Never-the-less you are determined and focused, and find yourself in a band full of grownups “playing lead” guitar and you get gigs opening for the very players you so admire. Suddenly, you’re hanging backstage with Johnny Winter, Joe Perry, and Elliot Easton. Your band releases a regional hit and local radio WBCN invites you in to talk about your music… sounds like a fairy tale, something that only happens in the movies, right? Yet, that is exactly what happened to San Diego guitarist, Jimmy Zollo.

Although he is rarely thrown out of clubs anymore, Zollo’s resolve and ‘never say die’ attitude is still apparent. He continues to play with different musicians in multiple bands and actively generates new music and original material. So, when we finally had a chance to sit down and talk, we started with those early years.

Was your family musical? “My dad played saxophone a little bit.” Jimmy says. “And my mom was an artist and she’s responsible for all my musical influences. She was actually a graduate of UC Berkeley and was double promoted from high school. She went to college really early and was up there during the Monterey Pop festival. Her main thing was abstract art but she did all of it and then became an art teacher in the school system. Once we were old enough to go to school, she went back to work and became an art teacher in the high school that I attended. She used charcoal and paint and she sold a lot of her pieces in La Jolla.

She took me to my first concert; Boz Scaggs, the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac back in Foxboro. Thanks to her I got to see Queen six times, Thin Lizzy and there were many concerts I missed because by that age I had already been playing and had a band. She tried to get me to go see the last tour that Bon Scott did through Boston and I said, ‘Mom, I’m playin’ a party.’ Even though I wanted to go… I missed that, and then he was gone. She took me to go see Prince on his first tour, and then she told me about this guitar player from Texas that you need to see… Stevie Ray Vaughan! She was a major influence on my direction and my biggest supporter.”

How about siblings? “My younger brother Drew is a great bass player. We’ve played together in the past. When growing up he would snatch my guitar away from me.” (laughing) “I would beat him.” (laughing) “I finally got hip one day and said, ‘if you’re going to keep doing this, then you’re going to play bass.’ I gave him my guitar and showed him some bass lines and got him going on that. And I have a sister, too. She never played professionally, but she can play the drums.”

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“That’s the thing about blues music, it’s all based on the love of the music
and the people we revere the most.”

– Jimmy Zollo

 ************************

Originally from the East Coast, you must have known early it would be music? “I grew up in Boston and left when I was twenty. When I left that area, I was already a veteran of that scene. I played professionally from the age of fourteen and I opened up for Johnny Winter, Gregg Allman, Frank Marino, Metallica… Hanoi Rocks and a lot of others I can’t remember. I was in a little band and playing with some guys from high school; ‘Scorcher’ and we had our own little regional hit song, ‘Dreamers’ and ‘Let the Nation’s Burn.’ It was kind of hard rock stuff and we got airplay on WBCN-Boston and did interviews on that station.”

WBCN is nation-wide exposure… who else were you running into around Boston at that time? “When I was young, around 1978, I got to meet the Aerosmith crew, the Cars… I met Elliot Easton, Joe Perry and Steven Tyler. Where I grew up, there was a super high bar for guitar players. Even as a kid, you knew there were kids that were already pro players.”

The Northeast is known for its outstanding guitarists. Did you ever run into Duke Robillard? “Yeah…Roomful of Blues! They used to play within walking distance of my home so I would go over and stand outside and listen and then sometimes sneak in and get thrown out… Ronnie Earl, too!”

So you leave the East Coast in 1985… “I went right to Hollywood! It was a great time to be in your twenties and be in Los Angeles. I had just turned 21 and was just kicking around in a couple of bands with some of the guys that I moved out there with, and then eventually my brother and I stumbled into some other guys that came from the Pittsburgh area and we formed the group called ‘the Betrayed’ and we got picked up by EMI. It was a rock band and we were really into the Stones and blues stuff. Basically what happened, we got signed to a big record deal with all these plans and ‘Nirvana’ came out and everything changed!” (laughing) “That was the story for a lot of bands during that time, everything shifted towards that. The people that signed us… they were gone! The next thing you know, we just have a deal on a label with people that don’t know us or have any background with us… and that’s how that went.”

