skipjohnson + Musician in London, EN

ABOUT

Since I can remember, the guitar was in my arms. I grew up in my father's house, he was an incredible musician, with the best taste in music.
Apart from the brazilian classics he used to put on the old LP player, he also used to put some black sabbath, pink floyd, tommy, bob dylan, b.b. king, louis armstrong and others.
The instruments I grew up with were and old accordeon, a mandolin that was awsome cause it was of my size! A ultra old harmonica and my father's guitar!
I really started to jam seriously on the guitar when i was 15 and i had just moved in to london. I started where most people start, from the basic 4 chords punk songs, i used to wear a mohican and show my finger at police officers (they would just laugh at that poor silly kid). When i was 17, I was already defining my own musical taste. I started to listen some rockabilly songs, some psychobilly songs (in my opinion one of the most complex underground styles of music... you can create and mix anything in it and it will sound great!) and some blues.
i had some studio bands with a few friends but nothing too serious.
Then i was invited to participate in an project to create a song to play in a fashion show, from my part of it, the guitar, was a very cool flamenco style song, mixed with some R&B from the singer's side (trust me... it sounded awsome!) and it was my first time in a record studio and my first cd!
Then i moved back to Brazil when i was 19 and started a psychobilly band in the capital (the first psychobilly band from the capital!), i was very proud of that band and we actually played a lot, we were famous for never rehearse before a gig so we would be actualy rehearsing while performing hahaha... i had some good laughs in this band and there i really found my own style of playing. We started to record a demo with 4 songs in one of the greatest record studios of the capital but we were broke and never finished paying for the demo (i hope wilson don't throw away our staff and wait until one day we finish paying the recording!) would be nice keep it for later in life to apreciate it!
then when i was 21 i came back to england where i still am. Here i met this great guy called lidinei (a very unusual name i must say) and one day, we were talking about music in a pub and he asked if i liked blues... i said yes and the names i knew, eric clapton and b.b king. well... he laugh at me really hard and i actually got a bit embaressed... he told me "there's more to blues than that my son..." and he started telling me all about the delta blues and how all started! I must say, after listening all those great guys, it changed my life... i finally had found what was missing in my musical life!
I started listening to all of those old songs (some so old and so rare that you can barely distinguish the noise of the dirty LP from the guitar) and then suddently all of those memories from my childhood started to pop in my head, the guitar, the harmonica, my father's lp player... Then i started playing the harmonica (and i was so determinated that in 2 weeks i was jamming some pretty cool blues!) i started playing in open chords, using slides and today, far from where i want to be, yet, much better than before, i already consider myself a good bluesman, not for my music itself, but for undestanding what those old fellas were playing about.

Screen name:

skipjohnson

Member since:

Aug 26 2009

Active over 1 month ago

Level of commitment:

Touring

Years playing music:

12

Gigs played:

Over 100

Tend to practice:

More than 3 times per week

Available to gig:

6-7 nights a week

Most available:

Nights

MUSIC