HIT CHANNEL INTERVIEW: March 2025. We had the great honor to talk again with a very talented guitarist and a nice person: Andy Timmons. It’s been more than a year since our previous interview, but now Andy has a fantastic new studio album out, “Recovery”. Read below the very interesting things he told us:
What was your musical intention in “Elegy for Jeff”, obviously a homage to Jeff Beck?
Obviously, Jeff left us a couple of years ago and most of us, me especially, I thought he was gonna be around another 20 years. He is just gonna be eternal and his music certainly is, so, when he passed, it was a very sad time obviously for all of us that revered him so much. I mean, it felt very natural to write a piece of music, I do that a lot; there’s a lot of my music that is very much in response to things that are happening or just personal things that I’m going through, but I wanted to come up with some type of melody (ed: he plays a few notes of the track on his Signature Ibanez). I’m not trying to sound like Jeff so much, but I’m trying to evoke some of that beauty and emotion that he evolved and had been able to present better than anybody else. That’s what I always say about Jeff, that he kept evolving from every era of his career, he kept changing and pushing himself and when he did that great piece “Where Were You” (ed: from “Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop” -1989 – Andy plays its melody on guitar), he did that with the tremolo bar, it was clear that he was on to something new and expressive. When he eventually did the “Emotion & Commotion” (2010) album, that was the record that made me realize that he is just pushing the bars of the potential of the guitar as an expressive instrument.
So, for me, to honor him I tried to tap it, which I’ve always been trying to do prior to his path. Music has always been that for me, it’s that outlet, I think for all guitar players, any artist, any musician, it’s our outlet to speak, to speak to the instrument, to the poetry, to the lyrics, whatever the art, to the painting, to the sculpture, whatever might be, as a reflection of ourselves but then possibly as a reflection to people that experience the art. I had a lot of great feedback for this record and other pieces that I’ve written, people say that they get some of their feelings from and that to me is the success. So, I wanted to start the record just to say to Jeff: “I love you, we love you and thank you for everything that you continue to give us”. His body of work is always there even though he is no longer physically here, let’s keep being inspired by and let’s keep enjoying it. Go listen to “Nadia” (ed: from “You Had it Coming” -2000) today, go listen to that beautiful piece of music. Go listen to his version of “Nessun Dorma” (ed: from “Emotion & Commotion” -2010), listen to “Where Were You” but also listen to “Shapes of Things” (1966) by The Yardbirds, listen to the first Jeff Beck Group album (ed: “Truth” -1968) with Rod Stewart singing, it’s the best rock ever recorded and so many great pieces. Listen to the way he plays “Moon River” with Eric Clapton singing (ed: from Clapton’s “Meanwhile” -2024), one of his later recordings, so good. Thank you for that question (laughs).
How challenging was it for you to get the Jeff Beck-like tone in “Elegy for Jeff”?
As I’m saying “I’m not trying to sound like Jeff”, very honestly I was and I don’t think I got the tone quite right (ed: he plays the intro on his Signature Ibanez). I should have recorded it with this guitar, but the guitar and the amp that I used -this is prior to me writing the song, about 5 or 6 years ago- I went on the Internet and I found a Jeff Beck Signature Guitar, I just wanted to feel what his guitar was like and to see about the tremolo, the nut and the pickups that he uses, I got it and it’s cool, but I didn’t spend much time on. When it came time to do this piece I thought: “Oh, I should get this guitar out” and I knew from interviews that he used a little amp, the Fender Pro Junior, a 10-inch speaker, it’s a really tiny amp. So, that’s the guitar plugged straight into the amp and I used my Keeley Halo on the mixing console, so it’s that one guitar, this tiny little amp and trying to get that delicate sound (ed: he plays a few notes), it’s clean, but it’s got a little dirt. That sound that you are hearing now is my Keeley Mk3 Driver through a Suhr SL68 (ed: amp head), it’s a Marshall kind of clone and above it’s an actual Marshall ‘68 Stereo, I’m not sure if you are hearing the stereo (ed: he plays again a melody from the track). That’s it (laughs).
I really like “Love > Hate” From “Recovery”. What inspired you to write this?
