What's on the horizon for Jo in the coming year?

I’ve been doing showcases with Dawn McCoy. There seems to be label interest in her, mainly in Nashville, also some more shows with Chris. I’m also trying to get something together with Bam, something different and, I may get a chance to complete my “Gringo”, a spaghetti country & western type soundtrack!!

I’ll also keep doing my art, maybe have a gallery showing for my ‘f-hole’ guitar sculptures.  

On your website, you cite Muddy Waters as a reason for you starting to play the guitar. Any other notables that turned the young Jo onto the old banjo?

Muddy got me into the slide playing. Ronnie Wood and the Faces were a major influence. There’s a lot of slide, steel and banjos on their records and that started me digging for the roots. I also got quite into J.J. Cale and Taj Mahal early on.

Also on your website there's an interesting array of prints based on your guitar collection. Do you still have the old 'Jo Rocka' emblazoned Telecaster? And is the orange double necked one on f-holes one an old Gretsch?

Somebody pawned my Jo Rocka tele I had to buy it back from the shop. Last time I saw it was in 2000 on some Dogs demos at Dan Priest’s studio in England, but I left it there with the intention of picking it up later, but Dan doesn’t remember that. I’m still hoping it will appear. I did most of the early Dogs recordings and gigs with that guitar. It was my first baby and its loss is a real “Heartbreak”.

And yes, the orange double neck is based on a Gretch.

How long have you been doing the art side of things? Was that always there too alongside the music?

It’s always interested me, and it relaxes me more than music.

Were you always a guitarist and the other stringed instruments followed? Or have you always been playing all kinds of strings? I got a mandolin, tricky little blighters, always amazes me the speed and dexterity of the old bluegrass boys like Bill Monroe.

Yes, I started on the guitar but took an early interest in slide guitar & open tunings and that spun me off to banjo (G tuning), lap steel (D-E tunings), mandolin (tuned to an upside down bass).

What sort of things are currently destroying the Almeida stereo?

Charley Patton ‘Devil sent the Rain Blues’, Nic Armstrong’s ‘Great White Liar’, June Carter ‘Wildwood Flower’, Ron Wood & Ronnie Lane ‘Mahoney’s Last Stand’, Johnny Paycheck ‘The Real Mr Heartache-The Little Darlin’ Years’,  Stones ‘Route 66’....
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A few q's on The Dogs as well:

What, if any, was your favourite era of The Dogs/or favourite recordings? (Maybe it's because it was when I first heard you, but my all-time favourites overall would be from The Dynamite and Graveyard albums, also from a guitaring point of view, there's some exquisite flourishes on tracks like '....Rains', 'I Don't Want You To Go', the solo on 'Last Bandit', 'Heartbreak' etc.  And who could deny the lead work on 'The Kid From Kensington'? Aaaaah then there's the intro to 'Hurricane', 'The Prettiest Girl in the World' and the mighty 'Chiva')....

A lot of the stuff we did for ‘Graveyard of Empty Bottles’ comes to mind, but its not so much the songs but the time we experienced together. Every track you mentioned, I remember...

Rains: tracking with open G tuning with the slide guitar.

I Don’t Want you to Go: with Bam playing my wah while I solo at the end (you can hear it on the extended version) .

Last Bandit: Remember being pissed off at the producer (not Dearnley). He wanted me to do a real flashy solo so I did the opposite.

Heartbreak: That song is just FUN, Faces style. Great live backing track of me, Bam & Steve. Great room sound.

Kid: Tyla mentioned somewhere that I didn’t co-write that song with him. That’s just not true. I had the basic chord progression for awhile. Not very ‘Tyla’ type open chords on this one.

Hurricane: Nicky Hopkins complimenting me on my parts.

Prettiest Girl: Closing my eyes and just going for it top to finish on the strat.

Chiva: trying out the Wah and slide together for the first time.
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Looking back, maybe even to pre-signed Dogs, do you think there was a good R'n'R scene around at the time then?

There wasn’t much rock and roll at all. My faves at the time were the Lords Of The New Church. Hanoi kind of set off the whole Glam thing but for me The Lords and Johnny Thunders set the pace. Any band doing a Stones type thing were not taken seriously by the labels.

Any favourite tales/remembrances/funny stories from then at all?

We did an early photo shoot when we were recording the bed tracks for Unauthorised Bootleg. We had rented an old church with high ceilings to record the drums. Inside they had some scaffolding used for renovating the place. It was late, I’d been on the Jim Beam. We decided to do the shoot on top of the scaffolding! I remember falling in slow motion from a height of 30 feet... on my chest. The sound was amazing, a bass drum sound Phil Spector would die for! I laid there motionless everyone in astonished silence for awhile thinking that was it for Jo. I said “bloody’ell” and we left shortly after that to a club.  Its amazing that I survived that one.

Did the rest of you ever have to have a quiet word in Tyla's ear and say, 'Hang on mate, calm down, this one's not so good.' Or was he on a perpetual roll at the time, as it seems?

No, in those days we never questioned each other it was all on ‘automatic’.

For a long time I've thought that 'Errol Flynn / King of the Thieves' is sort of The Dogs 'Exile...'. Not quite as long, sure, but loose, sprawling, erratic, eccentric, inventive, definitely soaked in certain things...Discuss!

It was recorded after our first US tour. They put us all together in a remote place in the north on England where we couldn’t be ‘distracted’. The pub was above our living accommodations. When we recorded Dynamite we had already been playing most songs live for awhile. Errol wasn’t like that. We got to the studio and rolled the tape.  Drunk like Me, Errol Flynn, Planetary Pied Piper and Dogs Hair we had recorded before in different versions. Satellite Kid was recorded on the first take in Los Angeles with Glynn Johns and I dubbed the 12 string guitar in London with Mark Dearnley.

The late great Nicky Hopkins may have added the ‘Exile’ touch for the amazing piano on Hurricane, Princess Valium and Trail of Tears.

The mix/production of 'Straight' was, I always felt, a bit shit, very tinny, no bass. Just really brittle. Superb songs that didn't have the warmth of earlier records. Was that the desired effect, or were China (Records) being tighter than ever? Or did you drink all the advance? Or did Ric Browde fall foul to the Dog Grog?

All this and more?

We met Ric in LA and took a liking to him, not for his past records but his pranks. We had a ball recording it.  

The label had nothing to do with it, we came to Los Angeles looking for management. Yes, we drunk our money, but then we always did!
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Do you keep up to date with releases by Tyla and Bubble?

Bam and I talk everyday, but I haven’t heard Tyla’s new stuff.

What's your view, if any, of the current Dogs line-up?

Some would say as it doesn't actually feature the 'classic' Dogs line-up, it should just be a new band. Others that as T was there from the off and wrote 99% off things, he can do what the hell he likes with the name. In my mind, the Dogs were the 4 of us, if either Bam or Steve James aren’t part of it, then its not the Dogs.  The stuff Tyla was writing before I joined was different, it wasn’t yet focused. He needed a good band to give him the confidence to stop just being another Keith Richards.

I could lay a bet on your response, but do you miss London at all?

Of course I do, I love London and still look at it as my home.

Crappy final question....3 people dead or alive you'd have for dinner 'round your place?

My dad who’s now passed away, Bam, who is always the best of company, and throw in the late songster/storyteller Leadbelly.

That should be an interesting dinner!

Thank you sir, and a Happy New Year.

Jo Dog: http://home.earthlink.net/~joalmeida/