You started playing professionally so early, it sounds like you really didn’t play in that many garage bands. “Well, at 14 I started playing and about six months in, I was in a band with grown-ups… playing lead. It was pretty wild because I didn’t know keys or chords, I just played by ear and nobody could understand how I could learn and play. When I tried to go back and figure out what I was doing, it just ruined it!” (laughing) “You know what I mean? It stopped me from growing, because I started thinking about it instead of just playing intuitively. I could watch friends play… I had some neighbors and their dad was a Bluegrass and Dixieland Jazz musician, so they had instruments. And his son was my age and the drummer. We would play and I’d get tips on how to tune it up, how to make bar chords and cowboy chords and stuff. So that was kind of how I started.”

Your music is so diverse, all the bands you play in… styles and genres, you literally play a little of everything? How did that come about? “Well, I’m glad you noticed that!”(laughing) “It basically goes back to my mom, because she had her record collection and I learned all the stuff in it. From Van Morrison, Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Janis Joplin… I mean everything that everybody had out in the late 60s and early 70s, Creedence Clearwater. And then my things; I was listening to Sabbath and Zeppelin, and Queen, you know? The Beatles, Rolling Stones.”

Who were some of your blues influences? “Oddly enough, it would have been the second generation of players, Jimi Hendrix, the rock stuff. Some people might not associate that with a blues thing, but then I worked backwards.”

Bet mom had something to do with it? Jimmy smiles. “She was the one who told me to go back and listen to Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and all that stuff, Chuck Berry. I’m like, ‘who are these people you’re talking about?’ And she would get me the records and that’s how I got into it.”

I think most musicians have been influenced in some way by Wolf and Robert Johnson… Muddy. “Clapton is a good example, he plays everything. He plays hard rock, pop and deep blues and all that stuff and she (mom) literally told me ‘if you can emulate Clapton’s career as far as the range of music…’ I was 14 but it didn’t take long until I realized what she meant and just how much Clapton and the Stones did for the blues and for all those people.”

Sounds like you followed her advice? “You realize everything came from that (blues). All the roots of everything rock & roll was laid in that era. Take Johnny Shines who traveled with Robert Johnson and Johnny could emulate Robert’s playing and singing and the next thing you know it’s virtually like Robert Johnson had a band because there’s a drummer and a piano player and now there’s a back beat… and it’s rock and roll!”

The first band I remember seeing you play in was the Red Lotus Review with Karl Cabbage, Pete Fazzini and Kurt Kalker. How did that band come together? “I had been out of the music scene for a little bit because I had recently been married and had a child coming, so I kind of dropped out to concentrate on that for a minute. And then my wife at the time told me, ‘you know you can go back and start playing music again if you want.’ After my daughter was a year or two old, I started playing with Chillboy (Raffesberger) and he had a little cast of revolving musicians who were available and always great. A woman Charmaine Tam, a bass player was playing with Karl in another band and she mentioned that I should meet him because he would love my playing. In Chill’s band we were playing blues and I was playing a little more traditional style. He was great at what he did but I had a different style, maybe more primitive compared to what he was doing. Charmaine thought that would fit in with what Karl was doing. The first thing I played for him was a Robert Johnson song and he was hooked.”

After Red Lotus Review you started another band with Karl, ‘Holla Pointe.’ “When Red Lotus was like six or seven years in, we actually had a record deal with the Rip Cat label. I was putting together material and we were getting ready to record and a couple of the guys didn’t want to continue in that direction, unfortunately. It was a great lineup and very unique: two guitars, no bass, drums, harmonica and vocals. We wanted to inject original material into that format. I decided to still do these songs and I asked Karl, ‘I’m going to do this band, ‘Holla Pointe’ if you want to be a part of it and he was like ‘Yeah, I’m in!’

Musically, how was it different from the RLR? “It was similar but what happened, we added a bass player and a few different rhythms and I tried to incorporate a hill country and more of a Delta feel, amped up a little bit. Trying to save that traditional vocabulary but adding a twist to it.”

