As a child he wasn’t allowed to play with transformers; as an adult he writes songs about them. That pretty much sums up James Struthers, the light-hearted, shaggy-haired 20 year old, in a nutshell.

Struthers picked up his first guitar six years ago (a Yamaha that suffered an accidental, untimely death at the tires of a pickup truck), but considers himself more of a singer than a guitarist, “I think both are equally important in songwriting, but I’m more confident in my vocal range...