Steve Kimock and Friends Celebrate George Harrison at Tarrytown Music Hall March 15
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By W.B. King–
During a break from a Holiday Inn residency with a band in the early 1970s, Steve Kimock grabbed grub at a nearby greasy spoon joint. Upon entering, he encountered a 50-gallon plastic drum flush with books of all stripes. A sign read: take one.
“I reached in and just took a book off the top without really looking, it was Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mindby Shunryu Suziki,” Kimock told The Hudson Independent. The author, a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher, helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States. “One of the bits that stuck with me [after reading it] is that if you want to do this, whatever the Zen of a practice is, it’s like drinking a molten, hot ball of metal that you can neither swallow nor spit out. This is going to be stuck in your throat forever.”
The fate of fishing out Suziki’s tome, and its extrapolated lessons, proved life-changing for Kimock. More than 50 years later, his reputation as an extraordinary guitar player and composer is celebrated far and wide. His passion for music and practicing the craft still burns bright—happily stuck in his craw.
“I’m in an interesting place now. When I was getting started, they said, ‘you’re the new kid’ and that can be rough. And if you’re lucky, there’s a decade in there somewhere where you’re really hitting it,” Kimock, now age 70, shared. “At some level, you’re going up but not exactly going anywhere. There’s no sideways. Then you get to a certain age and I guess people respect you for still making the effort and that’s a neat place to be. I don’t worry so much or second-guess myself anymore. I’m just happy to be alive and still working.”
Guitar Junkies
If not for his Aunt Dorothy, a folk singer who performed with the likes of Pete Seeger, Kimock may have followed a different life path. “She ran a thing called the Eastern Cooperative Recreational School…music, arts, crafts and dancing. She always had a guitar, an autoharp and all kinds of stuff. She would sing us songs when we were little. It was fascinating.”
Folk soon morphed into blues, thanks to his cousin Kenny, a Tulsa-based blues guitar slinger and singer. When he came home from a military tour in Germany, Kenny stayed near the Kimock’s for a spell. “He had a Gold Top Les Paul—it was the most exciting thing I ever saw. He showed me some Rolling Stones and blues licks and how to use a Fender amp with a Les Paul—nothing beat that sound.”
By the time he reached 16, fueled by Aunt Dorothy and Cousin Kenny’s influences, Kimock wanted to pursue the troubadour life. “I decided I’m going to do this—just play guitar, and I don’t care what else is going on. That’s how I got into it. I got lucky and into it early enough for it to ruin my [high school] education,” he said with a laugh. “It [music] sent me packing as soon as I could get out of there.”
After working with a handful of bands and living on a commune in his native Pennsylvania, a state known for its motto of “virtue, liberty and independence,” Kimock got picked up by the Goodman Brothers band, which took him to the San Francisco Bay area in 1974. Attracted to all styles of music—from psychedelic rock to folk to jazz to the sounds of droning sitars—he eventually made a name for himself and found a new community.
“My California experience was mostly rural—sheep and cattle ranches. I was out on the hillside with a dog and a jeep,” he said, noting that he lived in the region for nearly 40 years before returning with his wife and children to his hometown of Bethlehem, PA.
In 1979, he joined The Heart of Gold Band that featured recently exited Grateful Dead members, the husband-and-wife team Donna Jean Godchaux (vocals) and Keith Godchaux (keyboards). While the band held promise, the tragic death of Keith soon after their second gig, derailed any hope of success. Drummer Greg Anton and Kimock would go on to found the acclaimed band Zero, which featured guitarist John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service fame. Known for their instrumental prowess, the band attracted talent like Nicky Hopkins (The Rolling Stones), Pete Sears (Jefferson Starship), Bobby Vega (Sly and the Family Stone) and John Kahn (Jerry Garcia Band), among others.
So impressed with Kimock’s playing in the 1980s, Garcia name-checked the up-and-comer as one of his favorite new guitarists. “That was so sweet. That was just him, unsolicited. There was no push from management or anything. We just liked each other and liked each other’s playing,” Kimock toldThe Hudson Independent. “The only downside to that was that when he borrowed a cup of my ‘sugar,’ it was Jerry Garcia. But when I borrowed a cup of his sugar, it was still Jerry Garcia.”
What brought the two guitarists together was a love of disparate musical genres. “The Venn diagrams of our formative listening overlapped a lot. However high Jerry ever was, he was a guitar junkie first and I’m a guitar junkie first—we saw that in each other. So, when we got together, we had this cone of silence thing. Nobody bothered us. Obviously,” he continued, “his entire thing with writing and all the different music—to the extent to which he pursued as many styles as he did—is beyond me.”
