-Drums, Percussion, Additonal Guitar and Additional Vocals, Tympani, Trumpet, Bassoon, Hammer Dulcimer, Wounded Seagull (struck with mallets), Cannon, Icelandic Gong, Fuzzster, Chain and Bell.
Influences
The Dead Kennedys, Pink Floyd, Face to Face, The Descendents, the Beatles (White Album), Rage Against the Machine, Merle Travis, Social Distorition, Diggable Planets, Wilson Phillips, Hoobastank, Heart, LL Cool J, Led Zeppelin (Over the Hills and Far Away) Ween, Primus, Over the Rhine, India Arie, Mary J Blige, Hazel Dickens, Bela Fleck, Rod Stewart, Creed, Donovan, Jerry Lee Lewis, NOFX, Bad Religion, Agent Orange, Jackopierce, The Cure, Brown Couch, Green Day, Therapy?, Pavement, The Pretenders, Marylin Manson, the B52s, Handel, Liz Phair, Crosby Stills and Nash, John Prine, Goober and the Peas, Antony and the Johnsons, the Indigo Girls, Nathan Beaver, The Yale Whiffenpoofs, The Phantom Limbs, Juggernaut, U2, Run DMC, Limp Bizkit, Jurassic Five, Michael Galasso, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Nickelback, Deep Blue Something, UB40, Living Color, Tears for Fears, Pennywise, Marcy Playground, Depeche Mode, Blondie, Billy Idol, Bad Brains, Rancid, Offspring, Rollins Band, Coolio, Ramstein, Crash Test Dummies, The Walkin' in Memphis Guy, Kanye West, No Doubt, Filter, Gerund, The Presidents of the USA, Hootie and the Blowfish, PJ Harvey, Son Volt, Bone Thugs N Harmony, Toni Braxton (vocal gravy), Willie Nelson, Los Del Rio, Three Dog Night, Blood Sweat and Tears, John Denver, Ace of Base, Blackalicious, Sufjan Stevens, Jean Ritchie, Cypress Hill, Alice Cooper, the Clash, Foghat, Blink 182, Body Count, Flogging Molly, Protein, Daisy Chainsaw, and the Dead Milkmen.
Sounds Like
Ween, Goober and the Peas, Primus, Jars of Clay, Hoobastank
Nicotine Jimmy Dog is the most important Screamo/Death Metal/Concept Rock band to emerge from the eastern Kentucky Music Scene since Carnival of Oddities. Touched with elements of crunk, electroska, and happy hardcore, this band quickly rose to prominence in the late nineties and quickly receded to the dark undergrounds of the Appalchian underground/indie scene popularized by such bands as Foddershock, Scooby's Poop, The Brandy Ledford Experience, and Coal Minin' Sk8rs. While the music remains popular there today, the band has not appeared in public since the infamous "Blue Pavillion" show and the "Blue Courts" fiasco of late 1995. Taking cues from such mountain songwriters as Jean Ritchie and Merle Travis, this band took the old-time musical focus on ballads and storytelling, blending with punk counterculture and adding in the poppy guitar riffs of Blues Traveler and Rufus Wainright.
Fronted by the reclusive Judd (also known as Juddnuts), and fleshed out by the "talking guitar" of Jason "Smitty" Smith, the band's core members created a tight core around which the merry hopalong funkagrind melodies were wrapped. Bassist Sperm and drummer Big Rog rounded out studio cuts with extremely satisfying heavy low end thickness with driving dynostatic beats and a firm complement to Judd's spoken word assemblage lyrics.
History
The band coalesced in 1993, when the bandmates first met at Harlan High School. Judd and Sperm had previously collaborated on a concept album "Reverb 30" taking classic poetry from William Carlos Williams and E.A. Robinson laid over cascading arpeggios from a Mexican Fender strat. Judd and Sperm quickly found a shared creative spirit in Smitty and the three collaborated on the now infamous Nursery Sessions. The trio called themselves Blueberry Bears and formed a solid repetoire, which can best be heard on the bootleg album "Live in the Heartland on a Snow Day," which contains the first recording of their mega-hit Who Knocked Over my Pumpkin track. While forced to attend a pep rally for the tripple-A championship Harlan Green Dragon basketball team, the trio discovered Big Rog playing the quads in the marching band, and the rest is quite literally history.
