Meet James Byous | Musician, Actor, Writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with James Byous and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi James, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking.
I think risk taking is at the heart of great artistry. I’ve always felt like the stories worth telling were the ones in which there was something at stake. If you don’t stand to lose anything, there are no stakes and the story is a long stream of pointless musings where nothing matters. There’s no conflict. There’s no love. Love is a loaded word but I think we can all agree it’s really goddamned important. Love is full of risk. If you let down your walls and you really let yourself love someone, they hold the power to break your heart. It’s scary as hell. But, you know, it’s way more terrifying to me to think about laying on my deathbed thinking I missed out on the chance to deeply love someone. I’ve done a lot of things in my life that people tend to see as being extremely risky– like hitchhiking across the country, walking the Camino De Santiago, sleeping on the street, living in a van, doing JiuJitsu with no health insurance… But I wasn’t going to live a small life just because I wasn’t rich. To hell with that. What would I have to say? What would I have experienced?

So yeah. Take some risks. Tell the stories. Otherwise your gravestone might read “He watched a lot of TV.”

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
It occurred to me a couple of years ago, that in spite of my best efforts, I grew up to be a musical theater actor. There are worse things you could be, I suppose, but I wanted to be a rockstar. That’s a bit of an amorphous term, but what I mean is I wanted to play rock music in front of massive, stadium sized crowds. Big dreams for a kid from Modesto. I wanted to be in a band and tour the country for screaming legions of fans and be on the cover of Rolling Stone and all that Jazz. I think this is a dream I was born with. I was always putting on shows for people in my living room. The sidewalk. I sang the national anthem for sporting events. Some kids mowed lawns for money– I played my harmonica in front of the grocery store.

I had taken drama class in middle school and that allowed me to get on stage in front of people and continue to work on my 10,000 hours. I took drama all 4 years of high school. I joined choir. I started a band in senior year. I willed it all into existence. I was relentless. I know for a fact I annoyed plenty of kids at my high school. I was that guy who brought his guitar to school every day. My dad was really sweet and supportive of my efforts. The whole family was but I lived alone with him and we would frequently listen to albums together and that was all we were doing. We’d throw on Dark Side of the Moon and just listen.

I was a bit of an anomaly in my school in that I was an athlete *and* an artist. I know it’s pretty typical for people to think that they were the weird kid, but I think in some ways I was in fact, one of the weirdest. I would full on perform “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen in the locker room to the other fellas on the wrestling team. They would all shake their heads, unsure whether to roast me for being outrageous or to clap.

When high school was finished, I got a scholarship to come to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy here in Los Angeles. I studied acting for film, but I was still bringing my guitar around with me every where. I started another band with my class mates. We broke up after AMDA and I started auditioning for shows and playing solo gigs around town. I also regret to inform the reader that I began to do quite a bit of drinking and drugging.

I’m blasting through quite a lot here to get you to the main bit. The drugs, the drinking. It became clear to anybody close enough to me to see me with any discernment, that there was going to be a problem. I did not want to feel my feelings. You’d think that a young person chasing their dreams would be excited. Grateful. Joyous. I was sometimes, but there was a growing darkness in me that would eventually cannibalize all other feelings until I was a shell of the bright-eyed boy from Modesto.

In 2010, I was in a new band called Badwater. When, after a night of heavy drinking and doing cocaine until sun up, my best friend and the guitarist of Badwater reflected to me that I seemed to drink a little differently from most normal folks, I was a bit shocked. I couldn’t be an alcoholic! I was only 21. I’d just gotten started! Well I started to look into some 12 step meetings for alcohol and got sober. Three months into being sober, I realized I wasn’t an alcoholic! Huzzah! (Please, Reader, sample the bittersweet flavor of intense sarcasm spread thick over an idiot sandwich). I would have this same realization over and over through years of chronic relapse.

Somehow during all this madness, I continued to be hired to perform. I auditioned for a musical series called For The Record in 2012 and was cast in a musical mash up of the films of Martin Scorsese. After that first contract I was hired again and again and I worked for FTR in bars, nightclubs, theaters, casinos, and cruise ships for years. When you’re the one on stage, everybody wants to drink with you. Everybody wants to get you high. So I continued to drink and drug like a madman. I was insane. It wasn’t like a normal person who has a couple of drinks and calls it good. I was drinking myself into oblivion.

In 2017 I started filming for a Netflix docu-series called Westside. I was one of nine LA based performers, chasing their dreams on screen. I also hit rock bottom. Publicly. It’s really interesting to have video evidence of the last night if your drinking career live in perpetuity online in high definition. But there I am in episode three, snorting cocaine in an alley and talking about how I’m being haunted by billboards for liver cancer.

Rock bottom. Boom. It did not rock. And I hit the bottom hard. I’m really thankful I felt as awful as I did because it meant that I was finally willing to ask for help. I went back to the 12 step meetings and I really worked a program of recovery. That was 7 years ago now. I haven’t had a drink or a drug since.

I’m telling you this really long story because it’s inextricably tied to my artistry. The struggle to get sober after years of addiction and alcoholism was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I loved drinking. It helped me cope with a world that I saw as being inherently chaotic, dark, and cold. For a long time, alcohol gave me the courage to get on stage without judging myself. It gave me the courage to put pen to paper without judging my thoughts and my creativity. When I didn’t have that crutch to lean on any longer, I had to dig deep to find the reasons that I needed to create. Why did I need to perform? Why was it so important for me to get on stage and interpret the world for an audience? I thought my life was over. I had no idea how to be an artist anymore. Thank God I didn’t need to know how to be me in order to be me. After a bit of time I really started to find myself. To find my voice without the drugs and the drinks. I started to Love myself and be able to look at myself in the mirror without feeling disgusted and ashamed.

The Netflix show didn’t get renewed for a second season. The Pandemic hit and I moved to North Carolina and worked at a drug rehab as a peer recovery counselor. I had never felt more rewarded than giving back the recovery I found. During that time I started working on a rock opera called “Jimi Darkness: Alcoholic Superhero.” I’d write a song and show it to the clients and pretty soon the whole staff and all the clients were having me perform the first 20 minutes of the show. I was living my truth. I was telling a story that could make a difference. I moved back to LA in 2021 and I’ve been working on Jimi Darkness ever since. Dialing it in. Showing him to LA. Getting him ready to show to the world. I found my voice. I recovered. I’m a sober musical theater actor, singer, writer, and martial artist in Los Angeles. Pretty cool for a kid from Modesto.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’m a huge fan of taco trucks. I know one or two in every neighborhood that makes killer food. We’re eating tacos, hiking in Griffith Park, and going to Venice beach to walk the boardwalk. I’m also getting my guest some tickets to see me in the latest For The Record show “Tarantino: Pulp Rock” live at The CineVita.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I want to shout out my wife Maëva. She is so constant in her support and her acceptance of me as an evolving person. She inspires me daily with her work ethic and her tenacity. She came to this country with no friends and hardly any more possessions than could be fit into a suitcase and we built a life for ourselves. I’m proud to be her husband and to share the stage with her. And I’m still blown away by her voice.

Website: https://rollingsoberbjj.com

Instagram: @jamesbyous