Jim-Joe Greedy learned about country music the old-fashioned way — from prime-time television shows.
Me too. At age six I watched “Hee Haw” with my grandfather every Saturday night, mind blown by the quick picking and endless goofy grins of Roy Clark and Buck Owens.
For Greedy, it was seeing bluegrass stars The Dillards on “The Andy Griffith Show,” or Johnny Cash and friends on The Man in Black’s weekly variety program, or the sharp-dressed Flatt & Scruggs on “The Beverly Hillbillies.”
Greedy has been a part of numerous Valley punk and rock bands — 8th Route Army, Pajama Slave Dancers, Steve Westfield & the Slow Band, Angry Johnny & the Killbillies — but country music was his first and strongest love, and he celebrates it regularly with his own band, Sixtyone Ramblers.
They play country hits and rarities from the fifties and sixties. Greedy’s baritone voice is a timeless thing, perfect for crooning songs by George Jones, Ernest Tubb, Faron Young, Dave Dudley, Dick Curless, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and others.
The Sixtyone Ramblers will open for Junior Brown at The Iron Horse on Thursday, August 3 at 7 p.m.
Spiffy performers made an early and lasting impression on Greedy. No matter what kind of band he’s been in, he likes to wear a suit and tie on stage. On a rain-battered muggy morning last week, he arrived for our interview in a striking western hat.
Greedy grew up in Easthampton in a house close to the mountain, which blocked TV and FM signals from the south. “I didn’t have a lot of interest in rock music just because of the geography of things,” he said.
He liked The Beatles — “their presentation was always very classy” — but generally as a kid he shied away from rock music. “It seemed kind of silly and gimmicky to me.”
At age eleven he got his first guitar from an older sister (he traded her a portable TV for it), but during those preteen years he was more interested in baseball or the Boy Scouts.
When his high school friends wanted to start a band, he reluctantly picked up the bass, and in the early-’80s, he played in the punk group 8th Route Army — longtime Valley residents might remember their stickers plastered all over town at the time. (“We had a manager that had deep pockets and he was into hype and merchandising, so we had a lot of stuff. Not a lot of fans, but a lot of stuff,” Greedy quipped.)
A new group called Pajama Slave Dancers played their first show opening for 8th Route Army at Hangar One in Hadley. They didn’t have a bass player, so Greedy talked his way into the band. “They showed me a few songs in the dressing room,” he said.
But by the mid-’80s, Greedy started getting bored with rock music. He frequented flea markets, buying whatever cool old records he could find (“jazz, weird records, country, anything and everything”).
And then he heard the game-changing Dwight Yoakam. “I honestly thought he was an old singer I’d somehow missed, because he did not sound like contemporary country. Then I found out he was a new artist.”
Greedy was inspired to play classic country music, but couldn’t find any likeminded locals. The closest thing in the area was Angry Johnny (whose backing band at the time was called The Snots), but well over a year went by before Greedy warmed up to his sound and vibe. What finally sparked him was Angry’s original tune, “Whiskey.”
“I thought, ‘Man, this is like a really good country song.’ So I called him up and said, ‘You know, I don’t like almost anything you’re doing, but this one song. if you could write ten more like that, I’ll play with you. But we gotta change the name of the band.”
And thus was born Angry Johnny and the Killbillies. “It was worth it to me. I saw something in his writing that really appealed to me. There was a hillbilly rawness to it,” Greedy said.
About a decade ago Greedy started his own group, Sixtyone Ramblers, its name a tribute to what was “a real good year in country music,” he said. Its current members are Joel Meginsky (aka J Walker) on lap steel, Josh Gordon on fiddle, Dave Erickson on bass and Jeff Roncalli on drums.
The band’s repertoire of old-school country songs — including popular classics and little-known gems — draws on Greedy’s own record collection and musical history, but also some online surfing.
“I don’t really like the Internet, but man, I get lost in YouTube,” he said. “Finding live performances, television performances, a whole bunch of country stuff I’d never heard before, and it’s awesome. There’s so much unknown stuff out there. I find it every day.”
Greedy’s inspirations include Lefty Frizzell, Hank Snow, early Johnny Paycheck and especially Johnny Cash. “He’s been a big influence throughout everything I’ve ever done,” he said. “Seeing him on TV [as a kid], all dressed in black…he looked like a god.”
And right up there with Cash in terms of influence is Hank Williams. Greedy and friends are in the midst of creating a tribute act to the iconic country singer and songwriter.
Greedy recently finished a Hank Williams biography and found him to be a figure that ties together many a musical thread in his own life.
“I compare him a lot closer to [punk legends] The Ramones than I would any country artist of the day. He had this ‘basic-ness.’ It’s what drove him. He didn’t want anything fancy. He used to always tell his guys in the studio, ‘Keep it vanilla.’ He did what he did because of what was in his heart. I can see a similarity to The Ramones. They took rock ’n’ roll and turned it into some of the most basic elements. And it had a lot of appeal. Instantly.”