A Bodacious Interview with Jimbo Ross by Maureen Elizabeth

To say that Jimbo Ross is an eclectic performer is an almost laughable understatement. When your bio includes being a session musician for Peter Townsend, , Bob Dylan, Johnny Mathis, the Moody Blues, Roy Orbison, Elton John and a tour with Led Zeppelin (to name just a few of the many artists listed) it becomes apparent that his knowledge and talent has earned him huge respect and demand in every genre. The electric viola is his instrument of choice and my interview with him revealed a deep respect and love of the blues that he has translated onto an instrument that, for most of us, doesn’t come to mind when thinking of the blues.

Tell me about your musical roots.

I left home at 16 so that I could pursue my music. I was supposed to be an insurance salesman. My dad was from Chicago and he would play piano by ear. He was just a great guy and he knew he needed to support his family. He wanted me to become an insurance salesman just like him.

Did your love of music originate from him?

I have always loved music, it was my world. It was the place I could go to - my escape. I was the youngest in the family and I was begging my folks to let me play the piano. My best friend was going to learn to play the viola so we signed up for lessons together but he quit a week later. With the viola I could go into my room and shut the door and be in my own world. I got my first guitar when I was 9. My whole hook up to music was listening to the Wolfman Jack show, listening to old soul, R&B and blues. The music just floated my boat – it was calling me, you know. XLRB was a radio station out of Tijuana and we could get it in LA. I heard James Brown, Sam and Dave - I was just drawn to the expression of the blues because it was just such honest soul wrenching music. It cast a spell on me.


Your first CD was “Driven by the Blues”…

That CD was done completely live. I did 10 tunes in one day.

Was that the plan?

That’s just the way it happened. I had ten tunes and my players were all great players and we just decided to do it. It was Aug of 1997 and I found out my guitarist was leaving and he was the one I wanted. You know there are unique guitar players that stir you in places that just floor you – he was one of them and I had to have him on my CD. It took the next year and a half to finish the record, adding vocals, producing and when I was done I got what I feel is a state of the art, top class record.

When did you decide that this would be your life?

I always knew music was going to be my life. I played music by ear, I was self taught, I played blues, just a natural blues -funk -rock –R&B- soul guitar. I listened to Lightning Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Freddie King and Johnny Winter. Winter was a big influence, his raw expression from his early years. Johnny just listened to blues records ‘cause he couldn’t work in the field -so he stayed inside and played guitar. He was a white guy doing the blues and I was a white guy doing the blues and he just showed me that I could do it. I listened to Eric Clapton when he was in the Blues Breakers, he was a little too clean but he did it well. Never really patterned myself after any violin players. I had listened to so many but I loved swing bands. I listened to swing music, 30’s swing stuff. I had a hot club type band in the 70’s and I would throw in the greasy notes. No matter what I was playing it would always pop out. If you have something to say - you have to say it. That’s what blues has taught me. It’s the expression of the blues. I don’t care how many notes you play, you put together a conversation. Most jazz greats have a love of blues influence. I had a jazz rock fusion band and we played all well crafted instrumental music. I love classical, but as far as self expression, I love the blues. All blues are happy blues. Willie Dixon says you find the silver lining inside the clouds.

Does that ring true for you?

You find the joy inside the sadness, inside all the feelings. Like the expression “tears of joy.” When I am in zone it is where I come from. People want to feel the move, want to feel what you are feeling. I want to see someone connected - I want to feel the connection, if you take someone on the journey with you it spellbinding. That’s the kind of performance I signed up for. I don’t want to go through the motions.


The audience wants to see the person on stage not only connect to the music but to connect to them as well.

And this makes a really great relationship! Ever since I was a kid watching the Ed Sullivan Show, eating ice cream in my pajamas, watching Sam and Dave, Elvis, Wilson Pickett.

And the Beatles?
Oh I was Ringo. I was in elementary school. Paul was all the girls’ favorite but Ringo was cool and goofy and had a cool name. CCR, when they came out I said “all right!” Southern revival, John Fogerty had an honesty about him. The Allman Brothers are my favorite jam band of all time. I wore out Live at the Fillmore.
We got spoon fed English blues. The English ate up everything about the blues and spoon fed it back to the United States. It was the beginning of the British rock invasion and that enabled us to get the blues artists onto the stage. And then Freddie King got to be in Woodstock. The only way I could get my medicine was from Wolfman Jack in my room. I would go to these record stores in LA and I would buy my records. I still have a bunch of them.

