Jimmy Fay

Jimmy Fay is a legend in this town. He grew up just across the river from Manhattan in Jersey City and migrated here with some of his cronies around 1970. He is the leader, main song writer, drummer, and lead singer for the Spark & Cinder Band. Over the years he has played drums with many other groups, as well as a bit of mandolin here and there. Currently you can catch Jimmy at the helm with Spark & Cinder, also playing drums with The Steve Cook Band and The Kind. He can be heard playing mandolin with The Steve Cook Trio, and The Pub Scouts.

Jimmy...Well I was in town long before Spark & Cinder.

When did you first come to Chico?

1970.

Why did you come here in the first place?

To get away from the East Coast, you know, and a lot of my friends were out here, so, it was like, nice here; especially around Chico around the mountains and stuff.

Didn't you guys spend some time in Tucson at some point?

Not yet, I came out here in '70, and then we went back [to Jersey City] after about a year and a half.

Was that with Supa Nova?

Yeah, we started Supa Nova when, when I showed up we started a band. Only one of 'em had played in a band before: Zack, you know, then me. Then there was two of us that actually had played, and Zack had been out of commission for like five years at that time anyway. I was the only one that had been working. It was all the hippies that used to hang out with each other.

After about a year and a half, me and Victor went back [to Jersey City], and they followed us back there. We played a little bit around New York City, and Jersey City, and Woodstock, and all that, then they went back to California, and me and Victor went to Oregon to play in the John Booth Band. We played with them for about six months, and then we were in Eugene, and LA, and then we hitch-hiked from LA back to Jersey City. That was '72, right in the beginning of 1972. And then we started Jack Straw, back there, then. And that's the band that turned into Spark & Cinder.

So Jack Straw actually started back in Jersey City?

Oh yeah.

And who was in that?

To begin with it was none of the guys...first it was me and my brother Stevie, and Victor, and these two Italian guys that lived with their mother back there.

What did Victor play?

Victor was a guitar player. He played bass in the first Jack Straw, then he was real big on guitar, and he played that.

What ever happened to him?

He died a long time ago.

[For more on Victor Esposito, see the interview with Jerry Morano...kg]

So, you're back there with Jack Straw in Jersey City.

Then we went to Tucson.

Was that with the Baxmeyer guys yet?

Yeah, that was the next thing. The first version lasted about a year I think. Then at the beginning of '73 the Baxmeyers were in the band, and we played with them for a year in Jersey City. Then we went away to Tucson. The band then was Billy Bax, and Bobby Bax, and me and Victor, that was all, there was only four of us.

Did Bobby play guitar too?

Yeah, Bobby was playing guitar then. [Bobby Bax played guitar and keyboard later on, in an early verson of Spark & Cinder...kg]

So Victor and Bobby were on guitar, and Billy was on bass, and you were on drums, or mandolin?

Drums. We had an acoustic version where I played mandolin, but this was the band, rock & roll, you know. That was the band that started playing reggae.

At what point did you guys get tuned into that?

Well, the first point was when we went down to the Virgin Islands; that's when I first got tuned into it. I didn't hear it again till I got back to California. Jerry [Morano] had the reggae records. They weren't playing it, Supa Nova never played any reggae at all, and we [Jack Straw] were doing that.

What year was it you went to the Virgin Islands?

'72, during the early Jack Straw days. So what happened was we came back to Chico from Tucson, then the Jack Straws went back to Jersey City, and the Supa Novas stayed here. When I was in Jersey City, Zack started calling me there, asking me to come back to Chico 'cause they had a bunch of gigs and their drummer thought he was on the moon with Swami Satchadenanda and Jimi Hendrix. Billy and those guys moved back in with their moms, and I was like, kinda living on the streets in Jersey City. So I just sold my PA and flew out and joined Supa Nova again, in the summer of '74. That lasted another six months or so, and then everybody got sick of Zack. I got everybody to go down to the Southwest where I used to play with Jack Straw, and we had a gig that got canceled in Phoenix. We knew that the Jack Straw guys were back in Tucson by then, Bobby and Billy, and we knew we could stay there if we showed up. So we went back and it was the same old house that we used to live in; somehow the Jersey City guys had maintained this house. And we went back there, and they were there, and we started playing Jack Straw again, as well as Supa Nova. While we were on the road there, in the Southwest, Supa Nova broke up, then Jerry started playing with Jack Straw. Billy Bax came back to Chico with us, then we kicked Victor out, 'cause he was a junkie, and we got Joe Hammons, after we kicked Victor out. And we made a Jack Straw tape. There are still versions of it around. It has "Pressure Drop" by Toots and the Maytals on it; it has a song by the Meters on it, and a couple of original songs.

So you'd written a song or two by then.

Oh, I used to write like, I wrote a whole fuckin' rock opera thing; a mock "Beauty and the Beast" for the Jersey City Dept. of Public Works. No, I was writing songs since I was twelve, man.

What I'm wondering is when the first Spark tunes were starting to get written.

As soon as the band started.

