Jim And The French Vanilla

Jim and the French Vanilla sounds like the name of a band, but it's actually a solo recording project from Jim Blaha, guitarist with the Minneapolis-based indie rock band the Blind Shake. In his spare time, Blaha was writing and recording acoustic-based pop tunes with angular melodies and occasional bursts of sound effects and minimal percussion, all captured with his lo-fi bedroom recording setup. A CD-R of some of Blaha's experiments crossed the paths of the folks at the Minneapolis-based indie label Modern Radio Records, and they enjoyed the music enough to persuade Blaha to give it an official release. 2008's Roll Out the Candy, credited to Jim and the French Vanilla, was a limited-run album released by Modern Radio on CD-R. In 2012, Blaha assembled another set of bedroom recordings, and the second Jim and the French Vanilla album, fittingly titled II, was released as a digital album and a limited-edition vinyl LP, once again by Modern Radio. In 2017, Jim and the French Vanilla went electric with the release of Afraid of the House on Dirtnap Records. While still a lo-fi solo project, this time Blaha's songs were dominated by the hard buzz of electric guitars and bore a closer resemblance to his work with the Blind Shake, though still reflecting a different melodic outlook.
© Mark Deming /TiVo