Jimmy Schoettle | Bio | Musician, Producer, Composer

For Jimmy Schoettle, the guitar has been a lifelong fascination. Those six strings exert a powerful hold over him he says, inspiring moments of ecstatic improvisation, imparting deep contemplation and, occasionally, moments of aching frustration. Music has opened a great many doors and opportunities for this guitarist. Although he plays keyboards, drums, and percussion instruments, it's the guitar that he excels at and loves more than all other instruments.

From the age of 13 when he borrowed his first one, the guitar has become his passion and obsession. Playing is a daily ritual that he claims causes a type of "withdrawal"
if to much time passes with out a guitar in his hands.

Jimmy says he had a wide variety of early guitar influences such as, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Jimmy Page, Carlos Santana, Al Dimeola, Pat Metheny, Joe Pass, and Wes Montgomery. The late G.I.T. founder and studio musician Howard Roberts once told Jimmy "if you steal from one person it's plagiarism, if you steal from twenty it's research." so Jimmy has been doing "research" for close to thirty years. You can hear bits and pieces of all the above players in Jimmy's diverse style in addition to players like Stevie Ray Vaughn, Gary Moore, and Eric Johnson.

Growing up in the south suburbs of Chicago exposed Jimmy to a dozens of different types of bands and hundreds of gigs. He worked for years "jobbing" with bands, everything from top 40 dance bands to jazz bands, country, fusion, rock groups, studio sessions and anything in between. So is the life of a working musician.

Following the trends in technology in the late 80's Jimmy got a degree in digital electronics and opened his first project studio to provide music for corporate video production. It was here that Jimmy realized his passion and talents for producing. His first major work received international acclaim, a 15 minute music bed for a Lions Club International video shown in Melbourne Australia for over 10 thousand people. Jimmy had found his "dream job".

Since then Jimmy has worked on scores of projects including jingles, commercials, music beds for The Discovery Channel, numerous corporate video projects, and his own solo piece Acoustic Island. Acoustic Island is a lite acoustic jazz collection, this CD really displays Jimmy's composition and production skills. Ranging from lite acoustic to full orchestral this work really showcases his versatility.