I started asking Uncle Andre to show me stuff. I’d get by Andre at, like, 1pm.. He’d hook me up to one of his amps in the living room and I’d just start playing. Two hours would pass. Nearly every day, Andre never talked to me. He would cook, water plants, wipe down his xylophone. He’d go inside, come back out. After the second week, I told my dad I was feeling frustrated.
I said, “Uncle Andre, I feel like you’re not showing me enough.” He said, “Joel, for the past two weeks, whenever I walked into the room, you would try to flourish as much notes and skills as you possibly could.” My pores are raising telling this story! “I don’t have to tell you anything for you to play better,” Andre said. “You know it already! You just need to get it on to those frets!” I went home and said, “Dad, Andre is a f***ing genius!” And that’s how Andre taught me.
To this day, Andre Tanker is in my studio. I have his main black guitar, his Fender Strat, and his amp. I have Andre’s foot pedals from his last show, everything set from his last show. I haven’t touched it. Nobody can touch it!
Imij and Company rehearsed with them so Andre and 3canal could perform with us at any fete we played. The Friday night in question, I don’t know how to explain how bad it was. We got home from soundcheck at Queen’s Hall. I think it was One Fete. I was just farting around in my room and my dad came to my room with bad news. He said Uncle Ken Braithwaite just died. I literally collapsed backwards on to my bed. He was part of the band that went to London with Dad. Ken died at 6 o’clock. Dad said, “Take it easy. I’ll get you some dinner and then we’ll head to the gig.” I chilled in my bed, really depressed. And Dad pushed the door open about 8 o’clock, “I have some f***ed up news for you, son! Andre gone, boy!” That was the worst day of my life. Except for his funeral.
There was no stopping Andre Tanker. The only thing that ever stopped him was Trinidad. If he was anywhere else, New York, or Boston, or any of the other islands, it would have been a different scene for Andre.
Jimi Hendrix was left-handed and guitars are right-handed and Jimi Hendrix never changed the string setup (to suit a left-hander). He just turned the guitar upside down and played it! There’re a lot more stories about his playing, about things that happened in the studio, that blew my mind! He had such control and understanding of things like feedback, he literally used feedback to play songs! There’s a natural ability about Jimi and that same thing lived in Andre.
I’ve spent my whole life trying to play guitar like Andre Tanker.
Jimi Flipp is a group of very cool, very calm musicians I’ve had a lot of respect for for a long time. Peter Shim on guitars, John Otway on drums, Phil Hill on keyboards, a fantastic bass man, Pedro Casafranca, Rochelle Chaves and Stuart Silver on vocals.
I needed this band really badly. I wanted to play rock, I wanted to play guitar stuff. Imij and Co started back and, from 2001 until 2019, I was just playing soca. I kept saying to Peter, we need to start back a band that plays mainly rock.
It’s a really cool thing with the band name, Jimi Flipp. People say, “Well, it’s not Imij!” And I reply, “It really is Imij. Just flip it!” Sometimes you get the phone call right away, sometimes you get it half-past two in the morning! I just kept looking at the name Imij and it came to me. Most people see the connection to Jimi Hendrix but not to Imij.
We play a strong blend of 80s, 70s and 60s rock. We do 90s and current stuff as well but we love the earlier stuff.
Sometimes I do wish I’d learned guitar properly. But my body never got it. I never allowed myself to sit down and read. I just played.
Pires, B. C. (2023, July 24). Flippin Jimmy - Trinidad and Tobago Newsday. Newsday.co.tt. https://newsday.co.tt/2023/07/24/flippin-jimmy/
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