Jimmy McIntosh
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"Jimmy is a wicked guitar player!"-- Ronnie Wood
"Beautiful work, I dig it!"-- Mike Stern
"You're Killing!"-- John Scofield
A working professional over the past 25 years with an impressive list of credentials as a sideman, Las Vegas based guitarist Jimmy McIntosh finally steps out as a solo artist in his own right on Orleans To London, his long overdue debut as a leader.
Jimmy McIntosh comes to Strokeland as guitarist for The Lon Bronson All-Stars, a long-time Strokeland Records favorite and brings a whole new funk vibe straight from the Cresent City to the East Bay.
A hard-grooving, swaggering collection of N’awlins flavored funk, slamming rock and searing blues tunes, this formidable collection features such heavyweights as Art, Cyril and Ivan Neville of the Neville Brothers along with Nevilles drummer “Mean” Willie Green, Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood and a legendary guitar hero whose initials are "JB", who makes an uncredited mystery guest appearance on three tracks (listed under the sobriquet “Hot Rod”).
McIntosh more than holds his own in such illustrious company, unleashing potent licks that run the gamut of six-string influences from bluesmen B.B. King and Albert Collins to rockers Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Jimi Hendrix to a whole host of jazz guitar greats. And while McIntosh has plied his trade over the years for innumerable shows and studio work as a first-call guitarist on the Vegas scene, he reserves his personal playing for this auspicious showcase.
“As a working pro I do whatever it takes to make the gig work and keep the leader happy,” says McIntosh. “But on my own, I do my own thing. So there’s music I play for a living, which is great. But then there’s more creative music that I listen to and play for my own enjoyment.” He cites the Stones, the Nevilles, Miles Davis, reggae and guitar greats Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Mike Stern as personal favorites.
“G-Spot,” a slow-grooving N’awlins flavored funk throwdown, features some particularly nasty, toe-curling guitar work from guest star “Hot Rod” while the mysterious, reggae flavored “Woody,” named for McIntosh’s late father, features some of Jimmy’s most luminous, lyrical and harmonically adventurous playing on the record. “A.K.A. Papa Funk” (Jimmy’s ode to the great Art Neville) is more N’awlins styled jamming, this time with a harder edge and featuring some incendiary Hendrixian six-string work from McIntosh.
Wood joins in on an extended instrumental cover of The Stones’ “Slave,” which is powered by Green’s slamming backbeat and features some urgent tenor sax work by Phil Wigfall. McIntosh breaks out the wah-wah pedal and serves up some sizzling fusion licks on the aggressive “Fifty Five,” his personal tribute to one of his own favorite guitarists, Mike Stern. “Hot Rod” returns for a captivating solo on the slow blues “Rogent,” named for a childhood friend of Jimmy’s. McIntosh adds his own six-string fire to the bluesy proceedings here, exchanging pyrotechnic licks with the remarkable “Hot Rod.”
Jimmy soars into the stratosphere on a cathartic reading of Jimi Hendrix’s turbulent landmark, “Third Stone From The Sun,” which also features scorching contributions from drummer Green and bassist Westmoreland. And the collection closes on a poignant note with a sparse solo acoustic rendition of “The Minstral Boy,” an old Irish folk tune that Jimmy performed at his father’s memorial service in November of 2001. “It’s a couple hundred years old and was played at Winston Churchill’s funeral,” he explains. “I worked up that arrangement and it came out nice. My brother had always wanted me to record a copy for him to have, so I put this on here as a kind of surprise for him.”
Recorded partly in the Crescent (at Piety Street Recording) and partly in London (at Ronnie Wood’s home studio), the aptly-named Orleans To London may not be a cross-section of all the styles that McIntosh has been called on to play in his capacity as first-call guitarist on the Las Vegas show and studio scene, but it fully represents the depth of his own musical interests as both a player and lifelong listener of music.
Jimmy first got turned on to the Neville Brothers from a 1981 Rolling Stone interview with Keith Richards, in which the Stones’ guitarist mentioned Fiyo on the Bayou as being one of the best albums of the year. “I hunted that record down, brought it home and fell in love with it,” he recalls. “And then I purchased everything I could find by the Meters as well. I met Art and Willie Green when they started coming to Las Vegas around 1994, and we’ve been really good friends ever since.”
Through Art Neville, Jimmy met Ronnie Wood in 1999. More recently, Wood heard about Jimmy’s project and expressed an interest in playing on it. So McIntosh and his wife Carol flew to England with basic tracks he had recorded with the Nevilles and company and had Wood overdub guitar parts. “Initially, Ronnie was only supposed to play on ‘It Was a Virus’,” says Jimmy, “but he ended up playing on five tracks. I always felt that Ronnie was one of the most underrated musicians, and boy was I right. His musicality was just amazing. Everything he did was first take and just brilliant. He’s a great improviser.”
During the recording of “It Was a Virus,” Wood explained to Jimmy that a friend of his might drop by for the session. “Ronnie said 'I told Jeff Beck about your record with the Nevilles and he might drop by and want to play on it.' Well, I didn’t even react to that because I was in shock when he said it.” Beck did indeed show up and was so inspired by what he heard that he ended up applying his six-string magic to “G-Spot,” “Rogent” and the vocal number “It Was a Virus” before the night was over. “This was like I died and went to heaven,” says Jimmy. “The only way it could’ve gotten any better is if Mick and Keith would’ve stopped by.”
Maybe that’ll happen on his followup CD. But for now, McIntosh is still immersed in the afterglow of his serendipitous debut as a leader, Orleans To London. It’s a project that should have immense appeal to funk fans and fretboard aficionados alike. It stands as the crowning achievement to date in Jimmy’s ongoing career as a working guitarist.