
David James
composer. singer. guitarist.
Mission Rebel No. 1 is a musical work that will have its premiere in September 2023. The subject of this song cycle is the life of my father, Rev. Jesse James.
This work has been under development for the last couple of years; the first work-in-progress performance was presented as a livestream on June 11, 2021. You can watch it here.
Subsequent work-in progress performances were presented in October 2022 and January 2023.
These presentations are sponsored by a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission, which has also supported the development of the work.
Additional support–material, logistic, and recollective–has come from:
Aijai Anderson
Lunar Beckett
Landon Beckett
Linda John
Suzanne Lee
Regula Langemann
Lauren Post
Donald Washington
Mark Werlin
Linda Wilson
Alex Cherian/Bay Area TV Archive
Paul Dresher/Independent Jazz Alliance/A Safe Place to Play
David Miller/ Clay Geerdes Archives
The Lost Church
Archival footage provided by:
KPIX-TV
Oddball Films
In memory of my mother, Dolores Lorraine Dulaney, and my father’s mother, Anna Mae Anderson, the two of whom never met on Earth.
Jesse Joseph James
October 6, 1928 - May 31, 2005