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Last fall, singer-songwriter and guitarist James Gilmore walked into the Foster Student Innovation Center with an idea. He wanted to become a rock star.
A year later, Gilmore is releasing “Campus Bands,” a compilation CD of artists at the University of Maine.
The album, available now on iTunes and next week in the University Bookstore, is a testament to Gilmore’s work ethic and business sense. Through the cooperation of the innovation center, the funding and participation of local artists, and technological know-how of Bangor-area music businesses, the CD is a homegrown effort to cultivate UMaine’s music scene.
“I thought that [the album] would hopefully get enough exposure for each one of the bands to make us all ‘campus famous,’” Gilmore said. “All of the bands on it were really into it. They wanted to play here and have everyone know all their songs.”
Music and business were not always so intertwined for Gilmore. The innovation center taught him the legal and business side of music and got him in contact with lawyers and music business professionals from Bangor.
Jesse Moriarity, coordinator of the Foster Student Innovation Center, worked closely with Gilmore throughout the process. The innovation center provides help to students with plans ranging from starting a small business to simple school projects.
“We wanted to make sure he knew how he would find artists, audition them, pay for the project and market it,” Moriarity said.
She said the innovation center doesn’t do the work for students but offers them guidance and resources. The center not only helped Gilmore get in touch with the right people, they worked to get Gilmore grant money to fund the project. Unfortunately, none could be found.
With the center’s help, Gilmore worked to make his vision a reality.
“It started that I found bands through Java Jive and Battle of the Bands and other concerts that I played in personally,” Gilmore said. “I got to meet a lot of artists and bands around the area.”
All of the bands have at least one member from UMaine; most have several members, according to Gilmore. He said the idea was to find groups that would be able to play the Campus Bands concert scheduled for Nov. 20.
UMaine is just the first step, though. According to Moriarity, Gilmore’s original plan was to travel from campus to campus doing the same thing. Gilmore still has the bar set high.
“This is the experimental phase right now,” Gilmore said. “We’re gonna test it out with UMaine. I plan on promoting it to the best of my ability, and if after all that it takes off and is a big deal on campus, then I plan on going to other universities around Maine.”
Husson University and NESCOM have already expressed interest in the project, and Gilmore plans to one day venture to Portland.
From a musical standpoint, Gilmore is just as ambitious. He is a member of both Two Days Later and GreenerSide, who appear on the CD. He has a solo track on the compilation and is involved with other various endeavors not on the CD.
His voice seems to come straight out of the ’90s, listing singer-songwriter influences that include Jason Mraz, Bob Dylan, John Mayer and Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20, among others. When playing live with his band Two Days Later, he can lead the crowd in a nostalgic rendition of Green Day’s “When I Come Around” and quickly switch to an expressive performance of one of his original tunes. His sound has “mainstream success” written all over it.
For Gilmore, that’s the idea.
“[The innovation center] asked me, ‘What do you want to do,’” Gilmore said. “If I was gonna be honest, I wanna be a rock star one day. While other people would shy away and say, ‘What could you realistically do?’. They showed some people that were really good contacts in the music business.”
Gilmore clawed his way up from the bottom starting at open-mic nights and other shows around the area, even organizing a Habitat for Humanity benefit concert. The Innovation Center drove home the point that artists can’t just expect to gain a following out of nowhere.
“You hear the stories where people play out, and somebody in the audience will be this huge name, and they’ll gobble them right up, but not in the real world,” Gilmore said.
The album features mostly under-the-radar acts, but Gilmore was glad to get the more well-known act Sam and Yuri on board. With radio play, an album of their own and a small following already, Gilmore says he hopes to achieve the success they are seeing right now.
He hopes to pass along his knowledge of the music business world to the other musicians.
“The success of this album that I forsee will definitely show [the other artists] that this is how it’s done,” Gilmore said. “That taking your music and having some sort of business knowledge will propel you along.”
Keelan Donovan, a member of the band York is featured on the album, said that Gilmore was great to work with. Gilmore contacted Donovan after seeing him play at the Bear Brew.
“We are actually starting a band together,” Donovan said. “His work ethic and playing style line up with mine.”
Donovan and his band members contributed money to fund the album’s release. Their song on the album is a jaunty tune about a ghost in the Chateau Frontenac.
Moriarity praised Gilmore as a “really cool kid,” saying she was impressed how far he had come with the project.
If one thing is certain, Gilmore is a student who knows what he wants for the future.
“As of right now, I don’t see myself doing anything else [other than music], as with a lot of the bands on the compilation,” Gilmore said. “I chose them specifically because they have exceptional potential and a lot of them have a lot of drive as well.”