From there the band grew into its classic period where such hits as "Dot," "Occasional Bird," "Phantasm," "the Ten Minute Song," and "Your Birthday was Yesterday Mother Fucker" were honed for the Sex With Fish album. Poppy hits such as "Chorus at the End" and "Marshmallow Man" delighted groupies from Pineville to PIkeville and even in some parts of northern Tennessee.
The late period was marked with the most musical creatity, even as forces drove band members in separate directions. Sperm went into production of avante-garde plays (Uno being the most widely recognized of his ouvre) and Smitty and Judd brough a new acoustic sound into the repetoire. Often hauntingly beautiful, the music from this period is the least well known and the most coveted by fans. Songs such as "Cottonmouth" "The Old New One" and the "New New One" display the most maturity, even as the old wry irony could still be found in titles like "Group Grope Cluster Fuck Kinky Sex blues."
In 1996, the band stopped playing entirely. Since then, they have been holed up in a double-wide trailer on Pine Mountain near Kingdom Come State Park, working on a 78-hour rock opera that tells the history of exploitation in the coal mines of Appalachia.
Prophesy
While not explcitly Christian, the music of Nicotine Jimmy Dog has touched many believers both here and abroad. With lyrical overtones that bear an uncanny resemblence to passagess in the Biblical book of Isaiah and the later part of Lamentations. Since secluding themselves on the mountaintop, some privileged vistors to the compound have reported visions of the apocalypse. Many believe that the music of Nicotine Jimmy Dog is actually the word of the Lord, made manifest in his prophet, the medium formerly known as Judd, and lyrics and musical incantations have been parsed by biblical scholars all over the world.
The band refuses to be identified as individuals, with all four members preferring to accept the nomenclature Ezekiel2K as the surrogate voice for the band. Many residents of Cumberland and Putney, KY have reported unusual and supernatural occurences near their home, visitations by angels, water changing into wine in mountain hollows near the compound, and healings that cannot be explained by modern science. The next album, which will be known as "Ezekiel2K: The Voice that Cryeth in the Wilderness, Prepare Ye the Way of the Dog" may very well usher a new era, both for concept rock and for the followers of Jesus Christ.
About My Work
I am Stephen Dreadnaught, an Ethnomusicologist with a PhD from Columbia University Music School and I moved to Harlan, in eastern Kentucky, in order to more closely study and devote my career to this obscure, but incredible band. I am currently writing a three volume biography of the band focusing on the early days through Ezekiel2K (and Ezekiel2.1K). I hope you will share my enthusiasm as I load my basement tapes and pirated NJD albums onto myspace for all believers.
Somebody call Hell and ask if they're wearing parkas... our fucking CD is finally out!! My Creation: Dry, Hard, and Angry is hot of the presses. Countless hours and $15,000 later, its ready for your consumption.. Its got 11 action packed songs that I promise you will enjoy. "This album represents some of the most horrific and most beautiful parts of the last few years. It literally saved my life working on it at the time" says Lance Maverick.
So please show some support and go spend a few bucks on a great product. Thank you all very much and we hope you truly enjoy this album. We are all very proud of it.
Rog DUDE!!! Nobody rocks the freakin icelandic gong like you!! i mean my ears have never had such an experience like this before. i think i better go lie down!
This music is amazing, my son has been on drugs for the past few years, and my wife and I have tried everything, from rehab to group sessions...And Nothing has worked....Nothing until we ran across njd. It turns out that all lil' billy needed was a good healthy dose of njd, only 5 times a day! Thank you Nicotine Jimmy Dog, You music has made for a better life for everyone!!!!!!!!!!
"We can assume Jesus had mad flow because he could rock any crowd. Like the sermon on the Mount, he had hundreds of niggas captivated-just him, alone, on a mountaintop." -RZA
Our daugher was real collicky after she started teething. We'd tried everything that the mainstream doctors were trying to prescribe. We even tried yellowroot and ginseng. But nothing got the job done until we had her listen to some Nicotine Jimmy Dog. And she's been an angel nearly ever since.