You’re playing with so many people and in so many bands currently… Joe Wood and the Lonely Ones…”It’s basically the same lineup as ‘Change Today.’ It’s Joe’s nightclub act, his working band. I wasn’t really interested in doing more night club acts. I’ve been in maybe 20 bands over the past 10 years and worked hundreds of days a year. But I said I was really interested in getting in to his (Joe Wood’s) back catalogue and maybe writing some new stuff, so we agreed on that and that’s where we are…with ‘Change Today.’

You also played with vocal dynamo, Casey Hensley. “At that time I was playing in the Six-String Outlaws and that’s where I met Evan Yearsley. He and I clicked musically and we had the same interests… so let’s do something together, you know? He said, ‘Well, I’ve got this girl singer, Casey.’ At the time I didn’t realize, but I had met Casey four or five years before when she was like… 14! She sang on a concert that I was playing with Chill (Raffesberger) for ‘the Best of San Diego’ or something. She came in and sang an Aretha Franklin song and I was all, ‘this girl’s good!’ So, I ended up being in the first rendition of her band.”

Are you spending any time in the studio? “Yeah, I’m making this ‘Change Today’ record right now which is really great. It’s a pretty wide-ranging sound, Joe’s a great songwriter and I got to contribute. It was a chance for me to collaborate with someone who’s a proven, great songwriter.”

How did you meet Joe? “Well, it’s funny I met him in ’89 and he says he remembers… but I know he doesn’t.” (laughing) “But I’d been working for different record producers as an assistant in the studios. When they make recordings, I would go in and basically take care of all the guitars; insure they’re strung up and intonated, tuned up and working properly. I would go to the studio at nine in the morning and stay till midnight. I worked on a lot of sessions while I was pursuing my own career. I worked in every studio in L.A… Capitol, MCA. Everything from Rod Stewart, Robert Palmer, hard rock records, I was very busy and made a lot of money. Most musicians don’t make a lot of money when they’re struggling. What was nice is that it didn’t interfere with what I was doing. After doing that for a couple of years, I ended up being in those same studios recording my own stuff. Most of the people working there said, ‘Wow! It’s great to see you here and now you’re working on your own thing.’ And that’s how I met Joe. One of the producers working on one of Joe’s last records with his band TSOL, caught wind of me and was interested in hearing me play. So, when he did and I introduced myself to Joe and he said, ‘You can join my band, anytime!’ We did a couple of gigs together and I pushed the ‘Change Today’ thing and that’s really taken off.”

I remember seeing you play with Rod Piazza at one of his birthday bashes in Riverside. “Rod Piazza” Jimmy says. “I look at him with the same amount of reverence that I do with all the blues originators because of his dedication and the purity of what he does. He recognized something and took me aside and gave me this heart-to-heart about what I was doing. I just gained so much respect for him because he encouraged me… who am I, to him? But he heard something in me and gave me some wind in my sails to believe in myself. It’s hard to explain to people who don’t know who he is or the genre and express the feeling and the depth of what that meant to me. That’s the thing about blues music, it’s all based on the love of the music and the people we revere the most.”

It seems blues is more personal; the music and stories handed down generation-to-generation. “I was just watching a Muddy Waters interview and the man interviewing him was Pete Welding. He was a record producer and blues/jazz historian and was very close with Muddy.” Jimmy says, and as to prove a point. “I was taught Robert Johnson songs by Pete Welding, who learned from Muddy, who learned directly from Robert.”  

Details! This was in your studio years in L.A.? “Yes, I was very young when I met Pete, he heard I was into the blues and took me into his office at Capitol and gave me a music and history lesson that day. That was huge in my life at that time. I also had a chance to meet Les Paul there and had my picture taken with him. He was a very nice man and made me feel like I was his friend, even though we only talked for a few minutes.”

Let’s talk about ‘Change Today’ and collaborating with Joe Wood. “Joe isn’t a kid anymore and he’s fully aware of that. And the songwriting that he’s doing now is very deep and he’s really gifted at it. When you hear this record… there’s a couple of edgier tunes on it that will make his fan’s of earlier material feel good and there’s some darker stuff that they’re gonna’ love too. But there’s also some stuff that can stand next to Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson, its real songwriting. Roots-y, pure soul music, and it’s all originals. I just add my texture and color to it. I get credit for arranging some songs but for the most part all the stuff was there. I did contribute two tracks and Joe put it in his blender. Anytime you write something, it’s always a better result when there’s other minds involved that are creative and add to it.”

