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Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

ALBUM REVIEW September 10, 2020

Jim Kimo West: More Guitar Stories

Read "More Guitar Stories" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

Guitarist Jim Kimo West (aka Jim West) is probably best known as the guitarist in musical satirist “Weird Al" Yankovic's band. Anyone familiar with Yankovic's music knows that is an eclectic gig, but West is even more eclectic on his own. He jokingly describes this album--a sequel to Guitar Stories: Slack Key & Beyond (Westernmost Records, 2016)--as a “Slack Key, New Age, Jazz, Funk, Celtic, Americana and Indian Classical mashup." Crazy as that sounds, it is about right; West uses ...

ALBUM REVIEW July 18, 2018

Kimo West: Moku Maluhia - Peaceful Island

By Mark Sullivan

In addition to his regular gig as guitarist with musical parodist Weird Al Yankovic--which requires him to cover a wide variety of guitar styles--Kimo West is a Hawaiian slack-key guitar aficionado. His previous solo recording Guitar Stories (Westernmost Records, 2016) applied the finger-style playing technique with open tunings to an eclectic variety of material, accompanied by several supporting musicians. Here he stays closer to the slack-key tradition, playing solo with occasional support from shakuhachi flute and cello. Kimo's compositions are ...

ALBUM REVIEW April 2, 2016

Jim "Kimo" West: Guitar Stories: Slack Key & Beyond

By Mark Sullivan

Guitar Stories presents a lovely, diverse collection of music centered around Kimo West's composing and excellent guitar playing. West is a proponent of the Hawaiian slack key guitar style, a fingerstyle playing technique using various open tunings. He credits the name of the tuning used on each track, as well as including a list spelling out the full guitar tuning for each. So it's appropriate that the album opens with “Na Koa Moku O Keawe," a baritone guitar ...