In Conversation: J.D. Simo

Photo by Adam Abrashoff.

For close to a decade, Nashville native J.D. Simo’s veracious love of music has driven a one-man musical crusade that emphasizes all things honest, raw and real. The past year’s lockdowns allowed him to get back to basics, manifesting some of the most authentic work of the guitarist and songwriter’s career alongside longtime collaborator Adam Abrashoff on drums and engineer-producer Adam Bednarik on bass. While on a nationwide dual headlining tour with Boston-based blues band GA-20, Simo caught up with The Eisenberg Review to talk about The Big Lebowski, the process of recording his new album Mind Control, his favorite spots to eat across the country and why Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul is a masterpiece.

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How’s tour been going so far? What have you missed the most and what have you been enjoying the most.

Well, I miss my family a lot. I got really used to be home with my daughter—my wife and I have a three year old daughter—so I really miss being papa bear. That’s the most glaring thing. And I’m really enjoying playing with my friends. During lockdown, we’d gotten used to just getting together every week working on any number of things. It’s wonderful to be hanging with them, watching movies in the van. We’ve had some pretty epic viewings after the gigs and stuff like that. I mean, you know, all the things that I enjoyed [about being on tour] before.

What’s the best movie you’ve watched?

We did our yearly viewing of The Big Lebowski a couple of nights ago, which is always good for the soul.

Without question.

The Dude abides. We’re about to start watching Ren & Stimpy from the first season, which I’m really looking forward to.

Mentioning lockdown, the conceptualization of your new record, Mind Control, which is going to be dropping November 5th, seems a little bit different even from past singles that I’ve heard. Walk me through how Mind Control is different than past solo efforts you’ve released over the past couple of years.

I think the biggest difference is that every other project I’ve ever been a part of—whether its been for myself or whatever—there’s always been a plan of some sort. There’s always some sort of roadmap. In this case, after about a month had passed during lockdown, me and my friends didn’t want to not play music, so we started getting together at my place—masked up and distanced, we were all strictly quarantined—just for the hell of it. There was no plan whatsoever of what we were going to do, other than we knew we going to get together to play some music and have some fun. W e did that for a couple of days a week for a year and every session yielded at least one new track, if not two or three. So, by February or March of this year, an incredible amount of material had amassed. It was really apparent though, there was a collection of stuff that we had written together—myself, Adam Abrashoff, who for a long time has played drums with me and collaborated with me, and our dear friend Adam Bednarik, who we had always wanted to work with, but just never had the time to and ended up producing and playing bass—we assessed this huge moutain of material and decided that these are the things that we think are the coolest. It was really easy, then, to do it that way, where after the fact to decide these things go together and we think this is the dopest stuff that we worked on or most original, the least derivative. We’re normally going in with a modus operandi and so it was a great way to work. It’s a way that I want to continue to work, actually. It’s the most fun and yields the best results for me. I have my own little funky—if you want to call it a studio, you can call it a studio—it’s just a funky basement with some funky gear in it.

That sounds like a studio to me, if you can record there.

We can get together and work on stuff anytime I want, that’s the beauty of it.

That’s fantastic. So, as opposed to looking for the rug that ties the room together, you’re finding the rug as you go, weaving it as you go, if you will.

Indeed. At least, I’m housebroken man.

I’d imagine it was pretty therapeutic being able to get together and write music during the trying last 18 months.

It was a blast man, it really was. All musicians want to believe that if the monetization of it was taken away that they would still do it. Everyone kind of says that. It was just so fun to be doing it for the hell of it. I actually kind of miss it now that we’re on the other side of it and back into the grind of it, if you will. It was just really pure and really beautiful.

Mind Control is out November 5, 2021.

It really sounds like this creative process being so different was nourishing in a different way. I’m curious as to whether or not audiences are responding differently to the material now that you’re out and playing it.

That’s really difficult to quantify. I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I don’t really know, because I can’t really compare it objectively. It certainly feels different than it ever did. I’m a very different person than I was pre-pandemic for reasons of the pandemic and reasons not of the pandemic. I’m much more go with the flow than I’ve ever been in my life. I think that the world we live in now requires a bit more surrender to the flow of the river than any other time in modern history…

I can get with that.

…Because there’s no way to attain some level of joy unless you let things be. I can only speak for myself in that, I guess, but I’m really enjoying playing all of this stuff in the space that I’m in with the people that I’m traveling with exponentially more than previously. I’m enjoying the whole thing a lot more myself, so I would hope that that’s translating to people.

And that’s awesome. Given what you’ve just described, I don’t know how it couldn’t. I think fans know, I think audiences know, I think the people around you know when you’re personally in a more comfortable space. I think people feel that.

I think so. I certainly can spot it when I’m watching somebody. I get a good read on whether or not someone is acting or being genuine.

What don’t you typically get asked about that you love to talk about?

I’m a big foodie. I’ve guested on a bunch of food podcasts and stuff like that. That’s one of the things about traveling that’s really amazing. Every city in America, let alone the world, has a place. If it’s New York City or San Francisco or some place like that it might have 30, and I just find that really fascinating. I think that the sensual arts, as it where—music and food and painting and film—they all coalesce together and they’re all virtually equally fascinating to me. I’m really looking forward to getting back to San Fransisco in particular and my hometown of Chicago and partaking in specific food adventures.

Where are some of your favorite spots to hit on tour?

One of my favorite places in the entire country is Swan Oyster Depot, which is in San Francisco. It was one of Anthony Bourdain’s favorite places in the world. It’s just a place that you go and get a whole plate of fresh dungeness crab that was caught that morning in the Bay. If you’re into oysters, which I am, it’s just one of the best places in the world.

