E-Mail Jimmy Lloyd Rea: bluesman@triax.com
Bassist Jimmy Lloyd Rea lives for the blues, and now it's time for the blues to help
him out
The Oregonian, Friday, December 18, 1998
By John Foyston of The Oregonian staff
Everyone who knows Jimmy Lloyd Rea has stories about the man. One of mine happened the night I met him years ago when his band, the Switchmasters, was taking a break on the sidewalk in front of the River City Saloon. I knew of Rea but didn't know him -- this night was to be the beginning of a long, good friendship.
"Hey, Fatso," he said in that gruff growl, "C'mere, look at this. . ." "This" was the perfectly hideous white polyester sports jacket he was wearing. It hung from his back like a bad cough syrup habit, fluorescing with an eerie glow of its own, like a chunk of fuel rod spit out during the Chernobyl disaster. He motioned me closer, pointing to the jacket's tag, "Look at THAT," he said with a triumphant grin: " 'Expressly tailored for General Motors salesmen. . .' I'm wearing a used-car-salesman's sport coat!"
From the thrift-shop polyester he seeks out to the pawn-shop Japanese basses that he delights in collecting -- and occasionally playing onstage -- Jimmy Lloyd Rea is a true character and an integral part of Oregon's music scene. Thousands of us have been converted to his brand of roadhouse blues when Rea and his Switchmasters came rumbling out of Baker City to clubs and festivals around the region. And nobody ever even wondered at a band with the bassist as the frontman.
Jimmy Lloyd Rea made it look as easy as swilling a cold one on a hot day. He stood center stage with legs astraddle and one of his vintage Fenders (the ones he plays for real, always fitted with dice for volume knobs and "JLR" in stick-on metal letters) slung on a special strap so as not to muss his polyester, with a disreputable straw hat jammed on his head, singing the blues about as convincingly as they could be sung.
The problem is that he can sing the blues all too convincingly these days because diabetes is running its insidious course, causing circulation and vision problems. Worse, it's combined with the effects of years of heavy-duty antibiotics taken to fight a persistent bone infection he picked up during a hospital stay in 1990, and which shut down his kidneys. He's now doing peritoneal dialysis, because he can't even get on the waiting list for a kidney transplant until the staph infection is controlled.
On top of it all, he's in serious pain from two ribs that he just fractured in a fall. And you wouldn't know any of this unless you asked, because Rea is -- as he has been for the past decade -- determinedly upbeat, talking instead about great guitars to be found, great gigs still to be played and new albums to record. "I just came up with the name for the next Switchmasters album," he says from his home in Baker City. "I was going to call it 'American Boogie,' but then I hit on 'Kickstartin' the Blues,' which I think is perfect."
Rea, drummer Randy Lillya and guitarist Doug Rowell plan to go into Rowell's studio next spring and cut the band's third album. ("The Blues Is On the Line" and "Roadhouse Blues" are the others.)
But first, a few hundred of his fellow musicians, friends and fans plan to throw a party organized by Lillya to kickstart Rea's bank account, which has been sadly battered by a couple years of enforced idleness. Insurance covers most of the medical bills, but there's lots to be covered -- dialysis costs about $6,000 a month, Rea says. Right now, he's wheeling and dealing guitars on the Internet, but touring is out of the question -- he's not even sure he'll be able to make it to Portland for his own benefit.
What is certain is that the stars will be out Sunday night. In Rea's many years on the road with the Pete Karnes Blooz Band and national touring acts, he's made a lot of fast friends. "Paul deLay, Curtis Salgado, Lloyd Jones and Linda Hornbuckle have all signed up to be there," says Rick Hall, president of the Cascade Blues Association. "He's given so much enjoyment to the music community -- everyone wants a chance to help him out."
But Jimmy Lloyd Rea wasn't convinced at first. "When Randy told me he was planning a benefit, I told him to forget it. I've played a lot of benefits over the years, but somehow, you never think you're the one who's gonna need it."