Guitarist Jamie James Talks New Album, Playing With Harry Dean Stanton, and Mimes

Charlie Desjardins ‘27 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

If a musician is remarkably lucky, they’ll hang around long enough to carve out a solid, if unremarkable, career. Veteran guitarist Jamie James has done enough for about twenty-five remarkable careers, and he’s not done yet.

After founding legendary “rockabilly” trio The Kingbees—a label James himself isn’t unsure of— Jamie James set out on a blazing path of musical adventure, linking up with actors Harry Dean Stanton and Dennis Quaid to build a career as a reliably brilliant sideman in LA clubs. Now, in his early 70’s, he’s back with a brand new collection of songs called Straight Up, a back-to-basics killer that James describes using a genre of his own creation: pop blues. I was lucky enough to sit down with the musician over Zoom for a wide-reaching conversation about music, life, and rediscovering personal passions in the face of death, and I hope to speak to him again sometime in the near-future.

Charlie Desjardins: How are you doing today? It’s great to see you!

Jamie James: It’s a great day! I’m out here. I live in Culver City, and it’s a beautiful day today. It’s, you know, just one of those days—a perfect day in Paradise.

CD: I guess that’s a sort of interesting place to start. I was listening to Straight Up earlier, and there’s a song, “Septuagenarian Blues,” where you call every day “a beautiful day.”

JJ: That’s the way I live my life, man. I haven’t always lived that way, but I had a quadruple bypass in 2020. I didn’t even know that I was ill. Ever since then it’s changed my focus. I got back into songwriting, and I live my life like today could be my last day. Nobody really teaches you that kind of growing up! You have to discover it yourself, whether it’s a brush with death or some other kind of insight. You gotta embrace every day.

CD: Speaking of growing up, I know you started out as a guitarist, and you describe yourself as a “guitar nut.” Was songwriting something you started doing on the side?

JJ: Songwriting was my first love. I first started playing guitar in 1966, and the first thing I was desperate to learn was the Batman theme. Once I learned that, I went outside and played it on a Saturday, and some kids gathered around, and I just played it and played it. Eventually, I pleaded with my mother and she got me an electric guitar-amplifier combination, and I started playing every night after school. I just practiced, and practiced, and practiced, and I started wanting to write songs to somehow express my emotions. I was maybe 13 or 14 years old, and it was either become a delinquent or find a way to express myself. So I started writing little songs, and I fell in love with that.

CD: What was the first music you were obsessed with?

JJ: It was really a combination of live shows and songs on the radio. In those days my mother used to have this big old radio on top of the refrigerator, and it was on all the time, and you would hear whatever was playing on the radio day after day. I mean, it could go from Simon and Garfunkel to Marty Robbins to Leslie Gore to Petulia Clark. But what really sent me into orbit was sneaking into a show to see Tommy James and the Shondells. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that phenomenon where you’re walking up to see a show, and you’re outside, and you can hear the music from outside. It grabbed a hold of me! So it was really live shows, because, quite frankly, I couldn’t afford albums. The only money I really had in my pocket was from shoveling snow or mowing lawns, and I wanted to spend it on candy! [laughing]

CD: Was playing live something that came easy to you?

JJ: I still have a certain amount of stage fright, as The Band so aptly put it in their song “Stage Fright.” It’s funny, because I’m terribly shy in one sense, and then I love to show off. I’ve got a big mouth. I love the attention! So it’s a little bit of a dichotomy. But the infectious thing about live shows is what happens between a performer and an audience. In 1969, I went to see Sly and the Family Stone, and it just blew my mind. The way they had that whole audience in the palm of their hands, just by what they were doing on stage! I found it completely mystical and magical.

CD: I can only imagine! I read somewhere that one of your first touring gigs was with Steppenwolf. Is that right?

JJ: Well, it was actually called the New Steppenwolf. I was 23 years old, and I moved from Toronto, Canada down to LA in 1975, and I met this bass player by the name of Nick St. Nicholas who was the original bass player in Steppenwolf. So we started playing around town at places like the Whiskey a Go Go, and then one day Nick called me and said, “Listen, we’re working on a deal to win the rights to use the name for a year, but Goldie McJohn (Steppenwolf’s keyboardist) has this guitar player that he wants to use.” And so I auditioned, and we ended up touring around the United States and Canada and Europe for about the next 10 months or so. Quite frankly, I started to feel like this wasn’t going anywhere for me as a songwriter. I just didn’t see it. So I talked to Nick and Goldie and told them I was moving on, and then within months I started The Kingbees.

CD: The Kingbees became known during the rockabilly revival alongside bands like Stray Cats. How did you develop your signature sound?

JJ: Well, I was kind of burnt out. I’d been playing a nice old 1960 Les Paul custom and this beautiful 57 Stratocaster, and I was just cranking through a big Marshall stack. I mean, if I stood in front of my amp the air from the speakers would blow my hair forward! It was like Spinal Tap! So I was just seeking a change, and lo and behold, there was a mime down on Hollywood Boulevard named Eggman. I used to walk down to get soup at the Hamburger Hamlet, and I started talking to him on a break and he said, I’ve been really into Buddy Holly. He made me a cassette tape, and I was floored. I could hear right away Buddy was playing a Stratocaster, and I said, That’s it! That’s what I’m gonna do!  That twangy, melodic thing! Reduce everything minimalist! And so I formed the Kingbees with that in mind.

