Hello!

My name is James Hoke and I'm a musician, sound engineer, and producer from Carrboro, NC. I have been practicing my craft since I was just a kid and always had big dreams about having my own studio space, teaching kids and adults, and providing myself with an income based 100% in my passions and interests so that I can share music, and all the joys and benefits that come with it, with my community.

With that as my goal, I saved up, and over the course of 10 years invested my life savings into building and operating my own recording studio. No one helped me do this, save some friends who contributed some of their time and labor. By mid-2024, I had completed my dream and was living in the space I created my studio in and had big dreams about the future. I had written up a business plan, started marketing and doing research and had even started to get some of my sound engineer friends involved to run sessions in that studio.

Things were going great until July of 2025, when everything I had built was destroyed by Tropical Storm Chantal. A culvert on the property was blocked causing it to flood. My friends and community worked quickly to try and save what we could, but the damage had been done. I watched water pour into my home and studio and slowly ruin everything I had spent the better part of a decade building. I wanted to cry and scream, but I couldn’t. All I could do at the time was laugh, which may seem strange to some. The scale of the damage and how suddenly my life had gone from being on this incredible path that felt like it had an almost cosmic purpose to just...a flooded room full of broken gear.

I put together a painstakingly curated list of equipment, speakers, instruments, computers, and other gear that had been lost in the flood to send to my insurance company, only to discover that because it was a culvert that had failed, they would not cover any of the damages. It was a devastating thing to hear. The damages were calculated as upwards of $38,000, not counting any of my personal belongings and only considering the gear I bought for essential studio function.

A week later, my car was found to have been damaged by the flood as well as my partners vehicle making them both inoperable. We took what steps we could and figured out space for me in her small apartment for me to stay while I figured things out.

To make matters worse, I had another job lined up in Oregon as a high school audio production teacher, and was considered as the final candidate, but at the very last minute the Licensure Board decided my credentials didn’t meet State standards and even though the school had made me an offer, they were forced to rescind it due to those standards.

The past month has been beyond devastating. I am now: homeless, jobless, carless, and without any of my professional or personal belongings to rebuild myself financially with. I am asking anyone who can do so to help me rebuild my life. My current goals are to stabilize my living situation, purchase a vehicle, and get myself back into school to become a full –time music teacher so that I can continue my dream despite how broken and de-railed the path to it has become. I realize that it is a lot to ask, and that I’m just one person in a vast world of people who have also had tragedy befall them in one way or another, but I promise that I will continue to try my best to make something of my life and bring a little bit more beauty and knowledge into it wherever I can. If you have the funds and wherewithal to do so, I am asking for a donation so I can reach my goal of $10,000 to start rebuilding my life and my studio. Realistically, I’m going to need about $40,000, but I know with $10,000 I can buy a vehicle, replace some of the essential equipment I need and get started towards working to get back what I’ve lost. I’m not asking for a handout, I’m willing to do the work necessary to get where I want to be. I just need a little help from my community in the face of such sudden and all-encompassing tragedy.

Attached is my Venmo and Cash App information, which is the best and most direct way you can help me:

Cashapp: $jprimitive

Venmo: @James-Primitive

Thank you so much for reading this far if you have. Even if you can’t give anything, just keep a positive thought about me and my situation, as well as for others who have been affected across NC by storms of this caliber and greater.

Wishing for the best for all of us,

-James Hoke.