Andy Timmons Interview

If there ever was a “guitarist’s guitarist”, it would be Andy Timmons. The Danger Danger shredder turned solo artist has spent nearly 30 years creating instrumental rock that’s both innovative and exciting (most releases in this category are one or the other, seldom both). On his latest album, Electric Truth, Timmons touches on facets of blues, jazz, funk, and more; never losing sight of his musical identity along the way. Call it zealous, call it adventurous, call it larger than life: All that and more would be accurate descriptors for this six string savant. We sat down with Timmons to discuss his creative inspirations, ambitions for the future, and that time he accidentally upstaged Steve Vai.

Greetings Andy and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?

Andy Timmons: Joe, I’m doing great! *points to my UFO Strangers in the Night shirt* Nice shirt by the way! *starts playing the lead riff to “Too Hot to Handle”* That right there was a big part of cutting my teeth in rock n’ roll.

UFO is a huge deal for us Chicagoans!

AT: I grew up not far from you in Evansville, Indiana, at the other end of the Illinois-Indiana border. I’m a Hoosier. Don’t hold it against me *laughs*.

Of course not. As someone who grew up playing “Deliver Us” and “Redemption” on Rock Band 3, this is a treat to be talking with you right now. Have you ever encountered younger fans who discovered you through that game?

AT: Yeah, more back when that was a bit more current. I would hear players were getting into that and “Groove or Die”, stuff like that. I would see people gaming on that. It’s a huge honor, but I also realized that it was turning on that generation of young players onto music they wouldn’t have necessarily heard. My son who’s now 18 was hearing “Barracuda” and all these great rock tunes from that, and from a lot of memes too I guess *laughs*. “How do you know that song?” “It’s a meme!” Of course. Hey man, however it gets out there, it’s an honor.

A couple months ago I spoke Steve Vai about this. He said between Halo 2, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band that it opened the floodgates to a whole new generation of fans.

AT: That’s awesome man. I’m sure him on a much higher level on myself *laughs*. That’s beautiful man. I’m happy to be in the conversation!

Speaking of beautiful things, this month saw the release of your latest album, Electric Truth, which is perhaps your most stylistically diverse album yet. What inspired you to step outside the instrumental hard rock realm that we generally know you for?

AT: To let people know, out of the 9 tracks, 7 are instrumental and then there’s the 2 vocals. Whether I’m doing instrumental or vocal, I just love going wherever the muse or inspiration takes me. Some of the record was really inspired by having met this great guitar player Josh Smith, who initially I was just seeing on YouTube. I just became a fan. I reached out to him, got his number, said “Hey”, and we became friends. He invited me out to his studio to record. I was like, “Yeah, let’s do it!” I love playing with my band, which tends to be more heavy rock instrumental and that type of thing. Josh’s thing is more steeped in the blues, earthy and funky stuff. I’ve always loved the sound of his band. He has this really great feel of the rhythm sections he would choose.

That was just what we arrived upon. It was, “OK Josh, you produce. I’m just gonna come out. I’ll be the artist, but you pick the band. We’ll write some tunes and see what happens.” The whole thing was really organic. I really didn’t have in mind, “Hey, let’s do something diverse.” It was, “Let’s write some songs and do them the best we can.” Those are the 9 tunes that turned out the best, so we put them out. For me to do a song like “E.W.F.”, which is very much a thinly veiled reference to Earth, Wind & Fire. It’s funky. I love that guitar player Al McKay, who played on all those tracks. I’ve loved that music my whole life. I’ve played a good amount of funk guitar, but it was in cover bands and clubs over the years. It’s a style that I love to play, so why not?

To me, it’s all music and it’s all guitar. Whether it’s metal or bossa nova, I love all of it. It truly is that kind of world for me, but rock is my foundation. It’s my blood. It’s UFO and KISS and Rush. It’s all of the 70s thing. That’s where you get to a track at the end of the record like “Take Me with You”. It’s kind of a Pink Floyd-ish thing. Then the next thing you know, it’s all out Foo Fighters *laughs*. That’s always gonna be in my music, but I love everything in between.

It’s funny because when I got the promo, it was prefaced by saying, “This isn’t a metal record. This isn’t a hard rock record.” Which didn’t matter to me because I’ve always been a fan of your work and would check out anything you do anyways. This is a record where it shouldn’t matter whether you’re a metalhead or a hard rocker or a blues man or whatever. If you’re a fan of great music and great performances, this should be a given. I was very impressed.

