Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers
House Of Blues
29 June 1998

Jimmy Thackery & The Drivers

Jimmy Thackery is one of the best traditional blues/rock players out there. Looking at the number of people who showed up Monday night at the house of blues, I must not be alone in this opinion. There was the largest Monday night crowd that I have seen to date.

Thackery gives a bare bones show, with no fancy clothes, no fancy sets, and no fancy stage performance. What he does give is a solid two-hour set of musicianship. Thackery, who played with the Washington DC based band "The Nighthawks" for ten years is known for using just about every technique known to guitar players, from tasty blues licks to Hendrix inspired bombastic guitar dive bombing, while visiting plenty of points in-between. His backup band "The Drivers" has been with him for a long time and provides the solid base upon which he can work. Thackery and his band are touring supporting their latest release "Shifting Gears" released on "Blind Pig" records.

He gets really thick tone from his beat up Fender Stratocaster which he played the whole set, almost always getting his sound from a pretty basic dual Fender "Twin Reverb" amp setup and the occasional stomp box. Asking the crowd what they wanted, "blues or rock and roll", the crowd responded with "everything". Thackery proceeded to go into blues and worked his way through to some of his original songs, ending up with "Red House", and finished with an encore of "Apache" and "Wild Thing" which the crowd sang along. Along the line the dance floor filled up with people, not necessarily dancing but really getting into the music. All in all it was an excellent show.

Murf recommends that you check Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers out when they are in town. If you want to check out Jimmy Thackery on CD, Murf recommends "Wild Night Out", which is a live show that accurately reflects his performance. [MORE PHOTOS BELOW]

Bottom Line: Great Music, Great Guitar Playing, good crowd…I give it a 9.5