Jimmy "Flim" Johnson

[lbpesq]

Jimmy, I have to say that your bass looks absolutely gorgeous.   I can’t believe it’s been a road bass for over thirty years!   Looks like it came out of the showroom last week.   Have you ever sent it back to the mothership for a refinish or is that original?

Bill, tgo

[JimmyJ]

Thanks Bill tgo,

Yes, that bass was refinished in 2012 (I think).  The picture below shows the odd checking that had appeared on the backside.  Because of the specific location, Mica figured it was possibly my own body heat pulling moisture out of the wood and displacing the finish.  Not surprising because that bass has been outdoors in a lot of extreme weather.

Jimmy J

[rustyg61]

Hey Jimmy, I just finished watching your Spud benefit with the Steve Gadd Band & it was phenomenal! Some bands impress with rip your face off licks & power but y'all were even more impressive with your dynamics & subtleties! I don't think I have ever heard a band that was tighter & more in sync with each other! I was amazed at how you could do a 10 minute freeform jam & all come out of it together every time! You are hands down the most tasteful bass player I know of! Every single note you play fits perfectly & sets the mood for what is being played by everyone! And of course there is that unmistakable Jimmy Johnson tone, just oozing with Alembic goodness!! It was refreshing to see all of y'all using live amps with no in ears! I love old school jams! What rig were you using? I had to watch it on my iPhone so I couldn't see details very well, but I did use ear buds so I could hear everything. The mix was perfect! Your solo on Bye Bye Blackbird was worth the price of admission! It is available for 24 hours on streaming, I highly recommend everyone buy it & support the Baked Potato!


Here are some screen shots from the show.

[JimmyJ]

Hey Rusty,

Thanks for all the kind words, and for supporting our favorite local joint. 

It was great to get the chance to play with other people, in the same room, at the same time!  I know everybody here and anybody who plays music at all is missing that experience so we all had a great time.  This is likely the longest period of time that Gadd has been home since calendars were invented!  He is otherwise constantly on the road doing something - to the degree that he has 2 passports so one can be getting visas for upcoming tours while he's out traveling with the other.  But the first thing he said was "I've been practicing!  Getting back into rudiments!"  Wow.  Inspirational.

All these guys are amazing musicians.  Listening and reacting to what they play is a real joy.  Despite the fact you can't see my face, you know I was smiling the whole time! 

Gear: directly behind me is my little Walter Woods amp on top of 2 12" Thiel cabs with EVM12-L speakers.  On the floor to my right is a REDDI feeding both the house PA and the streaming mix boards.  Gadd had a monitor standing up just behind my music stand with so much bass in it that it was as loud as my amp.  AND, in the upper corner of the room to my left is the house PA which also had bass in it.  There was no escaping the low notes.  Ha!

If you've never been to the Potato it's a tiny room with a sand-filled stage and a 3-speaker PA system which shouldn't work as well as it does, but somehow it does.  Despite sometimes very loud drums and amps you can still hear everybody in the band.  The cameras are all unobtrusive and I think they're doing a great job with these streaming shows - except that the website crashed just as we were about to start...  Even with only a handful of people present and some mask wearing it felt like a normal night at the Spud.

Thanks again,
Jimmy J

[lbpesq]

I’m jealous!   More than any other change caused by the pandemic, I miss playing with people.   But it looks like that may change soon.   My band decided that next weekend, weather permitting, we’re going to set up on my large front porch and play outdoors, socially distanced of course!

Jimmy and the Steve Gadd band are wonderful.   Hieronymous, Sonicus, and I got to see them play at Yoshi’s a few months ago (seems like another world).

Bill, tgo

[AllanHoldsworthArchives]

I see that today some of my Allan related comments have been reposted into the URAH forum (I lurk) so my semi-private web presence here has been discovered.  Not surprising I suppose.  But I am in here mostly to talk about Alembic, bass playing, and music in general, with the players who hang out here.  This is a public forum and everybody is welcome (even Fender bass players  )  but I would prefer that this thread not become an Allan forum so I may not respond to folks who sign up just to ask me those kinds of questions.