Sounds like a fun environment. “These bands with Joe Wood and Mark Campbell and Chris Ogard… we all get along so well, it’s almost comical. I’ve never been travelling with a band ever, where it was so light and easy. It’s so much fun because we just laugh all the time and we can’t wait to play. Everywhere we play people are just like, ‘Wow!’ they feel the energy because we’re so excited. We’re finishing up this record, we’ve got all the basic tracks but I have to put my stuff on it and the vocals and we’re trying to put May 30^th as the release.”

Any reflections about life or the road you travel, to this point? “I just go where the music tells me to go.” Zollo says. “I’ve never pursued or pushed myself; I just do my part and make sure I’m ready when that intersection comes. I’ve had the opportunity to play with so many people; I got to play with Jimmy Bain before he died. A bass player and songwriter, he wrote ‘Man on the Silver Mountain’ he was in Ritchie Blackmore’s band with Ronnie James Dio and he wrote all the Dio stuff for ‘Holy Diver.’ I got a call to do a session and I’m standing in the control room with him… didn’t know that was gonna’ happen!” He smiles and shakes his head. “What am I doing there?”

So your message is be prepared and try not to freak out? “I met Cash McCall last time I went to Memphis and he actually performed two songs with me and shook my hand and goes, ‘I really like your playing.’ I was like, ‘That’s enough for me!'”

The post Jimmy Zollo: How Bad Do You Want It? appeared first on Traveling Archive.

For almost forty years Jonny Viau, when not fronting his own band, has been the ‘go-to’ sax man for most of Southern California. He’s recorded with the very best and the list is long; Duke Robillard, Solomon Burke, Kim Wilson, and Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown are just a snapshot. Viau has put in the time and the miles, playing his way around the globe in support of Mitch Woods, Earl King, Candye Kane, the Blues Beatles and who could possibly forget, The Pleasure Barons.

Jonny is the first to admit as a young musician, having the opportunity to open for legendary bluesmen like Muddy Waters and B.B. King “I was definitely star-struck…meeting ALL those guys!” And to this day he continues to credit the influences of Jazz, Rock and R&B icons as diverse as Sun Ra, Frank Zappa, King Curtis and “a lot of Stax stuff, Sam and Dave and Otis Redding.”

Our conversation began like most, where’s home? “San Diego, baby!” Jonny says proudly, “I’m a third generation Californian and a native San Diegan.”

Was your family musical? “Well, as a matter-of-fact, yeah!” Jonny smiles. “My grandfather played the violin, the clarinet… and the saw! The musical saw! And my mom would back him up on piano and he’d do shows at the Lion’s Club. He’d have a guy with a giant apple on his head and he’d take a gun and shoot it over his shoulder, with a mirror in one hand and a big spring-loaded worm would come out of the apple, cornball stuff, you know?” (laughing) “I have all of his instruments, though. I have his saw, his violin and his clarinet. He was a pharmacist and his name was John Nemes. He was a big wig up in Artesia, near Long Beach. He had a pharmacy. I remember they sold leeches for black eyes and bruises.” (laughing) “I have a jar they kept the leeches in. We got a couple of those.”

Was saxophone your first instrument? “No, not by far! When the Beatles came out, that’s what started this whole, damn thing. That Ed Sullivan appearance really started a whole wave of people wanting to be musicians. A friend of mine, Mike lived on the same street and we started taking guitar lessons in Escondido at the same time. I was probably seven years old then and that lasted almost a year. Then, I started getting into baseball so they didn’t know what direction I was going to go in… sports or music? There was a piano at my Grandmother’s house and a box of toys with a harmonica in there. And I’d be running around with one of those. So in the 7^th or 8^th grade I had a paper route in Poway and I bought a set of drums from Apex Music down on Broadway in downtown San Diego with my paper route money. I played drums for maybe two years until freshman football.”

