True stories on Thackery

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Jimmy Thackery performs at the Mahindra Blues Festival 2013. — SATEJ SHINDE

Jimmy Thackery was the unassuming guy with a Clapton-ish appeal who took to the Mahindra Blues Festival 2013 stage with a three-piece band. “Just a trio? How will that turn out?” thought many who eagerly waited to hear what Thackery and his band had to offer. The blues singer-guitarist was initially not a part of the festival’s lineup. Jimmie Vaughan’s unfortunate heart attack left a hole in the schedule and much last minute scrambling later, Thackery was on a flight to Mumbai to participate at the festival. The concertgoers over the weekend couldn’t have been more thankful.
On his maiden trip to India, Jim-my managed to wow old-timers and youngsters alike with a tight, focused and fuss-free performance, in the process showing them how no matter where time takes musical genres, the blues will always be at the core. “It is the basis of everything. Unfortunately there is a stigma attached to the blues. People have this notion that the blues is for old people; it is sleepy and boring. Well some of it surely is…” Thackery says, breaking into laughter ahead of his performance on Saturday at the Mehboob Studios. “You can trace the blues from Robert Johnson to Lady Gaga. Genres may have evolved and added a many more sub-genres, but they almost always find their roots in the blues.”
It is often the pursuit for the roots that make younger musicians today stumble upon the blues. Those musicians who pick up the guitar to play like Slash, research on his training and influences, in the process discovering Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix and Link Wray. Somewhere in that accidental education, they unearth the foundation of the blues. “Youngsters often get into music wanting to play stuff that scares the hell out of their parents. Teenage angst, whatnot. Then musicians like to know who their heroes admired. That is how they discover older and rawer sounds. However, not all of them are connecting the dots. It’s sad, but true. Young musicians listen to SRV and try to trace his inspirations. But they’re not necessarily bringing their friends to accompany them on that journey.”
Thackery spent 14 years with The Nighthawks before touring under his own name in 1986. Incidentally, he left the Nighthawks so that he could find time to focus on writing and recording music than being on the road. The shift, however, didn’t stop him from doing 300 shows a year for the next quarter of a century. He laughs, “I know, isn’t that funny? I found a great bassist and drummer and put together Jimmy Thackery and The Drivers. I realised that we were sounding so good that we started touring again. Even today, my idea of playing music stems from a very basic thought. Sometimes I listen to something on the radio or anywhere else, and go, ‘what is that noise? And more importantly, how do I play it?’ As long as I still feel that way, I know I am still discovering newer sounds.”
The organic nature of the genre drew him to picking up the guitar in the first place. “The blues are deeply emotional. As a musician, when you’re on stage, to allude to a cliché it’s not just guitar strings that you’re tugging at. Some people come on stage, play their stuff and get off it. Some interact with the audience, while some others are more theatrics than music. Beyonce has a great voice, but she is indulging in too much of spectator sport kind of music. Even Charlie Patton was a clown on stage, but the music always shone through. That balance can only be maintained by the performer no matter what the expectations of the crowd.”
For all his talk on sticking to the basics of the music, Thackery is not without his own little bit of stagecraft. Apart from flaunting his deftness with the instrument, he is also famous for a publicity stunt with another American blues musician George Thoro-good. While touring in the 1970s, Thorogood’s band The Destroyers and Thackery’s The Nighthawks happened to be playing shows in Georgetown (DC) at venues across the street from each other. The Destroyers were engaged at The Cellar Door and the Nighthawks at Desperados. By prior arrangement, while both bands played Elmore James’ Madison Blues in the key of E, Thorogood and Thackery left their clubs, met in the middle of M Street, exchanged guitar patch cords and went on to play with the opposite band in the other club. “Those were the days George was sleeping on my couch. He was a flamboyant player but he wasn’t yet a star. When I realised that we’re playing literally across the street from each other, I thought it would be a great publicity stunt to swap bands. This was the pre-cellphone days, so we had decided that the manager of one of the clubs would call up the other to inform him about the band going on stage to start playing the song. There were logistical worries about how we would go about it. First of all, how do we get a cord that long? After a certain distance the cord’s signal drops too. Also, what do we do about the incoming traffic? So I got a few biker friends to hold up the traffic…and you don’t mess with those guys! A smart tech guy fixed us up with signal boosting cords to prevent a loss of signal due to the extraordinarily long guitar cables,” recalls Thackery.
He makes it sound easy today but the stunt was successful despite a few tiny glitches. All sorts of things could have gone wrong and Thackery had thought out most of those problems and planned solutions for them. But he missed a crucial one. “When I picked up playing with The Destroyers, I realised they played a very uptempo version of the song while I was strumming away at ease. So I had to quickly keep pace with them. George in turn realised he really had to slow down playing the guitar while jamming with the Nighthawks.”