SHOTGUN JIMMIE

THE LITTLE WORKHORSE THAT COULD…

Jimmie’s still Jimmie.

Yep, he’s still that same loveable soul with a perpetual smirk plastered across his face, slinging hymns and chorals about the little, lovely things in life. But, now he’s older, wiser and apparently in pretty great shape.

A charming cornerstone of Canadian indie for almost two decades now, Shotgun Jimmie is one of the hardest working, most sincere and all around lovely musicians in the game. He’s done it all, from paling around with fellow sappy Sackville souls, Julie Doiron and Fred Squire, in the highly revered lo-fi lovelies Shotgun and Jaybird, to ripping savage lead guitar riffs for bearded Canadian indie music poet-laureate John K. Samson in his Provincial Band — not to mention his own, beautifully irreverent Shotgun Jimmie project — Jim “Shotgun Jimmie” Kilpatrick is a whirlwind, two parts workhorse musicianship and one part winning smile.

He’s a perpetually-bustling social butterfly of the Canadian music scene but in a surprising move, to record his newest record, Everything, Everything, Jimmie went off the grid. Yep, he pulled a Walden, hunkered down in a tiny, rustic cabin in the middle of nowhere in Manitoba, a sort of artistic self-exile.

“I think retreating into the woods is a pretty common practice in art,” he says of the solitary musical retreat. “I think it’s a natural idea for an artist to want to remove themselves from the day to day, just immerse yourself in art.”

During the recording, Jimmie kept a pretty rigorous schedule for himself. He wasn’t content with just sitting around contemplating. He needed to rock out not just on the album he was recording, but in every facet of his daily life.

“Basically, I’d get up and make breakfast, record some songs, chop a bunch of wood to get my appetite going, have lunch and come back to it,” he says. “It was pretty much 9-5 recording, then I’d do some more writing at night.”

With no running water and with only a lonely little wood stove for heat and companionship, most people wouldn’t last very long out in the wilderness without pulling a Shining and trashing the place. For Jimmie, though, it was a chance to get away from the constant grind of touring. He’s been rocketing back and forth through Canada for about two years straight – by himself and with John K. Samson – stopping only long enough to play some hometown shows and catch up with some buddies before getting right back to it.

“It was amazing… I had no responsibilities except being fed, rested and making rock and roll. It was magnificent. Just giant blue sky, a fresh breeze through the trees and these beautiful, looming mountains. Putting yourself in a focused, free of distraction situation, just concentrating on a project is an amazing luxury.”

The record itself was a solitary pursuit, as well, save a couple of guests. Jimmie tracked everything on the record himself, on anything he could find: four-track reel-to-reel, cassette recorder, Zoom handheld mic and computer, sometimes using all of them in tandem.

“I wanted to experiment with collaging mediums and formats to put them together,” he says, explaining the Frankensteinian process of the album. Jimmie gets a surprisingly cohesive and beautifully lo-fi result with the wild array of archaic and modern methods. The warm silvery compressed drums sound like they were aped from a Guided By Voices record – which Jimmie readily admits informed a lot of the sound on Everything, Everything.

“I love those guys,” he says, beaming with sincerity and enthusiasm.

The vocals range from being sung through a megaphone and scraped and scratched into rock and roll oblivion to the more frail and serious side of Jimmie, sparkly, clean and warm – an intimate, personal kind of vibe.

“Some songs I wondered if they were too much,” he says about the more solitary and emotional tone of the record. “I kept feeling like I was putting a bit too much out of myself out there, but then again, I recorded some stuff that was way more personal that never made it,” he says, laughing.

And there is a beautifully-tangled intimacy to the songs. Some tunes, like “Bridge Street Stage,” are just oozing sincerity and sappiness, forcing you to crack a smile. The song falls into a beautiful, stargazing lullaby as Jimmie wistfully sings, “We were out tracking stars, moving through the night sky,” backed by Doiron’s ethereal oohs and ahhs.

Elsewhere, like on the wildly endearing “Skype Date,” Jimmie is a loveable, goofy guy just brimming with starry-eyed excitement.

