gonna be a great season. Gary Busey … whaa? Went to the club XS with the group and my crew from the W Hotel Scottsdale to celebrate the fact that it was Sunday night and we didn’t have to go to a coal mine in the morning. Ended that night hanging out with random Ivy League kids at a blackjack table in the Wynn (aka The Michael Jordan of Casinos) at 630am.

Monday I played a show at The Palms … worked on my game a little bit in the Hardwood Suite …

Jon’s view at Surrender

Jon and Kate (my friends would kill me if I made a ‘plus 8′ joke here)

Be back there May 7th … yay?

Always honored to come back home and see so many familiar faces in the crowd.

Thank you!

NYE // San Francisco, CA // with Mike Posner

I love New York in the fall … you can’t beat the vibe. The city is buzzing, in total work mode, and the weather is still warm enough to make walking excursions enjoyable. I think we were two weeks too early to get the full-on changing of the leaves but the central park stroll that I hit before our show at the Red Bull Space was magical.

We were out there for CMJ, a music conference that I like to refer to as “college’s south by southwest”. We really had a really good time and rocked two great shows. Big thanks to Oakley, Moodswing 360 and Nue Agency for putting everything together.

One night Marc from O.A.R. recommended a great Italian restaurant in Tribeca called IL GIGLIO and per the doctors orders we enjoyed a couple bottles of wine and some amazing pasta. Definitely a spot worth checking out if you’re looking for some real old school Italian food.

Check out some pics from the shows:

Getting in the mode

The Lineup

“Pusher”

Our boy Chris Young sat in

“Six Bottles”

Always great to play with Shwayze and Cisco

Night #2 // Red Bull Space

Feeling it

“Six Bottles” Solo

Line for Line freestyles with James Kinney

I got an iPhone last week and started taking pictures again. But now I’m the d-bag with two phones … I just don’t know if I can give up my blackberry yet. I still like buttons.

Here’s a little peak at the last week of my life through Apple’s celluar device:

World Series Game One

Agreed

Such a beautiful ballpark

Happy fans after a solid win

San Francisco, CA // 3am // On my way to a late night jam sesh with BZ

Phoenix, AZ // Played during the Suns vs. Lakers game // Thanks to Jamie and Steve LeVine

Perfect Saturday // USC & Giants by the pool at the W Hotel Scottsdale // Thanks to Joe and Todd

Best Halloween costume I saw

I played my entire Halloween set like this

Happy Halloween from LA

Twitter is like super sugary cereal. The kind that is really more desert than anything else. Good at any time of the day, but seconds after you slurp down the last bit of self-made-Coco-Puff-Chocolate-Milk you realize that you should have opted for a real meal.

I used to be much better at blogging until the pace of my little musical journey picked up dramatically and I started to rely on Twitter. Quick and easy but pretty empty. I’m gonna try and engage in a few more ‘sit down dinners’ these days and get back to spending time on blog entries that won’t cut me off with a red negative number like I just missed seven problems on my 7th grade math homework.

On another note I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone who has helped me out on this path I’ve been charging down for the last 3 years. It was about this time in 2007 that I decided to take the plunge as an independent artist and it’s because of you that I’ve been able to live my dream every day and continue to grow this thing in ways that I never really thought possible. There is so much more to come and I couldn’t be more excited about the possibilities. So thank you to anyone who has seen a show, bought a CD, told a friend about my music, wore a KJ shirt around campus and spread the word. If you’re reading this, then you deserve a thank you too. The next year will change a lot of things for me and I can’t wait to look back on this post in October of 2011. Thank you Renee for balancing my life out – I owe you more than you know. Most importantly thank you to my team – Jeremy, Chelsea, Josh, Carr and V … it’s only gonna get better.