IN THE MID-1980S, I MET JIMMY ARNOLD. PETER BONTA INTRODUCED ME to him while I was working with Peter and Gene Ryder on demos in Peter’s studio in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Peter gave me a copy of Jimmy’s album Southern Soul, and I was blown away. I knew of Jimmy’s first two albums and what a great banjo player he was. Until I heard Southern Soul, I hadn’t realized he was also a great fiddler, guitarist, songwriter, and singer.
My first in-person meeting with Jimmy was at the tattoo parlor he owned in Falmouth, Virginia. Jimmy was a rebel. With a teardrop tattooed under one eye, I wondered what his prison connection was (popular belief is that there is a prison connection to that tattoo). Jimmy wanted to know if I wanted to help promote his music career. Although Southern Soul struck me as an important album and I saw incredible possibilities for Jimmy and his playing and songwriting, I knew he was a rebel—and rebels tend to be difficult to work with. I told him I would think about it.
A few weeks later, I received a phone call from Jimmy asking if he could pay me a visit at my home in D.C. and play me some more tunes. I was open to that, so I said yes. A few days later, Jimmy and six other guys roared onto Rodman Street (where I lived) on their chopped Harleys. They looked like they had just come off the set of Hell’s Angels on Wheels. It took only a few minutes for me to feel like the conversation coming from these guys was probably fueled by methamphetamines. I was happy that Ramona, my German shepherd, was by my side.
At one point, Jimmy (whose tattoos were visible running up his neck) said to me, “Hey Mike, wanna see my favorite tattoo?” I wasn’t about to say no. Jimmy dropped his pants, and his favorite tattoo was the rear half of a mouse, the front half not visible, as it was going into Jimmy’s anus. That pretty much clinched it for me. My rule of thumb was never to work with musicians whom I wouldn’t feel comfortable introducing to my mother.
I never saw Jimmy again. Continued severe alcohol abuse weakened him fatally, and at age forty, he was dead. Southern Soul was and is among the finest examples of Americana music I’ve ever heard. Although it’s a concept album about the American Civil War told from the viewpoint of Rebel soldiers, it isn’t about the causes of the war—it is just one of the finest albums of its genre. If you like Americana music, it was reissued on CD in 1994 and should be heard.