Here, more-so than any of his past work, is pure, unfiltered Jimmie. There’s a startling honesty to this record that many will write off as kitsch or irony and that’s really too bad. Everything, Everything is really just a sincere guy doing what he does best, writing charming and irreverent as hell two-minute pop ditties about growing gardens with the girl you fancy.

He’s not trying to bullshit you, he’s just singing his heart out.

“I was recently thinking about this record and how much work it was,” he says. “Like, I wanted to have this piano part, but I wanted to record it from upstairs, but have the mics downstairs. I had all these headphone extenders running to the four-track in the basement, so I had to hit record, run up the staircase, jump down and play the part. I’m definitely not the greatest piano player, so it took like 40 takes, and I was just sweating and out of breath, but the whole time, I was just so pumped like, ‘Yeah! This is what I should be doing! I love this! Yeah!’”

A self-professed fiend of skiing and running, Jimmie’s no joker when it comes to the finer points of exercise. “That’s one of the reasons I love being a one-man band,” he says, referring to his latest backing band – a suitcase, a snare drum and sometimes a shaker, all played by him in tandem with his guitar and vocals. “On this album there’s a lot of upbeat high energy rock songs, so I thought I’d just try and incorporate exercise into that rock and roll. Let’s face it, man, I’m not getting any younger!”

There’s more of a mystique to the one-man band shtick, too. “I feel like the whole thing is a bit freer and more spontaneous,” he says. “In a lot of ways, it’s more of a performance than a rock show. Even if I do just play the songs and don’t blather on about aliens in between the songs, just the spectacle of seeing one man up there doing that stuff, it changes the way that people receive it,” he says. “It’s the freedom of being able to start or stop at any time. Hell, sometimes I don’t even play, I just sing. Or even draw! Yeah, I draw now.”

But Jimmie has also shared the stage with many great backing bands over the years, including a brief stint with indie folk siren Klarka Weinwurm on bass and sludgy grunge-pop master Jon McKiel on drums.

“Those shows with Klarka and Jon were great, I felt so much like myself up there. Usually, when I play with a band, I feel awkward.” he says.

Though the solo shows give him a rush of endorphins, Jimmie says that he sometimes misses the comradeship of collaborating with musicians he loves.

“I’m a kind of solitary guy anyway,” he says, explaining why he’s been keeping to himself lately. “But, sometimes it gets really lonely. Sometimes, I really miss the connections you form in bands, you know? That was what was so amazing with Provincial: I got to play with John and all of the other guys, and it was all just so warm and welcoming and comforting.”

It makes sense, because even though he lives in Brandon, Manitoba now, Jimmie still beams with the mention of Sackville, the scrappy, sappy, beautifully collaborative little East-Coast university town where he made his name.

“Sackville for me was my musical undergrad,” he says “I didn’t go to university but I did go to a university town. Transistor Sister was my undergrad, and I think Everything, Everything is my master’s thesis.” says Jimmie, laughing.

“I think that it was the perfect little petri dish to start a scene. I look back at that being something I’m lucky to be a part of. I know these little things don’t last forever, you have to embrace them enjoy them while they last.”

After traversing the globe to hand deliver sweet rock and roll to the people, and crafting the most sincere, beautiful and mature musical offering of his career, it’s nice to know Jimmie’s still Jimmie. Just a regular dude who loves rock and roll, and still gets nervous playing in the little town that loved him and took a chance.

“Last night I had an anxiety dream about this Sackville show I’m playing tonight and I’ve never had one before. I guess I still get rattled about stuff like this. But, the last Sackville show I played was great, my parents were here. Hopefully this one’s just as good.

Armed to the teeth with a loveable, sardonic outlook on life and some of the catchiest choruses known to man, Jimmie is a showman. Delighting and bewildering with a beautiful dichotomy of sincerity and irreverence, it’s hard not to be in awe of such a humble, awesome dude.

Not to mention, he can probably outrun you and that’s pretty badass.

Catch Shotgun Jimmie as part of the ShakeOut! fest, at Broken City (Calgary) on May 16. He’ll also be at the Wunderbar (Edmonton) on May 17 at at Park Theatre (Winnipeg) on May 25.

By Nick Laugher