Jimmy Thackery is the consummate road musician - a musician’s musician - with a wealth of experience who has established himself as a club and festival staple across the US.
Having served a fifteen year apprenticeship with the Nighthawks, Jimmy stepped out in 1987 with a view to developing his own songs and style. In the event it took him until 1992 via three albums with The Assassins and a decade long association fronting his band The Drivers, before the 2003 instrumental “Guitar” album served notice of Jimmy the solo artist.
Looking back, equally significantly was the 1994 “Trouble Man” album on which he really found his feet; teaming up like so many guitarists before him with intuitive Rock-Blues producer Jim Gaines. Jimmy finally seemed to nail down his own style, a guitar led, cutting edge blues-rock genre that owes as much to the influence of the late Roy Buchanan as the pithy vocal delivery and occasional guitar twang style of say Lonnie Mack.
All this is worth restating for a potential European Blues Rock market that is still in part oblivious to Jimmy’s road tested style. Happily with “Healin’ Ground”, Jimmy breaks new territory, with some fine new material that strikes a lovely balance between his role as a guitar maestro and that of a thoughtful song writer.
“Healin Ground” is a significant collaboration with Nashville based song writer/producer/musician Gary Nicholson (whose many credits include the Grammy award winning Contemporary Blues album “Nothing Personal” for Delbert McClinton) and is a much more focussed affair, delivering 11 songs that nicely act as a foil for Thackery’s subtle playing. As Jimmy himself explains, “the cadence of a lyric tends to suggest the way to go on the guitar”. All 11 tracks are full of subtle light and shade, and offer nuances of Rock, Blues Country and even 60’s retro guitar.
The opening “Let the Guitar Do The Work” is reminiscent of kindred spirit Mike Henderson’s “Lay Your Guitar Down”, while the following “Fender Bender” is an apt title for a delicious journey back into the days of The Ventures meets The Shadows” with a cutting edge.
If anything Jimmy’s vocals are possibly his weakest facet, but there is enough in his song writing armoury to use his voice to great effect, bringing some world weary phrasing to flesh out his lyrics.
But this is not a one dimensional album, as in between the crisp guitar attack, and the ghosts of Buchanan and Albert Collins Jimmy delivers wry humour and irony as on “Upside of Lonely”, some real feel as on the title track and a dash of Countrybilly on the second instrumental “Kickin’ Chicken”. There’s even room for a revamp of the Henry Mancini’s “A Shot In The Dark” (from “The Pink Panther”), on which Jimmy adds some lovely cool jazzy licks. And by the time of a closing romp through Muddy Water’s “Can’t Lose What You Never Had”, you have been treated to the full repertoire of Jimmy oeuvre. Like I said a musician’s musician who has delivered possibly his best yet album.
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