Local guitarist holds residency at OJ’s

Times Reporter    

 

After Music Centre Canada shut down here in Strathmore, local musician and guitar teacher Jim Baxter was looking for something extra to fill his time, and in September he found the perfect home gig. Every second Thursday Baxter can be found at Original Joes, often accompanied by his friend and fellow musician Kyle Green. 

“It’s a great gig. I tend to get bored doing a single by myself so it’s nice to have Kyle come in, it’s way more fun to play music with somebody else,” said Baxter. 

He also plays at the Lighthouse Pub in Calgary on Sunday nights where he hires a co-host every weekend.

“I started when I was 14. I just always wanted to play in a rock band and didn’t really have much opportunity until I was about 18 and I ended up in my first band,” said Baxter. 

“I basically just dumped everything and ended up going on the road. It was a really awful band and it crashed and burned really fast but I did my first gig on my 19th birthday in Saskatchewan so I was legal the first night that I played,” he recalls. 

Baxter is primarily an electric guitar player who has done a lot of trio stuff over the last few years. He said things are constantly changing. 

“I ended up playing country a lot throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s and I still do. I just play everything I really thrive on variety. In the course of 40 minutes I might go from John Prine or Ronnie Milsap to Audioslave. It’s probably too eclectic for some people but the thing is if you’re just playing acoustic guitar then it tends to sort off round of the corners a little bit,” said Baxter. 

He has been living in Strathmore for about seven years and had taught at Music Centre Canada for most of the five years they were open. 

“I avoided teaching guitar for about 25 years. I have been teaching basically for 10 years (now but previously) the gigs dried up to the point where I need to teach,” said Baxter. 

He used to play six nights a week, then it dropped to weekends, then only to Friday and Saturday. It eventually became necessary for him to look into regular gigs. No one was more surprised than Baxter himself when he realized he loves teaching, it’s something that satisfies him and he can’t picture himself ever giving it up now. 

Back when he was playing gigs constantly he would get bored and quit to go drive cab. When he got sick of driving cab he would go back to gigging. 

“I got to the point about 10 or 12 years ago where I got tired of learning other people’s songs and I’ve done everything that I want to do in the business. I don’t play drums but I know how to tell a drummer what to do. I’ve got lights and I have been running sound for 25 years and I learned to sing because I fired the singer et cetera. I definitely know what kind of stuff I want to do and what will actually work,” said Baxter.

“With teaching, I mean sometimes it’s digging a ditch but you know when you get a kid who has never seen a guitar before and you get him after a couple of months playing stuff, it’s amazing. It’s a whole bunch of fun, and it’s a really sustaining thing, there’s just more fulfillment out of it.”

Baxter has been working on a CD, which he predicts will be ready to be released in the summer. The CD is being recorded at Absynthe Studios in Medicine Hat. It has taken him a long time to get his CD put together because he has only been able to work on it an afternoon or two every couple months. He said it is country blues and rock, and a lot of the songs on it are ones he has played live. To find out more about Baxter’s guitar lessons go to www.jim-baxter.com. 

Baxter and Green will be at Original Joes on March 14 and will be playing every other Thursday after that. The show usually runs from about 8 p.m. until 11 p.m.