We weren’t really what you would call a “rockabilly” band. That’s more of a thumping sound. We were just a power-driven trio, playing the songs I was writing. The songs I write now [on Straight Up] are way more “pop blues.” One of the guys at the record company asked me what I classified my stuff as, and I said, Just say that Jamie James is the founder of seventies pop blues! And I ain’t talking 1970’s! I’m talking in my 70s!

CD: You talk about Straight Up like an “old man” album, yet it still sounds so energetic and so vital. What was the recording process like for this particular record, and how long did it take?

JJ: Previous to doing the album, for about 18 years, Tom Walsh (drummer), Tom Mancillas (bassist), Ken Stangy (keyboardist), and I had been playing with Dennis Quaid [& The Sharks]. And during the pandemic we just drifted, and I had my surgery, and I said, God—I promise you I’ll use all any little scrap of talent you blessed me with to really get back to my true purpose on this planet. So I focused on songwriting and called the guys, and we set up a recording session at this little studio called Robot Kitten with this wonderful engineer named Paul Rossler. Then Tom and Tom and I went in one afternoon (Ken Stangy was absent due to touring conflicts with Paul Anka) and cut all 10 tracks. I kept the original scratch vocals from that jam—the bass, the drums, my guitar—and I went back the next day and added a little electric guitar and redid a couple harmonica parts.

That’s the only way I know how to do it. You go in, and you sell heat! There’s no time to simmer. There’s no time to wait for it to boil. You turn it on, and you’re at a boil immediately.

CD: A big part of why I connected with Straight Up was those harmonica parts. How did you start playing harmonica, and who were the artists that inspired you?

JJ: Back in the early seventies I went and saw the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and Paul Butterfield just turned me on like that. So when I started doing shows with Harry Dean Stanton in the eighties, and Harry played an old school kind of melodic harmonica, I loved it. When the pandemic hit, I ordered a harmonica rack online, and I had a couple of Harry’s old harmonicas, and I just started to do that. I practiced every day.

CD: Did you feel Harry’s spirit while recording?

JJ: Yeah! I’m playing one on [opening track] “Let the Praying Begin.” 

There’s a kinship with Harry that will never change. He was 27 years older than me, and he wrote songs long before he became an actor. When I first met him I had no idea who he was! Honestly, I thought he was kind of a homeless guy. My girlfriend’s father had invited Harry and I over for July 4th, and I looked at him and said, Harry, I didn’t know the buses run on July 4th. I thought that must have been how he got there, because he was so disheveled looking. And he laughed and laughed and laughed, and it was only when we started playing, and I started seeing all these people show up (Joni Mitchell, Bono, and Chaka Khan were just a few of the artists), that I realized people knew this guy. 

CD: You played with so many renowned names. Was it ever tempting to offer them your services as a session musician?

JJ: No. I’m not a session player. That’s a whole different kind of talent. I don’t have that talent! I don’t do it as a session, I do it like a concert. That’s why I called this record Straight Up, because it’s straight up!

To me, it’s all about the song, then the singing, and then the drums, and that’s it. Everything else is just fluff—the guitar solos and all that stuff.

CD: As a drummer myself, I couldn’t agree more.

JJ: I had a feeling you were a musician!

CD: I bang on things. I wouldn’t call myself a musician! But I’m always fascinated by other musicians talking about drumming, because you just want to get the rhythm down.

JJ: I think that’s what most people would say. Listen, Marvin Gaye, he was a drummer, and Stevie Wonder did some of his best work when he played all the instruments. Paul McCartney played drums on his first solo record. Ringo Starr is probably the most underrated drummer in show business. He was the first heavy metal rock drummer! He was banging it out!

CD: He was brilliant! I love Ringo and I love McCartney, and they’re still putting stuff out! 

JJ: That’s an inspiration to me. I’m 71, and those guys are like ten years older than me. There’s no rules! Go for it! When I did [Straight Up], I knew that we captured lightning in a bottle. I’m not trained to go in and just turn it on automatically. I just hope I’m having a good day today! I knew I knew we were in the middle of magic, and I’m so grateful that it’s on this record, and we get to share it. Man, it’s like, I can’t even believe it’s happening. It’s fantastic.

CD: So do you ever see yourself quitting or retiring from music? Or is it so in your blood that you’re gonna go out with a guitar in your hand?

JJ: I play guitar every day. I’ve already played for half an hour this morning. I’ve never looked back since I got my first electric guitar, and I play every day. 

It’s kind of a frightening question, Charlie! God forbid. I don’t even want to think about that.

CD: Every single musician I’ve ever spoken to has said the exact same thing. I think you find something that you love in life, and if you can do it every day, it’s the biggest blessing.

JJ: That’s the key to a happy life right there! It’s simple, but once you have that key in your hand, man, don’t lose it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.