But were they coming up in Jack Straw, some of those first Spark tunes?

No, we had different songs. We did a couple of songs that were cross-overs, like "On The Floor," and a couple of things like that. "Clint," we used to do "Clint," you know, they were my songs. The first Spark & Cinder songs were "In The Mood" and "Black Maria" and "Big Apple Pie Face."

Cool. Ok, so Jack Straw is happening, Joe's in the band, and...

Then, we were getting hired by Butte Creek; we never even practiced with them or anything. They only practiced once a month anyway. But with Butte Creek we [Jimmy and Jerry] were the rhythm section. But Billy never did, and Joe never did. So we knew Cannon, and we saw Cannon playing with Bone Dry, and they were doing funk and shit, and we figured he could play with us too, and we could have a keyboard. So we asked Cannon to be in the band, and when he showed up everybody [from the Butte Creek Band] was there. So we had to kick some people out.

Was Kim Cataluna around yet?

Yeah, we had been hanging out with Kim 'cause she used to practice with her band right down the street from the house I was living in at the time.

What band was she in then?

She was in this band called The Rubber Brain Boogie Band, with Sue Poe. And then as soon as we started Spark, I think we played for about a month, and then we got Kim. It was really short, but it was for a little while. There's a few live tapes of us before we even had her. Then she was the next one. It was the Jack Straw guys, and Johnny Lapado, and Marilyn and Michael. I think that was the whole...only three of 'em from Butte Creek. I can't remember anybody else actually, that was in the Butte Creek that was in that first band. Who else the fuck was in that band anyway?

It was you guys, and those guys, and Kim a little bit later.

Right, so that thing about Spark used to be Butte Creek really like, is technically like, incorrect. I mean, three out of eight people, you know what I mean? I guess people kinda associated us with Butte Creek because we played a few gigs with them, but really, the whole thing man, our motto when we started was like, "this ain't Butte Creek, you gotta come to practice." That was the fuckin'...my motto back then. Had the whip out.

What about Bob Wallen? Wasn't he in the band then?

Wallen was the guy that was kinda in the band, he'd get up and do one or two songs a night, and he was our manager.

Was he in Butte Creek for awhile ever?

Yeah, he was one of the rotating minions; there was like, millions of them.

So Spark & Cinder is off and running in Jan. '76. How did you feel about the impact the band had on the culture around this town. Were you aware of it, or did you not even think about that?

Oh yeah, it was obvious and massive. I don't know why it gets pushed so far back into a lot of people's subconscious. It was fuckin' massive. There were fuckin' fire trucks named after us. One of 'em was Spark and one of 'em was Cinder. No one even remembers what they got named after. I think there was always misconceptions about the band to begin with. And more as time went on. To us it was still the same, it was our band, like Jack Straw. And as time went on people would ask, "where's the chick [Kim Cataluna], where's the Butte Creek guys?" You know, the music kept getting better as it went along, and more professional, way more professional, but we were in our heyday at our most raucous and unprofessional state. But whatever, thats the way it is in this country: it's backwards, everybody's a fuckin' retard.

After awhile, it was tough to get a full weekend gig around here, or anywhere. That made it necessary for a lot of guys to play with more than one band.

The thing about getting in a bunch of bands was that some people didn't want to travel, especially when everybody had a million kids. When everybody had a million kids, they didn't really want to be on the road all the time, which you had to do. If you wanted to just have one band you had to travel with it. So it became a way for me to survive. Billy just got into that driving jag. He thought that was his main purpose in life, or something. I just started playing with more bands, that was my answer to that. Everybody got too domesticated. That's why ya gotta play in different bands. Plus, it was interesting. It was like being a studio musician, but live.

Yeah, it was great. For me, to have the opportunity to play all those different styles of music was a great education.

I think it had an effect on the culture of the town, drastically. People didn't even know what reggae was, we brought it in. It was the thing that we did that no one had heard before. We were associated with that. Then the town became more multi-cultural because of us, but nobody ever gave us any credit for that. Especially all the Jamaican guys that were making so much money coming here playing. They didn't have no idea that they wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for us, but they wouldn't have been. Maybe a couple years later, but we definitely pushed the thing into the future there, the whole town. And we weren't from around here, man. We were from big cities, all of us. We were cosmopolitan from the beginning. We looked like a bunch of dirt-hippies, but some of the guys had been every-fuckin-where. India and whatever. Everybody was from all these different places. Like I say, the first time I heard reggae was down there.

So was it after seeing that down there, and hearing those rhythms that you started incorporating more of a poly-rhythmic thing into your drumming?

No, that started happening when I was playing funky stuff.

In high school?

Yeah, in high school, you know, the African shit, and the Latin stuff I started working on when I was back there [in Jersey City] 'cause Pharoah Sanders and them guys used to play a lot of African stuff, and we used to go see them over there.

At Fillmore East?

