Jim Hoehn, author of A Father's Guide to Birth, Babies and Loud Children, is a Milwaukee-based journalist and songwriter who discovered early that putting pen to paper was a legitimate way of avoiding any form of manual labor, leading to a career path that has included newspapers, magazines and wire services.
Hoehn and his wife are the parents of three young children, whose sugar-fueled daily antics were the basis for his award-winning monthly magazine column on parenting, as well as his book. One of his editorial stops, which helps explains some of his outlook and approach to parenting, was a stint as the managing editor of the New York-based Rugby magazine, a sport which he played for the better part of two decades.
Although he has written on a wide range of topics, Hoehn's primary focus was sports, covering such events as the Super Bowl, Rose Bowl and Hong Kong 7s rugby tournament, in addition to several thousand regular-season and tournament games of all sports at every level.
Hoehn currently resides in the world cubicle journalism as a production coordinator for JS Online, the website of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. For 11 years, he wrote a monthly magazine column, "Father's 'Hood," described by one reader as "Erma Bombeck meets Dave Barry," which won national recognition in the humor category from Parenting Publications of America.
A midlife crisis turned Hoehn's writing attention toward music, where he has carved out a surprisingly successful niche as a performing songwriter despite a musical philosophy of "Six strings, five fingers, three chords, no problem." As a songwriter he has performed at numerous festivals and events around the country and has opened for a wide variety of national artists, including the likes of Warren Zevon, Jerry Jeff Walker, Todd Snider, James McMurtry, Junior Brown, Robert Earl Keen, Don McLean, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and a memorable evening with songwriter-turned-mystery novelist Kinky Friedman.
Through a combination of shameless self-promotion and clerical errors, Hoehn also has appeared on a number of radio and TV shows, including The Mitch Albom Show on MSNBC.
In addition to his latest release - Royalty Check Hotel - Hoehn has released three other CDs of mostly original music - Deadline Penitentiary, Playa del Pressbox and Live at RACAfest. He also is the producer of four extremely successful tropical-flavored compilation CDs, Thongs In The Key Of Life (Vols. I through IV).
Hoehn also was the host of the semi-regular radio show, The Three-Chord Barbecue, on Radio Jimmy Dreamz, which originally aired for two years on Radio Margaritaville. His hopes of completing the ultimate male trifecta of immaturity - sportswriting, guitar playing and eventually owning a Harley-Davidson - were squelched by the appearance of not one, not two, but three children. In his mind, he is not driving a minivan.