AT: That means a lot man. Kudos to you for having that kind of wider palette. My son right now, he got into guitar playing about 2 years ago. At 16, he hadn’t really cared about guitar at all. He’s in a house full of guitars and here’s me playing all the time. But one day I heard Pantera and Slipknot coming out of his bedroom. I thought, “This is new!” Then, all of a sudden, he wants to pick up guitar. “Alright buddy!” I teach him some. I got him a great teacher. I got him Scott Stine an incredible metal player at The Guitar Sanctuary here in McKinney, Texas. Right now it’s all Megadeth and Metallica, but I know one day he’ll start to branch out. He’ll want to get into other things.

I love that passion for this particular genre. That’s the way I was too. I swore when I was 15, 16 that I’d never be in a band with a keyboard player, no way *laughs*. Two years later, I’m in a band with a keyboard player. Of course you love that. There’s so much beauty out there. It’s whenever you’re ready for it. Some people may never wanna get outside of metal and that’s awesome too. I have loads of respect for whatever the passion is. That’s the beauty of it.

Who plays with you on this record and how did they contribute to its overall creation?

AT: The rhythm section is guys that Josh Smith always works with. It’s Lemar Carter on drums, who’s now playing with Joe Bonamassa. Travis Carlton on bass, he’s Larry Carlton’s son, one of my favorite guitar players of all time. He plays with his dad, Robben Ford. This guy’s a heavy player. Deron Johnson did all the keyboards. He’s a great writer and orchestrater, but he played with Miles Davis later in his career. There’s a bit of a resume with each of these cats. They couldn’t have been easier to work with. I felt comfortable coming in because Josh, being the level of a player he is, he’s not gonna bring anybody in that’s not top notch. But then there’s matter of chemistry.

Just because people are great players doesn’t mean they’re necessarily empathetic players. I know some really great guitar players that do their thing really great, but when it comes time to really fitting into certain situations, they may not have the ears, or what I call the antenna or radar, to know what to play and what not to play. These guys were the highest level of the kind of player that I loved to play with. Everybody’s listening to each other. We tracked everything live in the room together, bass, guitar, drums, and keyboards. That first song, “E.W.F.”, is a live take. That’s us just playing live together. I think Lemar overdubbed some cowbell and Deron put on an additional keyboard part, but there’s a feel that happens and you can hear the interplay and the way the band moves together.

That can’t happen when people are just focusing on a chart and making sure their part is perfect. It’s the consideration of everything going on around them and it’s like some people live their lives. Some people walk down the sidewalk and you better get out of the way because they’re not gonna move. They’re gonna go where they’re going. Or there’s the person that’ll be considerate and recognize that whatever they do is gonna effect everybody else around them. I’ve recognized later in life that that’s me. I’m uber aware of whatever I play is gonna effect, or out in the world, whatever I do is gonna effect everything else around me. I’m just hypersensitive in that way. I think certainly musically that’s beneficial, especially in a band where you really want that organic feel of what can only happen when humans are in a room together.

There really is that tightknit unit feel throughout this album. One song in particular where it really stood out to me is “Shuggie”. That’s a total jam. How did it come about?

AT: Thank you! I wrote that on a Telecaster. When I started thinking about writing tunes for a record with Josh, he plays a Tele style guitar quite a bit. He’s got his own signature Ibanez version of a Tele now. I had this riff idea, but also, the name “Shuggie” is a reference to Shuggie Otis. The quick history there is there was a hit song in 1978 or 1979 called “Strawberry Letter 23” by a band called The Brothers Johnson. They had several hits, kind of an R&B/funk rock band. This was a big radio hit. The coolest thing about it was this double guitar harmony. It’s hard for me to replicate in a solo performance, but it was my favorite part of the tune.

I wrote a tune that incorporated the basic idea of that guitar harmony, but it turns out the song was originally written by this guy Shuggie Otis. He had recorded the exact version of it 5 years earlier on his solo record where he was playing all the instruments, kind of an early version of (Todd) Rundgren or Prince record. These brilliant guys writing, producing, playing all the instruments, making these solo records, everything. He started off as a guitar prodigy. His dad is Johnny Otis, the great blues artist. Shuggie had a record deal on Epic when he was 15 playing blues guitar. He had the blues thing, but then he went into this really creative, psychedelic, R&B direction. It’s hard to explain.

