LITTLE ROCK — Jimmy Thackery mowed lawns to pay for his first electric guitar, a $34.95 Japanese model ordered from a catalog.
"It's impossible to play. The neck is like a baseball bat, not real comfy," he says. But he played its thick strings until his fingers bled. Still, he wanted a "real" one - a Fender - and sold the Japanese one to a neighbor for $35 when he was 13.
About 20 years later, after he'd played with most of his heroes and for audiences around the world, his brother gave him a special Christmas gift. He'd tracked down that guitar, through several owners, and bought it back for $35.
"Ain't that cool?," he says.
Though it's simply unplayable, "I keep it to humble myself. Any time I get too full of myself, I pull that out and remember where I came from."
When he was with The Nighthawks, Thackery played a 1971 Gibson Flying V. It's No. 70 of 300, the second reissue, made of Honduran mahogany.
"At some point, I fell out of love with this thing," he says. When that happened, he decided to start collecting the autographs of his heroes. He first asked Carl Perkins to scratch his name on it, and "he whipped out about a 6-inch buck knife, and went to town on it."
"I had all kinds of people sign this thing over the years. Some of them were blues people, some of them were just great players that I just admired."
Those names include Otis Rush, John Hammond, Bo Diddley, Jimmy McCracklin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Rogers, Willie Dixon, Paul Barrere from Little Feat, Son Seals, George Thorogood and Elvin Bishop. all cq
Instead of scratching, Willie Nelson used a black marker.
B.B. King nicked his name into the pick guard because he didn't want to mess up "a fine musical instrument." Thackery could always replace the pick guard, he reasoned, if he decided he didn't want King's signature on there.
Thackery laughs in disbelief.
The guitar belonged to his former roommate Chris Donald, guitar player in Sha Na Na, whose widow sold it to Jimmy for $310. It's been broken in half and fixed with a dowel rod. The head stock has been broken three or four times and repaired.
"This thing is a death ray. It is the loudest, most god-awful raunchy sounding thing you will ever hear, just tear your face off," he says.
Though Thackery has several guitars, since the mid-1980s, he's been playing a 1964 Fender Stratocaster L-series he bought in perfect condition for $700. He's worn down the finish - a red and yellow sunburst edged with black - to the alder wood beneath.
"Over the years I have hot-rodded it, butchered it, beat it to death and carried it all around the world. And what you see is what is left. But there's nothing that sounds as good as this old piece of crap. It's got a soul to it that nothing else comes close to having."
It was stolen once in Kansas City, where he was playing a festival. It was the one night he decided he was too tired to haul the gear up to the hotel room and instead chose to just "pray to the big note" that it would be safe. A guy short on cash for drugs broke in and took the guitar and other gear.
Though he figured it was just gone, his Kansas City fans are fierce. They made fliers using photos of the guitar from past performances and took them to pawn shops and music stores. The "crackhead in question" came into the music store that provided the gear for his show, and the guy behind the counter was a fan and very familiar with the guitar. Thackery got his guitar back two weeks later.
"It's perfect for me. It's perfect for no one else. You probably couldn't get $400 for it in a pawn shop. But to me, it's worth everything."
The following was compiled from an interview with reporter Michelle Parks.
What was it about the blues that got your attention in the first place? You were intrigued by television themes with a thread of blues, like the Peter Gunn theme by Henry Mancini. Then, you heard Slim Harpo's crossover hit, "Baby Scratch My Back," on AM radio.
"I remember hearing that on a little Japanese transistor radio with a thing in my ear and going, 'What is that? What is that? I've never heard anything like that. And then from there it was Howlin' Wolf. And the first time you hear Howlin' Wolf as a 13-year-old, it's the scariest sh** you ever heard in your life. I mean, it's the boogie man. And then you hear John Lee Hooker - forget it. There's just something sinister and rebellious and just all wrong about that stuff, which of course is why we have to do it."
"Some people never get hit with the blues baseball bat, which is what I liken it to - it's like getting hit over the head with a ball bat. And maybe they become Barry Manilow. I don't know. But for some of us, it's more of an epiphany than it is anything else, I think. It's not something that you grow into. It's something that hits you all at once right between the eyes."
While you were in The Nighthawks, the band flew musicians into Washington for Monday night concerts at a club. You brought Big Walter Horton, Otis Rush, J.B. Hutto, Fenton Robinson, Jimmy Rogers, Johnny Winter and others, and your band backed them up without rehearsing. Describe those shows.
