Johnny Knoxville, Keegan-Michael Key, Judy Greer — the fun never stops at ‘Reboot’
When he opens his mouth, James Worthy can make you feel like you’ve just had the perfect cup of coffee. His deep, gravelly voice exults in the joy of an artist who has worked hard to achieve his sound.
Even better, he can still do it.
On July 12, Worthy will be at SXSW for the first time to perform his new EP, “Reboot.” While he’s been on an EP release tour, he’s released two albums, the last of which — his latest, “Sleeping With Ghosts” — debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
On this EP, Worthy, born James Ward, has put out seven, all of which were released this past year. He’s also just put out his new album, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” which came out in August.
“I think I’ve been working on an EP for the last few years,” he said early to talk about the EP release. “I just kept putting stuff on the Internet. This is the first one I did by myself. It took way too long. It’s been a long year. I always worked on this EP for so many years. I just put it out last week.”
He did, though, take a little time off the year to go to Africa.
It all started the day before I came back from Africa. I was working on the video for the song “When I Go Down,” and I was talking to my friend from high school, “Weird Al,” the guy that I still talk to on YouTube now that he’s an adult. He’s the one that made the video with my song “When I Go Down.” He was in Africa doing something, and he thought it would be a good time to come to Austin and hang out with me. I took him down to the studio in Austin and played him what I was doing.
He goes, “James, you should go to Africa.” He showed me the video of it, and I didn’t know how to make a video, and I showed him some of the other videos that I’ve done over the year. “You know,” I said, “It’s really hard.”
