| BIOGRAPHY |
In an era when stars are manufactured at painfully young ages..., when everyone from your neighbor down the block to dear old Dad can attain seemingly instant celebrity status..., Jim Witter, the humble, unassuming, golden-throated tenor, who can paint a ballad with the delicacy of Serat and with the ferocity of a rousing rocker like Pollock, reached the summit of his stunning major-label debut, Forgiveness, the old-fashioned way: He climbed it. Step-by-step. Day-by-day. Year-by-year.
It helped that Jim comes from sturdy musical stock: "Anytime I was scared about music as a career, my parents were always there. I would have given up many years before if it weren't for them. And of course there was always music in the house growing up, and my mom played piano. She unconditionally pushed me and helped me...but she never said, 'Why don't you go to university so you can fall back on something?'" In addition, Jim's great uncle Jimmy played piano for silent movies right in the theater in the Vaudeville days. ("He wrote charts; he repaired instruments. As long as it was musical, he did it.") And his cousin Russell is a music teacher.
"For me, music has always been a calling," Jim adds. "I picked up the guitar when I was 10 or 11, and when my mom showed me piano chords when I was 14, I just took it from there."
"Right out of high school I played anywhere I could and did anything I could do to survive," Jim fondly reveals regarding his days scuffling around the Toronto area. "I wrote jingles. I sang a lot of background vocals on other people's records. But the little money I got ultimately fed my bad habit of songwriting. I would demo songs and send them off to record companies. I kept relationships going for years, all based on rejection, but I took everything they had to say to heart. And it was eight years before someone from Sony in Canada finally said, 'We like how you've developed as a writer.'"
After several more years of demos, jingles, sessions, playing cover tunes (and even recording country music) to pay the rent, Jim got his biggest break yet: Writing songs for Curb Records. Finally a chance to shine in the states! Just what he'd been hoping for.
But that was nothing compared to what was to come...
One day Mike Curb himself approached Jim and asked a simple, pointed question: "Are you a Christian? You seem to be writing music that this world needs."
Wham!
After Jim replied in the affirmative, that began a series of astonishing talks with Mr. Curb. "Mike is not your typical record company president. He's from the old school. He's so in tune with what writers and artists are doing - and he goes by his gut when he decides what's good and right. And there's nothing like knowing he's looking out for you. He helped me realize what the Lord could do with my music. He planted a seed in my heart, and I started asking God what he wanted from me. It was a sign for me that God was pointing me in a different direction."
For Jim, the moment of discovery was a fresh start, a new beginning - and these new songs with their vivid imagery and stunning storytelling reflect Jim's revived, thankful heart... and his obvious maturity and versatility as a musician.
"I was always a big fan of acoustic music - especially the folk of the '70s: James Taylor, Harry Chapin," he reveals. "But I especially like Billy Joel and Elton John." (So much so that Jim has been heading up a popular local stage act featuring the music of the aforementioned piano men, complete with a "multimedia trip through the 70s.") And it's obvious that Jim's wide palette of influences - along with his unquenchable ability to create winning melodies - is all over his new release Forgiveness.
The title track, however, holds the most meaning for Jim. Another in a growing cadre of gripping story-songs, "Forgiveness" is the evocative, tender ballad about a little boy whose "very best friend" betrays him by stealing his bike and then lying about it. The boy never speaks to his ex-best friend again. Then years later he reads an obituary in the local paper... and he realizes he lost the chance forever to restore that foundational relationship: Sometimes we lose our way / We don't say things we should say / We hold on to stubborn pride / When we should put it all aside / To waste the time we're given seems so senseless / And one little word shouldn't be so hard / Forgiveness...
"If this song can help people to make amends in their lives, end a grudge with a family member or friend, that will be worth it," Jim notes.
Even the genesis of "Forgiveness" is a special memory for Jim, ever the perfectionist when it comes to lyrics. "I went into my writing meetings armed with what I thought were some great ideas. But as I looked at my notebook the night before, they all of a sudden didn't seem so great. So I'm sitting there at the piano a little depressed. A little panicky. Then my mind flashed back to a conversation in my publisher's office in Nashville: 'You ought to write a song about friends who part ways as kids.' So I prayed, and it just came out. The melody. The lyrics. Before we broke for lunch, the song was complete!"
Says Jim: "It's part of God's way of showing me that my life is in his hands."
