Shotgun Jimmie – Still Jimmie

Shotgun Jimmie used to play in Shotgun and Jaybird. Everybody loved Shotgun and Jaybird because they had great songs, they were funny, they were sad, and they were wonderful. They were sloppy and drunk and at times totally transcendent. They had a drummer that could hardly play, and then after he left, they had one of the best drummers imaginable. Everybody who ever heard of Sackville, New Brunswick wanted to see them play.

After the band broke up Shotgun Jimmie made a record in his living room called The Onlys. Everybody loved it. He sang about getting up early in the morning, about writing songs, about good times and bad times and a mysterious “sparkle revolution”. He played a bunch of shows supported by a shifting group of some of the top musicians of our time: Construction and Destruction, Jesse Baird, Jay Baird, Bucky Buckler, Baby Eagle.

Soon, Jimmie started playing a bunch of shows with Welland, Ontario’s Attack in Black. The shows were different then what they’d been before. What was once ramshackle and sweet and funny, was now still somewhat ramshackle, was sweet, funny and also pretty rocking. That is to say it rocked. They blasted through the songs with urgency and purpose. Then Jimmie wrote a bunch of new songs and recorded them with Attack in Black in their basement studio. Jimmie calls this his serious record, and it is, in a way. but he codes his worry in rhyme and in tune. He makes jokes. He plays guitar solos. It’s wonderful. The songs are crunchy and catchy and unforgettable. There’s a shambling duet with Simone Schmidt of Toronto country bad One Hundred Dollars called “Quicksand.” There’s the questioning rock generation anthems of “Mind Crumb,” and “The Cost Of Doing Business.” There’s emotional laments: “Province to Province,” which sounds like one, and “Waist Deep In The Water,” which doesn’t. And there’s my favourite song: “Used Parts.” It’s a different sounding Jimmie, but it’s Still Jimmie.