Hi Jimmy, I'm the one guilty of reposting your comments. I'm sad to say that your presence here wasn't hard to discover, all it took was a simple Google search! My apologies if you took offense at the repost. Your comments provided some very much needed background on the album in question, and deserved a much wider readership than they got here. I'll refrain from reposting you in the future. Now, I'll let you get back to talking bass. Your bass sounds GREAT, by the way!

[JimmyJ]

Per Stornes, is that you? 

No offense taken.  Thanks to the 22 second attention span of the Internet this is already ancient history. 

I understand that this forum is not a "private" place but I am not interested in having a Facebook or Instagram account so I'll never be posting anywhere else.  This is enough of a platform for me so this is where I may occasionally vent. 

After my initial surprise, I was fine with you reposted my view of the circumstances surrounding that dvd release so the URAH regulars could see another perspective.  No harm done, to me.  Only a bit embarrassing for Allan's legacy... 

And apart from you and Ed ... no additional outside traffic has appeared here so my fears of losing control of this space were unfounded.

Glad you like the bass tone.
All good,
Jimmy J

[edwardofhuncote]

Jimmy J., [trying to think of how to frame this in the form of a question]

I was looking for something to play along with the other night, and in my stack of frequently listened to stuff is one of JT's compilation albums with "(Walkin' Down A) Country Road". I love that tune. It's really fun to play on, all those little fills and things... and I got to thinkin'... when you got the gig there back when, obviously that tune wasn't much of a technical challenge for you at all, but I figure you had to have spent some time figuring out what was going to work with regard to playing somebody else's lines and putting your own stamp/signature/sound to the song. (in this case Randy Meisner, though I reckon for you it was mostly Lee Sklar, outgoing?) Did it come down to just playing through the song with the various configurations of the All-Star band? Did you actually have to chart out what you wanted to play and work at it? Or am I way off base, and you just nail it in one. 

Sorry... hope that's not too specific... I'm hoping to apply to a current situation. The former bass player in my gig is kind of a friend, I consider him to be a superior player, but I believe I am better suited to the gig than he was, just from an experience standpoint. Anyway, I've had to adapt quite a few things he played, and had complete freedom to do so. We've shared a few laughs over some of the stranger arrangements.

[JimmyJ]

Gregory,

Thats a good question!  When I first got involved with the JT band, James and his management team (Peter Asher at the time) would send the band cassettes of songs likely to be played on the upcoming tour.  They'd include previously done live versions and album cuts of songs that hadn't yet been performed.  That gave everybody a chance to remember and/or learn the arrangements in advance.

My way of working on it was to use 6x9" spiral sketchbooks and make "shortcut" style bass charts for myself.  They were never meant to be used (or even seen) by anybody else because they contained only enough info to get me through the arrangement.  (My original notes on the live Country Road arrangement are below.  Don't laugh, it's only a sketch.  HA!)

For subsequent tours I'd scribble down any tunes I hadn't heard before and after a few years of doing that I had 6 full sketchbooks with almost 200 arrangements.  I had to keep an alphabetical index so I could find which tune was on what page of which book...

Leland is one of my favorite bass players so I have huge respect for his choice of notes and generally tried to do what he had previously done.  His way of playing this music was the right way!  Once we got going I might subtly vary things a bit to my taste and maybe trade one of his little moves for one of mine.  But generally speaking he "wrote the book" and because of the way James likes to deliver the music true to its original form, that is the gig.

So to answer your question specifically, when you are jumping in to an established band I think you have to at least start by emulating the previous guy to make it easier for the band to deal with the change.  I mean, if he played out of tune and rushed like crazy, maybe don't go that far... 

Cheers,
Jimmy J

[jazzyvee]

If that is for a JT song I can't imagine how your notepads look for Allan Holdsworth arrangements especially as I think you mentioned previously, it was all played on the edge. :-)

[JimmyJ]

Jazzyvee,

I know, it's very messy notation!  Ha!  I did a similar thing with Allan in spiral sketchbooks, but those charts were not very detailed. Primarily only the bass notes with no further chord information or time signature info.  And I almost always had one of my scribbles on the floor in front of me when playing with him just to help me stick to the form.  Here's one for the song Atavachron if anybody is interested...

