He's gone from gigging in his hometown English village of Hitchin to touring with Taylor Swift. Lydia Jenkin charts the rise of James Bay.
Melbourne's Northcote Social Club is an old-school venue. Pool tables, peeling posters from gigs gone by, beer served in no-nonsense pints, a slightly sticky coating on the bar. But there is an inner sanctum - a room inside the pub with carpeted floors and decent acoustics, and as rising British singer-songwriter James Bay takes the stage, a hush comes over the 400-odd people milling around.
It's quite odd really. Not many British folk knew who the 24-year-old was last year, let alone people on the other side of the globe, but even though he's yet to release an album, somehow the crowd know all the words to his songs.
They're very excited to have him here - excited but reverential, because Bay writes rock-inspired, guitar-led pop songs with his heartfelt husky voice front and centre, and these fans want to hear every word he sings.
He seems like a very polite young man, his sweet English accent accentuating his sincerity, and he's clearly delighted to have such a dedicated crowd in Australia already, as he sits on the edge of the stage swinging his legs while chatting with fans after the show.
Talking to TimeOut earlier in the afternoon he's also clearly kicking himself that he's not coming to New Zealand on this tour, as his single Hold Back The River has been certified gold here already, and has spent the past eight weeks creeping into the Top 10.
"Now that I'm all the way down here on this other side of the world, I can't help but look a bit longingly at New Zealand. I mean Australia is fantastic, with these lovely cities and then this big sandy bit of ridiculously hot desert, which makes up the rest of the country, but obviously, Lord of the Rings movies aside, New Zealand looks pretty stunning. So next time I'm back I'll make sure I get over to spend some proper time there."
He might wear the rock star hat with aplomb, but Bay is disarmingly un-rock star-like in person. He's amiable, engaging, and laughs at himself for trying to eat a rock-hard mint while chatting.
He seems a little surprised at where he's found himself (having just won the Critics Choice award at the Brit Awards, and coming No.2 on BBC's Sound of 2015 list) given that three years ago he was playing open mic nights in Brighton.
Not that he's an overnight star. Bay was discovered by his management company because of all those gigs he played in Brighton, where he was studying at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music. Then he moved to London, continued to play a lot of live shows, and was finally noticed by a Republic Records A&R exec in New York via a live YouTube video of a performance in a Kentish Town pub.
Bay's musical journey really started in Hitchin, though, the Hertfordshire town with a population of 30,000 where he grew up.
"Growing up in Hitchin was great. It was safe and comfortable and easy and fun. It's funny because you hear these stories where people say things like 'I knew by the age of 8 that I wasn't supposed to be in this small town anymore, and I needed to be in the big city', but my tale is sort of the opposite. I was just fine in Hitchin.
"My dad worked in London, and my uncle used to live there, so we'd go into London from time to time. But I didn't really like it. It was just too busy, too much fuss. We lived next to rolling fields, and we had a really quiet street, with about four cars a week, and I really liked that. And it was a great place to play music."
Music was a part of his life from a young age. His parents had a lot of records, and loved to listen to the radio - his mum introduced him to Motown, and his dad was all about the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen. It wasn't long before Bay picked up a guitar, age 11, and started noodling round.
Watch: James Bay's single Hold Back the River
"By about 13 or 14 I was all about playing live, in the pubs, and one club, of Hitchin. There was one venue, which was sort of the holy grail, you know, if you could get a gig at Club 85 then woah, you're clearly about to have a number one hit.
"That was the only actual venue, otherwise we'd play in the back gardens of pubs, these sort of pub festivals in the rainy summer. It was the sort of thing where people would open up the side of a lorry and that would be the stage. There was a lot of that. And then we also played a lot in people's living rooms, at parties, that sort of thing. We had no idea what was going on out in the wider world, but we had our own little music scene, as far as having all your friends coming to watch you when you're 15."
He credits his parents for their relaxed attitude towards his passion for music, and for giving him the space to make his own mind up.
"They didn't try and direct me too much, they let me find my own way. There did come a point when I was like 16 or 17 when they said, 'Okay, so you need to start making some of your own money because we can't just pay for all the stuff you want', you know, classic parent moves, and that was a bit of a theme they stuck to. It was great though, they didn't try to push me into doing something else instead, and they didn't pretend to know what it was all about."
He's also very thankful that his older brother shared his music obsession, and was someone he could talk to for hours about their latest favourite record.
"We were both nerds in a musical sense, we loved sleeve notes, we'd read all of them, we just loved nerding out about who played the drums and who they thanked, and who was the producer, and 'Oh my God, wow, look Eric Clapton thanks BB King on this album'. "We were fascinated by that stuff."
When it came to choosing a producer for his debut album, on the advice of his manager, Bay listened to his favourite records from the past 10 years, and made a dream list of producers he thought would make a good fit.
"I'm going, 'Okay, how do I get a producer, I'm nobody, no one has heard of me, how do we do this?' And basically you have to be a bit bold. So I made a shortlist, and at the top of it, almost for a laugh, I put Jacquire King, because he's made some of my favourite Kings of Leon stuff. So we got in touch with him, and he came straight back, and he said 'I'd love to do this', which blew my mind."
Working at King's Blackbird Studio in Nashville also blew Bay's mind a little bit.
"The musical history there is just mad. I felt like a tiny fish in a massive pond. Three or four days into the first week I was like, 'I might just step outside for a minute, let's just chill, take a breath, drink it in'. And then while I was sitting there, this big old bus pulled in with Willie Nelson on board. Woaaah. And then there's Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys just wandering down the corridor. Mad."
He might feel like a little fish in a big pond, but he's already a firm favourite with a few mega-stars - Ed Sheeran has complimented him, and Taylor Swift is a bonafide fan. She saw him when he was supporting Irish musician Hozier in Nashville, and came backstage to find him and tell him she had his songs on her playlist.
Now she's invited him to open for her on the European leg of her 1989 tour, playing spots like Hyde Park.
"It will be very different for me, but that's really cool. I struggled early on, for a moment, thinking, 'What am I?' and trying to put myself in a box. But then I kind of realised, growing with my music and building a fan base, that people are cool with me being this sort of multilayered thing.
"I'm finding my own way in, through my own little crack in the wall, and it turns out people are listening.
Who: James Bay Listen to: New album Chaos and the Calm, out March 23