The world. I don’t go into politics when I do interviews very purposely, but it’s clear to see there’s been a lot of division with a lot of dishonesty and a lot of gearing people towards fear and hate and that’s always dangerous. Every time that has happened in history, bad things happened. So, my life has been really based on respect, empathy and caring for other people and I refuse to let that go and I won’t be bullied into fearing and resenting people. I take everybody at face value; if somebody mistreats me, well, it’s a different story. I ‘ve travelled the world and I know better than to feel negatively towards people just because they are from somewhere or they believe certain things, that’s even in my own country, be it religiously or politically. If I see somebody one on one on the street, I don’t know what they believe politically, I don’t know what they believe religiously, but one on one as a human being I know I can connect with that person, I know to my core of my heart that the same things are important: Respect, care, empathy and love regardless of what they are being fed or feel stressed on the inside or whatever.
So, if you can extract all of that distraction, take it away, love is greater than hate. It always will be: The mother’s love for the child, common respect and love for all humanity, all living things, for the Earth. I always told my son growing up: “It’s not that hard, just be good to people”. If they are not good to you, then, it’s a different story. Ok, I’m not saying: “Don’t have your guard up”, “don’t have your antenna up” because I’ve got a strong antenna, but the initial contact is gonna be very positive. I’m gonna be at the utmost of my positive end on that and it’s exactly how I react on a musical situation, it’s no different. So, that’s what’s about (laughs). Every song on the record, there is a bit of darkness, but there is always optimism, not wanting to give in, because I can easily ball up in the corner for the rest of my life. I suffered from depression, I’m easily affected deeply by things that are going on around me, but music has always been the solace and the outlet to get through these things, so, that’s a pretty good description of what’s that song about (laughs).
Your guitar sound in “Why Must It Be So?” is fantastic. Please tell us everything we should know about this piece.
I think that’s my ’65 Strat, I don’t have it in the room right now, but I have a white refinished Fender Stratocaster from 1965 and ’65 is unknown to be the great year of Strats but this one just really sounds great. That’s all on the neck pickup and yeah, that may be my favorite composition on the record just because there is Beatles in it, there is Chopin in it, there is Procol Harum (ed: he plays its melody). Already we’ve gone on a journey just in that first iteration of the melody, it’s got some clever little modulations (ed: he plays again and he describes the chord progression), we ‘ve got F# and back to F and then after that, now we are in C# again, now an A. The first sound it’s how we have recorded it on the record, it’s my Keeley Mk3 Driver which is a very mod blues driver circuit that I started off, so, that’s that kind of cleanish (ed: he plays again) sound, here is the amp, ‘cause there is this bright chimey thing. But for the lead sound, I go to my JHS AT+ pedal, here’s this pedal on (ed: he uses it). That’s my lead sound dialed in for the bridge pickup, then I go to the neck pickup, it’s too muddy, so, what I do is, I put in front of it a different Mk3 Driver set on the germanium setting, without much gain, but with a lot top end (ed: he plays and tries different options), without the Mk3, with, so, there is that lovely chewy (ed: he plays the melody of the song). Ah, now another transposition, we have A major, the tonic on that A major is A and that’s the third backing an F. I have fun commenting on modulations quite a bit (laughs).
What is the significance of album title, “Recovery”?
Well, it means a lot, like with “Resolution” (2006), there are a lot of different meanings. It speaks a little bit to what instrumental music is, even though I might have a specific meaning behind the song and its title, the music can mean anything to whom is receiving it, it can touch them in any way that they need it and the title “Recovery” is the same way. The initial response that people might have to “Recovery”, they might think of people that get through substance abuse like alcoholism or drug addiction or maybe even social media addiction, computer addiction, all the addictions that we have, that it is recovery from that. But also “recovery” can just mean healing in general and music has always been that for me, it’s always been my safe place to go, not only to feel things, but also as I got better to the instrument, to express. Music is recovery for me, it’s healing, it’s me putting everything I’ve got that’s going on inside -be it happy, sad and everything in between- into the music that I write, a lot of it subconsciously. A lot of the songs I couldn’t try to write the same way, a lot of things happen and I get a nugget of an idea and then my auralect, which is what I call our musical memory, my auralect guides me to what I wanna hear and that’s the idea between all that. It’s music that will hopefully heal myself, but if other people get some of that from the music, then I’m happy.