Jimmy J

[JimmyJ]

And just for your entertainment, here's a computer generated recreation of one of Allan's own charts.  This is for the solo section of the song "The Sixteen Men Of Tain".  He had obviously invented his own form of notation which referred to the available scales as opposed to the standard chord symbol approach.  Wild, huh?

Jimmy J

[edwardofhuncote]

Thanks so much Jimmy. As usual, you have more than answered my question... love your backstories too. I make our bandleader crazy by insistence on making myself similar little cheat-sheets to yours there. Not so much to study or memorize, but as a reminder if I draw a blank. For me, it is a picture of a song. It makes them appear in some form of symmetry that my brain somehow makes more sense of. I have often joked that nobody would understand my charts but me, and even that wasn't guaranteed. 

It's just kinda' lucky I had the benefit of knowing my predecessor. He is a very talented bassist, who went on to play/tour professionally, and I fell into his spot with these guys by other association. Like I said, in some ways, I am a little better suited to them, just by having done this kind of music almost my whole life. That doesn't diminish in the slightest what a monster player he is... I just hear things a little differently. That, and the band has gone in a different direction since his tenure too. But we get to pal around at least once or twice a year and swap stories. Whenever we do, I'll always ask about something he played somewhere along the way I needed to learn, and he's always been gracious enough to show me.     
   

[rustyg61]

Hey Rusty,

Thanks for all the kind words, and for supporting our favorite local joint. 

It was great to get the chance to play with other people, in the same room, at the same time!  I know everybody here and anybody who plays music at all is missing that experience so we all had a great time.  This is likely the longest period of time that Gadd has been home since calendars were invented!  He is otherwise constantly on the road doing something - to the degree that he has 2 passports so one can be getting visas for upcoming tours while he's out traveling with the other.  But the first thing he said was "I've been practicing!  Getting back into rudiments!"  Wow.  Inspirational.

All these guys are amazing musicians.  Listening and reacting to what they play is a real joy.  Despite the fact you can't see my face, you know I was smiling the whole time! 

Gear: directly behind me is my little Walter Woods amp on top of 2 12" Thiel cabs with EVM12-L speakers.  On the floor to my right is a REDDI feeding both the house PA and the streaming mix boards.  Gadd had a monitor standing up just behind my music stand with so much bass in it that it was as loud as my amp.  AND, in the upper corner of the room to my left is the house PA which also had bass in it.  There was no escaping the low notes.  Ha!

If you've never been to the Potato it's a tiny room with a sand-filled stage and a 3-speaker PA system which shouldn't work as well as it does, but somehow it does.  Despite sometimes very loud drums and amps you can still hear everybody in the band.  The cameras are all unobtrusive and I think they're doing a great job with these streaming shows - except that the website crashed just as we were about to start...  Even with only a handful of people present and some mask wearing it felt like a normal night at the Spud.

Thanks again,
Jimmy J

Thanks for the info Jimmy! I can imagine Steve had no problem hearing your bass that night! Do you get the same tone out of your live rig that you are used to hearing with your in ears?

I have been to the Spud so I know how tiny it is! That is what makes it such a great venue for live music, it is so intimate! I saw John Daversa's Big Band there so there were about 14 people on that small stage! Jerry Watts was on bass. He was great but he's no Jimmy Johnson! LOL! I got to meet him & John after the show, nice guys! I check the Spud schedule every time I visit my son in Culver City, hoping that you will be playing while I'm there, but so far our paths have not crossed. Maybe someday....

[jazzyvee]

Thanks Jimmy, it is an insight indeed. As a really basic music reader i am clearly wrong in thinking that those who read music fluently, have standard scores written out when they are looking at their music stands on stage. I have cheat sheets when I'm on a dep gig at short notice and don't have time to bed the songs in. However some bands don't like any of that on stage. Much easier for keys players as it can be stuck to the top of their keyboard and not seen. But I guess the reality is do what we need to to get the music right.