Battered and bruised, Viau had enough of football and naturally “got a flute.” (laughing) “I had listened to a Jethro Tull record and I really liked it. So I went from football to flute… and then from flute to sax. My flute teacher kept telling me, ‘Man you need to play sax. Sax would mean a lot more work and enjoyment and it fits in with more types of music.’”

But music was always on your radar. “Pretty much. With my good friend, Mike, the first time I heard Sgt. Pepper’s was at his house. And he says, ‘when he was listening to Herman’s Hermit’s, I was listening to Cream and Black Sabbath.’” (laughing) “But anyway, I started playing sax around the 9^th grade, and by the 10^th grade I sorta’ joined a band. My friend, Reuben says ‘I got band practice.’ And I said, ‘I want to be in your band.’ He goes, ‘well come to practice.’ I go, ‘okay.’ I went to practice and I didn’t know what I was doing. I just stood in a corner while they played… and tried to find notes that sounded good to play along with them. The bass player gave me a ride home and I thought that was fun to just go and rehearse once. And he said, ‘You going to show up tomorrow?” I said, ‘Yeah!’ So from that point on I just showed up for rehearsals.” (laughing)

Seems to have worked out well for you? “Yeah! I’ve never actually been asked to join a band…I just sort of show up.” (laughing)

So that was your first band experience? “That was a great band!” Jonny says. “And at first we were doing a lot of Allman Brothers stuff and had two drummers. We were called ‘SkyDog’ Duane Allman’s nickname. And then we became more and more eclectic doing all kinds of other material and whittled it down to one drummer and we called ourselves, ‘Orbis Max.’ We were the shit in North County and Poway. We played all the big, big parties. We played some of the finest keggers that were ever thrown. It was a full-size band; we had three guitars, keyboards, singers ‘cause we didn’t care. We didn’t care about making money. We never did make money.

 We played school dances and we borrowed some money off my mom to buy a real PA system and she gave us three years to pay it back. We paid it back in a year. We played at Camp Pendleton. We’d drive out there not knowing where they were going to send us, and it’s a huge place… and you’d be playing at a Quonset hut with about 80 men and one bar maid.”

Nice you were supporting the troops and cool that your mom encouraged you… “She got involved whether she wanted to, or not.” (laughing) “But she always supported my musical endeavors.”

Can you talk about your ability to adapt your style of play? “Being in ‘Orbis Max’ helped me learn how to adapt, we were super eclectic and we played everything from jazz to rock and contemporary Top 40. Some blues, I mean we thought we could play blues. We weren’t really real blues players. Another thing that really helped me out with those guys; from day one they would record. They would record live gigs; we’d turn our band houses into a recording studio and recorded originals. I was thrown into that whole recording scene which is completely different from playing live.”

Most call that honing your chops or higher education. “Later, when recording I was very familiar with the process and for the most part wasn’t nervous at all. There were a couple of times when I was a little nervous. Doing the Solomon Burke sessions was a high profile deal.”

Who were some of your earliest influences in blues? “I would have to say the Rolling Stones, only I didn’t know it was the blues at the time. I didn’t really know much about the blues until I joined the King Biscuit Blues band. In February 1980, I was 22 years old and they had a steady gig down at the Mandolin Wind on University and 3^rd. They played every Thursday, Friday and Saturday which is unheard of in today’s world.” (Just as Jonny says the late blues harp player Ken Schoppmeyer’s name, his phone begins to ring. Remember his ringtone is a wailing solo harmonica.)

Jonny’s eyes are now wider as he says, “I say the name Ken Schoppmeyer and the harmonica goes off on my phone. That’s weird… talk about spooky shit. (laughing) But Ken had a huge, huge, huge blues record collection and he told me to come over to his house and I brought a bunch of blank cassette tapes and just recorded King Curtis, and all these sax players I’d never heard of before and he turned me on to whole bunch of good music. Then I had to learn, I don’t know, like 40 songs in two weeks to start playing with those guys. And that ran through almost all of 1987. Right when I get in the band, we’re gonna’ record a record and I’m going, ‘Oh my God! I’m not really ready for this.’ But the next thing you know, we’re opening up for Albert King and B.B. King and Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy and Junior Wells. So, I got to meet all these guys and take a picture. For a green, 22-year old meeting B.B. King was like meeting Babe Ruth or something. I was definitely star- struck… meeting ALL those guys! Especially the first time and they were all, nothing but nice. B.B. was just the nicest guy. I was so tongue-tied and the only thing I could say to him, he had this giant, glob of gold on his finger, and I said, ‘Nice ring, B.B.!’” (laughing) “But the King Biscuit Blues band is where I definitely cut my teeth and learned a lot about life in general!”

