James Reyne

About

James Reyne, OAM (born 19 May 1957, Lagos, Nigeria) is an Australian singer, songwriter, guitarist, pianist and harmonica player. Father of Jaime Robbie Reyne and brother of David Reyne.

Born to an Australian mother and an English father, James' family migrated to Australia in the early 1960s, settling in Victoria's Mornington Peninsula area. Leaving law school to study drama at the Victorian College of the Arts, James' musical career initially took hold in the late 1970s when he and some friends formed the band Australian Crawl. Australian Crawl had substantial success in Australia with all of their albums achieving top 5 status. The band won numerous awards and James won best male vocalist for 3 consecutive years and garnered recognition for his songwriting ability, in particular with the song "Reckless".

After the band split in 1986, James spent some time in the United States and Europe, returning to Australia in 1988. His first self-titled solo album went triple platinum and included three top 10 singles. In the following years James released two more solo albums, Hard Reyne and Electric Digger Dandy, which mirrored the success of the first. In 1992, he recorded a duet with country music singer James Blundell, a cover of The Dingoes' song Way Out West which went to number 1 on the Australian charts. He then joined Daryl Braithwaite, Jef Scott and Simon Hussey on the album Company Of Strangers. James returned to Los Angeles and in 1995 recorded The Whiff Of Bedlam with renowned producer Stewart Levine. In 1999, James recorded and released the CD Design For Living with his friends, brothers Scott and Brett Kingman.

Throughout his career James has appeared in a number of theatrical, film and television productions and concert events, including the television mini-series Return to Eden (1983), the movie What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), the stage musical The Little Shop of Horrors (1996) and the television series State Coroner (1997-1998).

In 2004, he released Speedboats For Breakfast on undefined, followed in 2005 with the undefined CD ...And The Horse You Rode In On! which contained acoustic reworkings of some of his best known solo and Australian Crawl compositions. James toured Australia during 2005 – 2006, all the while writing and recording. During this period he recorded several children's songs that were included as a CD and book package with illustrations by Wendy Straw. Another project was co-hosting the music show Dig TV with Tracee Hutchinson, on ABC 2. In 2007, he released his eighth solo album Every Man A King.