MUSIC

Shakespeare Pub presents Erin Jaimes. 

Erin "Icewater" Jaimes came onto the Austin, Texas blues scene in late 1994, young and clueless, with a passion for the music. "If you play the blues, you're gonna end up living them," warned Erin's first serious musical mentor, drummer Jeff "Li'l Calvin" Hodges. Drummer "Uncle" John Turner, another major influence, often stated that "to some, blues is a state of mind. To others, it's a fact of life." (Little did she know how true their words were!) Listening to such artists as Koko Taylor, Dinah Washington, Etta James and Irma Thomas gave her an empowering but sobering look into a woman's survival in the blues - "a man's world." Erin didn't shy away - she embraced the challenge. The music had its hold on her.

Having previously sung "bass" in an award-winning all-women's acapella group at Vassar College and loving the primal power of a solid rhythm section, Erin was drawn to the electric bass. Appa Perry (of Appa's Blues Power and the Alan Haynes band) was the first to tell her "instead of asking me all these questions all the time, why don't you go and get yourself a *#@$%! bass?!" She got her first bass the next day and learned to play over time largely by watching and listening to bassists such as Appa, Larry Fulcher, Danny Galindo, Tommy Shannon, Keith Ferguson, Willie Weeks and Willie Kent. On April Fools Day, 1998, she landed a weekly gig of her own at the legendary Joe's Generic Bar.

Since 1998, getting muddy in the trenches of Austin's highly competitive music scene, Erin feels fortunate to have shared the stage with many remarkable musicians and Texas Blues legends.