How about Jazz influences? “Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Stanley Turrentine, Charlie Parker, I mean there’s so many.” And what was your take away from them? “With Jump Blues and King Curtis what I noticed was and especially with the sax players, they blurred the line between jazz and blues. Is this jazz, is this blues, is it jazzy-blues or bluesy-jazz? I don’t know, but it was good. I think with the saxophone, it’s so associated with jazz so people come up and go ‘you guys play some great Jazz.’ Well, we’re a blues band.”

You must have a pretty large R&B catalog, did you mine that genre? “A lot of Stax stuff, Sam and Dave and Otis Redding. When I left King Biscuit, the band sort of imploded one night. You know with bands; that happens. And everybody quit the group on the 3^rd break just before the last set. (laughing) “I formed a little group with Eric Lieberman eventually, but before that I was in all-black Soul band from the Bay Area called C.P. Love and the Southbound Transit Band. Right after King Biscuit, in late 1987 and into 1988. They would fly me up to the Bay Area and I’d do gigs up there. And we went to Telluride, Colorado. These guys were from New Orleans and they’d never driven in the snow before. We’re driving on that road from Silverton to Telluride in a van pulling a trailer. Which was fine going up, but on the way down it was snowing like no tomorrow and we were just sliding down that mountain. Nobody said a word, we were just scared shitless. But they treated me like family, they were nothing but nice to me.”

“After that I was just bouncing around, freelancing and playing with anybody I could. I moved into an apartment in Oceanside, so I was taking any gigs I could to pay the rent. I would play with the Mudsharks and Scottie Blinn. And with Eric and the Rhumboogies and we played every Tuesday night at Winston’s in Ocean Beach. I would get my horn player friends to come down and sit in. Sometimes we would have 3, 4, 5 or 6 horns and it was just organized chaos, with an emphasis on chaos. You’ve got to be somewhat organized and play together unless you’re Sun Ra, you know?”

Did you listen to Sun Ra? “Yeah! And I listen to a lot of Zappa, too. When I was locked in the blues closet, I didn’t make that a selling point. And I would go see him when I could. I’m still a huge Zappa fan.”

What was your first tour experience? “In 1990, I went out with Mitch Woods and his Rocket 88s from the Bay Area. That was my first real experience with touring, six weeks all across the country. I was touring with Mitch and backing up Earl King. I backed up Earl King several times and he was another guy who was just phenomenal. He wrote ‘Let the Good Times Roll.’ ‘People see me, but they just don’t know.’ Not the one by the Cars.” (laughing) “Just watching him tune his guitar was a musical experience. He would have his guitar tuned to these really weird tunings and that’s how he got some of those cools leads he would do.”

Gary Primich? “Oh My God! Oh My God! You know that session just happened to coincide with the Rodney King/L.A. Riots! And these guys (laughing) had never been to California, they came out from Texas and it was a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday session. Wednesday is when they were beating up people, they took Reginald Denny out of the truck and just about killed him. Thursday was loot, scoot and shoot day and we saw so much shit, so many fires and people with shopping carts full of stuff. A refrigerator in the back seat of a Cadillac with the convertible top down, people pushing big screen TV’s in those little red wagons… I’m telling you, we got the most done in the shortest amount of time you can imagine. We almost did that record in about six hours. They’d get on the talkback and go, ‘Fellas that sounded good, we don’t need to listen to it, trust me. Let’s move on to the next song!’ You really didn’t know there was a riot going on until you went to the bathroom, this tiny little window, you could hear sirens and helicopters and stuff. They had a curfew that day and we had to get out before it got dark and we were all fine with that.”

The title of the album was ‘My Pleasure.’