Yeah, and Herbie Hancock started playing that funky -- no, Pharoah never played the Fillmore East. He wasn't big enough. He might've opened for some people there sometimes. He used to play in like, little Village Vanguard. It was like, a little tiny place. And there was all the Puerto Ricans on the block. There was a kid that used to go out with Little Michelle [Jersey City native; current Chico resident], named Marcus that was a Jewish and Puerto Rican guy. He used to show me all the cow-bell things and stuff. He used to say, "Yes sucks, play salsa," 'cause everybody was into playing that fusion and shit when we were in high school, so he was going, "Yes sucks!" When you play salsa, that kind of [fusion] shit is lame, you know. And there was Brazilian guys in the neighborhood and shit. There was a lot of that crap when I was staying back east, you know, you pick it up. This was when I went back there and we started Jack Straw. We went to Jamaica, we were hangin' out with Brazilians, Columbians, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans, and shit, and having nefarious dealings with said people, and you always heard the tape in your house and shit. And seeing good salsa bands right on the street back there, get gigs with them and shit.

Was there a point where you realized you had developed this style all your own?

Oh, and also the Dead, from playing Grateful Dead music. Mickey Hart always played African shit, all that Alligator and stuff. That was not just like, rock & roll, they were playing like, Afro rhythms and shit. You know, that Afro 6/8. So, no, it was from playing the Dead music more than anything that caused the whole mixture of stuff. And just the '60's. When I started playing, it was the Beatles. The '60's thing was like a sponge, you know? And the Beatles had millions of different...just from playing Beatle music, right off the bat you get like, Celtic, and rock & roll, and all kinds of shit thrown in there right off the bat, Country Rock. And then the Stones, and the blues. Then we got into jazz for awhile. Just from the bands whose stuff you played, that started to formulate itself right off the bat, right when I was twelve and thirteen. 'Cause all those bands did all different kind of melting-pot kind of shit, that's the way I thought about it. Then by the time I was twenty-three, when Spark & Cinder started, by then it was more pronounced, and you could actually write a calypso, even two. I got into calypso after we got into reggae, you know, so that's the way that fuckin deal went.

Cool.

That's exactly the way all that shit [Spark's early history] happened. Everybody always forgets or they think I'm slanting it towards myself, but I don't have to do that. That's not even a necessity. The thing I like to see is someone actually said what actually happened, instead of, "Oh yeah, you know, I don't know, it was Butte Creek and Supa Nova, and Bobby Seals and John Glick." Those motherfuckers had nothing to do with it. I remember Bobby Seals had a little novelty band that I used to fill in for back when I first was out here in 1970.

Sub Zero?

Yeah, I never got anything musical off of those guys. They weren't even playing when I got back. Bobby started another band after Spark & Cinder started.

Bordello.

Yeah. I always thought Bobby was crazy and groovy and all, but, you know, he used to do a lot of songs about like, [sings, in a cutesy way] "Let's all take off our clothes and feel real good," you know, no musical influence. My musical influences are The Doors, and The Beatles, and the fuckin' Stones, and fuckin' Herbie Hancock, and Pharoah Sanders, and fuckin reggae guys, and calypso singers, and B.B. King, and Muddy Waters, and Howlin Wolf. Not some raggedy-ass guys from around here. So that's what I have to say about that.

Tell me about some of the personnel changes that happened over the years for Spark & Cinder. Joe was the the original guitar player.

Then it's Ska-t, then Lapado left. And we didn't replace him. We just kept it thin.

Then Dana [Olsen] got into the thing at some point.

Yeah, well, we wanted both of them. For awhile it was both of them. Then when Scott left it was just Dana. Scotty moved back down to the Bay Area for awhile. That's right, after he wrote that song, "Paradise." He had a leave of absence for a year. And we had Dana. Then Dana kind of left for a year, when Scott came back, and there was a little floppy period. There's a lot of floppage in this band, like Dana flopping, overlapping with Ska-t.

That still happens, actually.

Yeah. It was always Dana and Ska-t right up to now actually. There's like, an unbroken line of that. [Phil] O'Neill [sax] was in and quit after a few years, then we got Kevin Galloway, then Kevin quit and we got Jim Hall, then we got J.D. [Jeff Daub], right when Jim Hall left we started using J.D. on trumpet.

And there was Paul Abrahms on bass for awhile.

Billy Bax left after four years, in 1980. And he stayed out for four years. He really tried to get back for three years, but we had a guy [Paul], and it was a touchy subject. Then, finally after years of people buggin' me to get rid of Abrahms, I finally kicked him out of the band. It was totally my decision when that happened. I was the one that kicked him out, but like, Scotty and Phil and those guys had been asking me to get Billy back. Then Jerry quit too.

Yeah, Jerry's just back in.

He went for about 10 years, and he was out for l0 years, and now he's back in again.

So, sometime in '87, Scott leaves the band for awhile.

Yeah, 'cause he got in a fight with me. That's when you got in.

And that lasted up until real recently, not the fight, but Scott's absence. And now he's back in again too.

Yeah.

The current version is pretty beefy again, with Ska-t, J.D., Jim Hall, you, me, Jerry, and Billy. Ok, well, thanks Jimmy, that should do it.

Ok, sure.