Somebody said in a recent interview -this is something that I didn’t even recognize, I recognize it now and that can be very true- that there are usually a lot of different moods within each of my songs and especially on this record there is a lot of what you may call sadness or melancholy or a struggle, but somewhere also within that same piece will be some type of optimism like in “Love> Hate”, there is a lot of aggression and dark energy, but then there is some beauty too. The first statement at the beginning of the song is really beautiful and then it comes back at the end with a different energy after we’ve been through all the shit; at the end, there is a restatement of that melody and it can be very uplifting, even though there is this darkness. It was cool to have somebody else point that out to me, because I didn’t even recognize what I was doing, but it’s exactly what was happening (laughs) and I was doing it for myself. Art starts off very selfish. I think each artist, be it a painter or a sculptor or a lyricist, poet, guitar player, they are just trying to create the art that they need that we would like to get from somewhere else, but isn’t coming from somewhere else, it can only come from us, each of us individually, they are the only ones that can express the way that we express, so, I ‘m doing this for me. The start is very selfish, but that’s not necessarily the best way for a commercial artist to think, but I stopped worrying about being a commercial artist since I was in Danger Danger, that was a great education for me and I enjoyed it. I saw the commercial world for what it was and the machinations of the label entity as it existed then, but it wasn’t about that for me.
I just wanted to get better at the guitar and it’s still my goal: I want to be a better songwriter, musician and it’s selfish, it’s what I wanna hear. But again if you wanna be commercially successful you ‘ve got to think about a lot of other things and I’m not interested. I’ve got to figure out a way to somehow keep the lights on but I think by being true to myself and really be authentic to the music that I wanna make and the way that I wanna play, somehow it keeps getting better. I can only put that to the fact that people do recognize things that are real. They’ll recognize things that “this is fun for today, that’s gonna last for today”. I want this to be around for a while, so the people that continue to get into my music, they turn to be a certain type of person that resonates to what I have to say and what I’m going through and that to me is success. Somehow because of that I’m able to do some gigs, I teach a little bit, I’ve got some gear that I get to be involved in, putting out a signature guitar, all these things help but the bottom line for me is, I am just gonna keep being me and keep trying to do what I do on higher and higher levels and that’s what we get from The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Paul (ed: McCartney) and Ringo (ed: Starr) are still going on, are still creating, same with the Stones, same with Jeff Beck how he did everything all those years, Les Paul played until his 90s, they showed us that these things are possible. So, that’s it. I think it’s a long answer to what “Recovery” means to me, but there you go (laughs).
Are you satisfied with the feedback you have received so far for “Recovery” album?
Yeah, I’m overwhelmed, really. At certain points, you are so close to whatever you are working on, that’s hard to know. Each piece that I went along, I worked on quite a bit to get to where I liked it and I’ll be very proud of it. Of course, I sent it to a couple of friends to get feedback, but once you release something you have no idea what other people might think. I have a lot of my longtime fans tell me that they think it’s my best work, so, that’s quite a statement, because you hear the first Van Halen record or you hear so many of our favorite artists, you might really love their first work the best, the other stuff is great, but it’s different. So, for some of these fans to say it’s my best work makes me feel good, because you love your past work to be revered in any way possible and I’m blessed that people still love “Electric Gypsy” and “Cry for You” (ed: both from “Ear X-Tacy” -1994) and I love playing those songs every night, but also you want to continue to grow and hopefully keep to produce music. I’ll never write another “Electric Gypsy” and “Cry for You” and I shouldn’t try to; those exist very much of their time and on their own as pieces of work, but when I hear people enjoying the new songs too, it’s a blessing and I’m very thankful for that because I’m gonna do it anyway (laughs). I have no choice because it’s what I love and I’ve been giving it whatever gift I have, so, it’s my obligation not only to myself but to anybody that follows what I do to keep working on it, to keep growing. That’s what I do.
Could you describe to us your feelings recording the Lennon/McCartney song “I’m in Love” (recorded by The Fourmost) at Abbey Road Studios last year?
It’s hard to put into words, man, walking into Abbey Road because it looks like it did in the ‘60s when The Beatles recorded there, it’s like walking into a movie that you’ve been watching your whole life. I mean, I was born in ’63, right when they were entering those doors for the first time in ’62-’63, that’s been my foundation, all that music is in my DNA, like it is for so many people but literally from the cradle from me. My first musical memory is the guitar solo of “I Saw Her Standing There”, the flipside of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (1963) in America, so, to have the ability to walk in the room and touristically it’s overwhelming, it’s like “Oh my God, this is the room. It’s incredible”. But we hired the room, anybody can do this, you can book time, it’s a studio like any studio in the world, you make an appointment, you find a day, you pay the money, you go and you work. So, it’s that easy and it’s expensive, but I had two other buddies to go with me, we were sharing the expense, they were there a bit more as tourists. We had a 10-hour session and after we did a few things to accommodate everybody’s goals, I had about 8 hours of session time and I was there and I said: “Right, we’re gonna make some music here”.
So, I recorded a solo piece called “Truth” on solo electric guitar and that became a single, but the main goal of the day was to record a John Lennon song called “I’m in Love”. The Beatles didn’t record that Lennon composition from 1963, they gave it to another band called The Fourmost. The Fourmost did an ok version, but when I heard Lennon’s demo that surfaced on a bootleg in the ‘90s I thought: “Oh man, this should have been a Beatles song, it’s so good!” So, I always had it in the back of my mind “I want to record that”. When the idea was hatched to go to London and Liverpool on this kind of Beatle sightseeing trip with my buddies, we said: “Let’s see if we can book a day at Abbey Road”, so, when we got that to happen I knew that’s what I’m gonna do. So, I had to make sure that they had a kit of Ludwig drums there, a bass rig and the engineer brought out all the mikes that they would have been using in the ‘60s. He asked me what sound I was going for and I said: “Just think Beatles 1964” because I was thinking maybe like “A Hard Day’s Night” era, to get that sound. I can play a good bit of Ringo, so, I played everything: I did the bass, the drums and the guitars. Dan Steinhardt from That Pedal Show brought his 1961 Vox AC30 Top Boost, I brought my ’65 Strat because I was going for the “Nowhere Man” (ed: from “Rubber Soul” -1965) kind of bright lead guitar tone and I think we got pretty close to it and then when we had the track pretty much finished, I got Matt Bissonette (Elton John, Dave Lee Roth -bass), my buddy from The Reddcoats band that I’m in, to do all the background vocals and it was just a labor of love.
No commercial intentions, other than to get this song recorded in the way that I wanted. Again, you hear me go selfish, I wanted it to hear it. I wanted to hear what it would sound like and to be able to do it in that room, I mean, I hit the snare drum once and you heard the room, it’s such a big part of any recordings: “What does that room sound like?” If you watch my solo performance of my song “Truth”, the solo guitar (ed: he plays a few notes), I played this nice little solo piece, you’ll see me in the room but I’m not wearing headphones and most people would put headphones on. They had mikes on the cabinets, it was a stereo rig I had along with this Marshall, they had some microphones in the room, but I just wanted to hear the sound of the room, so, I didn’t even need headphones. I got to play guitar in that room and just thought of all the history, not only The Beatles, but “Dark Side of the Moon” (ed: by Pink Floyd -1973) and so many other great recordings that happened there, so, it’s hard not to feel that presence. Somebody asked me: “It must’ve been really intimidating to be in that room” and I said: “Honestly?! I felt like I belong there”. After the first minute I thought: “Wow, that’s the room. That’s where McCartney sat when he played ‘Blackbird’ and here is the chair he was sitting in. Alright, I got work to do” and I just felt like I was in a great studio, with a great staff and I just got to work and I wasn’t intimidated at all. I really felt at home, because, in a way, I was. I’m back to where it all started for me and I’m more than honored to do that. You can get emotional thinking about it now (laughs) ! Man, it’s crazy!
How important is improvisation to you?
Everything starts as improvisation be it songwriting, be it a solo that’s recorded, it could be improvised live in the moment, so, it’s everything. It’s extremely important to me and it’s something that I continually work on. There is a great video that I’ve referenced in other interviews with the great pianist Bill Evans (Miles Davis) being interviewed by his brother in Baton Rouge. His brother was a jazz educator, he was asking him about the process of jazz and Bill said the most astute thing: “In composition, a minute’s music could take a year, but in jazz improvisation a minute’s music is in a minute’s time”. So, I think the intention is the same, for the jazz or rock improviser, whatever type of improviser you may be, the intent is we are trying to put forth something as great as we can, something that we want to hear, it starts off very selfish. It starts off with: “Here I’m expressing what I’m going through hell, I’m navigating this moment in time”, but it’s the exact same thing for the composer, because they are trying beat by beat, bar by bar to imbue that same idea of “Here’s what I want to say”. Now, in a true improvisation it’s happening a minute’s music in a minute’s time. There is no time to deliberate, you are putting all the intention into every moment and it’s now, but it doesn’t make it any less important as a composition. So, I stride that line of “I love to improvise my solos”, but if I don’t get exactly what I want when I’m recording, I’m gonna compose around it, I’m gonna find what I want to hear. But live with my band, there are some solos that I may replicate like I did on the record because if I composed it for the record, it’s just as integral to the song as it is the song. I spend no less time, probably a lot more time, perfecting it, but I save quite a bit of material to make sure that I improvise every night because I want that immediate connection and expression like in “Electric Gypsy” and “Cry for You” and certain songs, I will play differently every night forever.
