Julia James

Julia James ’24 thought someone was pranking her. 

Shortly after earning a bachelor’s degree in music performance from UMass Lowell, James was working a waitress shift one night when her phone rang. She went out back to take the call, and the person on the other end told her she had been selected as a semifinalist in the CBS Mornings Mixtape Music Competition, a contest that drew hundreds of submissions from singers around the country vying for a chance to be featured on the popular morning show. 

Several weeks earlier, James had submitted a video of herself covering the Johnny Nash classic “I Can See Clearly Now” that she had recorded on her laptop. As she stood in the restaurant holding her phone, her disbelief gave way to excitement, and the news sank in: James was one of 14 musicians picked to advance to the contest’s next round.

“I was ecstatic,” she says. 

Things then shifted into high gear. Clips of James and the other semifinalists were broadcast on the show, which draws 3 million viewers. She was interviewed and performed live on WBZ, the Boston CBS affiliate. A Nashville-based performer ultimately won the competition, but James says the experience was a thrill.

“There were so many beautiful singers in the semifinals. I was honored to be in a group with them,” says the Southborough, Massachusetts, native, who began using the last name “James” as a stage name when she was a teenager to protect her privacy.

On the heels of the CBS Mornings competition, James was set to release her first album, “October Avenue,” which she describes as a “genre-bending” recording that takes inspiration from musicians Phoebe Bridgers, Matt Maeson, Amy Winehouse and others. 

Now a resident of Nashua, New Hampshire, James teaches music theater, voice and piano at a private music school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. 

While an undergraduate, James was the lead singer of the band Miss Karma, which played gigs in Boston and around Lowell. She says the community of musicians that surrounded her when she was a student helped her to develop as a performer.

“Lowell’s music scene has brought so many of my friends together,” she says. “Some of my best memories are from the different shows.”

She spent her first year of college at Belmont University in Nashville before transferring to UMass Lowell. 

“UML gave me a lot of confidence and a lot of room to find my sound,” she says. “I wish I chose it first.”

James started writing poetry when she was in fifth grade, in part to deal with the upheaval her family was going through: Her uncle, Richard Phillips, was at the center of a high-stakes international drama when the merchant ship that he was captaining was hijacked by Somali pirates. Phillips was taken hostage and rescued five days later by Navy SEALs. (He went on to write a book about the ordeal, which was made into the film “Captain Phillips,” starring Tom Hanks.)

“In that time, I found a lot of comfort in my writing,” James recalls. 

Crafting stories and poems eventually led James to songwriting; she says she has penned hundreds. She began playing gigs — singing and playing acoustic guitar at local restaurants — at age 14. To date, the largest audience she’s performed in front of was a crowd of 30,000 at a New England Revolution soccer game at Gillette Stadium, where she sang the national anthem.

It’s not the crowds that excite her, though: It’s the idea of connecting with other people, one by one, through her songs. 

“If I can reach one person and help them to have a better day, I’ve been successful,” she says.