Musical Biography:  James Benshoff

James has been playing music since before he was born.  Not counting a few traumatic piano recitals during his childhood (from which he’s still trying to recover), his first musical performances with bands were as a bass player and guitarist.  Wisely, he decided that his only hope was keyboards, and he’s been a multi-keyboardist ever since.  For about 15 years, James played keyboards and sang with more than a dozen bands throughout Central and Tidewater Virginia , as well as appearing as a solo performer and part of several duos.  After spending a year touring with the band Momentum in his mid-20s, he retired from live performance and eventually entered graduate school to become a professional counselor.  James never stopped playing music, however, and in the mid-1990s began performing again with other musicians.  Currently, he is the leader, keyboardist, vocalist, sometime guitarist, and sound engineer for Anegada.  When he’s not playing music, he moonlights as a tenured faculty member in the Department of Counseling and Educational Development at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro .