We've been blessed with a lot of sick notes! Tim Palmieri is the young guitarist from the Connecticut quartet Psychedelic Breakfast. He's a monster guitarist‚ and anyone who has witnessed him play will say the same. Psychedelic Breakfast are road warriors‚ constantly turning new heads on to their rocking energy and intense improvisations. With two tasty studio releases under their belt (Self-titled‚ and Deuce)‚ the quartet plans on releasing a live album in late winter/early spring of 2003.
It was a pleasure to talk with Tim during some brief downtime between gigs with Psychedelic Breakfast and his side project the Diesel Experiments.
I gave Tim a call and this is how our conversation began...
Ring... ring... ring.... Click
Tim Palmieri: Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo... (held for 26 seconds)
Mike McKinley: (laughing) Hello‚ is Tim there?
Tim: umm... this is Tim.
MM: Hey‚ it's Mike from LiveMusicBeth.
Tim: Mike... I'm so sorry‚ Mike. I thought you were a telemarketer.
MM: (laughing hysterically) That was great‚ I was like "interesting... how long can he hold this for?"
Tim: That's what I do when telemarketers call.
MM: Yeah‚ me too. I just freak out on them.
Tim: Oh man‚ you got the G-rated version‚ I was just holding a tone. I usually get them in my zone.
MM: Yeah‚ I was going to chime in and lay down a beat box.
Tim: (laughing) Yeah‚ that would have been cool. I'm sorry...
MM: So do you have some time to bullshit about music with me?
Tim: Yeah‚ sure!
MM: Well‚ we recently had Brian O'Connell from Uncle Sammy sit in with us‚ Jeff Waful from Relix/Jambands sit in‚ the guys from Raq frequently make an appearance‚ and we're doing some jamming with Herby1 and crew from the Revolving Door. It's all about collaboration‚ which is something I overheard you say to a friend at your Higher Ground show with the Seth Yacovone Band. So I know you're running a project called the Diesel Experiments where you invite all different musicians to sit in and play all different styles of music.
Tim: Yeah exactly‚ I'm all about that. We don't even get to practice really. We might get together to practice for maybe an hour or two before the gig to get basic song structures down. It's all about listening well on that first night‚ and seeing all these energies meet and see what they give off.
MM: I heard that you were playing and yelling out changes.
Tim: Yeah‚ that was a lot of fun - I picked a Pink Floyd song which had one riff and basically that's it with a jam in the middle. So I was like - this is perfect. We get to play this tune by Pink Floyd‚ which everybody knows‚ but at the same time we could make it completely ours. So I just started to shout out styles‚ like "reggae" - so we'd do the riff in reggae‚ then we did jazz‚ then heavy metal‚ a waltz‚ you know like any style I could thing of at the time. It was really cool.