I didn’t know about it until the 2000s when some of these records got rereleased. I went, “Oh my God! That hit song I love is just a direct copy. They took verbatim what he had done.” So I got into this guy and was just a big fan. It was a nice way to pay tribute to Shuggie. It’s probably my favorite solo of mine on the record, just because it gets into this moody chord progression. There’s some really nice palettes to play some cool melodies over. Then the band sounds amazing. They’re just so great. I’m glad you dig that one man!

After just seeing you play that sequence, I must ask. Are you one of those guitarists on a never-ending quest to find all of those bizarre and forbidden chords like say Allan Holdsworth?

AT: I’m a huge Allan Holdsworth fan. I don’t get that deep into abstract for abstract purpose. I’m not saying that’s what Allan was doing, but I hear players influenced by him that kind of seem that’s the motive. I just go for the beauty that I wanna hear. That’s very much a product of everything that I’ve loved. The music that I tend to gravitate towards isn’t as complex as some of Allan’s. Again, I love his compositions. I love his playing. It’s beyond me in so many ways, but I tend to go for things that are a bit more direct and more inclusive than exclusive.

There are certain types of jazz and certain parts of fusion that can be incredibly creative, genius level stuff, but it may not appeal to a wide range of people. For those that are cerebrally connected to that style, it’ll really connect. I connect with it on some levels, but I can only be who I am, and that’s more steeped in Beatles and 70s rock than it is really advanced fusion. You occasionally might hear some chords that head in that direction, but it’s only to support whatever melodies I’m wanting to hear.

The other performances I’d like to discuss are the two songs with vocals, “Say What You Want” and “Take Me With You”, provided by Corry Pertile. How did you discover him?

AT: There’s a guitar player here in McKinney, a friend of mine named Nick Knirk. I met Corry through Nick in that they were doing some duo gigs. They actually did a record together. I just fell in love with the guy’s voice. He’s a really, really good songwriter and singer. I had these two vocal tunes and I had half the lyrics for the tunes, but I thought, “Man, I’d love to hear those vocals on these tunes.” I can sing to a degree and I like to sing on some of my records, but I heard his voice and thought, “Yeah, this is the guy.”

He came in, helped me finish the lyrics, and then sang on the tunes. We actually just performed them. We did a CD release show last Friday, April 15. He’s just got a beautiful presence man. He’s just a really great, sweet guy that everybody loves. He’s one of those cats that lights up the room. He’s got that raspy, velvety thing to his voice. I’m glad you dig those man!

Yeah I heard him and thought he sounded like prime Rod Stewart meets David Coverdale. Total soul! It really elevated those songs to the next level.

AT: Right on! I agree. I’m so proud to have him on the record. I’m sure we’ll do some more in the future.

There’s an underlying blues influence on this album, specifically on tracks like “When Words Fails” and “Grace”. Who are some of your favorite blues players and how did the genre shape your playing style?

AT: It’s interesting because I didn’t listen to traditional blues until much later. I hadn’t heard Albert King until Stevie Ray (Vaughan) passed. I heard that one bend from Albert King and I went, “Oh my God, I need to keep going back.” I heard B.B. King growing up. He was pretty popular with white kids in the late 60s and early 70s, so my older brothers. He was really a crossover and helped the blues a lot. Guys from that certain area that I love in addition are Freddie King and Albert Collins. But I was getting the blues from the rock players. Steve Lukather is a big influence on me, as is Larry Carlton and Robben Ford. Some of these guys who were influenced by the original African American artists assimilated it into their rock stuff or jazz fusion stuff.

The blues is the foundation for rock n’ roll to start with anyway. It’s all coming from that. When you say specifically blues guitar, I get a lot of it from Hendrix. He was, at his foundation, certainly an R&B and blues player. It’s coming from those guys specifically, but Robben Ford and Larry Carlton, their approach to the blues took traditional things that we would’ve heard from B.B. and Albert and Freddie, but also added a bit of a jazz voice leading, which in a bit more of an expressive way, can get into the harmony even a little deeper. All traditional guys address the harmony, certainly, but these guys were getting a bit more into the jazz voice leading and incorporating more of that Charlie Parker and Dizzy (Gillespie) thing into the blues, which the traditional blues guys weren’t doing yet.

