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Daniel Zimmerman
Jazz/Rock guitar player/composer/bandleader
About Me
Dan Zimmerman devoted himself to
guitar at age seven when he heard Love
Gun, the new album by Kiss. Dan’s list of
guitar favorites soon expanded beyond
the space makeup of Kiss’s Ace Frehley to
include John Scofield, Eddie Van Halen
and Wes Montgomery, to name a few.
After playing in high school rock bands,
he studied classical guitar at UC Santa
Barbara and jazz at Berklee College of
Music in Boston. At UCSB Dan played in
Evil Farmer, a rock/jam band known for
spontaneous, creative and sometimes
disastrous improvisations. Evil Farmer
shared the bill at festivals and clubs with
many other bands including ALO, who
Dan still sometimes guests with.
Dan has played guitar professionally in
Southern California for more than 20
years. The numerous artists he has
performed and recorded with include Raw
Silk, Spencer the Gardner, Roy Galloway,
Jay Ferguson from Spirit and the
internationally renowned Latin Jazz artists
Teka and Luis Munoz. A respected guitar
instructor for more than 20 years, Dan has
written several articles for Guitar Player
Magazine and for the website
truefire.com.
In the mid-nineties Dan and Bucket Baker,
drummer for Kenny Logins and Michael
Jackson, formed Common Ground, whose
performances featured Dan’s instrumental
jazz/fusion compositions. Later that
decade Dan formed the Conga Punks with
Cougar Estrada of Los Lobos. Dan and
Cougar wrote songs together and Dan
performed on the first Conga Punks
record, an eclectic Afro Cuban/Rock
album. Dan currently performs and
records with international jazz artist Luis
Munoz. His guitar playing on Luis’ albums
Voz and The Dead Man has been singled
out for critical acclaim.
Performing with artists from many
different musical traditions has not only
given Dan a broad repertoire of styles,
songs and skills. It has also allowed him
to develop an approach to all music that
takes from the best of each of these
traditions. He brings a Jazz musician’s
enthusiasm for improvisation to the
excitement of rock while playing with the
friendly openness of blues and folk. This
unique musical approach resulted in Dan’s
first solo CD “Drifting Home, released in
2017. The album was met with critical
acclaim in the jazz/rock guitar world. Since
then, Dan has been fronting his own
band, performing his original
compositions as a trio that features
dynamic band interaction and
improvisation.
In 2021 Dan will release his next CD
Earth Tones, featuring Dan’s rock roots in
a stripped down and raw setting. He will
record live in a studio with his trio,
bringing the energy and spontaneity of
their live music to the precision and clean
sound of a studio album