James' experience in live sound includes international tours with Ministry, Royal Crown Revue, and Gary Sinise (Lt. Dan Band).
 
He also engineered nearly 700 shows at Chicago's Park West Theater, including hundreds of music concerts (not limited to Nick Cave, Laurie Anderson, King Crimson, David Byrne, Jimmy Smith, Chicago Cabaret Convention [45 acts in three days], Chuck Berry, Warren Zevon, Aimee Mann, Alice Peacock, Millie's Orchid Show, Royal Crown Revue, Hot Tuna, Bea Arthur, Intergalactic, Prince, Glen Tilbrook, Umphree's McGee, and countless others). The Park West also hosts fashion shows, awards ceremonies (such as the Jeff Awards), sporting events, and private parties, giving James a wealth of diverse sound reinforcement experience.

Work for various other Chicago area concert venues and independent sound reinforcement companies has brought James' lifetime live gig total to nearly two thousand events.  James has mixed sound in nearly every hotel ballroom, downtown skyscraper, suburban country club, museum, and street festival in the Chicago area. His favorite gig ever was mixing James Brown in front of 15,000 people at the Saratoga Jazz Festival in New York.