Romantic, moody Irish singer catching on

NEW YORK -- Even with an audience including Julia Roberts, Renee Zellweger, George Clooney and Nicolas Cage, singer-songwriter Damien Rice is not a background kind of guy.\nAll those stars attended a gig Rice had last year at the home of a Hollywood agent to introduce his music to the movie community. But it was a party with networking and laughing, so when the folksy Irishman began strumming his guitar, few people noticed.\nAnnoyed, Rice wanted to pack up his guitar, return his fee and leave. But that would have been rude -- not to mention professionally suicidal. So he tried a trick. He moved away from the microphone, knelt on one knee and started to sing.\n"I did one song really quietly and sang it for me," he recalled. "(I thought) this is the last song I'm doing unless they all phone in and focus and really want something more. And then it just happened to work."\nHe's been winning over less famous fans the same way. His debut album, "O," has sold nearly 300,000 copies in the U.S. and won the Shortlist Music Prize. Rice is selling out 3,000-seat venues on a current tour through cities where a year ago he couldn't fill a bar.\nHis powerful, emotionally-intense music has drawn comparisons to the late Jeff Buckley. Rice's best-known track, "Volcano," mixes his voice with singer Lisa Hannigan and a mournful cello.\n"He has a beautiful, powerful voice, and the delivery of these songs really takes you on a journey," said music executive Jack Rovner. "There's just a handful of artists that have that innate ability to take control and Damien has that."\nRovner, a former RCA executive, has bet on that ability: he and partner Ken Levitan made it the first release on their new label, Vector Recordings.\nTake an artsy, romantic Irishman and put him on the phone from an intoxicating city like Florence, Italy, to talk about his music, and you'll get sentences like this:\n"There's something magical about music, and the simple fact that it's a vibration of air. It's sort of magical if you vibrate the air in a certain way, people are pleased by it."\nLike wow, man!\nRice may be a dreamer, but he also has a confidence in his own art that has served him well.\nFor eight years, he was the singer for the Irish rock band Juniper, which did well in his home country. They had a major label contract and a seemingly comfortable life.\nBut Rice, now 30, felt pressure to write hit songs, and it got to him. He felt like fences were being built around him.\n"All of a sudden, your lifestyle has become less adventurous and less free," he said. "I found that when it happened to me, I was less creative and had less of a desire to live because I didn't feel like I was really living."\nHe quit the band and reconnected with his true love by busing around Europe with his guitar.\n"I would sit down and sing whatever I wanted to sing, mostly my own songs," he said. "I enjoyed my experiences. I got the perfect amount of money to do whatever it was I wanted to do at the time."\nRice is no fool, though. He traveled with a credit card.\nHis current success is proving a test. According to one recent review, he seemed upset when he couldn't completely silence the crowd at a sold-out London show for 4,800 fans -- the same problem he had at the Hollywood party.\nA bigger crowd "makes a difference to the energy in your body before you walk on the stage, but my approach is very similar," Rice said. "I walk onstage with the same natural, innate desire -- which is to be true, to be free, as honest with myself as I can be in that moment."\nVector's Rovner marveled at what Rice has achieved with little radio airplay or notice on the charts. Word of mouth is what every marketer dreams about.\nThat's the good news.