As a self taught musician you have been able to live your dream?

Oh yea, it was hard, but there came a time when I quit playing guitar and I would play the viola. The viola is in the middle of the orchestra – it’s like the alto in the choir. We’re playing all the color, the harmony. After all the years of playing the color and the harmonies - that was my teacher. It helped me be able to hear harmony so I could improvise, so when I would hear the chord changes I could hear the harmonies that were supposed to go with them. How to let your backbone slip and do the wild thing on the viola is a whole other thing. I play a 5 string electric viola. I’ve played salsa, fusion, swing, bluegrass and Irish music on it for fun. I was in a Celtic rock band. I’ve been a featured soloist in different movies. You have to have the ability to bring it alive…

I learned about your music through an interview with Lennie Jones, the artist who created the cover painting for your latest CD “Steady Rollin’ Man.”

Lennie and I talked for hours on the phone and I told him there’s got to be a train, gambling and women. He said that’s a little much on a 5x5 CD cover! But he put the paintbrush on the canvas and he said it just came to him, it came together overnight. He captured my vibe and we hadn’t even met. The title “Steady Rollin’ Man” says that I’ve been at it my whole life and I’m still rollin’. You can’t stop me. My first album “Driven by the Blues” - I had to get that out. I was driven. I had been around the world in 180 days being a session player and I’ve been in all kind of bands because I feel the passion. It’s the blues that I identify with. It helps me be a better player no matter what I play. Lennie dug what I was all about. I’m still rollin’ - I take my time, I’m in no hurry, I don’t let the small stuff get me down. Sometimes the music people don’t know how to take me because nobody is doing what I’m doing. We put on a show; one guaranteed rocking’, good time. We are a Bodacious Blues Band. “Bodacious” is a word in some dictionaries but more like a slang word. Harvard College dictionary defines it as “noteworthy and up standing.”

When writing a song, what’s your approach?

I start with the groove. I walk the dog. I take the dog out for a walk then I get the bass line going in my head. I get a groove and a hook and a line. I have to be moved by something out of my own experience and write down ideas, a few words that mean something to me. I’ll come back to it maybe with a musical fragment from something else, even with the lyrics. It’s not all about bad luck and misfortune. I like to be a little optimistic about my blues. It’s about hope. If people feel better it’s going to be okay. I have the blues to help me through it. The violin was Clapton’s first instrument. It was Jimmy Page’s first instrument. That’s why he pulls out the bow when he is in Zep. I played with Page and Plant when they were on tour. I was just doing the string section playing Kashmir and Black Dog. I got to play with some of my mentors; I was able to play with James Brown.


So tell me about the blues and the violin.

I play blues licks on the violin. I chose to move what I was doing on guitar and do it on the violin and it sounds like a slide. It’s a righteous, raw feeling. There are no frets so I can play all in between the notes. It makes people crazy. That is the color, the color of the blues - it’s the stuff between the notes that gets under peoples skin and they go ohhh yeahhh. You can’t do that on the piano. I put some emotion behind it, move the notes around and make it talk. I reach in grab your soul and move your spirit - that’s when you’re doing something right. It’s the zone, it‘s not thinking, not the intellect. It is total feeling, deep emotion, honest, gut wrenching feeling. Sometimes it is very subtle where you back off just a little. You are telling a story the way you color your notes, the way you use words, it becomes who I am. It is off the cuff, it’s being able to improvise. It’s so much more fun, so much more colorful, so much more interesting, a righteous and raw bending of the notes.

In an American Blues News interview with Kim Simmonds it occurred to me how interesting it is to talk with people when they have the ability to look back and reflect, finding that sense of having lived a good piece of their life. And what I am finding, especially with musicians, is that they want to continue and that they are very happy that this is the path that they have chosen, no regrets.

Oh absolutely. We are on a mission. This is what we got to do. The other chapter of my life is unfolding. I am embarking on that which is what I wanted to do in my 20’s but I wasn’t old enough or mature enough, then, to do it. I am not a household name but I'm still doing it old school style- get enough people to hear it – give me a chance to get up there, and do it, give me a stage and I’ll prove it!
Go to www.bodaciousrecords.com and check out Jimbo Ross and his “Steady Rollin’ Man” CD and for those of you in CA watch for his live appearances – he promises he will get the party started!

