Independent Venue Week are thrilled to announce a very special and incredibly intimate solo tour with BRIT award winner and multi-platinum selling artist, James Bay.

The Hertfordshire-born singer-songwriter will be touring grassroot music venues with a very special intimate solo show as part of Independent Venue Week from 24 January – 4 February 2022 across the UK as far west and east as Cardiff and Norwich, and as far north and south as Glasgow and Brighton – returning to some of the stages he first performed on at the very beginnings of his career.

James Bay says –
“Independent venues have played an irreplaceable part in my career since the very beginning. From my earliest days playing open mic nights, to my first tours and beyond. The Castle Hotel in Manchester was a favourite show of mine on my first ever solo headline tour. I remember the beautiful wooden interior of the room, the gorgeous light above the stage and the magical hush that fell in such a special space as I picked my way into the quieter songs in the set. This summer I played at Home Farm, a new outdoors venue in a beautiful little forest clearing, just off a little farm outside north London. It was such a special experience. I went onstage as the last of the summer sun fell through the leaves above, it was quite emotional just how good it felt to finally be back together with some of my fans. I hope to go back to Home Farm to do that show again!”

“After a year or more of waiting, I was lucky enough to play a few shows in the summer of 2021, solo, to some wonderful audiences. I loved going back to performing the way I started out, just me and my guitar. I’ve been trying to do as much as possible to support independent venues through the covid pandemic and given I had such a great time in the summer, it felt like a fun idea to do a whole tour of independent venues to kick off 2022. I ended up writing so much new music through the pandemic, so I’ll be trying out loads of new songs on this tour. I can’t wait!”

Since then he has gone on to achieve incredible things, with his first album ‘Chaos and the Calm’ debuting at number 1 in the UK charts, earning him three Grammy nominations, and the follow up album ‘Electric Light’ reaching number 2.. A third album is in the works, songs from which will be featured in his set on this tour. Sadly, James was not able to undertake shows at the time due to the pandemic, but instead took part in the Save The Venues campaign in 2020, producing a fully livestreamed set.

James Bay will continue to champion the grassroots music scene and the venues that make it by bringing his live performance in person to some of the venues that are so integral to the live music ecology. For someone who has first discovered performing at an open-mic, it’ll be a touching full-circle moment for an artist who has hit such heights in recent times.

Independent Venue Week will take place from Monday 25 January to Sunday 31 January 2021. 2022’s official ambassadors include Wet Leg, Joesef representing Scotland, Mace The Great for Wales, and SOAK representing Northern Ireland.

So far this year, 152 venues from 80 different villages, towns and cities have signed up to take part, 90.1% of which are outside of London with more to be announced over the coming weeks. Over 30 venues from Wales have applied to take part in Independent Venue Week’s 2022 edition. This is the highest number of Welsh’s venues involved since the start of IVW.