Blake James Music

If there were a blended drink named The Bottom Line, it would probably mess you up. The Bottom Line (the band, not the mythical beverage) operates on the same premise, but through music. You’ll forget where you are, why you were here in the first place, and you’ll probably end up eating hashbrowns and a Denver omelette at an IHOP before it’s all over.

Blake James provides the band’s heart: production, concepts, and lead male vocals. An experienced lyricist and songwriter from past musical projects, Blake takes pleasure in writing hooks and composing beats that don’t require thought on the listener’s part.

Whitney Ohman is the soul of The Bottom Line, providing lead female vocals and soulful sound that few (if any) pop singers possess. Having an equally long relationship with music and vocals as Blake, Whitney brings passion and pure vocal talent that is unmatched.

If Blake is the heart, and Whitney the soul, DJ Souza is The Bottom Line’s adrenal gland, delivering raps and backup vocals. Having experience in writing rather than music, DJ makes up for his inexperience with raw energy.

Seriously, a blended drink may be the best analogy for The Bottom Line’s special concoction of pop: a splash of early 2000′s punk-pop, a shot of driving guitar riffs, a twist of hip-hop bridges, and chilled to perfection with soulful melodies, all over a healthy mix of electronic beats and catchy hooks.

My teacher at Full Sail University (we call him “Bones”) issued a challenge to remix the worst band I have ever heard in my life. So, I took the challenge and this is what I came up with. You need to look up “The Shaggs” on iTunes or Spotify just to see how bad they are. (the song I sampled was “Things I Wonder” by The Shaggs)

 I started writing songs on the acoustic guitar back in 2001, when I was 16 years old. I still have the ol’ Black $150 Washburn guitar that I poured my heart and soul into every day after school… It’s hanging on the wall with the others. I also have all my spiral notebooks, that are jam packed with song after song. Mostly songs about girls, girl problems, wanting girls, anything and all things girls… pretty much what any 16 year old boy thinks about at any given time.

The Blake James project carries influences from Third Eye Blind, Stone Temple Pilots, Days of the New, Tonic, and a few others.  All songs were written on the acoustic, and some were taken to a full band recording later in their lives. What separates these songs from the others I have written (in my other projects) is the acoustic driven music behind emotionally raw lyrics.

In addition to the importance of this project to my music performance career, this project was my introduction to the world of recording.  I was lucky to have parents that supported my dreams in music as a teenager, and they provided me with some pretty posh equipment.  I started working with Cakewalk and an assortment of 3rd party plugins, constantly recording anything and everything.  The project provided me with hundreds of songs to record, and was key in growing my skills as an editor, producer, and technician.