tHE Trouble with interviewing exceptionally cool musicians is that you get an urge to quit your job and take to the road à la Jack Kerouac. That’s exactly the feeling I had after speaking to American singer/songwriter James Apollo who had done just that.

Forthrightly rejecting conformity at the age of 16, he left home in Arkansas and hit the interstate heading west playing a new town every night until he arrived in San Francisco. There, he temporarily set up home in a rickety houseboat and penned his first record Sweet Unknown.

“I had an idea of how I wanted to live, so I started to live my life that way, and it has ended up pretty much like I had planned it,” James, who now lives in New York, explains in soft laid-back tones. “It’s been amazing, and as romantic as I had hoped but maybe not as happy at times.”

Back then James, who plays The Sheepwalk on Saturday, would “lie, steal, cheat and write about it”, and while he admits “some of that still goes on” his western-rich folk tales are no longer all about the “low down things” and more about “humanity”.

Central to the 28-year-old’s enlightened approach was a near-death experience in the summer of 2007, which saw him flung 20ft in the air from his ‘78 Honda motorcycle, and ended up putting him in cast from his waist down.

“At the time, the city was tearing my heart out, I was cruel and unhappy and this showed me the other side to life. It showed me that even when the worst thing can happen, people come out of the woodwork and you meet friends you didn’t even knew you had. It showed me life is pretty beautiful and we shouldn’t be more careful, we should be more reckless.”

Born out of that dark experience was the bittersweet melancholy of Hide Your Heart In A Hive, which was released to critical acclaim last year and his latest EP, Angels We Have Grown Apart, released this week.

“They were inspired by the sort of dark days that led up to the accident and that longing to follow the tumbleweed out of the city, while at the same time there was this light at the end of the tunnel, the element of the sunrise.”

Describing his sound as the “next phrase of traditional American music”, and often compared to the ‘lazy river’ feel of Tom Waits, James’ smoky voice conjures up images of dusty front porches and lonely nights with a whisky in hand, with the solitary traveller at the very heart of his hauntingly beautiful songs – a character who remains at the very soul of this talented singer.

“I tend to be a reclusive guy, I’m like a wounded bear,” he confesses. “I generally go out into the wilderness on my own and then when I’m weathered I crawl back into town and turn up at a friend’s house for a hot cup of coffee.”

James performs at What’s Cookin’ at The Sheepwalk, Leytonstone, on Saturday, May 2, 9pm. For more information about James visit www.jamesapollo.com