Has Jimmy got the X Factor?
Thursday 29 October 2009
Jimmy Watkins, Cardiff's former Great Britain international 800m runner, was featured in last week's Athletics Weekly, not for his running but for his musical ability.
He is the lead singer and guitarist in the band Strange News From Another Star (with fellow Cardiff athlete Harry Jones as drummer) that performs regularly around Cardiff and district and was featured in the recent BBC Wales Swn Festival.
Jimmy, a popular athlete, was sixth in the 2006 World Indoor Championships in Moscow but has now retired from athletics.
The band's album Double Denim Full Frontal is out next month after they were heard by record producer Charlie Francis, who has worked with REM, The Kaiser Chiefs and The Noisettes, among others. They have already released a single, which has been played on Radio 1.
Although Jimmy still has to work full time, he spends most weekends gigging. "We are not aiming to be a massive band", he admitted. "We just want to make good music. It's the same as with the running - we just want to travel around the world, playing music.
"The type of music we do will never be mainstream and we're aware of that. It's not particularly catchy, but we like playing it."
However, he has come a lon way since making his surprise retirement announcement less than two years after running a PB of 1:46.33. He had only recently set up with two bands, which eventually came to nothing.
"Although I was in a band in school, I didn't know anybody (in the music world). I just started from scratch."
Of his latest band, which came together last year and whose drummer is Cardiff's 3:53 1500m runner Harry Jones, he said. "This band seems to be working. We all kind of hit it off and started writing good stuff".
Charlie Francis has sent their record to radio stations and Watkins has been surprised to hear it played in nightclubs. "We had an email from someone in Gemany saying they'd heard us on the radio out there", he said.
But then Jimmy's impact on athletics was similarly sudden. Having played rugby for Wales at schoolboy level, he switched to running and broke through with 1:48 for the two laps in 2004.
Although he was GB No. 3 in 2007, he quit, saying, "I never really thought I was that good. To be the best in the world, you have to be ridiculously talented and I just didn't think I was talented enough. At first I thought I'd maybe made the wrong decision but the music takes over so much that I don't regret it at all".
26 year old Jimmy did some track sessions this summer and keeps up with the running to a limited extent. "I don't miss the racing. I miss being fit and healthy. I'm just jogging at the moment to try to keep a bit of weight off".
To read more about how Jimmy and Harry got together and how the band got its name, click HERE.
Jimmy is not the only Cardiff athlete with musical talent. European 200m medallist Doug Turner is also an accomplished musician.
There must be others. Let us know who they are.