Hi, I'm Jim... a songwriter and guitarist living near Atlanta, Georgia. These days I play mostly just for fun, and enjoy exploring multiple genres and increasing my overall appreciation of music, technique, and theory.
In the early 2000's, I was an award-winning acoustic fingerstyle guitarist. If you stumbled across this website looking for my fingerstyle guitar site, an archived version can be found here:
Jim Tozier: Acoustic Fingerstyle Guitar.
As a fingerstyle guitarist, I released three CDs on
Solid Air Records, a Grammy-winning label that specializes in solo acoustic guitar music.
Celtic Guitar is a collection of traditional Irish and Scottish tunes, while
Solo Guitar and
Guitar Pieces mostly feature my original instrumental compositions. I also have an independently released CD,
Castlerea.
In 2006,
Celtic Guitar Solos: Traditional Songs and Airs of Ireland and Scotland, a songbook featuring transcriptions of the tunes from my
Celtic Guitar CD, was published.
If you were looking for more information about my fingerstyle guitar music—or want to chat about music in general—feel free to contact me at
jimtozier@gmail.com.
Now, I'll bet you're wondering about that moose...
"Groove Like a Moose" is borrowed from an idiomatic expression in Finnish (which I enjoy trying to learn in my spare time).
A Finn might say
"Tuo bändi svengaa kuin hirvi!" (That band grooves like a moose!) or
"Tämä biisi svengaa kuin hirvi!" (This song grooves like a moose!) to indicate that it's good—especially if it has a strong beat that makes you want to nod your head or tap your foot.
There's even a Finnish book that collects and explains unusal sayings that uses
Svengaa Kuin Hirvi as the title.
It was a memorable phrase, and one that seemed appropriate for a musician. Especially since I like moose, anyway (my family is originally from Maine).
A quick glance through my guitar collection might lead you to ask a very reasonable question:
Why so many red guitars, when there are so many other colors to choose from?
I'm not sure I have a good answer for that. I just like red guitars. Perhaps because my very first guitar—a Christmas gift from my parents when I was 13 years old—was a
sparkle red Memphis Stratocaster copy. I believe Memphis was the house-brand of the Music & Arts chain of stores at the time, and was very much a budget beginner's guitar. But to me, it was the coolest guitar in the world.
These days I play red guitars because they remind me of the joy and wonder I experienced when I first started learning how to play guitar. As an additional benefit, collecting red guitars helps keep my G.A.S. (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome) in check since only a relatively small percentage of guitars are red—thereby limiting my temptation.
It also helps that I'm really only attracted to classic guitar brands and models that have been around since the 1950s—the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster, the Gibson ES-330, ES-335, and ES-345, and the Gretsch Tennessean (or Tennessee Rose).
