Jim Bianco

Jim Bianco, a singer and songwriter based in Los Angeles, developed strong connections to the city’s singer/songwriter surge of 2000 that centered on the Hotel Café. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he took up piano studies and performed on bass with neighborhood groups in his youth. After finishing school and spending a brief period in Europe, he accepted a friend’s invitation to relocate to Los Angeles and join a band. He continued on bass until the group disbanded, at which point he taught himself guitar and singing to front his own project. His first significant opportunity arrived with a set at the still-new Hotel Café, which earned him an opening slot with Gary Jules. Bianco then collaborated with Jules and the venue’s owners to shape the Hotel Café into one of Los Angeles’s primary rooms for singer/songwriters. His full band came together in 2003, comprising Matt DeMeritt on saxophone, piano, and flute; Brad Gordon on keyboard, trumpet, clarinet, and accordion; Kenny Lyon on electric guitar; Jason Pipkin on drums; and Josef Zimmerman on upright bass. They issued their debut album, Handsome Devil, the following year. With the Hotel Café’s rising profile, its operators started a label to document the artists who performed there regularly, and Bianco’s sophomore release, Sing (2008), became the first album on Hotel Café Records. He gained notice for his high-energy, audience-engaging live shows. By the time of his third album, Loudmouth (2011), fan support allowed him to crowdfund the project through Kickstarter. That same boundary-breaking rapport with listeners intensified on the fourth album, Cookie Cutter, when Bianco invited fans to submit personal stories for him to turn into songs. Seventeen participants completed a 69-question survey, and their replies supplied the material for every track. His fifth studio album, Forniquette (2016), featured a twelve-piece brothel band performing songs that recounted, as Bianco himself put it, “ten tragic Stories of a girl gone wrong.”