Interview with Johnnie Bolin
by Todd Seely

Among connoisseurs of fine rock and roll, the name Bolin carries a lot of weight. In the early and mid-Seventies there rose to prominence a guitar wonder by the name of Tommy Bolin. Sadly, his life and career were cut short at the age of twenty-five. Continuing the Bolin musical legacy is Tommy’s younger brother Johnnie, a powerhouse performer in his own right. Once playing drums for his brother, Johnnie has long been pounding the skins for Jim Dandy in the latest incarnation of Southern rock stalwarts Black Oak Arkansas. His latest venture is an album with BOA bandmate Rocky Athas, recorded in Austin, Texas. Taking a break from the studio, Johnnie kicked back to reflect on where his road has taken him, and what lies ahead.

When did you start playing drums?

I started playing when I was about twelve. I wanted to play drums, and Tommy was playing guitar so my dad first got me a bass guitar. And I kept saying “I want to play drums.” Then I got a Danelectro six-string guitar. Tommy gave me a few lessons, you know. And I said “I still want to play drums.” So I was beating on all the chairs…destroying all the chairs. So finally after he knew I didn’t want to play guitar, he got me a set of drums. I started playing right away, and I was in a band within the first week, actually playing live in bars and school dances.

Were your parents tolerant of you and your brothers making all that racket around the house?

My dad encouraged all three of us to play. We wanted to play, but it seemed like it was more a dream to him than it was us. We weren’t really old enough to know how good we were gonna be.

Music is obviously one of the biggest things in your life. How important do you think it is for kids to grow up in a musical environment?

I think they should give a kid a try. I think parents should open the doors to kids if they have an interest. Not going out and buying them thousands of dollars in equipment, but give it a try. Buy them a set of drums. Buy them a guitar and give them lessons.

Aside from the 1973 reunion gigs with Zephyr, was your brother’s 1976 tour the first national exposure you had as a pro musician?

I opened shows for different shows around the Midwest, but Tommy was really my first introduction on that level.

2001 marks the 25th anniversary of the death of your brother, Tommy Bolin.  Are you surprised by the level of dedication that can be found among his fans today? 

I'm not really surprised. I think the fact that, through the help of a lot of people…Since he’s passed away there’s a period between ’76 and ’86 where not much happened. It was really kinda sad the way he went out in the first place. Private Eyes had just come out, he had just started touring and when he passed away they just pulled the plug. The record company said “Well, we can’t sell a record for an artist that’s not touring.” It was hurting me that I never saw it anywhere, I never heard about it.

How much of an effect have organizations like the Tommy Bolin Archives and Tommy Bolin Foundation had on the Tommy Bolin legacy?

It’s done really well. I compare to other artists who are forgotten, and it’s a shame when artists don’t get recognition like they should. Tommy had a spirit that touched a lot of people in a lot of different ways. And it comes across in what people do for him…guys like you, for instance. They’re not gonna let something like this go by the wayside. Willie Dixon was real instrumental in doing this thing with Geffen (The Ultimate boxed set). He found out that producer Tom Zutaut was a big fan of Tommy’s. It took a while, and we had our doubts. It helped figure out Tommy’s licensing. That was all a big mess-who owned the rights to this, who owned the rights to that? So that straightened out a lot of the legal part of things, which is very fortunate. And since the mid-80’s Motley Crue did his song (Teaser), there’s us (Black Oak Arkansas & Rocky Athas) doing his songs, and Guitar World & Guitar Player talking about him.

The Tommy Bolin Fest is held annually in Sioux City, Iowa…your and Tommy’s hometown. How did the first of the tributes get started?

It started a long time ago when I would just play nightclubs on Tommy’s birthday. Early 80’s were the first ones. Siouxland Jams wanted to put on concerts. When they asked me to start playing, they wanted to mention Tommy. We did that for a couple years. It was like “Siouxland Jams presents The Fest,” with a little tribute to Tommy. Instead of doing that, I thought I’d like to have the whole thing about Tommy. Just to kind of mention him wasn’t good enough for me. It’s been Tommy Bolin Fest for the last three years.

In 1999, Glenn Hughes returned to Sioux City for the first time since Tommy’s funeral in Dec. 1976. What did it mean to you for Glenn, a friend of Tommy’s and yourself, to come back for the Bolinfest Tribute?

I’d talked to Glenn off and on since Tommy passed. There were some years that went by where I hadn’t talked to him or seen him. I’d gone to Dallas, after I moved back to Iowa, and started playing with Rocky. When Rocky started playing with him I talked to him a little bit more. Things started coming together with the three of us. Then the Bolin Fests started happening and I talked to Glenn and asked him and he said yeah. Before, we’d done the thing with Mike Drumm (of the Tommy Bolin Archives, in Denver 1997). It just all tied together when he said yes to that. We did the one, and it went over really well. Then we did the other one (in Denver, 1998). Then we did the Texas tour (in 1999). I thought it was real appropriate. That was the first time he’d been there since Tommy’s funeral. I have pictures of him coming out at my mom’s house. He hadn’t been back since, and he never had seen the grave. He wanted to come back for that reason. He came four days ahead. It was great to have Glenn come back.

