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In retrospect, having Jimi Hendrix open for The Monkees wasn’t the greatest idea a promoter ever had. But that glaring mismatch proved to be a boon for blues music when a young Jimmy Thackery walked into the Ambassador Theatre in Washington, D. C. where Hendrix was ravaging riffs during his first gig after being kicked off The Monkees tour. Thackery will always remember it as “the moment that changed my life.”
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on May 19, 1953, Thackery grew up in Washington, D. C. listening to the diametrically opposed musical tastes of his classically-inclined father and his pop-oriented mother. An early interest in music was encouraged. “They bought me this old piece-of-junk upright piano,” remarks Thackery who taught himself “to play by ear as long as they could stand it.”
His initial attraction to the guitar was driven by the raging hormones of a 13-year-old adolescent. “I realized that I’d never get anywhere with girls in the seventh grade playing the piano,” he recalls. “So I dumped that and informed everyone that I needed an electric guitar.” Once in his hands, Thackery was smitten. “The guitar just jazzed me,” he exclaims.
In 1972, at the age of 19, Thackery co-founded the Nighthawks developing his hard-as-nails, pyrotechnic style playing live night after night on smoke-enveloped bar room stages with one of the hardest working roots rock bands of all time. Describing his instinctive approach to those live performances Thackery says, “I put all my senses on hold and find the zone and follow what’s inside. There’s an electricity from your mind to your heart to your fingers. You just try and remember to breathe.”
But the gruelling schedule (up to 300 nights a year) took its toll and Thackery left the Nighthawks in 1987 to form a six-piece R&B group called The Assassins. Five years later, with his trio the Drivers, he achieved blues “guitar god” status and accolades from the press to match. Typically effusive, Blues Revue likened Thackery’s fiery blues and rock-influenced guitar mastery to a “thunderstorm of passion and fury that just crackles and roars with conviction and power.”
Coinciding with his switch to Telarc Records in 2002, the latest phase in Thackery’s creative journey of self discovery finds him much more focused on substance than flash. “It’s about the writing now,” he says explaining his penchant for turning personal experience into wide-screen storytelling. “It’s not just about the hot dawg guitar player.”
Thackery is adamant that he will never stop touring, admitting that he would go broke if he tried to stay in touch with his friends and fans all over the planet by phone.
Reflecting on the future of blues music, Thackery remains optimistic despite the current difficult times. “I don’t care how techno or weird music gets, it always comes back to the roots, because that’s where all music came from,” he contends. “It goes back to field hollers and people singing just to make the world go away when they’re working.” Jimmy Thackery is certainly doing his part to keep that happening. www.jimmythackery.com
Ken Wright
