Jim Campilongo Biography

Billboard Magazine calls Jim Campilongo, “an American treasure”, an accolade this guitarist’s artistry and influential career has richly earned him.

With nine albums of original material and guest appearances on dozens of recordings; from the Bammie-winner’s contribution on Cake’s million-selling “Prolonging the Magic” to (most recently) doing lead guitar duties with Martha Wainwright, Teddy Thompson and The Little Willies, his band with Norah Jones, He’s also had repeat appearances on David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and been interviewed on many major radio shows. Campilongo is also a published guitar teacher and contributing editor for Guitar Player Magazine. Campilongo’s virtuosity and originality has inspired a generation of guitar players. His songwriting uses a palette of the best in Blues, Country, Jazz and Rock with a sensitivity and wit that has also earned him the broad fan base most instrumental guitarist never enjoy.

In 2010 Fender Guitars bestowed Jim the honor of the Campilongo Signature Telecaster, a high quality instrument made by Fender’s elite Custom Shop.

Campilongo’s career began in the mid 1970s when he studied guitar in his native San Francisco with the eccentric Bunnie Gregoire, who taught the pre-teen to embrace everything from George Van Eps to John Denver. Campilongo recalls, “Before Bunnie I used to just randomly buy records if there weren't that many songs on them, I didn't care who the artist was. A banner day would be discovering a double album that only had two songs on it. So I ended up with John Coltrane Live in Japan and John McLaughlin’s Devotion with Larry Young on organ. I listened to those records until they melted and I still do to this day (on CD). Eventually, I found Roy Buchanan’s first album and all bets were off, I was going to be a guitar player.” Jim’s first instrument was purchased with Green Stamps.

In addition to Chet Atkins and Roy Buchanan, Jim began to be deeply affected by Muddy Waters and the Sex Pistols. Around this time he was given a 1959 Telecaster by an appreciative student in exchange for successful bass lessons. “Playing that '59 Tele changed everything for me,” Campilongo remembers, “It was like it told me to get serious.” Soon after, he formed the hugely popular Ten Gallon Cats, which featured pedal steel guitar and Jim’s ever-expanding Country/Jazz vocabulary. They recorded three CDs.

Jim broke from the Cats and reached a creative pinnacle in his existing body of work with 1998’s Table For One, a collection of winsome and elegant compositions praised by Billboard as, “Americana at its most touching". Guitar Player affirmed the CD as a showcase for Campilongo’s “darkly romantic melodicism". The record also garnered Campilongo a new level of recognition. Heaven Is Creepy (2007) was his best received to date, with California’s East Bay Express commenting, “His music has echoes of Django Reinhardt, Buck Owens, Bach, Duke Ellington, the Beatles, and a panoply of folk, blues, jazz, and rock styles. Comped chords, delicate filigreed fills, long quavering sustained notes, and shimmering overtones slide together to produce a deep, moody, impressionistic sound.” All Music Guide also weighed in with a glowing review, noting, “The tracks are packed with ideas and occupy a unique musical landscape that combines Western American twang, Spaghetti Western atmosphere, surf guitar dynamism, jazzy dissonance and a blue, cinematic sweep that’s almost visual in its approach."

In 2002, Campilongo pulled up stakes and moved to New York, where he formed his Electric Trio, which toured Europe and Scandinavia and recorded the acclaimed CD American Hips, lauded by Guitar Player as “easily his best effort to date". No Depression raved, “Campilongo meets himself every time he picks up his instrument; that brand of artistic bravery is rare and to be treasured.”

"ORANGE” was released in 2010 to critical acclaim. The Tonequest Report wrote “Orange offers another vivid glimpse into the mind of an artist who paints masterpieces with the guitar.” Rarely does an album by one artist display the range of diversity that Orange does. The segue from the opening track, the raw and rockin' roadhouse boogie “Backburner,” to the sweet, crisp, Chet Atkins-toned “Awful Pretty, Pretty Awful,” is so jarring yet strangely natural that it suggests it’s impossible for the same artist to have been behind both tracks, or at least to have rendered both so brilliantly.

Produced by New York City legend Anton Fier (Golden Palominos) and recorded in Brooklyn, Orange teams Campilongo with acoustic bassist Stephan Crump and drummer/percussionist Tony Mason. Anton Fier commented, “We wanted Orange to be different from Jim’s other records...more than just documenting a moment in time. We wanted to paint a more complete portrait of who Jim is as a person, a musician, composer and artist. The record had to be crafted in such a way that captured the different sides of Jim’s music while still holding together as a cohesive whole. We didn't want it to be just a collection of tracks, but an album, where the individual songs were chapters in a larger story or journey."

Since 2005 the Jim Campilongo Electric Trio have performed every Monday at NYC’s Living Room. Time Out NYC recommended as “one of the city’s strongest” and “...Monday night means Jim Campilongo..."