Tell us about the Pleasure Barons? “From ‘89 to ’93, I did two spectacular tours with the ‘Pleasure Barons.’ Oh My God it was Country Dick, Mojo Nixon, Dave Alvin, Joey Harris, Juke Logan… and we all wore tuxedoes. Country Dick was doing Tom Jones songs two octaves below Tom Jones. It was so much fun. And so funny, during rehearsals we were laughing so hard learning this stuff and then we did it again in ’93. The album was recorded in ’89, I believe. It says ‘Live in Las Vegas’ but it was actually recorded in the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.” (laughing) “In ’93 we had a tour bus that used to belong to John Denver and it was a really nice bus. And we had John Doe and Rosie Flores and Katie Moffett and it was a much more polished show. We had a bar on stage; it was when the swing revival and the martini revival was going, so if you weren’t playing on a particular song, you’d be making martini’s for the guys. We only did two tours and then Dick died in ’95.”

Country Dick Montana was larger than life… “I don’t know if you knew about Dick and the Beat Farmers, but he was always getting doused with beer from the audience or from himself, you know? He went after someone one time who was throwing excessive amounts of beer on him and he jumped off the stage and grabbed a guy…and started spanking him! Little did he know it was wrong guy?” (laughing) “He started spanking him.” (laughing) “He put him over his knee.” What did the band do? “We were laughing, ‘oh, there goes Dick! Just keep playing you guys.’”

Kid Ramos ‘Two Hands, One Heart.’ “Oh that was a fun session. He (Ramos) decided to make an album with a cavalcade of guitar players. So, it was two days of a revolving door of all these great guitar players. Duke Robillard, Junior Watson and ‘Gatemouth’ Brown.  We had three saxophones and a trumpet, Jeff Turmes being one of them, who’s Mavis’ bass player but he’s also a great sax player. He wrote out some arrangements but when Gatemouth came in, he wanted to change up everything. We had everything worked out with the solo’s but okay…we’re going to have to make some adjustments here. He’d say let’s do it this way and when the tape would run, he’d do it a different way. It kept going on and on… till Kid goes, ‘why don’t we do it like the record?’ Gatemouth goes, ‘why do you want to do that for?’ And Kid goes, ‘I don’t know, it’s a T-Bone song.’ Jonny laughs as he says, ‘Gatemouth goes, ‘I don’t care if it’s a Jesus Christ song; we’re gonna’ do it my way!’” (laughing) “Larry Taylor and I were looking at each other and laughing.”

Can we talk about how your solo projects came together, let’s start with your first CD called Jonny Viau and Friends… Sideman? “I just got all my friends to come in and play a song or two and it was so much fun. I had it in the can in ’96, but then I ran out of money so it sat and didn’t get released until about 2000. Then, I put together my own band, Jonny Viau and the Blues All Stars at the insistence of Larry Matranga the owner of Patrick’s. Because I was playing down at Patrick’s with so many different bands I coulda’ put a cot in the back room and slept there. The band I put together was called the All Stars so it could have anybody I wanted in it. It didn’t have to be a set lineup. At any given time it would be Marcus Bashore, Mike Cherry, Dave Pruitt, Billy Seward, Adrian Demain, Troy Jennings, a piano player named Neil Walkup and then we did the Live at Dizzy’s CD in 2002.

Rod Piazza pops up regularly in your discography? “Yeah, I did about four or five albums with Rod. He was cool to work with and in the studio he really brings out the best in his players without being an asshole, you know? With Rod, you wanted to be as good as you could. I traveled a lot with Rod around the United States; we did the Santa Cruz Blues Festival and another festival in West Virginia.”

How did you guys meet? “Well, I met Rod Piazza and James Harman at the Mandolin Wind where I used to play with King Biscuit. I’d see them at the Belly Up and sit in with them. I guess Allen Ortiz introduced me to Rod; he also introduced me to the King Biscuit guys. He was pretty instrumental in me getting my foot in the door with those guys.”

You mentioned James Harman. “I love James. He was just the coolest from day one when he had Hollywood Fats and Kid Ramos in the same band!? With Willie J. Campbell on bass and Steven Hodges on drums… C’mon! They were definitely ‘Those Dangerous Gentlemen’s.’ We opened up for them at the Belly Up and go see them at the Mandolin Wind. And I got to record with them.”

