Who Is Steve Kimock And Why Does He Keep Blowing My Mind???
photo courtesy of RitaZero
Steve Kimock is my current favorite improvising musician. He is a passionate, lyrical, uncategorizable guitar improviser who is little-known outside of a small group of devoted fans. This is despite the fact that he is the only person to have played with all currently surviving members of the Grateful Dead in a number of configurations since the death of Jerry Garcia. While his sound and phrasing at times bears a superficial resemblance to that of Garcia, he mixes rock, funk, jazz, blues, country, and a decided Eastern tinge into a heady brew all his own. He is also one of the few guitarists to master standard, slide, and lap steel guitars.
I have been a fan of guitar improvisers for over 20 years and to my ears Kimock should be mentioned in the same breath as such well-known guitarists as Pat Metheny, John Scofield, and Bill Frisell. Kimock's current band is the Steve Kimock Band (SKB). Current information can be found by going to the Steve Kimock official website.
Kimock still occasionally plays with Zero (website currently down), a band he co-founded with the late John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service and Greg Anton back in 1984.
He played on both the 1998 and 2000 tours of The Other Ones and had a fantastic 6-month run with Phil Lesh and Friends in the middle of 1999. He also was an original member of final Dead keyboardist Vince Welnick's band Missing Man Formation and a collaborator with Bruce Hornsby, who was a not-quite-official GD bandmember in the early 90's.
My favorite Kimock band was KVHW, which existed in 1998-99 which unfortunately broke up due to the personal problems of one of the bandmembers.
Robert from Oregon has a wonderful site of Kimock resources called Kimockzone.
There is an active email list for Kimock fans. Information on signup and readable archives can be found here.
Steve Kimock freely allows the taping of his performances. My list of Kimock performances on CD will be coming soon.