Jimmy "Flim" Johnson

[gbulfon]

Hello JJ,
I've seen you're gonna play with Billy Childs and Joe Heredia this weekend!! Can you tell me some more about this project? I'd love to be there, but...you know, I'm so far.......  
 
Also, I've been listening to the latest Chad album: you're blasting here!!! You're more pervasive then ever!
About this CD, I'd ask you a few clues:
- the second piece, where you play continuous 4ths rythmic patterns, is it improvised or written?
- one of the last tracks, the kind of guitar sound, that cannot be Allan. Me and Franco were trying to guess if it was Cox with synth sound or you with some kind of device!
 
Great playing, as always
Gabriele.

[JimmyJ]

Hey Gabriele,
 
I've worked with Childs on and off for many years including a few of his recordings.  Challenging music!  He has a strong left hand so he writes some wild unison lines.  I don't always take the live gigs because it's a real commitment to relearn the bass parts.  But it's great stuff and we should have fun tomorrow night.  At least we will feel like we've accomplished something if we live through the set.  Ha!
 
I'm going to suggest to Chad that he post a pdf of his record's credits on his website.  (I think ALL Artists should do that these days since music purchased online rarely includes credits...  This drives me crazy, especially on jazz records with several players.  End of rant.)
 
As to your questions...  I think you mean the 3rd track Bent Bayou with the funny 4ths bass pattern?  Yes that was an ad lib.  Without Allan's crazy harmonies it would be just a simple wobbly groove.  Plus we are treated to some very unusual clean soloing from Allan.  Cool!
 
Several of the tracks on this record are improvs.  Track 13 (of 14), with the envelope kind of guitar sound, is only Jim Cox (keys) and Chad.  Two other tracks were built upside-down; they started as improvs with Chad and Jim and then I added bass later which made them almost sound like organized songs.  
 
It's a nice collection of things and I'm glad Chad was finally able to finish it.
 
Thanks for the support.
Jimmy J

[jazzyvee]

I was wondering Jimmy, what were the circumstances that led to your choosing to play Alembic? I haven't read anything about that on the forum.
 
 
Jazzyvee

[jazzyvee]

Double post.
 
(Message edited by jazzyvee on November 15, 2012)

[gbulfon]

Well, how was the gig with Billy? Someone who could be there told it was awesome, and I'm sure he's right! But how did you feel it?
 
Back to Chad album. The Fifth is wonderful, your bass solo is delicious, Allan follows you crying outstanding phrases.
Overall, the album needs more listenings than any other Chad ones. Every time I get more confortable with the structures, identify themes, melodies and chords. And it sounds better every time.
This time, it's like Chad got back to the Atavachron era, sounding more like an Allan work. I usually could instantly recognize Chad's way of writing and conceiving melodies and patterns. And I love it.
This time is like he moved into Allan way. Still lovable.
The only thing I miss, is Cox and his unbelievable organs we all know so well in forty reasons. They were totally a different direction than any other organist!
Cox didn't play that much here, isn't it?
 
I'm finishing: are you ever coming out with some work of yours??  
 
GB

[JimmyJ]

Should I double reply?
 
OK Jazzyvee, thanks for asking.   I'll try not to make this too long-winded...  
 
I was always a wire-head and had a rather dangerous (in hindsight) electrical shop of my own as a young kid...  I know what 120vac feels like and yet somehow I survived.
 
The first electric bass I ever tried was a Fender P owned by Wayzata High School and brought home by my older brother who I think was playing it in jazz band at the time.  (Remember when schools had music programs?)
 
The first bass I owned was a Kalamazoo by Gibson.  
 
The next seems to have been an EB2 though I don't remember much about that one.  I think it was green...
 
Then came a Gibson Les Paul with low impedance pickups...  By that time I was doing some session work and on a whim had that bass modified with a built-in Jensen DI transformer feeding an XLR connector mounted on the bottom edge.  I could walk into the studio and plug the mic cable directly into the bass.  Apparently I was already out of my mind at that young age.  HA!
 
Then I was hanging out at the local music store, as young players tend to do, and remember saying to salesman Jim Harms it's too bad nobody makes a bass like my Gibson but long scale.  To which he replied I know a company in California that can do anything!.  
 
So in '75 I ordered a Series 4-string through that music store and that was the start of my Alembic experience.  The 5-string experiment started the next year, in '76.
 
I've probably mentioned this here before but my dad played bass and was also a piano tuner.  His tuning technique included hitting the piano keys very hard to help seat the strings.  I recall sitting UNDER the grand as he tuned the bass strings and that may have been the sonic imprint that I went after as I looked for my own bass tone later in life.  
 
Once I got to Alembic I just stayed there.  I still don't own any other brands.  It may not be everybody's cup of tea but I guess it works for me!
 
