MJames Tyler Toothman was born in a small town in West Virginia. The only son of Jimmy T and Pammy K, James was raised by his father in a house built out of cinder blocks. He spent his early years being looked after by a lovely woman named Scarlett who lived in a bar with dirt floors and a pool table and a juke box that would play Far Beyond Driven when he fed it quarters, as well as his grandfather, Big Jim, proprietor of Toothman’s Alternator Service, who regularly took him to hillbilly auctions hosted by a six hundred pound man named Tiny. In the summers he would visit his mother in Florida.

At thirteen, his father bought James his first guitar. That same year, he also smoked dope for the first time with Jacob Riddle and Josh Fluharty in a makeshift treehouse. At age fourteen, while James visited his mother in Ocala, his older cousin fed him LSD and took him to Gainesville for whip-its. It was on this ride that james was introduced to rap music and bass. Two twelves in the trunk of a honda civic. High on acid and nitrous oxide. Upon returning to earth and West Virginia, James mostly skated and partied in the woods and ate mushrooms and played in metal bands with his friends. He graduated from high school with Highest Honors.

At eighteen, he moved in with a friend who sold cocaine and crates of stolen liquor. That same friend turned him on to the Grateful Dead. Then it was off to college, where he hustled weed and went to hippy festivals and did all the drugs and played in more bands. After graduating college, most of his twenties were spent traveling the world. From Arkansas to Asia. Black Rock City, Pokhara, Paris, Doha, Rome, and Big Summit Prairie. He followed good times, music, and women wherever they led him. He worked when he had to and got by however he could. He shoveled shit on horse farms, tended bars in juke joints, and dealt cards in exchange for cheap beer and airfare. He produced rap music in South Carolina and grew fire weed in Colorado. He also blasted hash for one day in an old garage in Fort Collins, but he quickly gave up that occupation forever, along with roofing, because both jobs are far too dangerous to perform while stoned.

In that time, he also lost the love of a good woman. It was his own fault. He packed up and left without saying goodbye. And he still hasn’t forgiven himself.

Later, in seventeen, his mother died. But before she did, on her death bed, she told him to get off his ass and write the book he was always talking about writing. Because our time on earth is short. Then they did some cocaine together.

In nineteen, along with his best good pal, he founded the Cult of Ray Sawyer, based on a mutal obsession with the seventies rock band, Dr Hook & the Medicine Show. The cult’s mission, thus far, is without aim or reason.

These days, James is spending as much time as he can with his friends and family, playing his guitar, running the cult, and looking forward to whatever is next in life.