Jim Bianco

My first musical memory was of my mother, Jane, a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, playing Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" on a tinny old Baldwin upright piano. The performance was far from perfect, but I will say, and this isn't just because she's my mother, that what her playing lacked in technique, it made up for in heart.

On the contrary, my father, a Sicilian weight-lifting fanatic, couldn't carry a tune on a flatbed truck. He was responsible for getting that old piano into our lives, though. In 1979 my uncle traded it to him for two 35lb dumbbells and a bench press.

We moved from Brooklyn to Long Island. It was there where I spent the rest of my terribly normal adolescence stealing golf carts, taking piano lessons, losing my virginity, discovering the art of self-medication and playing in less-than-extraordinary high-school rock bands. Then I graduated.

From there I went to Berklee College of Music. I fell face-first into Thelonius Monk, Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, Bill Evans, J.D. Salinger, Jaco Pastorious, Tom Waits, Fats Waller, Kurt Vonnegut, Loudon Wainwright, and Miles Davis.

These men are heroes. They should wear capes. They, along with my mother, taught me that the most important instrument you should use when performing is your heart.

I moved to LA, rented a room no bigger than a closet for $80 a month and screamed at the top of my lungs until I decided that someone could interpret it as singing. Soon enough, i thought it was time to play in front of other human beings (which is not an easy feat, considering how difficult it is to find a human being here in Hollywood),

My next couple years were spent at open mikes, home studios, in bars and strange women's bedrooms (it was like a more mature version of my adolescent life, without the golf carts.) I put together a band, piece by piece, played as often as possible, recorded several demos and a full-length album, 'Well Within Reason', which eventually got airplay on local NPR station KCRW on Nic Harcourt's show 'Morning Becomes Eclectic". Soon enough, I was signed with an agent, I was playing a weekly residency at the famed Hotel Café, spreading out to San Francisco and San Diego and planning a national tour, and collaborating with Tim Davies and his 19-piece big band, who I eventually recorded an album with.

After a national tour in the summer of 2003, I won an acoustic music competition back in LA called 'Acoustic Live" which afforded me some free studio time. With the talent and creativity of my band, and the help of producer/band-mate Brad Gordon, we took to the studio to record our latest album "HANDSOME DEVIL". I wanted to make a record that brutally expresses the dark, insatiable depths of the male libido with momentary lapses of love, heart and folly.

Upon the release of Handsome Devil', we performed on-air for KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic"; In addition, my song "Long Way Home" from "Well Within Reason" was picked up by BMG UK recording artist Tunde Baiyewu of the multi-platinum European group "The Lighthouse Family". I've toured the country several times w/ my trio, and recently as part of the Hotel Cafe Tour, 2005 (w/ Imogen Heap, Butch Walker, Cary Brothers and more...). 2006 has started with a bang, too- We toured JApan for 2 weeks, then the UK w/ Glenn Tilbrook for 2 weeks, then a regional US tour for 3 weeks after SXSW. It's good to be back home, now, in LA.

Currently, I am planning to release an EP worth of ballads this October, the HOTEL CAFE U.S. tour 2006 this fall, and a European tour in November with the boys from the HOtel Cafe as well...

I'm trying my hardest to get my mother as the opening act on the bill.