Biographical:
Jim Blackmann was born in Liverpool, England, and then raised in Ontario in Canada, before returning to the north of England in his teens. He trained as an engineer and then gave it up to go travelling, before settling down in the South of England. He held many part-time and temporary jobs in order to support his creative output, which ranged from art to writing to music. He came to song-writing late in life, after writing novels, essays, articles and poetry. His musical influences stem from his youth, and include Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, both of whom are Canadian songwriters.
His interest in writing meant his lyrics are as much influenced by poetry as by other songwriters. These include poets as diverse as T. S. Eliot, Shel Silverstein, e. e. cummings and Rumi. His interest in the history and culture of intuition led him to write extensively on the subject.
Comments:
‘Delicate and subtle. Riven with emotion. Oh, and enigmatic to boot.’
Chris Donovan, Somewhere Over England
‘Jim Blackmann manages to transmit his music with beautiful simplicity!’
Fabio Salvi
‘There are some songs that are called ‘classics’ because they remain in the collective memory as a reference of a place and time. Yes they achieve to stop the world every time we hear them. I believe we all have our personal ‘classics’, we often don’t know why but they connect with a very deep part of us, unreachable most of the time. And then we have the sense these songs have always been there, they come from the origin, the eternity, and for three minutes this crazy world we live in makes sense. The song (Breathe), written by singer-songwriter Jim Blackmann, is one of them.’
Guillem Michel Roldan