In the summer of 1986 James Benton left the foothills of Kentucky and moved into the Chelsea Hotel in NYC. He spent much of his days there writing poetry in the lobby or in his dingy 6th floor room. He admits now that the poems written there were mostly very bad, infused with a rather cheap-wine-blurred observation of NYC, the Chelsea and the many eccentric outcasts who were living there at that time. During his stay, he was given an acoustic guitar by the night clerk that had been hidden away in the office and took it as a sign that he should at least start practicing a bit more than he had been in the recent past and to perhaps give the poetry a little rest. After a series of rather dreadfully painfull jobs that included a short gig at a criminal telemarketing firm on 5th Avenue and a hair washer at a chic uptown hair salon, he landed a position at The Bottom Line working as a host. “The pay was sh*t, but they fed me pretty good burgers and I was able to hear and meet some great musicians, including Keith Richards, Suzanne Vega, David Johansen and Odetta; the latter, actually giving me a verbal blessing as she exited the door one night. However, the money I had stolen out of my Father’s suitcase ran out with a quickness inside my little dream of living at the Chelsea and finally I found myself facing the cold and unnerving reality of having to move into the YMCA around the corner, and I became confronted by guys knocking on my door in the middle of the night whispering through the thin door what they intended to do with me while the cockroaches trekked over the ceiling and walls. I only stayed one night.” He then moved into a dank, rodent infested, closet like space on the upper west side where the views consisted of watching an occupied body bag being transported down his dark hallway and PCP crazed guys convulsing on the sidewalks at night, becoming one of them for an evening after being invited to smoke a little "something" by a young hispanic guy. New York was quickly becoming more of a place to leave than to try and live out a dream, so he headed to the Florida Keys, hanging with some old hippies and young Dead Heads for an extended period. He then took the long road to N. California where he settled in and started writing poetry again and reading at the open mics at the old Jambalaya Bar in Arcata. It was on the town square in Arcata beneath the flagpole where he had a chance meeting with John Trudell. This event was the inspiration for the song “The Crime” on Heavy Hearts. James only began performing publicly in 1997, two years after moving to the island of Crete with some encouragement from a close friend there and began writing profusely both poetry and songs. After several highly proclaimed live performances, he took off northward to the mountains in the South of France where he now lives and recently recorded Heavy Hearts, his self released debut album.