JD Simo - Simo The Band

A few months back while watching some Lexington Lab Band videos on youtube they did a series of Johnny Cash songs and had a guest guitar player named JD Simo. This guy played Johnny Cash songs like I'd never quite heard before. If Mr Cash were alive to witness JD playing his songs I think he would approve. In fact, if he were still with us he might try to hire JD to play on a new record with him. JD Simo is like the Eddie Van Halen of Nashville. But that's not all this young man has up his sleeve as a guitar player. He's a rocker and he's really into the blues and Jimi Hendrix and all the old great famous rock and blues based bands.This man is a virtuoso guitar player. Here's one with JD Simo covering a Johnny Cash song called Big River, with The Lexington Lab Band and part of The Big River Band.

According to his Wiki page: Simo grew up in Chicago.^[2] He began playing guitar at the age of five. By age 15, Simo had already formed a band and released a live EP recorded in Phoenix Arizona, which sold 5,000 copies.^[2] He quickly earned a strong local following in the Phoenix area, pleasing crowds of all ages with dynamic stage performances that showcased his guitar skills. He spent most of his teenage years touring, either in his own solo endeavors or in various other bands.

In the winter of 2006 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee where he established himself as the lead guitarist in the Don Kelley Band. This led to Simo's employment as an in-demand session musician. Simo continued to play in this capacity until 2011.

In the beginning of 2010, he joined bassist Frank Swart and drummer Adam Abrashoff to form the rock band SIMO. They spent much of 2011 on tour and released their debut album in November. They closed out the year with a homecoming show at The Basement in Nashville, the site of their first show. Sundazed Records released a vinyl single of Shake It/AoH off their debut album on January 25, 2013. SIMO was featured at several festivals including Mountain Jam and Bonnaroo in the summer of 2013.

Simo maintains an online blog, featuring videos of his playing style as well as information about vintage music equipment. In addition, Simo often films promotional videos for Carter Vintage Guitars in Nashville, TN.

This is what JD's band sounds like when you go to see them live. He just reeks of Jimi Hendrix in this video and it shows that chicken pickin' isn't the only thing Simo has up his talented sleeve. In fact JD said in an interview I watched with him in reference to his chicken pickin' .... "I can't do that" and "what I do is not technically chicken pickin'" ..... I'm not sure just exactly what he means by that because it sure sounds like chicken pickin; to me. But here he is in his element, this is what he likes to play. 

Did you get that Hendrix vibe? This dude blows my mind. Anyone who hold down a stage playing lead guitar and singing lead vocals like that is one talented son of a gun in my book. I've tried it, and I've been trying it for many years. I don't think I have it in me to do that, but that's okay. I'd rather watch someone else do it anyway. Anyone who knows what the pressure is like in a live performing situation would probably agree. You can watch JD's videos on his youtube channel and you can catch a lot of others just by putting JD Simo into the youtube search engine. 

 One big thing I have learned about playing music out live like that is you only get one shot at not fucking the whole song up. Nobody wants to see a band that has to start over a couple of times on a song. And nobody wants to hear you continue to butcher a song from start to finish.

People make mistakes .... that's a given in anything you do. What makes a good musician is one who can cover his own ass in a note or two and make it look like he meant to play it that way. Great musicians can cover the rest of the bands ass too if needed. One thing you NEVER want to do when playing a live show is to just crash and burn a song into complete silence. Its about the worst thing I can think of happening at a show where you're getting paid, Its embarrassing as hell. I've still got some redeeming to do at a place called Fat Jacks one of these days. I didn't crash the songs and I won't name anyone in particular to blame for it. There were five of us on that stage that night. Inexperience played the biggest factor in that incident. Luckily we were only opening for another act and using about 45 minutes to an hour to play while they got set up and ready. Luckily, we also had a lot of supporters in that crowd so nobody booed us at least. But I still felt like I had a score to settle when I left that place that night with my head hung low. It was a real bummer compared to the night before when I was playing on stage with JB and The Moonshine Band and sittin' on top of the world. 

One of these days, Fat Jacks ... one of these days!

Pedal Boards and More...

I've been looking at pedal boards for quite some time now. What the market is offering is either way over priced and or cheap crap. I'm not going to mention brand names here. I really don't like trashing other people's business' because that can come back to haunt you one of these days. Karma really is a bitch, and I'm convinced after 50 plus years of living that its got to be true. If you pay attention to things and keep your thoughts in your subconscious mind as much as possible you'll notice that any bad deeds you do to another human being (or animals) comes back right at you. Sometimes even tenfold it seems. It might take a little time, even a long time in some cases, but it will pay you back. That just seems to me to be how the laws of nature work out. Be kind to everyone and chances are they will return the kindness. Be a dick to someone and you might just get a black eye or even worse. People's lives have been totally ruined over something they did to someone. Its just not a cool thing to do. Not to sound all religious on you but I strongly agree with that bible quote, loosely paraphrased ... "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you". Unless you're just a sucker for punishment, 

Back a little over a year ago I was in very bad financial shape. I'm still not doing good by any means, but I'm usually able to pay the bills on time. Sometimes there's even a little left for food. I've come to the conclusion that I really need to find something I can do to make some kind of a modest extra income. Even twenty dollars here and there would be better than my current situation. 

