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Born in Newfoundland Canada, the first real instrument I played was Harmonica (which I don't play any more). I came to California when I was still a young pup and had no greater desire in life than to play drums. It wasn't until high school that I finally got to fulfill that dream and then I played in every group I could join or sit in with at the time. Inevitably, all that did was wet my appetite for more opportunities to play and perform. During those years I also won an award as a top performer in the snare drum category. (Ever seen the movie "Drumline", well it was that kind of drumming.)

After high school, I went on to Fresno State and majored in Music, during which time I played with every kind of conceivable musical group from orchestras to wind ensembles to jazz bands to rock groups - well you get the picture so I won't belabor the point. Then it was on to graduate school at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles (which, by the way, is a very cool place to study music). Well, unfortunately I never finished, I got into playing music more than learning it, and touring more than staying in one place and started learning other instruments including keyboards and writing my own music - lots of my own music (somewhere around 500 songs or so - there's a couple of originals on the MP3 pages). It was during that time I became quite good at programming drum tracks for recording studios and thus my foray into computers.

After a lot of years toiling in Los Angeles as what they call a "side man" and an "on call" studio musician and oh yeah the drummer for an original New Wave band called "Speed Limit" (a.k.a. The Limit), I bailed and came to Sacramento where I had no intention of playing music again except possibly for my own satisfaction. Well, I headed back to school to study business and computing, and along the way ended up building websites (which I do professionally for a living now). While on the journey down that road, I consented to produce a couple of albums - one for a church and one for a Gosple singer named Ervin Swan - which then put me in a working relationship with a local recording studio (Sound Solution Recording - owned by Tom Ford) for whom I started doing arrangements.

Somewhere between here and there, I made friends with some fabulous musicians and ended up forming a band by the name of Kool Skool. Initially I played as the drummer and laterally I was the keyboardist. During that time, the band went from a 6-piece group down to a trio. As a way to fill in instruments till we found the right musicians for the band, I began programming all the extra tracks (drums, horns, strings extra keyboards) onto a laptop and we made a debut as a trio on the 2000 New Year's Eve end of the millennium. Talk about a wild night, it was incredible and what a huge sound! No one could believe that it was just a trio. It was amazing how good and how versatile that trio was.

Finally, after almost five and a half years of playing together, my two friends decided to call it quits from our busy schedule and seek some time to themselves, leaving me to ponder if I was to continue on or hang it up as well and finally play just for my own enjoyment. To make a very long story short, the booking agent for Kool Skool (Don Peterson of River City Booking - see the contacts menu) started booking me as a solo on some odd gigs here and there. Since I had done 90% of the work building up the repertoire on computer for Kool Skool, it only took a few tweaks in the arrangements to get all of the songs up to solo performance level.

There's an old saying that says: "Don't despise small beginnings.", which fortunately I didn't do. After a very slow start, all of a sudden the jobs started coming in bunches, to the point where I have actually had to turn down some stuff (I can only sing so many 4 hour gigs back to back before my voice gives out). Talk about things taking off, I feel like I'm on one of those NASA space launches. It's been totally crazy! If you want to see a list of places that I've played check out the "venues" option which is part of the locations menu, and that doesn't include all the private parties, birthday celebrations, and corporate functions I've been doing.

Please take some time to check out the huge song list of some 240 songs (and growing). I think you'll be surprised at the diversity of styles that I perform. By the way, most of the bands that I've played with through the years only carry at the very most 40 or 50 songs in their repertoire, not over 240 songs, so you can see that I do one heck of a lot of music.

If you want to check out some of the music, you can get a sampling of the wide variety of material by going to the mp3 page and listening to some of the snippets or if you like the full length tunes that I've recorded. (For those of you who aren't satisfied with the number of songs that I've posted, please be patient till I find some time to record a few more. It's just a matter of finding some space in a very hectic schedule!!!!)

Well now you know more than probably ever wanted too, all that's left to say is that I'm looking forward to seeing you at one of the bookings!

Peace and God Bless!
The MusicManLive - James

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