Jimmy Thackery – Mr. Blues Comes From Washington

A long standing blues highway road warrior, Thackery, now 58 years old, can still practically blind you with his fret work, set your heart pumping and feet tapping with a blistering blues bar set. Just as easily he can bring the room back to earth with a smooth as 12 year old Scotch rhythm and blues number that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

Jimmy Thackery, now of the blues power trio Jimmy Thackery and The Drivers, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on May 19th, 1953 but raised in the nations capitol. And it was there he discovered his love of music and felt the blues first course through his veins. In a 2003 interview with Las Vegas Blues, Thackery explained his introduction into the music that would consume his life. “I was taking piano lessons and I hit the age of 13, and raging hormones became evident. I realized that I was never going to get lucky playing piano. Every girl was swooning over the guitar players. I love the sound of the instrument, the guitar just jazzed me. There was nothing like the sound of an electric guitar with a good bunch of reverb on it. Even as a child, when I would hear "Peter Gunn," that stuff just made me go oooh, what's that noise and how can I make it?”

When asked about the first band he had ever seen live, Thackery related a story that most of us can relate to on some level. “It would have to be the thing that actually made me want to do this. In seventh grade, I went to my first dance in the gymnasium. There was a group of seniors that had a band called "The Minus Four." They were just a regular garage band, playing all the "Louie Louie"'s and that stuff. I never forgot the singer, whose name I still remember, John Harberson. He was up there with one of those electrovoice microphones. He was screaming his head off, and his veins were popping out of his neck. The guitar players were turned up real loud, so you couldn't really distinguish anything, because it was in a gymnasium. It was the coolest thing that I'd ever seen. That made me say I want to do that.”

And that’s precisely what he did. Early on, Thackery was playing in a local band with Bonnie Raitt’s brother David who turned him onto the music of Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix and it didn’t take long for the electric blues to grab him by the shoulders and never loose their grip.

In 1972 Thackery, harmonica player Mark Wenner, bassist Jan Zukowski and drummer Pete Ragusa joined forces to create The Nighthawks, one of the most popular East Coast blues bands of the 70’s and 80’s. Thackery’s ferocious approach to blues guitar coupled with a brutal rhythm section made them a mainstay at local blues clubs from Florida to Maine as well as tossing them as far and wide as Canada, Europe and Japan. Thackery stayed with The Nighthawks (recording more than a dozen albums with the group) until 1986. Tiring of their relentless 300 nights a year touring schedule, he split with the band and quickly fronted another band, The Assassins.

The Assassins were essentially set up as an all-star project from the Washington D.C. area. The lineup included soul vocalist Tommy Lepson, Wade Matthews on bass, Bruce Harrison on keyboards and saxophonist Alex Holland. Although Thackery left The Nighthawks to move in a different direction, his new project seemed to falling into the same pattern. Again, the band took the East Coast blues clubs by storm but the band didn’t hold itself together.

The Assassins recorded three albums with Thackery at the helm but fell apart in 1991.

But Jimmy Thackery is not a man to sit idly for long. In 1992, he put in place the band that was to become his own – The Drivers. "The 1990's were a fabulous time. We were working our butts off doing close to 300 shows a year. The irony is that was one of the reasons I'd left the Nighthawks, I was tired of working so much and not having a life outside the music. When you're out on your own, you'd better rise to the occasion. So I found myself back in the 300 night niche. What made that satisfying is that it was my ship and I was the captain of it. We were doing material that I was writing. We were doing arrangements that I came up with."

He had signed up with San Francisco based Blind-Pig Records where he recorded 8 discs. His first handful of recordings for Blind Pig were mostly blues covers and a few original recordings, each one garnering him more attention than the last. But Switching Gears in 2000 seemed to be a turning point for the band. “I think that record, Trouble Man, turned the corner for me because I had a real producer and I was doing original songs. That gave me a direction. (Memphis producer Jim Gaines) Jim and I did a lot of projects together…I was learning so much by watching him as a producer that by the end of Sinner Street, we both came to the realization that I was ready. I was telling him what was going on. He knew that I'd lost my training wheels."

After leaving Blind Pig, Thackery and The Drivers signed with Telarc Records where Thackery took the helm of producing two of his recordings himself as well as collaborations with Tab Benoit and his long time friend David Raitt.

Thackery continues to tour like a journeyman and has added a new wrinkle to his blues. He has relocated to Nashville where he is working with some of the best songwriters in the world. And according to Thackery on his website, the experience has been educational. "Inspiration can come at any time. It might be a lyric first or it might be a musical lick first. It might just be a form thing. In my world, a lyric tends to be a musical road map. It tends to set up the music I hear in my head. The cadence of a lyric tends to suggest the way to go on the guitar.”

All in all, Jimmy Thackery is a blues guitar slinger who fell in love with the blues as a youngster and he has stayed true to his first love throughout his life. And like a good, long standing love affair, it only seems to get better as time goes by.