This is important because there is nothing that would replicate that feeling between artist, band and listener. I work on it every day, first thing I do every day I sit down with an iReal book app and I just improvise over. Today was “Giant Steps” (ed: John Coltrane -1960), “Autumn Leaves” and “All the Things You Are”, just to navigate chord changes, because everything I do in rock is very much informed by having done a lot of that, by listening to a lot of swing music, bebop and ’50 and ‘60s jazz, players like Oscar Peterson (piano) that just swung in a certain way. Also, players that always led through the harmonies in such a beautiful way like Wes Montgomery or ‘70s and ‘80s-influenced jazz guys from Steve Lukather (ed: Toto, Michael Jackson -guitar), who was influenced by Larry Carlton and Robben Ford is beautiful at that, of course Pat Metheny, one of our greatest ever. I listen to a lot of that music, knowing what a composition allows. It’s not always about what scales work, it’s about what notes mean at a certain time, but getting to a point on the instrument where you don’t have to think about, the tension and release aspect of music. If there is an A chord (ed: he plays it), I’m gonna found a melody around that’s gonna really allude to that harmony (ed: he plays a very emotional Jeff Beck-like guitar line). It is important. A wide range answer to a simple question. I could have just said: “Improvisation is very important”.
There is an amazing Youtube video where you are in the audience at Bomb Factory in Dallas and Steve Vai hands off his guitar to you to play. What’s the story behind this?
There is no story, you see the story on the video, that’s what’s so cool about it. Steve and I have played together a lot over the years, stemming from our mutual endorsement of the Ibanez company, then we played on stage a bunch, he is always very kind and generous. Whenever he comes to town, he normally invites me to come and play. This particular show was a bit more involved with production, I think it was the anniversary of “Passion and Warfare” (1990), so, there was a lot of production. He said: “Man, I can’t invite you to play but please come and I’ll see you after the show”. So, my wife, myself and my best friend, Sylvia, all go and we are there in the audience, he doesn’t know where we were sitting there, the show is a lengthy show, it must have been about 2½ hours. The last song, you know, he comes strolling out in the crowd with his wireless and my wife and her friend, Sylvia, we know we are gonna see Steve after the show, so, they go to the restroom to freshen up because then we’ll see Steve. So, they are away, my wife said: “Hold my water. I’ll be right back” and I see Steve just strolling to the crowd, what a cool thing, you get to rock out and stroll through the aisles. When he comes down, because some people had left, he sees my aisle, he looks and he sees me, he knew that I was there but he didn’t know where I was sitting. So, that’s what you see on the video, you see his face light up and without thinking, his first instinct is to hand me his guitar. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, he tries to hand me his pick, but my pick was already out of my pocket, I was ready (laughs). I mean, who hasn’t gone to a show just dreaming of “Oh gosh, I wish they ‘d ask me to play”?
The funny thing about it is that during Steve’s show that night he had some video interactions where at one point they are playing and all of a sudden Joe Satriani appears on the screen. He says: “Hey man, what are you doing?” and Steve says: “I’m playing a show. Let’s jam”. So, they had this thing worked out and they ‘ve got to jam back and forth via video and I thought: “How cool is that?!” but inside I was thinking: “Man, I wish I…”, you know. Then, another 30 minutes go by and John Petrucci (Dream Theater -guitar) shows up on the screen. “Hey Steve!” and the same thing, they are jamming, “Oh, man!” The whole show I’m going along, I know I can’t play live, but it would have been so cool. So, it’s one of those things: Be careful what you put out into the universe, because then dreams can come true. At the end of the show, we couldn’t have tried to make that happen; I guess we could have. That was so organic, but this is the thing I love about Steve and that’s when you see in his face when he sees me: “Oh, there is my friend. Here’s my guitar” (laughs). So, I turned around and I’m playing towards him, so, behind me, what I didn’t know was, everybody was on the chairs because I was just down in the middle of the audience, people can’t see, they are on the chairs, they were filming us and he said: “Turn around” and it was like a sea of cameras. It was a really sweet moment, kind of funny.
In early January I had the honor to do an interview with Larry Carlton. Would you like to tell us a few words about his influence on you?