There’s that element, there’s sort of the street food element like in Chicago… Jim’s Original, which is down on the South Side, which used to be on on Maxwell Street, is a Polish sausage stand that’s been there since at least the ‘20s. They’re open 24 hours and its an amazing bit of Chicago history and it is amazing.

And then the opposite side of the spectrum from that would be Eleven Madison Park in New York City: Daniel Humm’s three Michelin star [restaurant]. I love it all. I’ve been to multiple three Michelin star restaurants. All of them have been incredible, but nothing matches the artistic flow and also just literally the best meal of my life was at Eleven Madison Park in the Flatiron District of New York.

Those are three examples where it’s kinda like low brown, middle brow, high brow—it’s all of it.

Good food is good food no matter where it’s being made.

Yeah, totally.

So, the important question now is where are you angling to eat when you’re in Cleveland?

That’s a really good question. I haven’t decided yet. Believe it or not, Adam Abrashoff, who’s the drummer, he’s actually from north Canton. There is a hole in the wall Italian restaurant in north Canton called Parasson's that is absolutely fantastic, but it's not fantastic.

In what way?

It’s just a great Italian restaurant that is nothing to write home about. Is it the best you’ll ever have? No it’s not. I’m Italian and it is just a great, traditional, how your parents actually cooked, home cooked Italian restaurant. If I had to wage, we would probably end up going to Parasson's like on our way into town or something like that, but I don’t know for sure. I know it’s not exactly Cleveland…

Cleveland’s weird because we kind of adopt everyone in Northeast Ohio. Akronites and Cantonites would bristle at it, but we adopt Akron and Canton.

Totally. But that being said, the Beachland is one of my favorite venues in the whole country. There’s a vibe there.

For sure. It’s homey, it’s welcoming, and they actually over the pandemic got a new chef and upgraded the kitchen too. I haven’t tried any of the new food yet, so I’ll look forward to doing so when you play with GA-20 on October 20. In closing, I’ll ask our usual question: what are three records that you’d recommend to the audience and why?

I would recommend, let’s see here, pick some good ones…

Alabama Shakes’ Sound & Color. I just think it’s the best record that’s been made in the last 20 years and I think 25 years from now people will be putting that in the caliber of Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book or Dark Side Of The Moon or Pet Sounds. I just think it’s the most artful amazing record.

Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul, which is a very important record in my musical development. I just think that whether you’re a fan of modern hip hop or you like psychedelic music or you like soul music, it’s just a pivotal record because when it came out it was one of the first albums that was African American psychedelic music, which is a mixture that I particularly like.

Third would be another one from 1969: Fela Kuti’s Open and Close. I think every person in the world should like to Fela Kuti.

Without question. There’s something amazing about that type of polyrhythmic music that just evolves and gets more intoxicating and hypnotic, and he was the master of it. Him and Tony Allen.

I just can’t get enough of it. We listen to tons of Fela. I love that record. We were listening to Yellow Fever the other day. You can’t go wrong. I don’t think he made a bad record.

J.D., you’re speaking my language. I love all of those records. It’s interesting, I had the same experience with Hot Buttered Soul the first time I heard it. “Walk On By” is just such a towering track, in the way that it’s mixed, the string swells, that gnarly guitar… Isaac Hayes hardly has to do anything on the track, but he adds so much to it. He’s just such a presence.

I know. They made that record in one day as an afterthought.

Right, because wasn’t Stax [Records] going bankrupt and they needed money? They basically said “everyone that’s on our label, make a solo record, we need to make money somehow!”

And they didn’t even cut that at Stax. They cut it at a different studio because Stax was so booked. They cut it in one day and then they sent it to an arranger up in Detroit who did all of Mowtown’s strings and then all of the string overdubs were done in Detroit. So to think, like especially “Walk On By,” if you take all the string arrangements and everything off, like, it’s just kind of crazy how it ended up being this amazing, epic, groovy, very unique and original. It’s almost kind of like it was an accident. I love that album so so much. It just completely changed my life that record. And then of course, whether it was Wu Tang or Old Dirty Bastard, it’s been sampled a lot and with good reason.

Beyoncé sampled it on Lemonade, MF DOOM flipped it on Operation Doomsday… It’s been utilized so much. It’s a rare record and a rare song that gets to enter into the language of music as that one has. It’s been interpreted so much that it now is like a word. It’s used and borrowed from so much. It’s a beautiful thing.

Yeah, no, totally, I just love that album. We could go on and on and on… Last night, here in the hotel we were listening to outtakes from the Lover Power Peace James Brown live record from 1971 at the Olympia in Paris, when Catfish Collins and Bootsy were in the band for that little period, because there was a deluxe edition that came out a few years ago that has all these outtakes… I just love listening to music, man. It’s amazing how many musicians that go out and tour don’t listen to music. It’s amazing. It’s a weird thing when you’re traveling and you do bills with other people or you play on festivals and all this kind of stuff… there’s a fair amount of waiting around when you’re on the road. There’s a fair amount of hours where you don’t have shit going on, and the things people do to fill that time. It’s just interesting because music has to be like omnipresent. I have to always have music on, if I’m in the shower, if I’m doing something I always have music on. It’s interesting because not everybody’s like that and I just love it. It just makes me happy. Last night, we were having dinner here in the rooms—we all have adjoining rooms—and just had the doors connecting us open and I was just like “Man, I love fucking music, it just makes me so happy.” Just listening to outtakes of James Brown.

I’m totally here for it. I’m in the same boat. The Eisenberg Review attempts to do that. Just play everything from everywhere, anything that’s new and exciting because the more you listen to the more you can appreciate, and the more you can appreciate the happier you’re ultimately going to be.

Absolutely.