James Meadow, aka Davide Falcone, is an anthropologist and singer-songwriter. His stage name, with a reference to the anthropologist Margaret Mead, reflects his search for a synthesis between song form and ethnographic writing. He has performed in Italy, Canada and Scotland, opened concerts for Christian Kjellvander, Bocephus King, James Maddock, Brian Mitchell and played with Thom Chacon, Tony Garnier, Fabrizio Poggi, Matthew Lee and Andrea Ramolo. As a podcaster he has hosted the legendary Colin Linden and Bruce Cockburn on his show Where The Lions Are.
Music
His musical roots lie in North American songwriting. Inspired by artists such as Bruce Cockburn and Michael Hedges, he finds his best expressive instruments in finger-style technique and open tunings. In 2016 he began a journey as a troubadour in the Italian, European and Canadian squares, and eventually he performed in Montreal and Slocan (BC). In the years that followed he toured Italy playing solo and opening acts for artists such as Christian Kjellvander, Bocephus King, James Maddock and Brian Mitchell. On October 2020, invited by River Spirit Music in New York, he presented the album with an international live stream then, in 2021, he toured Italy extensively and eventually he played in Teatro Ariston in Sanremo as finalist for SanremoRock Festival, in the Chiari Blues Festival with Thom Chacon, Tony Garnier, Fabrizio Poggi and Matthew Lee and in the Edinburgh Folk Club. He also took part in the International Townes Van Zandt Festival in the 2020 online edition and in 2022.
The meeting with Luca Perciballi in 2016 marked his artistic maturity. With him began a collaboration that led to the recording, in March 2019, of his first studio album. A scarecrow sight is a selection of eleven tracks written between 2017 and 2018 and arranged by Perciballi. The album tries to translate the solid legacy of the American scene of the 70s and 80s into a more contemporary song form.
Anthropology
As an author and composer he tries to bring back in his texts a look at reality by integrating ethnographic writing techniques. Trained first at the Alma Mater of Bologna, in 2019 he graduated in Anthropology at the University of Modena. His stage name evokes that of Margaret Mead, one of the first anthropologists to have stressed, already in the 30s of the last century, the importance of a look capable of capturing the complexity behind the banal and subtle gestures of our daily behaviors.
Since 2020 he has been hosting Where The Lions Are, a journey through North American songwriting on the frequencies of ADMR-RockWebRadio. This led him to interview Thom Chacon, Colin Linden and Bruce Cockburn and to publish articles in the Italian magazines Rock Nation and Buscadero.
A scarecrow sight, the title of his debut album, wants to be the synthesis of these aspects: a defiladed perspective to read glances, encounters and experiences taken away from the flow of the last few years. All this within a record that, as an object, tries to remain solidly clinging to a recording tradition now at sunset.