Talk a little about Candye Kane. “Well, I recorded with her for several years before I was actually asked to join the band. I joined her band when that big swing revival in the mid-90s was resurging. She had me and Robbie Smith on trumpet and we did that for a couple of years. Candye was the first one to take me to Europe. She and I had a falling out, we kissed and made up and I went over to Europe again with her and recorded on ‘Super Hero.’ But I am so glad we made up and didn’t leave that tension and bullshit we went through, we put it behind us.”

How did you become a Blues Beatle? “Scottie Blinn gave my information to the guitar player who contacted me and said their sax player wasn’t able to come to Denmark, so last year I went to Denmark for a month and played with those guys. They play Beatles songs in a blues vein and they’re all from Brazil and speak Portuguese. So, I’m with these guys who just speak Portuguese and Danish and very little English. I did another tour with them on the East Coast and it was Fun. Nice guys and good players. Funny. You’ve got to have a sense of humor, you gotta’ laugh. They liked steak and cake and Coca Cola.” (laughing) “Every time we’d go someplace, they had to eat steak.”

Sue Palmer. “She and her band are the greatest people. I’ve been with them almost twenty years now; I think, where we’ve had the same line-up. We do these jazz festivals, blues festivals, concerts in the park…she does so many styles; she can cater to the event. We do the San Diego Blues Festival; we do more R&B and Blues. If we do the San Diego Traditional Jazz Festival, well you know.”

Sue’s band can also range in size. “She can do a solo, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 pieces. That’s a big band, and when you add both singers, Sharifah and Dheeja…”

Speaking of Sharifah… “Sharifah is Dheeja’s daughter and Sharifah’s been coming and singing with Sue for a long time, probably fifteen years, since she was very young. She would just nail me; kill me when she would do the Margie Hendrix part of Ray Charles’ ‘Night Time is the Right Time.’ ‘Baby!’ Oh My God! Something would just come over me. So I said, I want to put a band behind you one of these days. And kept saying it and saying it until finally, let’s do it. We did some rehearsals up at my house, found the best players I could find… Marty Dodson, Troy Sandow, Steve Wilcox, Sharifah and me. Small band, big sound. We learned all these obscure Soul and R&B tunes, everybody contributed songs and we had more than enough material to do a CD. We went to Nathan James’ Sacred Cat studio and we cut 16 songs in two days. You have the basic studio room where everybody’s playing and you have the other room where singers and horn players can play and be isolated and do stuff over. I asked Sharifah, ‘Why don’t you go in to the other room in case you’re not happy with your vocal? She says, ‘No, I want to be in here with you guys!’ A lot of the tracks she cut ‘live’ with us all at the same time. We never did more than three takes on any song.”

The result was the CD ‘Sharifah and the Good Thing.’ “We have a different rhythm section now, but she’s still playing and kicking ass… and taking names!”

For you personally, any wow moments along the way? “I was able to go and record at Capitol Records. It was probably one of the highlights of my recording career even though they just brought me in to play about 16 bars of solo. They had a whole, full on horn section of these session players and I said, ‘Am I going to have to play with those guys?’ They said, “No man, you just have to play the solo, that’s all.” You mean I’m getting 300 bucks to play 16 bars? Okay! Capitol Records here we are!” Jonny shakes his head. “That was an amazing place, all the way to the ceiling… gold records. Abbey Road, real serious records, you know?”

Last call, any wisdom to share from your journey, so far? “What I’ve learned through the music, by experimenting with different notes and rhythm’s is that people don’t understand it, when you’re playing over their heads. It’s why people don’t gravitate toward jazz. Charles McPherson summed it up perfectly when he said, ‘Jazz is like Shakespeare, everybody appreciates it, but nobody wants to read it.’” (laughing) “I’ve learned playing the simpler horn parts, friendly voicing’s that aren’t super jazzy and my solos too, I don’t try to play a million notes or try to sound like Charlie Parker. I just want to play what people like and can relate to. Keep it relatively simple, but fun… fun for me! It’s fun to pick the perfect note for the perfect moment.”

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