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Jimmy Thackery, with his amazing guitar pyrotechnics, has been recognized by Downbeat and Guitar magazine as one of the foremost guitarists in the country. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1953, Jimmy was raised in Washington, D.C. His mother, a music major in college, started him on piano lessons, but Thackery was more attracted to the guitar. In high school he played in a band with Bonnie Raitt's brother David, who turned him on to Buddy Guy. A pivotal moment for the 17 year old Thackery was seeing Buddy perform at a small D.C. church, but the "moment that changed my life," as Thackery recalls it, occurred quite by accident one night when he wandered into a Jimi Hendrix show in D.C. and heard Hendrix cut loose on guitar. Besides Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix, Thackery cites Otis Rush and later (after he had played with them) Muddy Waters, James Cotton, and Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson as the strongest influences on his music. In 1972, Thackery hooked up with harmonica player Mark Wenner to form the Nighthawks, a group that was to become one of the hardest-working and most popular blues bands in the country. Starting in 1974, the group recorded over a dozen albums and toured the world. Jimmy was the heart, soul, and adrenaline of the Nighthawks sound during his fourteen year tenure with them, creating a distinctively raw, powerful guitar style and establishing a reputation as a spectacular soloist. Since leaving the Nighthawks in 1987 Thackery formed a six piece R&B band called The Assassins and in 1991 settled into his current power trio format and released the critically acclaimed album Empty Arms Motel in 1992. Displaying a mesmerizing, jaw-dropping technical mastery of the guitar, Thackery remains among the elite of blues/rock guitarists playing today.
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