Who ultimately benefits the most from the Bolinfests and Archives releases, the Bolin estate or the Bolin fans?

The Bolin fans. We don’t really make any money. I think it works hand in hand. The gratification I get out of it is the fact that it’s something that the fans and the estate both share. I had all the means to get this material to people, I just had to meet the people to help me get it out. I’ve had a lot of help. I could never have done any of this by myself. Even the ideas. I can come up with some, but for every two or three ideas I come up with somebody else comes up with four or five. I’d still like to do a tribute album with different players. Everyone I’ve talked with, every good musician…I don’t even have to ask them. Whether it’s Ronnie Montrose, Rick Derringer, Carmine Appice, Jimmy Haslip, Cobham…

Are there recordings other than the Northern Lights live release, that feature both you and Tommy?

Well, we did the King Biscuit Flour Hour.

Will it ever see the light of day as a proper release?

I don’t know. They own that. As good as they’re supposed to make it sound, that didn’t exactly pan out…we never got a proper soundcheck.

You’ve said that you connect more to Tommy’s music than lyrics, since you grew up listening to him play. Is there a piece or a song that you connect more with…that means a little more to you?

His acoustic stuff. He’s got such a beautiful voice. His writing, too, is interesting. When he wrote Savannah Woman, he’d never been to Savannah. When he sang about France, he’d never…he was just singing about it. So that’s real interesting to me ‘cause that’s a side I guess I never saw until later on in life. Hello Again off his Private Eyes album was pretty touching. I remember when it came out I thought “Man, there’s not too much rock n’ roll,” after hearing Teaser. I’d never heard any of those songs before, on Private Eyes, but on Teaser I’d heard the vast majority of them with Energy years before that. Private Eyes was just all brand new to me. It sounded different. The way it was mixed was kind of off-the-wall too. As it ended up, Rolling Stone said it was mixed terrible…too much reverb. Four or five years later reverb was on everything! But I had just joined the band, and I didn’t know where all these songs came from. When we went out on tour we didn’t do any of those acoustic songs.

Following your stint with Tommy, you went on to record with several other bands. Tell me a little bit about the who’s, where’s and when’s:

*Richard T. Bear

After Tommy passed away, about six months later I met a guy named Freddie Salem. He played with the Outlaws. He called and said “There’s a band out here in Florida named Espresso, and they need a drummer. They’ll fly you down.” Bill Szymczyk, who produced Hotel California, was their production manager. And we had a gig…we did nine weeks at this club called the Jamestown. So this Richard T. Bear guy used to come down and jam with us all the time. He asks “Wanna be in my band? I’ve got an album coming out on RCA.” And he had Les Dudek on there, he had Paul Shaffer, the Brecker Brothers, Mike Finnegan, and Elliot Randall. We toured with that first record. He had a hit called Sunshine Hotel. We went back to New York, went touring again and did the album called Bear on RCA. Then we went over to Germany and did a live album there, Captured Live In Germany. So we went over there twice, went to France…toured with Sabbath, J. Geils, Travers, whoever they put us with. Did that for three years, and then he lost his deal. So I moved back to Sioux City, and about a month later I started the band DVC with John Bartle, actually called The Penetrators.

*DVC

The Penetrators moved to Minneapolis and within a year or eight months we got a record deal with Alfa, who had Billy Vera & The Beaters, Burton Cummings and Lulu. They were a Japanese label. We had two records out. The second one never came out because when all the labels were merging, Alfa had no one to merge with. Warner Brothers went with Asylum and Elektra (now WEA). All the big companies were merging, where Alfa was independent. So they just folded. Our second album never came out, even though we did it. It’s all mixed, we had pictures taken…we continued trying to shop the album, but it was done.

*Dare Force

That’s why I joined Dare Force. I did some independent stuff with them, two or three albums. It was heavy metal. Rock metal. A couple months went by and Black Oak called me. That was in ’88. Then me and Rocky quit to pursue a group called Alamo, and pursue getting a record deal. We did that for a couple years, and we did a couple Tommy Bolin tribute things too, back in the mid-90’s. We didn’t get a deal with Alamo, and that fell apart. I just moved back to Sioux City.

*Chill Factor

I got back together with John Bartle in Chill Factor. That was an overnight sensation. We disbanded again, and that’s when I got the call from Jim to come back to Black Oak.

Is BOA where you first crossed paths with guitarist Rocky Athas?

We played together in Black Oak in ’88, then both quit. Then I joined his band Alamo. We did that for a couple years, and that’s when I left. I never saw Rocky again for four years. He got back together with Black Oak about eight months before I did, and then they lost their drummer.

You and Rocky seem to have a unique comraderie, both personally and musically. Did this stem from his participation in the Tommy Bolin tribute shows?

