Dec 13, 2007

By RON YOUNGBLOOD, Staff writer

Jimmy C is a bona fide Maui character, a mild-mannered friendly guy who once had a housebroken, girl-getting pet goat named Julius. Took him to parties, and was heartbroken when Julius left the scene.

Known in various incarnations as Jimmy Coulter and Jimmy Christopher, Jimmy C made his way from Philadelphia to Maui as the drummer in a rock band. He claims he got his first taste of percussion by taking tap-dancing lessons. On Maui, he’s done a lot of tap dancing just trying to survive.

Because he bleeds music and grew up with a radio in his ear, Jimmy did time as a late-night disc jockey at Maui radio stations back when only the music was recorded. His on-air specialty was jazz, but his first love was pop crooners like Bobby Darin.

In the beginning, he was the man on the skins in a Beatles da kine, playing frat parties, weddings, anywhere the band could make a buck. They hauled themselves and their gear around in a secondhand ambulance and cultivated mop tops and Liverpool moves.

One thing led to another and Jimmy found himself touring, playing opening acts for big-namers. Some of this is straight out of a hazy memory, augmented by incomplete bio notes on a Web site. Jimmy, and maybe other members of the band, ended up on Maui.

Jimmy got a post office box in Kula and while walking the long walk one day to pick up his mail, he looked out over the island and realized it was home. That’s when all the tap dancing started.

For years he manicured the lawns at Seabury Hall – ask him about the merits of various string trimmers – did the radio gigs at night and drifted back into the music scene. On Maui, that meant playing whatever, wherever. It depended on the audience – bubble gum, straight-ahead rock, bluegrass, country, old and new jazz, etc. His drum kit got hauled around in a yellow Mustang II with a license plate that said “drums.” He’s always been good at marketing and low-key promotion. There’s a ratty black T-shirt with a fading “Jimmy C” in a drawer along with some “Jimmy C” notepads on the desk.

Playing conventions and parties – the main source of revenue for live musicians in those days – Jimmy found himself driving through a lot of nights from one side of the island to the other. With a day job, the short-distance touring was almost as exhausting as traveling cross-country. His hair grew gray but the youthful smile never went away and he stayed as thin as a rail.

Jimmy is one of those individuals who can become an instant friend, one of the traits Maui treasures – or, at least it did. Maybe it still does. Or, it should.

“Hey, Jimmy. I’ve been trying to learn to fingerpick some old standards on my classical guitar but I got no sense of rhythm. How about giving me a few lessons?”

“I don’t know anything about guitar.”

“Yeah, but you’re a drummer. You gotta know about time.”

The night glistened with rain. He lived among dripping eucalyptus trees over Peahi way. No gigs that night so Jimmy had agreed to see what he could do with a hobby player who was a friend. It took some peering into the dark and backtracking to get to the house. It was a very relaxed evening, and the hobby player even learned a thing or two about phrasing and actually getting four beats into a measure.

“Practice with a metronome,” he said. “Tapping your foot helps.”

The trip home, a cabin in the back of a pasture in the Lilikoi Farm Lots, was an interesting exercise in forced concentration. Luckily the cows had moved off the double-track road back to the house, and it hadn’t rained hard enough to stop the truck from fording the low spot.

Our paths cross now and again. Maui’s still a small place. There’s that smile and that enthusiasm about his latest gig or CD. It takes only seconds for the time and space between us to disappear. He’s that kind of Maui friend.

OK, here’s the plug for Jimmy C’s latest – a CD called “Alien in a Bottle.” That’s also the title of the opening cut. The band is called – for whatever weird reason – “Uncle Dirty.” The CD was recorded in Haiku. There’s a Web site, uncledirty.net. Most of the players will be familiar to Maui music fans. It’s an eclectic mix of rock before the roll disappeared, country, hummable hooks and off-the-wall, irreverent lyrics echoing the activist rockers of the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Jimmy C proves that there’s no age limit on acid-tongued rockin’, or being a bona fide Maui character pursuing the love of his life.

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