When Springsteen put the E Street Band on hiatus in 1989, Clemons moved to Marin, forming his own group, the Red Bank Rockers, and installing Dillon as his lead guitarist and musical director.“Meeting Clarence was pivotal for me,” Dillon recalls. But he’s best known for his long association with the late saxophonist Clarence Clemons, Bruce Springsteen’s famed “Big Man” in the E Street Band. One of his former students, Matt Jaffe, opens the show.In the 1980s, Dillon formed the Edge, a popular Marin rock-reggae band, with friends Lorin Rowan and Ozzie Ahlers. He’s also a teacher, a bandleader, a singer-songwriter and a producer of musical theater.On Friday night at Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley, Dillon celebrates his diverse career and the 25th anniversary of his first solo album, “Bad and Blue,” with a band that includes some of the same local musicians who played on the record — keyboardist Austin deLone, drummer Kevin Hayes and singer-keyboardist Dallis Craft. As a young musician in Marin, I had all the time in the world to play the guitar and work on my craft.”Nearly half a century later, the affable local star more than lives up to the title of his latest EP, “Six-String Man.” And he’s long been established as, in the words of Bonnie Raitt, “a bad-ass guitar player.” But he’s never been satisfied with just being an A-List session guitarist and sideman. All this great music was happening.
...
I sold 30,000 copies of my records, which is not a lot, but it’s a lot for an independent guy.”After being out of the country for most of the ’90s, he took himself off the road in 1999 and returned to Mill Valley. It was such a success that he ended up moving permanently to the south of France, living in a village overlooking the Mediterranean and touring constantly for the next decade.“I played every city from Prague to London,” he says. “I made so many contacts with promoters and musicians that I went for two weeks and ended up staying three months.”After returning briefly to Mill Valley, he teamed with members of Robert Cray’s band and toured Europe for six weeks as Jimmy Dillon and the Gypsies, selling out every date. “But I asked myself, ‘What am I going to do next?’ After touring overseas with Clarence a couple of times, I really wanted get something going in Europe.”Knowing the movers and shakers in the European music business would be in Montreux, Switzerland, for the annual jazz festival, he booked a room in Montreux’s Palace Hotel and lined up a nightly gig at famed Harry’s Bar, playing as a duo with Austin deLone.“All the musicians and promoters would come in,” he recalls.
Jimmy Dillon Guitar Lesson Free Press Called
10 benefit at the Throckmorton Theater for the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival.“I’ve had a solo career,” he says, “but my greatest joy is as a collaborator.”In the interest of full disclosure, he collaborated with me on a multi-media show celebrating Marin rock history last year at Sweetwater. Looking ahead, he’s been asked to put together a band for a Sept. “Ascension” ran in Chicago, Detroit and Mill Valley before closing at Bimbo’s in San Francisco.The Detroit Free Press called it “provocative and original with a sexy, soulful strut,” adding, “Finally a musical that tells the whole story, from blues to bop, ragtime to rap with a whole lotta rock ’n’ roll.”Dillon closed his music camp two years ago, but he still enjoys teaching, giving guitar lessons in various blues and rock styles online and on DVD through his website, jimmydillon.com.In recent years, he’s been in demand as an organizer of all-star bands for benefits and fundraisers. “Now there’s a plethora of rock schools, but at the time it was one of the very first contemporary music camps for kids.”To raise money for his school’s scholarship program, he wrote, produced, directed and performed in “Ascension of the Blues,” an ambitious musical that traced the history of the music he’s loved since he was a kid with a guitar for a best friend.
“What I said was to embrace the real part of the business, the organic part, picking up an instrument and playing it and savoring the joy that comes with it. Tracy will be a guest singer at Friday’s Sweetwater concert.As an elder statesman of Marin rock, Dillon was interviewed recently for a Mill Valley Library oral history project.“I was asked what I would say to kids growing up who want to be musicians,” he says. His latest project has been backing singer-songwriter Tracy Blackman in a band with one of his teenage idols, Carlos Santana, and Santana’s wife, drummer Cindy Blackman, Tracy’s sister.
0 kommentar(er)
