Jim Parker is a singer-songwriter based in Tempe, AZ. His songs are intensely-personal autobiographical sketches with no pretensions to artistic merit or commercial viability, only to the authenticity of their emotional content in the moment each was created.

His personal biography is both vague and compromised by false and fabricated (or, at least, highly-dubious) details. As he reported in a rare 2005 interview:

"I was born under a bad sign. In fact, I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus, rolling down highway 41. My mother was a tailor; she sewed my new blue jeans. My father was a gambling man, down in New Orleans. So I lit outta there, and landed in New York City—where, seeking only workman's wages, I went looking for a job. But I got no offers. Just a come-on from the whores on 7th Avenue. And yes, I do declare, there were times I was so lonesome, I could cry.

"But at times, I did take some comfort there. In fact, the 'girls' were like Sisters of Mercy to me."