On this issue, Gillette explains -

“Having studio space in my bedroom was key to my success. There aren’t many musicians that can wake up at noon and begin recording without ever having to see sunlight [chuckles]. If I wanted to, I would stay in my basement for days at a time. My mom brought me sausages and eggs at 1 pm everyday while I worked on my record. No one saw me but her, no one even knew I existed – It was like I wasn’t even alive, and that’s what made me so successful.”

Gillette’s living quarters were small at best, but his ability to improvise wasn’t just apparent on the big stage at the local high school where he paid to play at the annual talent show, his skill also translated into his recording studio/bedroom.

“I maximized my space, I had to. I swapped my queen for a twin because the other half of the bed was wasting space. I’m still not sure why one person would need such a wide bed.”

But his space-saving resourcefulness didn’t end there – Gillette has been “making waves” on the internet, and though after twenty years in the business, he still isn’t available on Apple’s popular iTunes, his YouTube music videos have generated enough traffic to his personal website that he has since been able to afford moving out of his mom’s basement and into the main floor of the house he grew up in.

“I bought a small webcam so I could record professional style amateur music videos without the burden of hiring someone to hold the camera, it clips onto my computer… The internet has been great for me, really great. I can perform in front of a huge crowd online, in front of no one in my basement. And it’s always better to perform live for no one and have people show up on the internet, than to perform live at a venue and have no one show up at all.”

“Optomism Jim” as his mom calls him, was kind enough to provide us with a link to his most memorable performance on YouTube which can be seen below.