James Hersch came onto the music scene here at Grand in Fall 2022. As he puts it: “I stumbled onto a gathering of the AIG (Acoustic Instrument Group) in 2022. A smiling Don Bollard noticed me lingering just outside and invited me to bring my guitar and join in. Everyone had a welcoming smile. I quickly became friends with David Durham and the Salty Dawgs.”
James made his Grand debut at the November 2023 Live At Cimarron venue. He then proceeded to a wider audience of music lovers this past January with his two-night main stage show: “The Songwriters of Grand, Oh, The Stories They Can Tell.” In creating the Songwriters Club, and in the casting for the show, James says he has found others “...who share a fondness for - and the courage for - expressing themselves, and their stories, in words and music.” “This all-original program,” he adds, “reflects the many facets of our personal journeys.”
James was born in Princeton, Minnesota and raised entirely in Osseo, a small town near Minneapolis. He was shaped by experiences, he says, “where music served to build community, whether in church or the boy scouts, the schools or the local teen center.” James and wife Candy moved to Grand from Champlin, MN after raising their two children.
They had been visiting Candy’s parents here since 2001. James was always impressed with “the quality and professionalism of the performances” of the musical shows at Sonoran Plaza and the Amphitheater.
Writing songs and singing for people has been his full-time vocation and occupation since he finished school. “Though I studied Classical Guitar,” he says (B.A. Hamline University,) “I quickly decided that writing and performing as a solo singer/songwriter was where my heart was.”
Beginning in 1984, James, who would ultimately go on to win the prestigious Telly and Harry Chapin Awards, made a commitment to write and perform his own songs: “Following a road paved by Harry Chapin, John Denver, Michael Johnson and others, I found a home on the college coffeehouse circuit, where I spent many weeks at a time on tour. I would drive throughout the western half of the U.S. to college coffeehouses, performing and selling my records, spending time on campus with students and polishing my guitar playing. Telling my stories and singing my own songs became a living for me.”
James had an agent early in his college coffeehouse days who later wrote: “For over thirty years acclaimed songwriter, singer and guitarist James Hersch has been quietly building a repertoire of work that puts him squarely on the edge of acoustic music’s importance in North American culture.” She adds that James has “...a rare mixture of straight forward musical talent, humor and sensitivity that allows him to create songs that speak to what is common in all of us.”
Another colleague adds that James “...paints pictures with his songs. His music invites us in.”
James saw that the Music Club here has “...an impressive diversity of talented members and styles,” as he puts it, and he saw an opportunity to add another genre, using his experiences as a singer/songwriter. “In particular,” he says, “I wanted to recreate the magic of small songwriter clubs such as The Bluebird Cafe (Nashville), The Troubadour (L.A.) and The Earl of Old Town (Chicago). It was in these clubs that I shared evenings with, and was inspired by, Steve Goodman, John Prine, Vince Gill and Garth Brooks. In these spaces, songwriters find the courage to sing their songs and share their stories.”