JamesNotJim, a.k.a. James “Wheatbread” Martin, is a versatile musician what a passion for bass, guitar, and more. His debut solo album, Whole Wheat Funk, is available on Bandcamp, Spotify, and other platforms (jamesnotjim.com has links). After performing with successful regional bands like Punkinhead, The Tares, and Nancy, James now focuses on creating, recording, and producing instrumental funk and ambient music.

Flight Lessons

Flight Lessons is whatever it wants to be.  A project of David Sparrow of Los Angeles based rock band Burning Jet Black, the idea was created as an outlet for songwriting and collaboration.
Being a part of a band, there always tends to be material that just doesn’t “fit,” so in that spirit, these songs are open for interpretation by whoever happens to be willing to add something new to the bare bone structures.
If it turns into a folk song, so be it.  If it turns into a balls to the wall rock tune, so be it.  The existing material is all very sparse with the full intention of reinventing it in a live situation.

The live version of Flight Lessons was only recently born in April of 2013 with its first inception being David Sparrow accompanied by Ben Levy of local band, The Vintage Tuesday.  
Although it’s not a foreign concept of joining violin and guitar, the camaraderie of Levy and Sparrow created a new vibe to the existing music.  Not exactly rock n’ roll, but not sad bastard songwriter territory either.

As the project is only just taking off (pun intended) there’s not much else to say, except Sparrow is excited to see where it goes.


Martin Ruby is a Roots/Americana band led by singer and multi-instrumentalist Marco North. Born in Brooklyn, he has been living in Moscow, Russia for the past 13 years.
Laying his demons bare, North pulls on characters like a series of strange coats. Paring back the extraneous, coaxing out the wry details, always seeking that conversational tone, his songs are a wandering collection of midnight confessions.
His first album, Heaven Get Behind Me was written on a 100-year-old parlor guitar, and recorded in a Soviet-era living room on a collection of vintage instruments, including a 1887 Pollman banjola. North’s unique songwriting is steeped in not only the melancholy grace of Nick Drake and Mark Linkous, but also the foggy noir of Johnny Cash’s American albums, and the somber meditativeness of Nick Cave’s most recent recorded output.

adam gerow is following