Flashback: James House, James House

Check out the songwriting credits on the third cut from Mark Collie’s fourth album Unleashed.

One song in particular is noteworthy. “All I Want Is You.” was co-written with a songwriter named James House.

House was a singer-songwriter who had come to Nashville in 1988 with the singular goal of catching Tony’s Brown’s ear after being inspired by watching the 1987 Country Music Association awards show. He did that with the song “Hard Times for an Honest Man.” Brown heard the song and immediately signed House to an artist deal with MCA.

Born in Klamath Falls, Oregon, House came of age as much on California country music as he later would on the California country rock of Laurel Canyon. House said, “What influences your tastes is usually a combination of your friends, family and location.”

His father and three uncles, all cattle ranchers in southern Oregon, played in The House Brothers Quartet.

House said, “They were honest to God singing cowboys, so between that, and the Bakersfield sounding stuff that mom loved, like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, I was constantly exposed to a lot of different music from an early age.”

The family outfit was good enough to have played the Arthur Godfrey series of television shows. House attributes his facility with harmony singing to listening to his family practice four-part harmonies singing songs like “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” and “Red River Valley.”

In high school, House found himself in Sacramento, California, which allowed him easy access to the music of Johnny Rivers, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

Having been raised on this west coast cocktail of musical influences, House started playing nothing but covers at local clubs and dance halls at 18 years of age.

Come college, House was playing five nights a week at a local venue in southern California called The Elegant Barn. House then worked the Sacramento and Lake Tahoe club-circuit until he drifted into LA as staff writer for a publishing company. House made ends meet by recording commercial jingles and songs for Hollywood soundtracks. He would do work as varied as working with Julio Iglesias, providing vocals so Iglesias could learn to sing songs in English, to performing on the 1985 Michael J. Fox movie Teen Wolf to helping Dustin Hoffman learn to sing for the endlessly razzed 1987 film Ishtar.

House then saw that CMA awards show, and left LA for Nashville with some encouragement from Tony Brown. With the City of Angels in his rear view, he came to realize how much he had been faking what he had previously been doing as a professional musician.

That all changed with his eponymous country music MCA debut album in 1989, not surprisingly with Tony Brown as the sole producer.

The collection of ten songs is an absolute gem that sparkles with the glistening California country-rock melodies House came of age listening to, dressed up with the elegant and sinuous west-coast vocals he was raised on. On the album, you can instantly hear what Brown must have; nobody else in this new crop of Nashville stars in the late ’80s quite sounded like James House. Even within the storied Class of ’89.

Bright, bouncy melodies are backed with the sharp instrumental twang and snarl of Bakersfield country, all covered with House’s honey-sweet singing dotted with nasal yips and yelps.

The James House album is as succinct a preview and prediction of nineties country as was recorded in the eighties. I can hear the kernel of what would become the signature sound of so many acts come the next decade. It’s hard not to hear Hal Ketchum, Radney Foster, and even some Chris Isaak in House’s singing and style.

Unfortunately, not many people would have the opportunity to hear House. All three singles from James House failed to have much of an impact on the country charts. “Don’t Quit Me Now” peaked at 25. “That Will Be the Last Thing” and “Hard Times for an Honest Man” didn’t even crack the top forty.

This despite the fact that “Tony brought in the best guys in the business” to play on his album. It’s an A -Team of session players: Harry Stinson on drums, Richard Bennett on guitar. Glen D. Hardin on keys, and Paul Franklin on steel guitar. Vince Gill and Mac McAnally provided background vocals.

The Mavericks would later record their definitive version of Jesse Winchester’s “Oh What a Thrill” exactly as House does here, somehow blending a staccato instrumentation with swooning, silky-smooth vocals.

“Under the Harvest Moon” sounds like a lost Rodney Crowell tune with its gorgeous imagery and romantic melody.

“Hard Times For an Honest Man” is an emotionally charged song sung with compelling intensity. It also features some chilling and haunting turns of phrase, highlighting both his songwriting and vocal chops. It is abundantly clear why House used it as his calling card to land his Nashville record deal.

Brown believed in it so much that he would reprise the song as the title of House’s 1990 sophomore effort, unfortunately, to no greater commercial success than his debut.

House would have his biggest commercial impact not as a solo artist but as a songwriter.

In 1992 he and Garry Burr were the writers behind Diamond Rio’s smash hat “In a Week or Two.” The following year House, along with Kostas, composed “Ain’t That Lonely Yet” for Dwight Yoakam.

Perhaps appropriate to House’s almost-there attributes, both these numbers peaked at number two on the charts, falling just short of the top.

House would, nonetheless, parlay this success into another record deal in 1995 with Epic. Working with the career doctor Don Cook, Days Gone By produced House’s highest charting single to date, “This is Me Missing You, ” which climbed to number six on the Billboard charts. The album is an absolute stunner, worthy of far more attention than it received in its day.

House would continue to honor his LA musical past by still contributing songs to the soundtracks of Hollywood films like 1994’s The Cowboy Way and 1996’s Tin Cup.

In 1998, House would co-write “A Broken Wing” for Martina McBride.

Among others, House has had his songs recorded by the likes of Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Bonnie Tyler, Olivia Newton- John, Lorrie Morgan, Sara Evans, David Ball, and Craig Morgan.

Interestingly, House would find wild success across the pond on the UK dance charts in 2013. A line dance craze erupted specifically around remixes of songs from Days Gone By

He later built his own home-studio and launched his own label, Victor House Records.

House is active with Songwriting With Soldiers, a non-profit organization that pairs veterans and active-duty service members with professional songwriters.

Although House is still actively in search of writing another great song, please go back and listen to the great ones he already has written and performed, back when he was in peak-voice in the late ’80s with Tony Brown in his corner.