"We knew the secret language of the blues, so we knew how to play with these guys. ... We were trying to educate [our fans]: 'Look, this is where this came from.' If you don't educate your audience, they don't know how special this stuff is. ... We were able to learn directly from these heroes of ours by playing with them - we were learning what their moves were, what their arrangements were, what their styles were and what their dynamics were."
Describe how you adjust your playing for different kinds of audiences.
"There's the raucous dancing, screaming, hanging-from-the-ceiling fans crowd or the attentive listening crowd. I like them both for different reasons. And I play those two rooms differently. I can use my dynamics more - dynamics meaning differentiations in volume and intensity - I can use that much more to my advantage in the listening situation, much less so in the raucous, swinging from the ceiling fan kind of place. There, you're pretty much just throttle to the fire wall. The subtleties get lost anyway, so why mess with them?"
"[Playing with heroes like Muddy Waters and James Cotton] taught us very early on how to use that drama to create an excitement. You can either do it full boar, or you can do it subtly. ... We were watching those guys and stealing everything we could from them. ... [Muddy Waters] could create more excitement at a whisper than anybody could full boar."
The digital music software you started using this winter, Pro Tools, can change how you record with friends who live elsewhere, like Tab Benoit of Louisiana, with whom you recorded Whiskey Store Live. Though you no longer share a manager and booking agency, how might this help you do that again?
"We're still very dear friends and love playing together. ... If we can learn to do this import/export thing, we can do records together from our houses. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing that takes the place of the musicians all being in the same room together, playing together. That's where the spark comes from. You cannot duplicate that doing this thing. This is just an easy way - if I had done a session and I needed a Tab Benoit guitar solo on it, I wouldn't fly him up here, I wouldn't fly down there. I'd figure a way to do this thing. ... If we were going to do a whole album together? Oh no, we'd go into a studio and let the spontaneity take over because that's where this stuff is at."
Describe the importance of your home recording studio in the current state of the music business.
"The technology that I use to make my demos is the same that we use in any big recording studio. It's just sitting out there in the office. And I can make stuff that sounds as good as my records. So little by little I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking, you know I don't really need to live on this plantation anymore."
"It will not be a stretch, much of a stretch, in the very near future for me to be able to record my own band right there, mix my own music, write my music, record my music with my band, mix it the way I want to hear it, post it for sale on various Web sites, and stop giving these guys all the money."
You have a My Space page with more than 2,200 friends, but you don't use it much yourself. How can the Internet alter the way you release records?
"The Internet is a wonderful thing. We know how to get right to you. ... In my mind, the record company casts this giant net with a lot of holes in it. I've got a spear and I'm looking at the fish. ... I know where my audience is, where they live. They contact me. They're the ones that write me and say, 'When are you putting a new record out?'"
What music do you listen to for inspiration?
"I tend to hear music in my head. And now that I have this fabulous set up out there, if I hear something in my head, it's 10 steps to where I can go put it down. ... I just go take those ideas and put them down there, and then, when I come back the next time, try to work those ideas."
"I'm very easily influenced by what I'm listening to. And I do find that I tend to let that creep into what I'm trying to create on my own - sometimes with disastrous results. ... I don't think if you're a painter you go get your inspiration by going to the Louvre. I don't think that's the way it works."
You read a lot when riding on the tour van. But what sort of music to you listen to, when you do listen?
"Probably Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, something like that. Mainly because there is a melodic sense in classical music, and I'm trying to come up with - within the blues genre, within the roots music genre - I am trying to come up with melodies. Blues, generally speaking, is not the most melodic music. It's very modal. It sticks to a very pedantic scale. Now, within that framework, you can write some really interesting melodies. My whole goal is coming up with a guitar solo in a given song that you can remember and whistle in the shower tomorrow."
"I find that by listening to classical music or old jazz - like Django Reinhardt, maybe slack-key music by Ledward Kaapana or something like that - that kind of stuff, that melodic thread, tends to spark my creative juices more than listening to John Lee Hooker or even Muddy Waters anymore. I've spent almost a lifetime listening to that stuff, trying to learn how to play it. Now I'm trying to figure out how to inject melody into that stuff."
When you traveled much more frequently, it was hard to find time to write songs. Describe how your more relaxed approach to life has affected your music and song writing.
