Steve Kimrock: Channeling the Dead
http://www.mercurynews.com/music/ci_13962000
By Andrew Gilbert
12/10/2009
In the extended family of musicians orbiting Grateful Dead, no player
has circled the group more closely without ever actually joining the
tie-dyed cast than guitarist Steve Kimock.
A veteran of more than half a dozen Dead side projects and bands led
by former members and associates (most recently Bill Kreutzmann and
Mickey Hart's Rhythm Devils and Bob Weir's RatDog), Kimock made
himself indispensable with a tone that evoked Jerry Garcia while
retaining a distinct identity. Whether the sound brought him the work
or the work forged his sound, Kimock quickly found himself in the
land of the Dead when he moved from rural Pennsylvania to San
Francisco in the mid-1970s.
"You can't get past the physical proximity thing," says Kimock, 54,
who moved back to Pennsylvania several years ago to be close to
family. "I wouldn't have hooked up with any of those folks if I
remained on the East Coast. When I showed up I was 21 or something. I
was ripe for being molded."
Despite his extended Grateful sojourn, Kimock isn't merely an
appendage of the Dead. He's carved out a separate identity with a
series of influential bands, including the mid-'80s psychedelic
outfit Zero and the proto-jam band KVHW. His last group, powered by
the jazz-tinged rhythm section of bass virtuoso Alphonso Johnson and
drummer Rodney Holmes, pushed the guitarist into new territory.
After several years working as a hired gun and itinerant
collaborator, Kimock returns to the Bay Area for performances tonight
at Moe's Alley in Santa Cruz and Friday at the Fillmore in San
Francisco with his latest combo, Crazy Engine, a quartet that draws
on the guitarist's Grateful Dead past while also breaking new ground.
The band features his son, drummer John Morgan Kimock;
singer-songwriter Trevor Exter, a skilled cellist who took up the
electric bass for Crazy Engine; and keyboardist Melvin Seals, best
known for his 15-year run with the Jerry Garcia Band (re-christened
as JGB). Seals has led the band since Garcia's 1995 death, and
performs with the still potent group at Don Quixote's on Jan. 15.
For Kimock, teaming up with Seals made perfect sense. While the
guitarist coaxes a range of sounds out of his instrument, evoking a
Clavinet or a Fender Rhodes, Seals typically sticks to the roar and
purr of the Hammond B3 organ, an essential staple in gospel, Muscle
Shoals soul and soul jazz.
"If you want a guitar to sound good on stage, get a Hammond," Kimock
says. "It can sound totally church, or graveyard spooky. Melvin is a
master. His sound is huge and supportive and physical."
As a player always on the lookout for new musical connections and
challenges, Kimock seems an unlikely figure to get cast as a Jerry
Garcia acolyte. He's worn the comparison uneasily since 1979, when
Keith and Donna Godchaux, newly departed from the Dead, hired him for
their Heart of Gold Band.
Kimock became the go-to guitarist for a series of Dead-centric
projects, including guitarist Bob Weir's Kingfish, organist Merl
Saunders' Rainforest Band, keyboardist Vince Welnick's Missing Man
Formation and the post-Dead bands Phil Lesh and Friends, and the
Other Ones, a group launched by Weir, Lesh and Hart.
As a teenager, Kimock had worshiped Duane Allman and Jimi Hendrix,
though by the time he moved to San Francisco, he had become a huge
fan of jazz masters such as Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt and John
McLaughlin. While initially skeptical about the scene around the
Dead, he found a way into the band's music through its embrace of
harmonically sophisticated improvisation.
"Early on when I got introduced to the Dead, I shied away," Kimock
says. "The people who were into it were too high for me to deal with.
"But eventually, listening to the album 'Europe '72,' I heard some of
the improvisation on there, and thought, 'Good grief, that's some
cool guitar playing.' Garcia was playing with a chromaticism that
didn't seem that far from what I enjoyed about Django."
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