Well, I couldn't afford a fancy pedal board at the time, so I started thinking of a cheap way to build one for myself. I wanted an affordable way to make one and possibly even sell a few at an affordable price after I get good enough at doing it. My first board was 14 inches long and held 3 common size pedals, like Boss Pedals for instance. The way I went about it, I wanted to make it as short and light as possible and small enough to fit my gear bag, which happens to be a Winchester pistol shooter case I found on the clearance isle of Wal-Mart I found one day for 10 or 12 bucks. It wasn't made to be a music gear bag but it turns out it make a damn good gear bag overall. And its a well made bag as well. I think they go for about 40 bucks when they're not on clearance but still worth it in my opinion. I'm pretty sure Winchester isn't going to give the go ahead to just anyone, and it had to be a good quality product before they allowed their trademark on it.

Just so happens that case fit my pedal board inside of it perfectly,  with plenty of room for other gear like patch cables, strings. picks, wall warts, and adapters. It was also perfect size for my Audix cab grabber mic holder. I highly recommend those too. Someone did their homework when they designed those cab grabbers. No more bulky mic stand to have to pack around just to mic your amp when you're out . You can get them at Guitar Center by clicking the link here, 

Tonight I just finished up making an 18 inch long board. I could do a few more thing to make it look more professional (and I will) but its for me to use and I don't care if there's a few minor flaws in it. I'm making practice runs at them and getting the learning curve down, There is cost involved in making these things but I think they will stack up to a lot of what's on the market, which is pretty much a thin piece of metal with velcro stuck to it if you're lucky. A 36 inch long by 1" wide strip of industrial velcro is going to cost you upwards of 8 dollars. The piece of metal these corporations are stamping the popular pedal boards out at at no telling how many units per day are pretty cheap to build. A few spot welds and some paint and velcro and its out the door. Truth be known they charge 79 - 100 dollars for something that may have cost them 10-20 dollars to make. I know, and I'm including overhead and employees and machinery to keep the wheels of corporate capitalism greased. But were does that leave us poor folk amateurs who can't afford to drop over a hundred dollars om a cheap pedal board?  Don't get me wrong, there are nice ones out there, but you're going to pay good money for one when you find it.

The bottom line is that I needed something durable and affordable for us poor folks. I had a lot of 1"x 6"  white pine lumber laying around so I decided to use it for something. I think it took me more time to come up with sketch than it did actually sawing the boards on a table saw and power miter saw. Once I knew what I wanted it was all a matter of cutting the pieces out and putting them together. I decided to go with Sedona Red wood stain by Minwax. Man, that is some pretty stain if you like reds. I've used that pedal board at countless gigs and its just as good now as when I started with it. Its nothing fancy by any means. I didn't try to hide what few screws I used on it. I used some 1/4" plywood for the bottom cover and it turned out nice for a throw together board. I used a One Spot AC adapter with a 5 piece jumper (the site shows a 7 jumper cable). My five jumper works for me with one left over in case I want to plug in my Dunlop classic 2 tone sunburst Wah pedal. Fortunately I haven't had a bit of trouble with my One Spot and the price sure beats those power modules they sell for well over a hundred dollars, some are closer to 200 dollars. They also have a newer model out that's pricier but not as much as those "bricks" being sold on the market.

This time around I decided to paint it flat black. After hitting it with some fine sandpaper I touched up the spots where any paint sanded off  with another coat of flat black. When that was good and dry I lightly went over it with a brown Scotchbrite  pad made by by 3M. I got it smoothed out pretty well and hit it with a coat of satin finish clear coat, also made by Minwax. I bought a 36" roll of industrial strength  velcro made by Velcro USA INC. in Manchester, New Hampshire. You can check them out at Velcro.com and check out all of their products. The self stick adhesive on this stuff is plenty strong and easily does the job. They also make some nice cable ties I like to use for all my cables. I think you can get a 6 pack of those at Wal-Mart for around 3 or 4 dollars. Each one is different colored too so you can use them to organize different types of cables.

