Member Since: 8/14/2006
Band Website: cowjazz.ca
Band Members: ***Jack Walker - vocals, resophonic guitar, lap steel, guitar***Jim Dix - vocals, battered Guild, Gretsch Duo Jet, keyboards, harmonicas, resophonic guitar***John Merchant - vocals, bass, guitar, mandolin***Honorary Members: *Kenny Neal Jr. - various percussion wizardry (live and electronic), engineering and production smarts*
Robert Reid (Bob, that's my job)*Paul Babiak - live performance knob twiddling, rehearsal engineer and "be over there now" Buddha*
Better Halvas - Susan , Rosie (Mrs. Goldfish), and Lynda - three amazing women. What are they doing with three addled derelicts such as ourselves?, it's beyond all understanding.*Engineers: Kenny Neal Jr., John Merchant, Paul Babiak
Influences: Jim's (Slappy's) musical influences: David Wiffen, McKinley Morganfield, "Hock" Walsh, Lack Styles (Jack Walker), Cliff Reid, Doug "Duke" Lang (Norway House Concert, Victoria, 1978), Willie "The Lion" Smith, Wilbur Dix, who did a good imitation of Willie's stride piano, John Merchant, Tom Waits, Dylan, Climax Jazz Band, Freddy King, Phoebe Snow. As a child, drifting off to sleep listening to my father playing Hoagy Carmichael tunes on a piano that forty years later ended up in my living room. Both my brothers: George for his esoteric jazz discs, Steve for introducing me to Captain Beefheart at age fifteen. Weird sounds drifting up from the ravines behind our house. Charlie Christian. The rapturous cawing of a murder of crows at the first spring melt, cicadas at the peak of the summer heat. Gary Creighton and Frank Nakashima. Treeplanters singing on the line - a thousand trees a day in the worst slash and the lousiest singers in the world whooping it up at day's end as they gnawed on ginseng, grew bottled bean sprouts, and gargled whiskey. The Great Farini. My mother's violin, which sat for forty years, unplayed, in a mouldering case until the sad day that she pawned it. My oldest daughter Genevieve and the beautiful tone she gets from her constantly played violin. My youngest daughter, Elizabeth, who at age eleven announced solemnly that she had joined a rock band and would I please rent her a bass guitar and amplifier? My two uncles, Wes and Mel, in rare musical sessions with my father. Daryl Glanville, for introducing me to Reid. Joni Mitchell, Thomas Tallis, four lads from Liverpool, and The Mills Brothers. Hunter S. Thompson for pointing out that "the music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs." Yeah that's true, but this ain't about the music business......this is about music.
Sounds Like: them wave files...MP3 files; the digitized and impossibly difficult to play Harmony guitars of the audio world where we all float, slightly strung out, half an inch higher than we should, twitching expectantly above the ever so slightly twisted fretboard.
Record Label: i.r.diculous productions
Type of Label: None