The ART of the Blues Interview with Lennie Jones, Folk Art Blues by Maureen Elizabeth

Lennie Jones (www.folkartblues.com) has a storied past. He calls himself a renaissance redneck, a swamp cop who has been shot at and beat with axe handles, a recovering alcoholic, and a self taught artist. My conversation with him was equally fascinating and informative. To understand his artwork, you need to understand, or at least have a sense of, his life. Lennie started playing professionally in 1965 and by the time he was 13 years old he was drinking heavily. “I came from a long line of drunks,” Lennie says, with his southern accent. “My Daddy was a Louisiana drummer who was a big music fan of the blues and old school jazz. So at an early age I was exposed to a lot of blues. By the time I was 13 I was playing the harmonica in clubs – I was way underage- and the owners, back then, would say "I can’t pay you what you’re worth but you can drink all you want.” And so he began a 30 some year destructive relationship with alcohol. In the 60's his own band was pursued by none other than Frank Zappa who wanted to sign them to his newly formed Bizarre record label. "He would come to hear us play a lot and he sent us on tour hoping to sign us. We already had a manger at the time who let us live in the night club - we were the house band - and he got us gigs, equipment and all the dope we could smoke, so we didn’t want to give up our manager." During this time the new Filmore styled Ambassador had opened and was becoming a stopping place for musicians like Zappa. "Since we were really well known around the D.C. area we opened for Canned Heat and I remember thinking “who are these guys?” Then they played Elmore James’ “Dust my Broom” – I mean straight blues - and I grabbed my manger and said ‘you keep telling me we can’t play the blues – just listen to these guys!' They were getting a huge reception and Henry “Sunflower” Vestine just blew me away. He has to be one of the most underrated Caucasian blues guitarists around and Canned Heat really was the authority on blues music at the time. These guys were great guys to meet and not only were they doing it [playing the blues] but they were doing it before I was and doing it well! Now I did all the art for the Telluride Blues Festival, twice – it’s a real honor- and in 2008 Canned Heat performed there, with one founding member “Fito” de la Parra, and I got to go up to him and say ‘Hey, 40 years ago I opened for you’ – it was great. I’m still really into the music but I don’t play professionally any more. I just paint. Playing music for me as a teenager was an outlet and a party. So when I got out of jail at the age of 18 I thought I’d start playing country rock, bluegrass…I learned to play the fiddle thinking that there would be less temptation in that genre – not true! There’s a quote I have on my website “When you let the devil ride, he wanna drive” I’m a recovering alcoholic 30 years now, since the last time I got out of jail, and I am probably the only guy you’ll ever meet who in 40 years went from drinking wine with Frank Zappa, playing at the first march on the Pentagon when Norman Mailer spoke, to standing behind the President of the United States with a rifle and a badge as a federal ranger and spending the last 20 years of life as a swamp cop in the Florida Everglades. It is truly miraculous that my life has changed the way it did.

Maureen: What led you to pick up a paintbrush?

Lennie: I was always interested in art. My mom was a good artist and my dad a cartoonist and let me tell you how art and music can be a salvation for a young kid. I hate seeing all these kids going without music and art in their life. If their home life is good – that is one thing. But if they have trouble and turmoil in their life, music and art can be a salvation. It was an outlet for me. Especially true when I was a kid. I could always draw but when I was federal ranger, 24 hours on call, I had no time to pursue it. So I looked forward not only to the time that I could paint but that time when I could paint what I wanted. Art is a reflection of what I know.

Maureen: What is your inspiration – is it the lyrics, the songs?


Lennie:I think that the life and the hardships that people endure .. I was taught at a young age that poor people eat beans and rice,and they play the blues.. the music really spoke to me. The overpowering rhythm and the lyrics.

Maureen: We had the good fortune of interviewing Kim Simmonds of Savoy Brown.

Lennie: He is an artist too!

Maureen: Yes! And we also talked with David Nelson who is an artist as well, both, like you, in their 60's and coming from that interesting place of reflecting back and taking all that wisdom from those lived years – its an amazing time to talk with them – just like you, looking back…

Lennie: I’m still struggling to be a good man , I'm still struggling to learn.

Maureen: So when you do your portraits, how do you develop the image?