Robert Hunter, Garcia’s famed songwriting partner and lyricist known for songs such as “Touch of Grey’” and “Ripple,” also entered Kimock’s orbit. The connection, however, wasn’t through his guitar pal, Captain Trips. “Greg Anton from Zero was at a party that Robert Hunter was at. Robert Hunter knew of our band and said, ‘You guys need songs [with lyrics]!” Kimock recalled, noting that the band played mostly instrumentals at the time. Among standout tunes from that partnership for Kimock was “Spoken For” and “Catalina,” which Zero have performed live, in different incarnations, over the years. In 2022, Zero released Naught Again, a live album that was recorded at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in 1992.
“There is some serendipity to all of this, in that if I wasn’t there, if I hadn’t gone to California, none of that would ever have happened,” Kimock noted.
Way Off the Page
When Garcia passed in 1995, Kimock soon found himself as a go-to guy for various Grateful Dead offshoot bands such as The Other Ones, Phil [Lesh] and Friends, the Rhythm Devils, featuring drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, and Bob Weir’s RatDog (along with Weir’s other touring bands).
“I became involved in that crew peripherally, the Grateful Dead, both individually and collectively and was just fascinated by their approach. What the Dead were doing successfully was way off the page,” Kimock said, ruminating on the magnitude and impact of the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers’ tunes and sprawling deadhead community. “It was very different in so many ways—from music to personalities. It was all being done at an insanely high level. Those guys are smart and on top of that, they had a lot of smart help,” he continued. “I did as much as I possibly could to learn and to figure out what was going on…besides playing the guitar, which doesn’t count for much. There is a lot of other stuff involved.”
Kimock would later reboot The Heart of Gold Band with Donna Jean. “We always laughed like teenagers,” he said of his talented friend and songstress who passed away in late 2025. She was soon followed by Weir in January 2026. Lesh left his mortal coil in 2024. To help keep the music alive, Kimock also plays with Jazz is Dead, an instrumental interpretation of the band’s catalog—noting, with a humble lark, that the best way to ruin a Jerry Garcia song, such as the iconic ballad “Stella Blue,” is for him to sing it.
“In the cognitive study of music, there are what are known as the presumed listening moments for the audience. For an untrained listener, two of the most prevalent are reminiscent listening and sing-along listening, so when they hear the melody, they are singing the words in their head. They’re feeling them and experiencing those feelings like when they first heard the song,” he continued. “Maybe they were falling in love. Maybe they were pregnant. There is an emotional component where you [as the listener] are allowed to insert yourself as the singer.”
Ever the transcendental student of music theory, Kimock often flirts with insomnia due to practicing guitar parts into the wee hours of the morning. Among his countless musical pursuits is his own band, Kimock. John, his son, who recently made his dad a proud grandfather, is a celebrated drummer known industry-wide for having impeccable timing and tight chops.
“Somehow, it seems to be going according to plan. I know there were times I could have gotten him a teacher. I didn’t. I just encouraged him and took him to every gig I could. He saw incredible drummers,” said Kimock. “So, when his body grew into the [drum] sticks, he was playing beautifully—today, Johnny is a machine.” In 2017, the band released the acclaimed album, Satellite City, which featured Leslie Mendelson on vocals and was produced by Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools. New music, he added, is always in the works, including an upcoming show in April with the proclaimed band Voodoo Dead that will perform at Jazz Fest in New Orleans.
All Things Must Pass
Kimock’s various musical experiences informs his approach to entertaining crowds from coast to coast in various ensembles, including “All You Need is George,” which brings the guitar virtuoso back to the Tarrytown Music Hall on March 15. In a celebratory tribute to the “quiet Beatle” George Harrison, Kimock will be joined on stage by Jackie Greene (guitar/vocals), Berry Duane Oakley (bass), Pete Lavezzoli (drums/vocals) and Gil Assayas (keyboards). “I’ve known all these guys for years,” he said. “This is a great line up.”
In harmony with the teachings Kimock learned, in part, from the free Zen book he picked up in the early 1970s, George Harrison once said: “Down through the ages, there has always been the spiritual path. It’s been passed on – it always will be – and if anybody ever wants it in any age, it’s always there.” This notion is also underscored in his song “Within You Without You,” from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967): “When you’ve seen beyond yourself then you may find peace of mind is waiting there. And the time will come when you see we’re all one. And life flows on within you and without you.”
A lifelong Beatles enthusiast, Kimock is honored to pay tribute to these musical heroes. “If it was the Olympics, these guys would all get the gold,” he said. “I’ve always been a fan and have covered them, specifically George Harrison, over the years. I love the challenge, especially playing the slide guitar parts.”
When the jam band supergroup hits the Music Hall’s stage, marking the last night of the 12-date tour, they will interpret well-known tunes from The Beatles, Harrison’s solo career and The Traveling Wilburys, Kimock revealed. Some of the deep tracks, he added, could be uncovered as well. “Depending on where their [attendees] emotional center is relative to music, they are going to hear some faithful renditions of George Harrison’s material.”
For tickets information, visit: www.tarrytownmusichall.org.
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