THE LINEUP
A monthly look at must-hear artists from all corners of the guitar world, from the roots of their sound to the tracks that matter most
Artist: Jim
Album: Love Makes Magic (Vicious Charm)
Jim Baron is best known as keyboard player and producer for electronic outfit Crazy P, who he formed with Chris Todd in 1995. However, for his own first full-length album, Love Makes Magic, and the previous EP, FallingThatYou Know (released under the ‘Jim’ moniker), Jim has taken on the acoustic guitar – a new route for him –to make a different kind of music.“I’d been working on a project called White Elephant with Chris and Ben Smith that had a more stripped-back acoustic sound,” Jim explains. “Ben is an amazing fingerpicker and I’d always played with a plectrum. After those sessions, I started getting into the fingerpicking zone.”
New Foundations
For his 2021 EP, Jim developed the skills he began working on after the White Elephant sessions, but he kept it intimate. “It started as an experiment, where I would tune into the music I love and then see what happened,” he says. “I was listening to people like Nick Drake and Crosby, Stills &Nash. I wanted to keep it less perfect than the Crazy Pstuff, which is quite shiny, and focus on the feeling. So I did the first EP all at home on one mic and the percussion was my daughter’s percussion toys.”
From Keys To Strings
Although Jim has been an accomplished musician for many years, the challenge for his solo work began when he switched from keyboard to acoustic guitar, an instrument he knew but had had less contact with. “Chris [Todd] is a great guitarist,” Jim tells us, “so we sometimes swapped – but rarely. I’ve always had a guitar, but I didn’t really get the chance to use it properly. For this, it was a case of trying to improve on what I could do with it. Also, I was always a big fan of The Cult, and I could envisage an acoustic version of their song Phoenix. That really kicked things off and I started experimenting with writing after I did that cover.”
Expansive Magic
For Love Makes Magic, Jim broadened the palette he developed on the EP, while keeping the acoustic soul of the sound. He says: “I didn’t have a clear idea, to be honest. I don’t have to fit this in with anything else; it is purely my personal love. But I did know I wanted to expand. So I moved it from home into the studio and started thinking about things like live [performanc