Since I've dug through numerous pictures, trying to find one of my first pedal board, I've decided that pictures will have to wait until another time. When I get a chance to take some decent quality photos of them and post them here. If you have access to a table saw and a miter saw you can make these all day long yourself. For those that are not too good with woodworking I could build one for you and paint or stain it in any color you'd like. I just picked up some Ebony wood stain and I'm going to give it a try as well. I plan on making at least a few more of these to let some friends borrow for a while. Maybe they'll get me some orders for some custom pedal boards. I'm a pretty honest guy when it comes to doing business with folks, so truth be known I'll be lucky to break even on them. Minimum wage wouldn't be so bad. Its something I can tinker with when I'm feeling up to it. My back is pretty messed up with Harrington Rods and I'm in chronic pain most of the time. But every now and then I get a good day and I'm able to accomplish a little something. I take a LOT of breaks when I'm messing around doing wood work. I just can't deal with standing in one place very long and bending forward is a real buzz kill too. It sucks when your doctor tells you to avoid bending, squatting, and lifting more than ten pounds at all cost, ever again. I see why he told me that too. I really pay dearly when I overdue things. Its something I'm still working on training myself at after 6 years and counting.

What can I say though? I've always been an ambitious type of guy. I worked hard all my life doing various jobs that aren't easy on your back, much less the whole body. I always enjoyed working though. I'm somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to machinist work. I did that for about 25 years plus. Carpenters don't like me much as a saw man either. I tend to cut the boards to whatever length they tell me. And I mean within 1/64" or closer. I found out quickly that carpenters don't deal with tolerances like we do in the machine shop/tool and die making where we go by hundreds of thousandths of an inch. The last carpenter I worked for finally figured me out and started telling me measurements and saying "short" or "long" when he did it. From there on out we had a system and did pretty good accurate work for people. I was just getting it down good when a pretty big machine shop called and offered me a job. I tested for the job and beat over 75 other applicants for it. They called me back on my last day of carpenter work job (on my way to work) and wanted me there the following Monday morning. My carpenter boss was happy for me that I had finally found a good paying job with benefits. He was so happy for me, he told us all to knock off at noon and call it a day. He couldn't afford to pay very well and was doing work for his mother, the real estate agent, and everything had to be cheap. She wanted us to take shortcuts which I didn't like, My last day there was Friday July 24th 2009. I never made it to the new machine shop job on Monday. I wrecked my Harley that Friday night and woke up from a coma about a month later in August. That whole thing changed my life drastically and 6 years later I'm still trying to get over it. For anyone who's never heard of Harrington Rods take a look at the picture below. Its not my actual x-ray but its pretty close to what I have, One of my vertebrates had to be taken out in tiny pieces.  It turned out pretty crooked, but at least I can still walk. No running or ladder climbing though. If I try to run I instantly fall face first into the ground. And if I try to climb a ladder, even a 3 step ladder I loose my balance. Its one of the common after effects of having that surgery. I've also got "trigger finger" in both of my middle fingers. They lock closed when I'm  asleep mostly and I have to pry them open when I wake up. There's lots of other health problems going on with me, but those are the major ones. My neck still hurts sometimes from being broken and my right shoulder blade too, but the hospital either couldn't or wouldn't do anything to fix that. I didn't have health insurance at the time and my motorcycle policy was eaten up and then some with just the air life flight. 

Anyway, I'm getting way off topic here now so I guess its time to recheck my spelling and punctuation as best I can and call it a night...... I've got a really hot project in the works right now too, but so far its been nothing but figuring cost for materials. I want to make a good product with good quality parts/hardware as cheap as I can and pass on the savings to people who might want to give one a spin. I won't go into details right now except to say it has something to do with guitars. Stay tuned and I'll fill you all in when the time is right.

Until then, may everyone have a great day/week/month/and life ..... Life is too short to sweat the small stuff we can't control anyway. If I can deal with a back like that, you can too. With lots of good pain pills of course lol.  Anyway .....Peace out brothers and sisters, and be nice to each other. 

  ~ Its All About The Music ~ .........


Oh, one last thing. I'd like to share a video of one helluva young and up and coming blues lady. Not only can she sing like an angel, she can sure play blues guitar, and she's got some of the nicest looking legs a man could ever hope to see. Seriously, check her out and buy her albums if you like her. She works very hard at what she does, and it shows. This little lady deserves fame and fortune a lot more than some of the crap I see selling records out there these days. This particular video has Paul Nelson sitting in on guitar. He's played for some pretty famous acts over the years and has solo work done as well. Check 'em out doing this Rolling Stones cover of Sympathy For The Devil. Paul Nelson really shines bright on this video. He worked with Johnny Winter a lot during his career and shows no signs of slowing down. Click here for his Paul Nelson's site.

Also, if you're a big time blues fan such as me, check out Blues Broad's Youtube channel for a lot more high quality videos . Subscribe to her channel so you never miss a great blues act when they come to her turf. She's got it down when it comes to HD videos and editing skills ....You won't be sorry you checked her channel out.......... Peace!