It’s huge! He taught me how to bend. What considered to be his first solo record, it may not be accurate historically, the record people call “Room 335” (ed: “Larry Carlton” -1978), because it’s got that song on it. When I got that record sometime, whenever was, in the early ’80, I just fell in love with the tone and his playing. It was around the same time I was being obsessed with Lukather, not knowing what Steve has also gotten from Larry. It’s about note choice, feel, so many ways to articulate a note (ed: he plays on guitar). This is one song that I always wanted to cover, this, right there, that phrase. It’s the last song on that record, “(It Was) Only Yesterday”. There is a universe of things that just happened and it’s all from him. If you just try to emulate (ed: he plays some notes from the song), it’s there, I mean, there are three vastly different dynamics… now the finger. I studied the first four bars of that song and it got back to me about a year (laughs). It’s articulation, it’s articulate expression, that’s what I got from Larry. He was doing it at such a high level and it involved a bit of distortion. For the rock guy in me, that kept me in there, if you know what I mean, even though, I was digging Joe Pass and Barney Kessel at that point, the rock thing was what I wanted more to hear, that’s why Mike Stern (ed: Miles Davis -guitar) was so important when he came on the scene about that same time with Miles Davis in 1981 with “The Man with the Horn” record and “We Want Miles” (1982) live record because he had Hendrix in him.
You told me in our previous interview about your shock when you watched him on Saturday Night Live with Miles Davis in 1981.
Exactly! I had no idea who he was, I did after, though. There was a quantum change there, so there was all happening for me right in the early ‘80s. I was playing quite a bit live with bands I was in, whatever it is, I was 18-19 years old playing professionally but growing, I had been taking jazz lessons for a couple of years at that point, hearing the traditional guys: Barnie (Kessel), Wes (Montgomery), Joe (Pass), but I had been playing Lukather and then I hear Carlton, Robben Ford, there was more of it and then there is Mike Stern really with a jazz chromatic and bebop vocabulary but with virtually Hendrix in. He was playing a Strat in that early stuff before he went to his Tele. Anyway, it was such a great time for me as a growing young player to just know that is all music and then off I went, I’m still trying! Larry is huge for me, I love his playing and the guy so much. I’m blessed at least to get to meet him a few times, I can’t say we are tight buds but yeah, he is a big one for me.
Is Artificial Intelligence a threat to original artists like you? I mean, someone can type now to AI platforms: “Write me a song like Andy Timmons’ “Cry for You”?
Wow! Good luck. I’m not worried about it. There are plenty of other things to worry about, so, if machines can replace me, then, that’s where we are at, but I don’t think they can because I am me. Artificial or not, as with many players that they will try to emulate and do their thing, they may get close and that’s extremely honoring but they’ll never be Stevie Ray Vaughan or Eric Johnson. Those guys can keep trying but why? Get from them what you love but please try to do your own thing, unless all you wanna do is emulate your heroes and there is zero wrong with that, but presenting what you are saying about AI, puts me in that mind frame of true artistry and true individuality. So, it’s hard to say where that it all go, it’s troubling I suppose for many reasons, with fake videos of things that are not really happening and it is artificial music. I don’t know if that machine level can replicate my auralect and the type of things that I play, I could be wrong (ed: he plays a soulful melody on guitar), but as soon as I say that, there is probably some program being invented right now that is too viable to do that. But I can’t worry about it, I just have to keep being me and doing what I do.
Jimi Hendrix’s music, George Harrison’s music, Santana’s music had also a strong spiritual aspect. Is today’s music spiritual?
I think so, depending on the artist. Whatever the connection might be to what they perceive as being a higher consciousness and that’s purely their belief and their feeling. In this physical life, I don’t think we know anything (laughs). I know what your question is and speaking personally, of course, it’s very deep for me, but I don’t know exactly where it is coming from, I have an idea and a feeling about there being a higher force, but there is so much that we don’t know. There is a lot of guesswork involved, but I think those artists that you mentioned they had very strong convictions in their spirituality and their music and it is reflective. I think people do pick up on that. I don’t give a specific answer because I don’t want to be too self-aggrandizing here, but there is a spiritual thing to what I do, but it’s up to the individual to decide, what that is or they just feel it and that’s even more important. A really great music and emotion is not something that you have to think about so much, but that you feel. I’m just hoping people feel this music however it lines up with your beliefs spiritually or not, but I hope they will dig it.
A huge “THANK YOU” to Mr. Andy Timmons for his time. I should also thank Mr. Steve Karas for his valuable help.
Main Photo: Larry DiMarzio
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