We recently connected with James Van Damme and have shared our conversation below.

James, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Hi, my name is James Van Damme and I sing and play guitar in Van Damme.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I originally started out performing as a drummer and was introduced to the instrument by my friend, Scott. I got to his house last and he had invited another friend over as well to play. I didn’t know I was trying out for a band and also didn’t know I’d be playing the drums when I walked in with my guitar I had just bought. “Seats taken, but try out the drums?” Now I had been watching Nirvana videos and had a set of drumsticks at home I used to play on my “drumset” I made at home consisting of pillows and plastic lidded cans (a can of cheeseballs makes for a surprisingly decent snare drum) so this couldn’t be that different, I thought. It wasn’t! So for the next decade I played around the country with various bands. There is nothing like the thrill of playing your songs to a packed room which brings us to how Van Damme was formed and how I went from drummer to frontman.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Following the shutdown of venues nationwide in March 2020, Van Damme was formed in April 2020. By this point I had been playing guitar for about 10 years and had a handful of home demos made using an iPad. And by handful, I mean like 50. With our prior band on hiatus, three of the five members still wanted to create and eventually play live again, two didn’t wouldn’t leave their homes. So the three of us (myself, drummer Nick Russo and guitarist Michael Doty) holed ourselves in our rehearsal studio and got to work adding our bass player, Rhys Johnson to the group. The pandemic gave us a rare opportunity to take our time to develop our sound and performance from the ground up. After two years in the studio (I had to learn how to sing live and we massively changed our sound from a grunge band to one that incorporates much more heavily from Metal while keeping the grunge elements we liked from the previous sound), we were essentially challenged to play a live show after a friend called us and put on the bill following hearing an early demo. It wasn’t the best show, it wasn’t the worst but it did open the flood gates to new opportunities I never thought possible. Now we are getting ready to go into the studio to record our first full length album, “Poverty, Death and Destruction”

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

We have a bit of different goal than most. I’m not looking to sell 100 million records or tell anyone how to live but we do have a mission to bring people together to have a good time and play songs that are truly what we want to play; not just writing to some fad in order to maybe get in on a bandwagon somewhere. Our message is often one of hope even though some of the subject matter is quite dark. You have the potential to change 99% of things in your life, as we say as a motto “the party is within you.” You can make it raucous good time or you can make it a pity party. Choose positivity.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vandammeband/
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/vandammeband

Image Credits
Jackie Stills and Films the Chickering Project