Today we’d like to introduce you to Jim Ivins.
Hi Jim, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My name is Jim Ivins. I’m originally from Richmond, VA, and have been writing, recording and performing music for over 22 years. I never had a choice in the matter. In addition to having parents with incredibly hip record collections for me to discover as a child, my cousin, Bill Leverty, is the guitar player in Firehouse, a band that has sold over eight million albums worldwide, won American Music Awards, dominated MTV and still get daily airplay on SiriusXM. Seeing Firehouse on top of the world in the early nineties, only to find this mythical figure with long hair and leather pants showing up at family events like Christmas Eve, was enough for me and my older brother, Jack: we wanted to do what Bill does.
Additionally, our father has been playing guitar and singing since he was in high school, so there was just always music around our house. I took to guitar and singing, Jack took to the drums, and we’ve been playing music together off and on since 2008, most notably as a part of our band, The Ivins, which I lovingly describe as “Wannabe Stadium Rock” (our latest EP, “Echoes,” came out in May). Currently, my main project is called The Fan, a pop-rock band that’s sound proudly harkens back to the golden era of late nineties/early aughts music that you’d hear in teen movies and romcoms (our latest single, “Either Way,” features the wonderful vocals of Nashville Voyager feature alumni, Katie Cole from The Smashing Pumpkins).
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
HA! If any real musician answers yes to this question then they are lyyyyyyying. I’m going to answer this question by listing a bunch of (what I feel are) notable career events for me personally, then will demonstrate why it all amounts to a struggle.
Over the last 22 years, music has taken me in some very interesting directions, and I don’t just mean living in Richmond, New York City and Nashville. *Takes deep breath* I have:
– Had over 23 releases, including 12 EPs and full-length albums
– Worked in the studio with multiple Grammy winners
– Seen my music on MTV, NASCAR, Fox Sports and Oxygen
– Composed in-store music for Wal-Mart
– Starred in a Billy Currington music video (still never heard any of his other songs)
– Once unknowingly opened for Macklemore at SXSW (right when “Thrift Shop” was happening)
– Appeared on recordings with members of gold and platinum artists, such as Firehouse, 3 Doors Down, Florida Georgia Line, Daughtry, Relient K, Tonic, CKY, Accept and Sleeping With Sirens
– Opened for some of my idols – Switchfoot, The Early November, Mae, Rooney, Cracker, The Rocket Summer, The Ataris, Hit The Lights, Wheatus, Parachute and Modern English, to name a few – and even got to play a couple songs IN Relient K one night in Orlando.
– Gone viral performing “Man In The Box” with Chris Daughtry and Lzzy Hale at me and Jack’s annual “Grunge Night” tribute show at The Basement East
– Had several record deals dangled and taken away
– Been repped by twenty one pilots’ lawyer and the longtime former head of A&R at Sony AND the manager of Lamb of God, all at once – and we STILL couldn’t get that record deal!
So that’s the setup. A bunch of interesting factoids from a guy who’s been plugging away for decades. And here’s the punchline: After all that, no one’s ever heard of me! NO ONE! But that’s the arts for you. I have plummeted into debt and gone broke (a bunch). Sacrificed jobs, careers, relationships, friendships, my sanity. Had projects that I poured my heart and soul into land with absolute thuds. And yet I still keep coming back. We all do. I’m not special. This is Nashville: there’s a million people out there with similar stories. Its just part of the gig. You can do all this cool stuff that looks nice in a bulleted list, but until you wake up one day and decide you wanna play music and burp out some nonsense onto TikTok and it goes viral and you get signed and thrown into the limelight with no experience and conquer the world before flaming out, none of it matters. Wait…
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I left one important point out of the previous question, because I wanted to include it here. There is, in fact, one event that I am most proud of and that, I believe, uniquely sets me apart from many of my contemporaries. In 2023, The Ivins became the first American band to ever play in the country of Sudan. Guests of the U.S. State Department and their American Music Abroad program, we went to Sudan for ten days of shows and cultural immersion, and to say it was eye-opening doesn’t even begin to describe it. It was an absolute honor then, and its an honor now, but its an accolade that was sadly clouded mere weeks after we left, when Sudan’s horrific civil war broke out. A war that is still raging today and that hardly any American is even aware of (not to soapbox it, but seriously, 12 million people have been displaced, over a third of the country is in famine, tens of thousands of have died, its insane – and we were literally in Khartoum, the epicenter of the whole conflict, three weeks before everything went to hell).
We played in front of thousands of people who had never seen anything like this in-person, and were mobbed for hours like we were The Beatles when we got off stage, taking pictures and signing autographs. Whatever else was going on in the world, the fact that their country was very openly on the brink of total collapse: none of it mattered. We were all joined together by our love of music. And we were the first – and, very depressingly, probably the last – American band to go to this country and be the vessels for creating these moments. No matter how much disappointment I may experience in my life, rock n’ roll got us there. And no one can ever take that away from me/us.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
There’s a quote that I strongly identify with, which is that, “hard work is mandatory, but I think some people are afraid to admit what a big part luck plays.” Its everything. My cousin, Bill, as someone who has seen the upper echelon of music industry success, once said something to me that I think describes the whole ballgame (at least, I think he said it to me – its been so long and I’ve told this story so many times that its possible I’ve contorted what he said, or straight made it up lol). Achieving true, top of the heap success in the music industry is like winning the lottery three times. You have to win the lottery once to get in the game, you have to win it a second time to have success and then a third time to retain that success. And just think about the odds of hitting the Power Ball even once. Its astronomical.
You can write the best songs in the world, have a great look, a great voice, a great band, but we’re all out here looking for “the shot,” which is an indefinable, unquantifiable X-factor that cannot be wrestled into submission. It just has to happen. It’s like dating. Everything could be great on paper, but without *that thing* it just doesn’t work.
Am I upset that we actually got “the shot” and were shopped to every label in the business more than once, but luck didn’t swing our way? Of course I am! But that’s just how it goes. Life is a bullet train that we spend our days jumping out to see if we can grab. Luck and timing is everything, especially in this business. For us, thinking about the particular time I’m referring to when we got shopped in 2013-2015, we were a smalltime rock band during the worst commercial period in recorded history for rock music. We jumped for the bullet train and missed. Them’s the breaks! And me and my brother have pressed on, both together and apart. Cranking out new music, playing shows, playing with other artists, doing everything that you need to do to scratch the creative and artistic itches that befall those of us who’ve committed to a life in the arts.
You just have to learn to be grateful for everything you have and adjust not only your expectations, but your barometer for what defines success. If you don’t, you will go insane. No, I didn’t get the success I wanted. But again, I’m a part of a band that made history and was the first American band to perform in an entire country. That’s pretty cool to me. So if nothing else ever happens to me, I am lucky as hell to have gotten to do stuff like this in my life. And am extremely grateful that people like Nashville Voyager give me a platform to rant and tell my story. So thank you very much for that.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jimivins.com
- Instagram: @thefanrvaband / @theivins
- Other: “This Is Jim Ivins” playlist on Spotify, which includes music across all of my projects – https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Hm0AIoRmf8kW9rarYkdlL?si=0a9e7a9fd6e84356
