Jim Campilongo,
NYC Telemaster
When you’re a serious fan of the combination
of Fender Telecaster and Blackface Princeton
Reverb amp, there is no way around Jim
Campilongo, NYC-based Telemaster with no
less than eight critically acclaimed instrumental CDs to his name. His latest masterpiece,
Orange will be released in February 2010. His
playing style is more than unique, revealing
a range that extends from seductive country-swing to atmospheric jazz and well beyond.
Besides his solo career, he’s playing in the
Little Willies with Norah Jones and has an
ongoing and celebrated residency at NYC’s
Living Room. He toured Europe last year
with Martha Wainwright, has a Gold Record
representing his collaboration with Cake,
and was recently involved in designing the
Fender Custom Shop Campilongo Signature
Telecaster, to be released at the winter
NAMM 2010 in Anaheim, CA. He also toured
Finland and Italy this past summer. In between
all his activities, he took some time to talk with
me about music, gear and life in NYC.
What got you into music? Can you give
us a short musical biography?
I started to play on my grandma’s piano when
I was a kid every time I’d visit her, but I didn’t
start to play guitar until I was 14 years old. I
started seriously studying guitar in the mid-
‘70s in San Francisco with Bunnie Gregoire,
who opened up my mind to all kinds of music
and styles. I’m really proud and thankful that
he was my teacher. During this time, I was
given the 1959 toploader Telecaster by an
appreciative student in exchange for successful bass lessons, and that changed everything
for me. It was like it told me to get serious.
Soon after that, I formed the hugely popular
Ten Gallon Cats, which featured pedal steel
guitar in combination with my country/jazz
vocabulary. We recorded three CDs. In parallel, I also worked on my solo career, and in
1998 I left the Ten Gallon Cats to fully concentrate on my solo thing. In 2002 I moved to
NYC and formed the Jim Campilongo Electric
Trio, with which I toured Europe and recorded some CDs. Since 2004 we’ve been playing
the Living Room in NYC every Monday night.
Do you play any other instruments?
I’m a guitarist down to the bone. I tried some
steel guitar playing, but I want to do everything I do perfectly, so I decided to fully concentrate on guitar playing.
Sure, after playing guitar for six months, I
started to back up a bluegrass band for $5
each gig. I was 14-and-a-half years old and
strummed some chords on an acoustic guitar.
Who are your most important
musical influences?
Photo by Arthi Krishnaswami
It’s definitely the blues, and players like Blind
Lemon Jefferson, Django Reinhardt and John
Coltrane, but I’m also into the music of Roy
Nichols, Merle Haggard, Roy Buchanan and,
of course, Chet Atkins. Some other private
heroes of mine are Jimmy Bryant and Speedy
West—their stuff is really wild but very inspiring for me as well.
You’re well known as a humorous person,
always in a good mood—what’s the funniest thing that ever happened to you while
playing music?
Are you serious, only one? I know 2000 funny
stories. My favorite story is the one I call the
“Cocaine Story.” It happened in the ‘80s
when I was 25 years old. The band I was play-
ing with had a gig in a club, and suddenly the
drug squad stormed the club. They all had
those black SWAT clothes on and their guns
at the ready, shouting at us and the guests
to not move and to put our hands up. They
arrested approximately 75 percent of the
people in the club because of drug abuse
and drug dealing. Naturally, we stopped in
the middle of the song while the drug squad
stormed the club, and we stood motionless
on the stage with our hands up, my guitar
hanging around me. After arresting most of
the people in the club, one of the policeman
came up to me, and he pressed the muzzle of
his gun against my forehead ... waited some
seconds and then he shouted, “Boooom!”
and then asked us to go on playing. And I tell
you what, the first song we started to play
was “Cocaine.” I couldn’t really laugh about
it at that moment, but later on it was really
funny. Yeah, that’s my “Cocaine Story.”
Wow, that is indeed a wild story. How long
do you practice every day, and how do
you practice?
I play a minimum of one hour each day, seven
days a week. I think it’s not important how
long and how you practice. It’s much more
important to do it intensively and to concentrate 100 percent on the things you’re doing.
Do you have some general things, tips,
etc., that you’d like to share with our readers about practicing and developing a personal style and unique tone?
Yes, sure. Stop playing a Blues in E major
every day… you all already know how to do
this. Try new and innovative things, things
that inspire you. Make goals. It’s important
and cool to master different scales and all
kinds of arpeggios, but don’t forget to use
all this stuff for your own music. It’s useless
to learn all this if you don’t use it in your own
musical context.
Is there anyone you’d like to have the
chance to play, record or jam with?
That’s a good question! I think it would be
Miles Davis, John Lennon and, of course,
Billie Holiday.
You’re also playing with Norah Jones, right?
Yes, I’m playing in the Little Willies with
Norah. She’s a great person to work with; I
like her very much. She was one of my first
contacts here in NYC, and she also helped
me to get the flat I’m living in now here in
Brooklyn. When playing together, she always
lets me do what I want to, no matter how