Lennie: The original image is in my mind and I’ll find a photo, not necessarily of the same sex, that helps toward visualization and I’ll listen to their music while I paint. I can’t do graphics,or lettering, I don’t have those skills, but when Robert Johnson’s family was opening a museum for their Dad I made a print to celebrate that occasion. Normally, I don’t do prints because I’m supposed to be a folk artist and a print is made on a machine – a print does not have my sweat, blood and flaws in it. You want a piece of your soul within your art. I live in the woods, people come to my house and want the whole story that goes with their art and I have sold to people who have never bought a piece of art in their life – it’s an honor for me…

Maureen: I understand that you gave Buddy Guy a portrait of Muddy Waters…

Lennie: That was incredible I’d been listening to him since 1964 when him and Junior Wells did “Hoodoo Man Blues” – and three different times I was supposed to give this painting to Buddy but it never happened. Finally I met up with him, me with my long white hair, and shook his hand and told him that in 1965 I heard the Chicago Living Blues, well, he’s listening to me now so I unboxed and gave him this portrait of Muddy standing in a cotton field and I had painted the real cotton shed from the plantation – he practically teared up and started talking about how much he misses the old guys and started telling all kind of stories… It was so nice to meet Buddy Guy, not through music, but through art, my own art.

Maureen: You have quite a connection with these blues legends...


Lennie: I painted Bo Diddley’s hands the day he died. I wanted to go to the funeral which was about 4 hours away from where I live but I though they may not let me in there and I loved Bo Diddley so that’s how I paid tribute to him. When you look at the painting it’s my guitar, I didn’t want to do his guitar and make it so recognizable, but those hands are remarkable. His hands on my guitar with my ring. Hands are the essence of a man – I don’t consciously paint hands that are larger than life. The one positive role model I had as a young man was my grandfather, I am named after him and I was blessed to have him in my life, and my grandfather taught me at a really young age to look at a man’s hands, not only see how he shakes your hand , but to look at his hands. If you shake hands with Buddy Guy or if you look at Bo Diddley's hands, they are the exact antithesis of what a guitar players hands should look like – not long slender Jimi Hendrix hands – Bo Diddley's fingers were the fat, broken fingers of a boxer, a guy who worked hard. Hands for me are remarkable things that tell a phenomenal story if you are available to interpret the story. I know the hands I paint are too big in terms of physiology, I hear that all the time.

Maureen: On another level, though, if you see the hands as really conveying the essence of who that person was and how they got to be where they are, or where they were, would their hands not be, essentially, larger than life – because that’s what they hold...

Lennie: Yes! Hands are not only a point of solace and comfort but to look at them as a visual beacon of their life – hands always tell a story – you can’t alter the life that is in your hands.

Maureen: That's beautiful.

Lennie: I spent time with Willie King before he died, I called him the Blues Buddha, and he always liked my artwork. He wanted me to come and help teach young people to play guitar and do posters with the kids. He was a wonderful, recovered, drunk and every Friday he played for free at the old folks home. I participated in a lecture series with musicians and writers -I was the only artist- and I had my paintings displayed. I had one painting covered with a sheet and just as Willie was about to play I gave a talk about him and how he, like others, had lived through extreme prejudice but that he approached racism and lack of understanding with love and not hatred. When he unveiled the painting he was so surprised to see that I had done a portrat of him. When he saw it he just cried, hugged me and said "man, you know you ain't no white man."

Maureen: You really connect with people through your art...

Lennie: Well, I have to tell you a funny story. One day I'm sitting in my studio, painting, and the phone rings. Now I have caller I.D. and on the I.D. it says "Robert Johnson" - really freaked me out! So I answer the phone and I hear "Mister Lennie, I'm Robert Johnson's grandson Stephen." So I told him about the caller I.D. and he laughed and said "my granddaddy come back to get you!" Now this is when they had asked me to participate in the opening of the new museum so I said "You know you will be bringing down a big, ugly white man!" And he said "I know! I can see that! But you sure know how to paint a black man!"

Maureen: John Cohen,a photographer who did some real early work with photos of Dylan, said that "in traditional societies when you get close to the musician,you are close to the heart of the people."

Lennie: Very, very, true. It is always the voice of the poor people that maintains an oral history and that's where it all started, isn't it?


Make sure to take a look at Lennie website www.folkartblues.com and see his heavy hoodoo overleaf on the Telluride Blues and Blues Festival website www.Tellurideblues.com.