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It would be fair to say that musically, Jim Stanard is something of a late bloomer, embracing a life in music at a point where many in his shoes surrender to the urge to take things easy. During a successful career in the business world, he made a point of seeking out new challenges, and he's applied that attitude to his work as a creative artist.

Stanard has always had a profound relationship with music and accrued plenty of performing experience early in life. Music meant so much to him that, as a teenager, he sold his childhood coin collection to buy his first guitar, a Martin D-28 that he still plays. As a young man, Stanard was profoundly affected by the singer-songwriter explosion of the 1960s.

"I played a lot of music in the '60s and early '70s, playing solo in college coffeehouses for about fifteen years", Stanard recalls. "Then I got busy with other stuff and stopped playing, but I always carried the music with me. Even after I'd quit playing, I was always listening and absorbing and accumulating a lot of musical knowledge, so when it comes to writing songs I'm endlessly inspired."