My younger brother lived in Dallas in the 80’s. He’d call me on the phone and say “Man, this guitar player down here…he beats all the other guitar players. He’s right up there with Tommy.” And he was playing a bar one time and I thought “Yeah, he’s OK.” We had a chance to play with Rocky’s Lightning, and they opened up for us. We were the headlining act, or whatever we were. We had the record out. My brother Pudge is trying to get me to come early to see these guys. Our transportation was late, so I just caught the tail end of the set. They were pretty funny. They did a lot of skits. I think I walked in and Rocky had a football helmet on. Three Stooges type humor, all that crazy stuff. During his solo, the drummer would get done and flip up over his drums. I saw that and I’m going “Wow,” but I didn’t really get the chance to hear Rocky play. Time marched on. Jim Dandy got rid of our guitar player in Black Oak, for this guy Rocky Athas. And Jim says “This guy Rocky used to play with me back in ’83.” It didn’t ring a bell. So we’re playing and I’m thinking “What a great guitar player.” A couple weeks had passed, and for Tommy’s birthday in ’88 I asked if they’d come up to Sioux City. We’re on our way up there, and we’re talking. He’s talking about Lightning and he mentions how his drummer used to flip over his drums. I said “You’re the guitar player that my brother used to tell me about six or eight years ago.” He says “In Dallas, there used to be some guy who used to come back to our dressing room and ask us if we ever heard of Tommy Bolin. And Pudge would say ‘That’s my brother.’ And we’d go ‘Yeah, right’.” So we’re sitting in the back of the car and we can’t believe that. The next town that we pulled into, I called my brother and said “You are not gonna believe who our guitar player is! Remember that Rocky Athas guy…?” We hit it off. We’re the same age. We definitely play real well together. Live, we work off each other.

Eventually Black Oak Arkansas rebuilt enough momentum to sign with Cleopatra Records and record the Wild Bunch album. What was that experience like?

That’s another good one about my younger brother Pudge. Greg Hampton called my house. He asked for my brother, and I said “Well, he’s passed away.” We talked and talked, and he says “Who are you playing with now?” I said “Black Oak. We’ve been in the studio. That’s all we’ve been. That’s all we ever seem to do, since I joined the band in ’88.” He said “I think I can get you guys a deal.” So I set him up with Jim Dandy. We got together, and we already had twelve songs. We went back in and did four more songs at House Of Blues in Memphis. So my brother got us the record deal.

Whose idea was it to record cover versions of Tommy Bolin songs Post Toastee and Shake The Devil?

Me and Rocky already knew them, from the tribute band. Jim wanted to do something with Tommy’s songs. And I thought “I don’t know what that could possibly be.” I tried to think of what’s suitable. Post Toastee’s a rock tune. Shake The Devil…you know, the devil’s in there. I couldn’t see doing Teaser or Savannah Woman or Alexis.

Moving on past Black Oak Arkansas, we have your latest project, with your friend and bandmate Rocky Athas, being recorded as we speak. How has the experience been here in Austin?

Oh, it’s been great. Great producer. Working with Robert Ware…he did some things with us for Black Oak. Us three have actually been together for quite a while, off and on. And Larry Samford, the singer we’ve got…I’d never heard him sing before, but it’s been real good. The music’s been excellent.

How is it working with producer Jim Gaines?

He’s real easy to work with. Most of these songs are brand new to me, so me and him are kinda working them out at the same time. I’ll do them, and he’ll say “How about doing something here…something there?” And I’m totally open for new ideas because like I said, it’s brand new for both of us. It’s easier to work with a producer that’s really involved because you’re working together. Trying to get through this thing together. It’d be different if I’d been playing the songs for years and years, but it’s all pretty fresh.

Most professional musicians move to a larger city like Los Angeles, Nashville or New York. Why have you maintained roots in Sioux City after all this time?

Well, I didn’t. I moved back there because of my mom, dad and my brother in ’92. And I’ve got the house. I live there, but I travel a lot. At this point in my life, really don’t want to move. I’ve lived in Los Angeles, I’ve lived in Florida, and I’ve lived in New York. I’ve lived in Texas. I like where I’m at right now. I can still do music by living there. That’s where my family’s at, and where they’re all buried. It’s really a great city, and it’s worked out OK.

Which of your accomplishments stands out as your proudest so far?

I didn’t get a chance to record with Tommy. I guess the period of time when I did the DVC stuff. I was pretty proud of that. The four of us were actually in a band. It was my band as well as it was any of the four of us. With Bear, it was Bear’s band. With Dare Force I was added later on. They were already established. Black Oak’s already established. With Chill Factor, the longevity wasn’t long enough. With DVC we started from square one, we got a deal.

What can we expect next from Johnnie Bolin?

Hopefully, something will come of this project. We’ll do it, I’m sure they’ll shop it and we’ll see what happens. I have my career too, but I do look after my brothers’ career. I’ll continue to do everything.