About Me

Jim of Seattle is Jim Owen, a regular guy born and raised here in Seattle, WA. I'm a husband, dad, homeowner, Microsoft employee, and long-time pianist and composer.

I started playing piano at age 4 and took lessons until 13, when I was finally old enough to be able to tell my mom I didn't want to do it anymore. At 18 I started up again on my own in secret at the piano in my basement, mostly writing silly novelty songs for friends. For the next year or so I wrote over 100 songs, most of which were total garbage. I did manage to have a small local hit on the independent new wave radio station at the time, KZAM. It was called "Laboratory Rat" and was my first tiny taste of success.

I was a music major at University of Washington and wrote a bunch of modern 12-tone and minimalist music, which was also total garbage. In college I acquired an interest in musical theatre, and started writing for musicals.

In 1993 I joined the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. I had some success writing music and lyrics for shows there, mostly one-acts. This included the score for a full-length show 4AM Boogie Blues with Marsha Meyers, which was produced in Chicago and Seattle and had workshop productions in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. After 3 years of sweat on 4AM, it died after a 5-week run in Chicago in 1998. A few years later I'd decided I was burned out on musical theatre.

The most fun I had writing music was for Disney Interactive in 1997, where I wrote a handful of silly kids' songs for their PC game Nightmare Ned.

I didn't write anything for a while, then started visiting Songfight in 2003, which sponsors weekly on-line songwriting contests. I've been participating in Songfight on and off since that time, and it's the best thing a songwriter can hope for - a bunch of fellow songwriters who will listen to your stuff with no strings attached. I've submitted about 30-40 songs for Songfight under different band names (Jim of Seattle, Ants (Invisible), W-Man, I Dunno Some Guy, and a few others) and I've won about half a dozen or so.

I'm currently working in Partner Services at Microsoft, and am having a great time taking things at my own pace.