They did a nice hybrid and that kind of thing appealed to me because when I first started taking lessons, I was 16. My guitar teacher was a real good blues and jazz player. He was turning me onto jazz. When I heard the rock guys that were playing a bit of jazz, like Mike Stern, it was like, “OK, now I’m hearing Hendrix, but playing these be bop licks. This is cool!” That was just broadening my ear and wanting to have a little bit of everything. I loved all these different things, from the heavy rock to the jazz or the blues. Hearing people put it all together was amazing. It’s music. It’s not like this, “I can only have this one purist thing.”

Are there any genres you haven’t explored yet that you’d like to on subsequent releases?

AT: I could easily say I would love to do what would be considered a straight ahead jazz album: clean tone, playing the hollow body. It’s gonna take a lot of guts to do it, but I see that happening in my future. I also wanna do something heavier like a Metallica or Megadeth record. I could see myself from the influence of my son, maybe do it with my son! Within the 2 years he’s been playing guitar, he’s like (James) Hetfield Jr. His timing with that real aggressive right hand, he’s killing it! I’ll never be able to do what he’s doing already. So maybe I’ll do something with him. You never know. I especially love that last Metallica record, with “Hardwired” and “Moth into the Flame”. Those are just great, great rock tunes. I got some of that left in me. I haven’t done something that directly heavy, so I could really see myself doing that and having a great time.

After listening to Electric Truth a couple times, I revisited the rest of your catalog, as well as the Danger Danger albums. Specifically, I revisited Screw It! and it occurred to me that “Monkey Business” and “I Still Think About You” were two of the last hits of the pop metal era before grunge took hold. When did it occur to you there was a radical shift in the rock world and why do you think it happened?

AT: By the time Screw It! came out, it was already happening. Seattle and rap was becoming more prevalent, especially with MTV. They literally said, later on with that record, “We don’t like your band. Don’t bother making videos. We’re gonna make Pearl Jam the biggest band in the world.” That was actually said to another band’s frontman. There was something happening in music at that time. I call it the Mutt Lange effect where things were being very processed and very perfected. I think that’s why Nirvana struck such a deep chord. Even though that first record is arguably well produced, it got to be more about some guys in a room playing together. They didn’t have to be the greatest players, even though I think those guys played amazing music.

Obviously for bands like mine, it was the death knell *laughs*. It was the nail in the coffin, but for me, as a musician, I understood it. I wasn’t offended by it. I know a lot of rock fans of that time were like, “There’s no guitar solos! This sucks!” It’s still good music. It’s still good energy rock n’ roll. I love Nirvana and I especially love Foo Fighters. Everything’s cyclical man. Everything has to change. It’s not like Whitesnake ’87 and this is it *laughs*. It’s great, but it’s gotta go somewhere. It’s just the way it’s gonna be because the people of that age grow older and there’s new kids growing up. They wanna buck the system or there’s new kids that wanna go a different direction.

I’m fine with all of it. I think it’s all healthy, all natural. It doesn’t mean you can’t keep doing what you love to do. That’s what you should do! Danger Danger got in on the tail end of what Def Leppard and Bon Jovi and Whitesnake had already been doing for a while. The sad thing for Danger Danger was it was a little too late. The band was good for what it was doing, but it was kind of chasing the tail. If you’re doing that, then there’s no way. You gotta do what’s in your heart and try to forge ahead with something that’s uniquely you, whatever it might be.

In the same breath, I always found it to be a little unfair for Danger Danger to be lumped into that category. Despite the band’s image, musically I always thought you guys were closer to Journey, Foreigner, and the early 80s AOR bands.

AT: That’s interesting you say that. The guys that formed the band, the bassist Bruno Ravel and drummer Steve West, were buddies who grew up fans of that era specifically. They were fans of not only Journey and Foreigner, but Survivor was another band they dug. There definitely are elements of that. You’ve got good ears. They were maybe more influenced by that, but certainly the pressure of label and “It needs to sound like this.” That certainly affects things along the way.

There was a third record that didn’t come out for many years that was made in ’92. The follow up to Screw It! was called Cockroach, which I thought was a really, really good record. It’s a little harder to find, but I guess with the internet now, maybe not so much *laughs*. You could hear we were getting a bit heavier, trying to keep up, but the songs were great. The songs were really good. It’s just a shame that it didn’t get to come out at that time and things got lost in the shuffle. It eventually came out maybe 10 years later. Bruno and Steve finally got the rights to release it, so there’s fans of that record too. I think it stands up.

Not long after the release of Screw It!, you opened for KISS. What was that experience like?

