My name is James. Your name may also be James. That is yet to be seen. More likely, you know somebody named James, Jim, Jimmy, Jimbo, Jamie, or even Jaime. It's a common name. And oh so biblical. Anyway, I am a loner, Dottie. A rebel. I'm from Wadsworth, Ohio, dontyaknow.
As of the time of writing this, I have been a singer / songwriter / multi-instrumentalist for nearly twenty years. I have been in a few bands along the way. In order here: Guido and the Draft Dodgers, Three Way Stalemate, Paved Groovement, Contrast, This Dizzy Height, ChunkStyle, Medina Line, JC Hovercraft, and Yes, Mayhem. All through those times, I continued writing songs and recording them to the best of my ability and equipment.
I have a modest recording budget of zero. Back in the day, I found that my boombox had a Karaoke-type feature, with a mic jack in the back, which would record a mix of the mic and playback from deck one to the tape in deck two. This allowed me to layer tracks over and over. These recordings are nearly unlistenable, but most are here for your amusement anyway. Those recordings, as The Jamie Experience and The James Machine, range from 1992-1996, spanning Wadsworth, OH, Uniontown, OH, Tucson, AZ, and Greensburg, PA. When I moved to Thomasville, NC in 1996, I bought a Tascam MK424 4-track tape recorder and a Shure 57 microphone.
This greatly increased my flexibility. The recordings still weren't very good, but I was learning. I had an old Ludwig drum set in my bedroom, which was featured in a lot of recordings from that period. One crappy mic pointed at the kick drum and the Shure 57 as an area mic pointed at the whole set from a few feet away. Actually, it's not that bad a method. Anyway, I later changed my name to James Mosheen, moved to Greensboro, NC for a year, and continued writing and recording.
In 1998, I moved to Asheville, NC and purchased an Alesis SR-16 drum mosheen. It made me incredibly lazy, but allowed for more productivity. I was pumping many recordings out at this point. You may be noticing a trend forming here, I was writing a lot, recording a lot, and the recordings weren't of much listening value. Again, I was learning. Soon after moving to Asheville, I began regularly playing solo acoustic open mics at Bean Streets, The Grey Eagle (in Black Mountain), Tressa's, and later, The Grey Eagle (in Asheville).
In 1999, I signed on to my first online presence, MP3.com, where I met Dan Taylor, the bass player of Milkface. With Dan's help, I was ushered into the age of PC recording. Using my 4-track as a mixing board, I would layer tracks into multi-track software on the computer. Late in 1999, I recorded the album Carnival at home in a spare bedroom. Soon thereafter, I registered JamesMosheen.com, which was up for about two years.
In 2001, after our first unsuccessful attempt at starting a band, we formed This Dizzy Height, which consisted of Lincoln Benson on guitar and vocals, and Chad Hildebran on drums. We recorded "Stereo Luxuriances", a truly inspired album, over the course of two or three months between my house (Makeshift Studios West) and Dan's house (Makeshift Studios Really West).
Later in 2001, Chad left the band and after a short break, we brought in Adam Clark on drums, and changed the name (and overall sound) to ChunkStyle. We played a few shows, on the UNCA campus, Asheville Music Zone, and the Asheville Pizza Company in Weaverville.
In 2002, after the demise of ChunkStyle, I moved to Indianapolis, Indiana on a job transfer. It was during my two year stint in Indy that I started calling my music project Medina Line, and registered MedinaLine.net. I soon realized that 500MB was a huge amount of space, so I started gathering all of the song lyrics, recordings, and short stories into a virtual pile on the web. Less than two weeks after, I filled that up and registered MedinaLine.com and continued on with the process. So, this site serves as the official archive of my creative works, good and bad.
In 2004, I returned to Asheville. Early in 2005, I purchased a Fostex MR8HD digital 8-track recorder and some decent mics. I set up a somewhat permanent residence for my drums in Dan's shed, and got started on a massive recording project. There were 46 songs in progress, about 25 of which reached the second round of mixing. This was released in 2008 as the "Ten Years After" album.
Early in 2007, I vacated the shed and moved into a rented practice space and started a band. Medina Line started out with a 27 song set list made up of new and old songs. The beginning of the band marked the return of fellow This Dizzy Height members Chad Hildebran on drums and Dan Taylor on bass. Nicky White came in with backing vocals and percussiveness, and Tom Bradbury brought the lead guitar hotness. Between May and August, we played three shows, twice at Broadways and once at the New French Bar. In December of 2008, I recorded a five song EP, "amillionscreamingvoices".
Early in 2008, Medina Line was called to a halt. I have since consumed myself with the creative process, new short stories, songs, recordings, and even some poetry. More band-like projects may come around in the future.
December, 2008 saw the release of Sour Grapes, an album written and recorded during a week long "vacation" from work.
Free Windows software was added to the site in March, 2010. I have begun developing personal applications in Visual C# Express 2008, with SQLite database integration.
August, 2010 saw the release of Yes, Mayhem, an album of Dan's songs performed by a large variety of internet friends.
Various projects continue today, writing and recording. Check back often, as this site is constantly updated.
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