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"I woke up, one morning, and I had a premonition," James says, from the scene of the crime. He was asleep in the city he's called home since 1966 -- Los Angeles -- the city where, the very next year, he made his first record with the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band. James' premonition kicked him out of bed, as he thought: "I better check my equipment."
He stepped outside his house in South Central. 37 years he's lived on the edgy edge of Inglewood without a problem. But he went straight to his studio in his former garage and, immediately, looked for his microphones. The Neumann U87, inscribed with the name of his production company, GATOON, the mic that he'd purchased in the 70s...it was gone.
"They don't make 'em like that anymore," James says. "It's a different formula now."
Two Neumann KM 84s were also missing (with their expensive cases) along with an AKG 414, an AKG D12, and an Electro Voice microphone...all from the 70s.
"They only made a few of them," he says. "I used them on Zoom, in the early 80s, a record I produced that charted. I'm working on my own album now." Sadness mutes the tone of his voice, altering the volume to barely above a whisper. "I planned to use them on it."
Three days after the burglary, he realized that more of his equipment was missing. But it wasn't until a week after he filed a report with the police that he looked inside all of his drum cases. Two snare drums, made especially for James in the early 90s in Japan, pearl snare drums--gone.
"I used those with Beck. They had a brilliant sound," he says. "It was like someone who had a Stradivarius stolen."
Three Drum Workshop snares, which he endorsed, were also stolen.
"I used those with Beck, too...used them on a lot of top name recordings," he says. "I would take those snares to the sessions."
He pauses -- like he's remembering some of those sessions that he and his drums embellished with symbiotic brilliance.
"I have another drum kit that stays at a cartage service. But the ones that were stolen...I had them tuned in a certain way. Broader...deeper. You get a close feeling with them."
When a musician is separated from a treasured instrument that he or she has been making music with for years -- the loss is deep, intimate, like losing a best friend. Or a lover. (Guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn called his beloved six-string his "first wife.")
"Those snares were dear to me...special," James says. "I was ossifed...out of it."
I feel his hurt. All the way from Los Angeles to Paris, I feel it. I explain that I lost my voice for a couple of months, about three years ago -- the complicated residue of a bad cold. When I couldn't sing, the me that I knew myself to be was diminished.
"Exactly. My instruments were such a part of me," James says. "When I filed a report with the police...they just told me to check the pawn shops."
It was also fortunate that the console, which once belonged to Smokey Robinson -- used when the Motown artists came to California -- wasn't taken. There is quiet on the line between Los Angeles and Paris until James says: "One of the snares was a Miles Davis snare."
Miles. His name was engraved on it.
"Miles' nephew presented it to me. Whoever took it, probably couldn't have gotten rid of it in a pawnshop."
This is so painful for me -- my tools...my lifeline. I'm hoping I'll get a lead on something."
He changed the locks on his studio; and when he leaves his home, he locks everything.
"I still...some nights I don't sleep."
Some nights he takes medication to sleep. Because he lies awake, trying to figure out who took his drums, his mics. Who took a part of him?
"I read my bible every night before I go to bed. What can I do if all the evidence says that someone did it...if they say they didn't do it?"
"I have certain feelings...I just pray 'em off," James says. "I did some recordings since this happened. The only time I'm able to not think about it -- is when I'm working."
