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 has worked at both labour and management levels in transportation, sales, construction, research and education, some 40 full-time jobs in all.

He has played banjo with the bluegrass-reggae fusion group, Soulstice, the folk-duo Rainshadow, the First Nation's hard-hitting Mouse Pack, the Yukon country rockers Cabin Fever, and others. He is writer-director of the bluegrass opry, The Ballad of Darlin' Corey, and founder of the Nanaimo Fringe Festival's Rainbow Review.

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 has recorded a CD with Soulstice: Gettin' Down, and with various musicians, a tape of sixteen original and semi-original songs, Heart & Hands. With Janette Briere on recorder flutes and vocals he recently finished Harmonic Tremors, 12 Canadian folk-blues tunes.

All CDs were recorded and mastered in Nanaimo at Jerry Paquette's RAINCOAST STUDIO.
He lives at 368 Haliburton Street, Nanaimo BC Canada V9R 4W2. (250-753-6204)