Best to all,
Jimmy J

[JimmyJ]

Gabrielle,
(You posted while I was typing...)
 
The Childs gig was pretty fun.  No major musical train-wrecks and some nice musical moments.  Heredia, Shep and BC all played great.
 
Yes, Chad has put together another nice record, this is an interesting collection of tracks.  Thanks for your kind comments we're glad you like it.  Not as many compositions here and the band improvisations create some unusual musically twists.  Candy for your ears!
 
No JJ solo project.  NO!  I prefer to play for others!
 
Jimmy J

[cozmik_cowboy]

(Remember when schools had music programs?)  
 
Yeah - now, I'm glad to say!  At the HS I attended in SE OH 4 decades back we had a choir & a band; they shared a stage/rehearsal space that was a hole in the gym wall (and had class concurrantly with PE classes going on in said gym), & wore uniforms/robes 10-20 years old; the football team got new jerseys every year (and the art room didn't have a sink).
The HS I subbed at the last few years has a SOTA perfoming arts wing bigger than my HS, with SR gear as good as most of what I used to make my living on.  Yeah, the jock wing is bigger - but not by much.  It's really pretty sweet.  Of course, it's also not in SE OH.
 
Peter

[gbulfon]

LOL JJ, you did it again! The double elle!
 
Would be nice to know what keeps you away from composing for yourself. Actually you compose everytime you play, but...you know what I mean  
 
Gabriele (one elle)

[edwin]

My high school had great music program. When I was there, it was run by an ex-Airforce sergeant, who was totally on him game. My whole school had 136 students for 9-12 and maybe 34 or 40 faculty and staff. Chris Carlson would recruit damn near the whole school for the choir and assembled a pretty good chamber orchestra to go with it. We played a wide range of material (admittedly from the classical tradition) ranging from the pre-Baroque all the way to 20 century pieces with tone clusters. One of the highest points of my life was performing the B-Minor Mass first oboe part with our school musicians supplemented with a few ringers. There is nothing like sitting in the front row of that orchestra surrounded by the choir and the pipe organ thundering away up in the reaches of the church, all with the majesty of Bach swirling all around you. Perhaps part of the ecstatic nature was due to the fact that the oboe is a bitch of an instrument to play and the part is crazy relentless.  
 
The next year, Carlson moved on (to drive a big rig for Digital Equipment Corporation. Dude had a weird career path but he was righteous. He'd come visit the school in downtown Boston or up at the school retreat in the back woods of New Hampshire.) His replacement was an alum of the school, fresh out of undergrad, who was all gung ho. That fall, we were preparing the Handel Messiah for the Christmas concert and at the first rehearsal she scheduled dress rehearsals for the final concert and told us that if we missed any of them, we'd fail (conversely, Carlson would schedule rehearsal and inspire us to do whatever we could to make it happen and be prepared, including getting charts months in advance). Now, the Messiah is OK for what it is, but it is deadly boring for the oboe. Rather than a voice with continuous commentary like the Bminor, it is always doubling a second violin, a flute, or third viola. It's essentially background color. So, I told her that my rock band had a show the night of the second dress rehearsal and was not movable. I told that I thought that she should let me off because I was a mere background in the Messiah and in my band, I was 1/3 of the action (a power trio! It was the 70s). She told me if I missed, I'd get an F. I missed it. I played the concert perfectly, I had perfect attendance for the whole rest of the semester. We had a meeting she told me she was putting an A on my transcript and that there was an F between. I lost all faith in her credibility and it renewed my sense that rock and roll was a lot more fun! Bass wins! I still miss that oboe, though. It was a Lor?e, the Alembic of oboes. I never got that great at the oboe, but what great experience! There was also some really fun chamber music, especially the modern stuff. I often tried to instill my rock bands with the rehearsal ethic of the classical groups, but it was a losing battle.
 
Oh, yeah, I remember one of Carlson's final exams. He sat us down and had us transcribe the Brandenburg #4, first movement, by ear. We hadn't done a single transcription all semester and I was totally lost. I thought it a bit unfair. I had never studied ear training or done a transcription. There were some big holes in my education.
 
Jazz class was even more hopeless for me. I couldn't tell Parker from Monk from Herbie Hancock from Lawrence Welk. Hopeless. One of my classmates was Alex McCabe, a seriously talented player and another was Jeremy Berlin. The teacher was Jordan Sandke who had with a variety of folks, from Howlin' Wolf to Jaki Byard (who coincidentally was a jamming partner of my uncle and spent a lot time hanging jamming at my dad's house when he was 12, 13, 14.). I was in over my head and tried to bow out gracefully. I wish I could go back and do it now!
 
OK, I apologize for the meandering.

[JuancarlinBass]

Maybe Carlson's replacement should have staged Bach's Magnificat afterwards, and then the Oboe would have a more prominent place.  
 
