This week DeBraun Thomas spends a few quality minutes with multi-instrumentalist Jimmy Earley.
Jimmy Earley is a multi-instrumentalist from Ann Arbor, Michigan who moved to Central Kentucky as a child. He got his first drum set at age 11 and started playing in Punk bands around the area. After graduating high school Earley moved to Chicago to play music. He says playing with bands in Chicago forced him to adapt and mature into the musician he is today.
“Trying to be within the song, whatever it is and my approach used to be a lot different, as a drummer when I was younger I wanted everything to be completely filled out and to be doing drum gymnastics all the time [laughs], I feel that you know, and my style has changed drastically and Chicago was really good for that as well, I really learned kind of how to be a lot more minimal and how to try and focus on the song and what I can do to strengthen the song rather than show off basically.”
After moving back to Lexington from Chicago in 2010, Earley joined the band The Fanged Robot. In continuing with his ability to adapt he learned to play bass. As he learns more instruments, Earley says as a songwriter, everything for him starts on drums.
“It almost kind of goes in order of the instruments I picked up, it’s either going to happen one of two ways, well, something either comes as a vocal melody or, if just want to sit down and build something from scratch, I’m gonna start with drums and kind of pile everything on top of that afterwards, that’s how I think, starting with drums is how generally how I found that I kind of work best.”
In keeping with a Lexington tradition, Earley plays with multiple bands around town. In many of those bands he is a sideman, but is well on the way. Earley says his passion music is what fuels his need to play with so many different bands.
“I love playing drums, I love playing bass, I love playing guitar, I love singing, I love doing, all these different things and there would be a time where I would be satisfied with doing just one of them or one or two of them, but I think in the end it’s about self expression and you, at some point, wanna put your own thing out there and kinda get that feedback and see how people feel about it, I think that’s kind of where I am right now, I love all of my projects, but I definitely wanna have something of my own, I haven’t really done that since Chicago.”
Jimmy Earley performs with The Fanged Robot, Frijidkitty, The Delicate Delegate and Space Trash. More information about Earley and his projects can be found on facebook.
