The punks gave him the inclination to pick up the guitar and yell, "hell, if we can do it so can you" being the cry to battle. As a tike he'd listened to his big brother's records- Captain Beefheart, Theloniuos Monk, Hank Williams, Sun Ra, James Brown, Robert Johnson and Johnny Cash along with the popular radio playlists. He didn't compartmentalize but rather developed an acute sense of the significant over the disposable. Stints in Actual Size (Pittsburgh) Poison 13, Prohibition, The Spoilers (Austin) The Candy Machine, Beautiful Losers (Baltimore) have led up to Jamie Panzer & Exercising Demons. "I'm not growing up so much as out. I couldn't write anything credible until I began to experience it myself".

vocals, guitar, bass, piano, organ and more.

Being at the tender mercies of guitarists who wouldn't tell him what key they were in so he could play along, he decided he'd become a mandolinist. At that point he saved all his pennies and instead of a mandolin picked up his first pedal steel. He still wanted to play mandolin so the next instrument he got was a dobro, and started to teach himself that too. Same goes for the harmonica. Finally after he was too old to remember any thing any more he got a mandolin. "Now where was I?"

pedal steel, dobro, harmonica, mandolin and more.

Looking like a dear caught in the headlights here. An enigmatic picker. He would play along to everything he heard that would float his boat. He and Jamie met years ago while flipping burgers at the same joint in Ausin, Texas.

electric guitar.
  country tainted rock and roll, folksploitation, cosmic soul (thanks GP) and beatnik pop for those in need of suggested classification... the following is something we're more comfortable with...  
  A distillation of sonic hooks, turn of phrase, irreverent attitudes, and desperate measures. filtered through an ancient membrane the hooch that trickles through is both fresh and original while remaining familiar and traditional. Here in the "great melting pot" sometimes it doesn't melt so good but we like it with some lumps any old ways. We don't operate in a vacuum nor do we isolate ourselves from the drone. We do however crank up the thresher to separate the wheat from the chaff but not the sacred from the profane. Anybody need some chaff? we've got mountains to dispose of... This old work horse wears no blinders as it pulls the harvest-laden wagon to market. Home grown, home made, hand spun and the sound of one hand clapping. Tom Joad meets Gurdjieff at Ellis Island, become minstrels and set off for points west, hooking up with Johnny Appleseed along the way. Johnny had just stumbled over the napping Rumplestiltskin so he takes up the harp and joins too. Farther afield, John Henry comes into the fold to keep time with his hammer. All the while, their muses, Sacagawea and an apparition in a long black veil, guide the way for the melodic misfits.  
     

 

 

 

 

 

Jamie Panzer & Exercising Demons