AT: We did two tours opening for KISS. The first one was 1990 and that was the Hot in the Shade Tour. We were getting play on MTV, so we were kind of up and coming. I remember Bruno calling me one morning to tell me we got on the tour. We were jumping up and down like little kids. Especially for Bruno, Steve, and I, and maybe Ted (Poley) to a degree, that was our foundation. My first concert was KISS on the Destroyer Tour in 1976. That was the day I knew this is what I’m doing. I was in the last seat at the very top of the stadium. 14 years later, there I am watching them from the side of the stage every single night, losing my mind, going, “I can’t believe I’m here.” I could’ve never imagined that that would happen.

Paul (Stanley) and Gene (Simmons) were amazing to us. They treated us with such kindness. We learned a lot from them. That first tour it was Bruce Kulick and Eric Carr with them. It was Eric’s last tour, so we got to spend a bit of time together. Slaughter was the other band on the tour. They were all such sweet people, but obviously Gene and Paul, we were googly eyed over them. We had a lot of fun. They were really sweet, really smart guys. In a lot of ways, we learned a lot from them of just how they had their eye on the ball. They weren’t partying and doing the things that maybe some of the original members had done back in the day *laughs*.

Then we did the Revenge Tour in the UK in 1992. That was about the end of Danger Danger’s touring. We went to Japan right after that on our own. But again, to end up on tour opening for your heroes from when you’re a kid…Ace Frehley is how I learned how to play guitar. The KISS Alive! record was my textbook for beginner “here’s how you do it” rock n’ roll.

Can we expect a tour for Electric Truth anytime soon?

AT: I’m not sure about any lengthy touring from me right now. There’s just a lot going on everywhere. I’ve got little bits I’m doing. I’m going to the UK to do a few shows with some friends of mine from That Pedal Show, Daniel Steinhardt and Mick Taylor. We’re doing some gigs at the end of June. I do a camp in Italy at the beginning of July. Then I do a Paul Gilbert camp in Sonoma at the end of July. I’ve done a bunch of these things with Paul over the years. I love hanging with him. It’s gonna be me, Paul, George Lynch, Greg Howe, Greg Koch, Gretchen Menn, Jared James Nichols. There’s some really, really killer players. I’ll get out and do some tour dates lengthily, but maybe not until next year.

It sounds like you’ll be in great company at that camp!

AT: My goodness, absolutely! I’ve done some with Vai and Satriani in the past. It’s always a blast for each of us artists to get to hang with some of our other favorite players, but the everybody that comes in to hang, it’s this great energy of people that are like minded and have that passion for learning. It’s really a blast for anybody that can come out to that. I highly recommend it. I’m blessed to be there.

Speaking of players hanging with other players, there’s a video on YouTube of Steve Vai mid-show walking through a crowd, spotting you, and handing off his guitar for you to play. All the comments were like, “Andy Timmons is the only guy who can get that face of excitement out of Steve Vai.”

AT: It’s really a beautiful moment! I’ve been to a lot of Steve shows and a lot of times, like the G3 Tours, he’ll have me onstage to play as a guest, which I’m always honored by. I think this was the anniversary of Passion and Warfare, so he had a pretty lengthy, produced show. He said, “Listen, I can’t have you up tonight, but come to the gig and I’ll see you after.” He had already played over 2, maybe 2 and a half hours. I was with my wife and our best friend Sylvia. We knew were gonna go back and say hi to Steve after the gig, so they went to the restroom to freshen up. My wife says, “Hold my water. I’ll be right back.” So off they go.

Steve’s got his tech with him and he’s strolling out into the crowd. Someone’s capturing this moment where he looks down the aisle. He didn’t know where I was sitting. He just knew I was there, but you see the look of surprise on his face. Without thinking, you see that guitar come off. My memory is he’s trying to hand me his pick, but I already had one in my hand. Always be ready! You never know when Steve Vai’s gonna come down your aisle, like I ever imagined that was gonna happen. It was a really sweet moment, but completely unplanned. He had no idea where I was. You see me trying to play *laughs*. Standing in front of Steve is pretty great. It’s a very fond memory. What a tribute to his character and his kindness. He’s out there shredding and it’s his show, but hey! Here you go brother! Have at it *laughs*! That’s a good day right there.

The new Andy Timmons album, Electric Truth, is available now on Timstone Records. For more information on Andy Timmons, visit www.andytimmons.com.