"I would go through this anxiety of trying to pull songs out at the last minute. And for the most part, I'd end up not being all that happy with them. I guess it's safe to say that by having a little bit more time at home to concentrate on the writing, I'm a little more pleased with what I come up with. It has a little more of a sincere quality, to my way of thinking. I find it hard to listen to some of the older stuff because to me it just, you know, I pulled something out of my butt and slapped it together with Duck tape, because you're homework's due. And it would remind me of that. It would remind me of, my dog ate my homework. I've got to do something really fast because it's due tomorrow. The same anxiety attack would be prevalent, and I just don't have that anymore. They call me up and want a record, I'll go in the studio right now, I'll go today and knock the thing out. That's a real relief. That takes a lot of pressure off, lets me sit up here and enjoy a day like this without going, 'God oh God, I've got to do this crappy song.' That's a big thing. That's a big change."
What's your focus now when it comes to song writing?
"I'm trying to become a better lyricist. I'm trying not to just rewrite Elmore James songs. I'm trying to write some stuff that comes from some personal experience, or some personal observation, or, you know, just some funny thing that someone has said in a conversation. Sometimes, if you're tuned into it, somebody will let one rip, just a one-liner or something and you go, 'God that would make a great song.' Then you take that line and try to put yourself in the position of someone who had come up with that line for a reason, and try to figure out what that reason is - instant song, as long as you can make it rhyme."
Tell me about "Landlocked," the instrumental song on Inside Tracks.
"Everybody's gonna say, 'Well that's Mark Knopfler [co-founder of Dire Straits] meets The Ventures [an instrumental rock band].' OK, maybe. But really the inspiration for the melody of that song was from Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony. ... There's a perfect example of taking a very pedantic structure, musically, and injecting this melody into it. ... Let's take Tchaikovsky and put a twangy guitar in there. Let's see what we can do with that."
Your band's trio also includes bass player Mark Bumgarner. And you recently added a new drummer, Russ Wilson. How do you see the group evolving?
"The music has a great potential for growth, and some uncharted waters, which is always very exciting to me. The coolest thing that you can have on your horizon is really not knowing where this stuff's gonna take you. When you know where it's gonna take you, you might as well work construction and make real money. ... [Wilson] has stuff to bring to the party, and we're not sure exactly what it all is yet."
How do you describe your musical style?
"I know it's roots music, but beyond that I don't really have a clue. ... I just write a song."
"I'm trying to be a songwriter, an electric guitar player, a singer, a band leader - but the music that I'm trying to create is based in roots music, mostly blues I suppose, but I mean there's a lot of different influences in there - surf, rockabilly, soul. I like so much different stuff."
How do you want critics to see you?
"My thing now is, write anything but blues and still be in Blues Review with a good review - that's your goal. ... This stuff has really nothing to do with blues as we know it, but we're still getting reviews in this blues magazine."
You've been in the producer role for some of your albums over the years. What do you like about that aspect of the music business?
corrected graf: "The part about taking a piece of music, especially one that you've written yourself and watching it grow and morph into something other than what it started out to be, is the fascinating part of it. By putting in one little nuance or one little passage or a single drumbeat or a single utterance for something, you can take that piece of music to another level with the slightest little bit of change. That, to me, is incredible, how that works. I still am searching for why that works. ... Sometimes it's just a fluke."
Atlanta, Philadelphia, Dallas and Houston used to be major touring markets for blues bands. Tell me about the decline of the blues genre?
"My theory is that the beginning of the end was The Blues Brothers [movie]. Now everybody can be as affectionate about those guys as they want to. But my point is, the minute those guys brought this into our living room, parodied it and made it mainstream, it ceased to become a special thing. The blues became not an exclusive club. And, now they're selling macaroni and cheese with it. Every commercial you see has got some really bad blues jingle behind it. It's just horrible. I think it really was those guys that were the beginning of the end. That was the peak of the exclusivity of the club we like to call the blues."
What's the future of the blues?
"I'm also a believer that everything is cyclical. Music tends to go as far out as it possibly can, but it always retreats back to its roots. The pendulum sometimes takes much longer to swing the other way. But we'll get tired of synthesizers and Britney Spears and everything else, and pretty soon everybody will want to get back to some organic, rootsy, from the heart, from the soul, from the depths of despair - fun music."