Photo by Gary Tanin
Jim Eannelli
Jim Eannelli
For years, Jim Eannelli flew under the radar. He was known to Milwaukee music fans as the Sideman, the ace of bass and guitar who backed the men and women at center stage. Eannelli is remembered for his supporting role in the power pop Shivvers, the techno-pop Colour Radio, the blues rock Shuffleaires, the jazz rock Locate Your Lips, the folky Willy Porter, the bluegrass Salt Creek and the gonzo rock of the Blackholes and Sigmund Snopek.
With his new album, Just Deserts, Eannelli steps into the spotlight after 50 years in the shade. It’s an album of 12 original songs, including two or three masterpieces, sung and performed by Eannelli, a multi-instrumentalist, with minimal help from a couple of musical friends.
Just Deserts by Jim Eannelli
Few who heard him play over the years suspected he was such a good songwriter. “Music came easily, but to put lyrics on paper was difficult. I was always bottled up,” he says.
Eannelli grew up in the ‘60s on the old West Side near the AO Smith plant. It was a blue-collar district where boys were taught to walk like men. Once when he went to his mother with a problem, she snapped, “Toughen up.” “We were children of World War II veterans—there was no discussing feelings. You had a job to do, and you did it,” he says.
But unlike many older-generation parents in the ‘60s, Eannelli’s mom encouraged his love for the new sounds pouring out of AM radio. His epiphany came while “riding in the backseat of my ma’s ’57 Plymouth station wagon listening to WAWA—Doctor Bop’s show, playing James Brown, Smoky Robinson.” He adds, referring to his Southern Italian heritage, “Sicily isn’t far from Africa.”
That affinity was clear in his first band, Eddie and the Soul Sensations. Eannelli's brother John “bought a green iridescent suit at Johnny Walker and learned to glide across the floor like James Brown,” Eannelli recalls. He became the band’s bassist at age 13 and played church halls. His next group, Blu Twill, performed at the Northwest Teen Festival, held at Timmerman Field in the summer of 1969. They opened for The Esquires, the Milwaukee soul group who scored a hit with “Get on Up.” “People ask me who my guitar heroes are,” Eannelli says. “It’s not Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page—it’s the guys I knew who grew up five blocks away from me.”
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There were times in the years ahead when Eannelli earned his keep in music. But he never counted on it. “I always had a job,” he says “I painted garages and buildings. I’d buy guitars in pawn shops, fix them up and resell them. I drove a truck delivering furniture. There was never a day when I wasn’t doing something.”
He also went on the road with a country band and as roadie for salacious singer Ruby Star and picked up polka gigs. Music was his through-line. “I had no illusions of grandeur. Music was the spark in my soul, the green light, the way the dopamine was going to flow,” he recalls. Songs came to him, here and there on the journey, as if materializing from the rough school of experience. In the winter of 2023, after surviving what he describes as a “near death experience,” he went through demo tapes of those songs and began to assemble his new album, Just Deserts.
The album opens in fury with “29 Women,” an angry, hard rock denunciation of the human cost of war. The song was written about Iraq but could easily describe Ukraine or Gaza. However, most of Just Deserts plays in a personal key with songs that navigate life’s left turns, brief encounters and poor choices. Loneliness and regret, pathos, are the prevailing emotions and spiritual yearning is evident. A few numbers are easily pegged. “Train from Chicago” is heartbreak set to the blues. Most are deeply grounded in the verities of rock, solidly rhythmic, highlighted by Eannelli’s fine guitar and bass playing.
Adding piano, organ and mellotron, veteran Milwaukee musician Gary Tanin “gave the album the elegance it needed,” Eannelli says. Folksinger Lil Rev played harmonica on one track. Eannelli produced Just Dessertswith sharpness and clarity, his studio skills honed by recent productions for his wife, singer-songwriter Peggy James.
“I couldn’t possibly play many of these songs with the bands I was in, but I was inspired by all of the people I played with,” Eannelli says, adding that it was time to collect and record his lifetime of songwriting. “I had a wake-up call—a big wake-up call.”
Just Deserts is out on Friday, Sept. 27 on CD and on sale at Rush-Mor Lilliput, and Irving Place Records, and is available for streaming and downloading on Spotify, iTunes and Apple Music.
Stream or download Just Deserts at Amazon here.
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