James Burchart is a singer/songwriter, recording artist, and author. He was born in the Yukon Territories and raised in Nelson BC in the heart of the Kootanays.
   Nelson was a small but significant cultural and intellectual center, teaming with live classical and folk music, painters, writers, photographers and poets. As a teenager James spent his evenings in coffeehouses like ‘The Jam Factory’, ‘The Vallican Hole’, and ‘The Preservation House’ listening Bruce Cockburn, Valdy, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, or some other unknown artist work their magic with guitars, fiddles, and unpolished voices. Before long he had a guitar of his own and was putting his own songs together.
   James was raised in an Evangelical Lutheran Church, but his father was very active in the Gideons, and often took James with him on speaking engagements in churches in the surrounding communities, exposing him to a wide variety of denominations and practices.
   By the age of fourteen James had recognized God’s call and claim on his own life and was baptized into the Evangelical Covenant Church.
   After graduating from high school he spent one year at Covenant Bible College, followed by a second at North American Baptist College – now Taylor University College and Seminary. Overcoming a lifetime struggle with reading due to dyslexia, he began to familiarizing himself with the works of CS Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Peter Kreeft, Frederick Buechner and a host of others, laying the Spiritual and intellectual groundwork for the music and books he would later write.
   After Bible School he formed the Christian rock group ‘Masterpeace’, attended some post-secondary school, and worked as a cook. Masterpeace eventually came under the musical mentorship of British recording pioneer and Hawkwind keyboardist Del Detmar, and in Del’s studio James made his first multitrack recordings.
   At the same time James was recovering from two painful knee surgeries that made it difficult for him to travel and left him constantly exhausted. Rapidly tiring of heavy metal music, and longing to get back to his acoustic roots, James left the band and moved to Vancouver Island where he recorded ‘Songs for the Common Man’ and ‘Lost within the Flame’, both of which received Much Music and college radio rotation.
   In Victoria James also came in contact with producer Bruce Wright, former songwriter and guitarist for the 1980’s Christian rock band ‘Servant’. The two became fast friends and worked on several projects together. Under Bruce’s tutelage James was able to hone and consolidate his songwriting skills and learn the basics of audio recording and production. Unfortunately Bruce died of cancer in 1991.
   The next few years brought many changes; James married and hung up his guitars for a while to go back to school and became a Respiratory Therapist. Once settled into his new career James and Sheilagh moved their family to Chilliwack BC. With his new profession established James soon discovered that he had the time and renewed energy to pursue his music and love of books. The result was a 5 song EP ‘The Backroads’ and a novel called ‘Book of Kallma’.
   James in currently interested in writing and performing Christian Acoustic music that is lyrically accessible to those with little or no history with the church or the Christian faith, and using the singer/songwriter genre to present Spiritual concepts in less of the religious language that is increasingly misunderstood by our culture.
   He is currently working on his third studio album, ‘From Ellis Island’ and his second novel, ‘The Narrow Road: A Post-Modern Pilgrims Progress’.