Jim Erkiletian

Jim Erkiletian is a logger-environmentalist who has played banjo from the stages of the Yukon to the streets of Vancouver. Rug rats know him as Juggling Jim McBanjo. He holds university degrees in Economics, English, Education and Anthropology, writes and directs videos and stage plays, bikes, canoes, and builds dugout guitars. He is banjoist for the bluegrass-reggae fusion group, SOULSTICE, and the writer-director of the bluegrass opry, The Ballad of Darlin¹ Corey, and originator of the Nanaimo Fringe Festival¹s Rainbow Review. He's worked at both labour and management levels in transportation, sales, construction, research and education.

He is responsible for three books of poems, Slapjots, (ISB# 1-895848-04-0) Metaphorplay (1-895848-02-4) and How You Can Profit From the Coming Ecological Collapse, (1-895848-14-8), and an instruction manual for building and playing a variety of stringed instruments, Dugout Guitars (1-895848-08-1). He recorded a CD in 1995 with SOULSTICE : Gettin¹ Down, and a tape of sixteen original and semi-original songs, Heart & Hands in 1996. With Canadian Metis singer Janette Briere he's recorded three CDs, Wilderness for Evermore (2001), Westcoast Magic (2002), and For Love of America PEACE Canada (2003).

He's compleated on novel, Windigr (2000), a western, of sorts. All CDs and books are available from him, or from Nanaimo Publishing Cooperative, 368 Haliburton Street, Nanaimo BC Canada V9R 4W2.