In my HS (first of the two I attended), there was a Choir and a Estudiantina (a students ensamble with Guitars, Mandolins, Venezuelan Cuatro, and... well, I entered as a guitar player, and on the second rehearsal I saw the double bass lying on the instruments room, and I fell in love with it instantly, I was 13 and had been studying music and playing guitar for about 4-5 years already. So, after a couple months the group had also a Bass Player in me). The repertoire was mostly Folklore and popular Latin American tunes, so nothing strictly academic here. Although in the conservatory I first studied there was an orchestra, I never joined it (I regret it now), and in the music school I went afterwards the staff were mostly young Berklee and GIT graduates (EARLY 80s, direct Diorio and Roberts alumni) which encouraged the formation of small groups, but with no formal School Ensemble. Anyway, on my HS the Jock wing was almost The Entire School, and the small space the Choir and the Estudiantina shared, had no facilities whatsoever, nor SR of any kind (The school's theatre, looking somewhat like a small Spanish Zarzuela theatre from early 20th century, had the likes of a mid-sized Home Stereo with a small microphone mixer. This in the early-mid 80s, at one of the biggest public schools in the very heart of an Oil Producing Country's capital city, mind you!). This group reunited earlier this year, 26 years after the last time we played together (which was in 1986) for a school's anniversary event, and had the opportunity to play again under the baton of our very same conductor back then, a renowned local Choir conductor and composer. It felt nice not to have forgotten the tunes, the feel... but most of all to compare the Then and Now feel of it, with all the water passed under the bridge. It was my start as a bass player, too, and therefore was significant. The old double bass is still there, but WAY TOO BEATEN OFF even for me to be played (It's hard to describe, broken headstock badly fixed, cracks on the sides, replacement bridge unadjusted and therefore WAY TOO HIGH for playing anything on those (yuck!) RUSTY STRINGS!. I swallowed hard, and got ahold of my trusty Gallien MB200 and one of my basses, and did rehearsals and the show on this.  
 
At the second HS I attended, there was a Marching Band only, no other music program whatsoever, and those guys insisted more on military formation than the music being played. The Band's storage room had several trumpets and trombones, even an Euphonium and a couple marching Tubas, which nobody played, since nobody seemed to have the slightest musical education. It was mostly drums, three girls playing xylophones, and the two instructors and a friend of them, on two trombones and a trumpet. Then it happened what had to happen... As I entered the storage room (again...) I fell in love with the Trombone, and I found myself learning Trombone, and the basics of Trumpet (and LOVED the Euphonium! I still want one!), and devised a way to teach the oh-so-basic tunes to a couple friends, by drawing the piston's positions, so we grew a little in the Horn Section. The instructors knew I was a formal music student, and so they drew me out of the military formation practice every time to help me improve on the instrument, and we ended up always talking about Jazz (It was the 80s... these guys were the ones to introduce me to some part of the fun I was missing, until then I was all about DiMeola, Metheny, Ponty, Corea, or more traditional sounds like Brubeck, Davis, they game me loads of cassettes with Spyro Gyra, Watanabe, Bob James's and GRP Big Bands, Ritenour, and of course... FLIM AND THE BBs!).
 
I ended up quitting the marching band after a year, when I got tired of the older guys trying to get military on me. Heck, by then I was already earning money making music, and was not interested at all in following nobody's orders, when I could be enjoying the music I made ... and its benefits. . And to think I wanted to play Bob James's Touchdown with the marching band...

[JimmyJ]

Sorry Gabri-L, I never could speL very weL...  (are we even now?)
 
Good stories my friends.  Those musically formative years were, well, formative for all of us!  The way we play and listen is directly connected to every musical experience we've had along the way.  My HS band director was a great and inspirational character.  
 
Jimmy J

[klinkepeter]

Hey Jimmy, check the series II showcase, i got a very nice series II shorty recently, a good bargain so i couldn?t resist..., but it?s worth it, this bass is awesome! By the way, sketchy conquers russia in december, this time not with a quartett, we do it with some different orchesters, i?m looking forward to!
it was really a pleasure to meet u at the potatoes,
Peter

[rustyg61]

Hey Jimmy, I'm finally going to get to go to The Baked Potato next month! I'm flying in Dec. 14 for the weekend to take my son to a Chargers game & we are going to see John Daversa's Big Band that night. I see you are playing with Terry Bozzio on Dec. 1 & Allen Hinds on Dec. 11. I wish I was going to be there to catch one of your shows! Maybe someday!
 
Rusty

[jacko]

Rusty - You should change your plans by a few days. It would be well worth it to see Jimmy play at the potato. The sound there is excellent and you can hear every note perfectly. I still can't imagine Bozzio's drumkit in that place though - there'd barely be room for the audience never mind the rest of the band :-)