WELCOME BACK TO ILLINOIS GARAGE PUNK LEGENDS THE SHADOWS OF KNIGHT!
“Gloria made us rock stars – momentarily!” JERRY McGEORGE
“IWAS THE ORIGINAL wild man!” says Shadows Of Knight founder and frontman Jimy Sohns. “There was lots of partying, lots of girls.” Indeed, Sohns only stopped living the rock’n’roll lifestyle when sentenced to three years in prison for cocaine possession in 1982. “C’est la vie,” he shrugs. Now Sohns and founder-guitarist Jerry McGeorge have released the “autobiographical” Wild Man on Little Steven Van Zandt ’s Wicked Cool label. It’s the pair’s first collaboration in 53 years, and a mind- bending 54 years after their snarling garage punk benchmark Gloria.
Born in suburban Prospect Heights, Illinois, 16-year-old blues fan Sohns was inspired to form the group, initially called The Shadows, during British Invasion year 1964. When Chet Atkins devotee McGeorge joined the following year, they hit their stride, honing their craft at local teen hang out the Cellar Bar. “It was packed, the audience screaming,” remembers McGeorge in awe. “Most shows ended in complete chaos!” Signing to the Dunwich label, The Shadows Of Knight released a cover of Them B-side Gloria as their debut 45.
“Our drummer Tommy [Schiffour] had a pen pal in the UK,” McGeorge continues. “They swapped records, Tommy sent him blues, he sent Tommy The Hollies, Manfred Mann and Them doing Gloria. We knew if we covered it, it would be the one to break, and it made us rock stars – momentarily!”
There followed the searing 45s Oh Yeah, Bad Little Woman and I’m Gonna Make You Mine, plus two albums, 1966’s Gloria and the same year’s Back Door Men, all defined by snot, attitude and defiance. Yet the intensity couldn’t last. McGeorge departed in 1967 – “It was all falling apart, getting messy,” he says – and after a stint in HP Lovecraft, he quit music in 1978. Sohns, meanwhile, led a reconfigured Shadows Of Knight line-up, joining Buddah subsidiary Super K for the group’s self-titled third album and the bubblegum pop of 1969’s Shake, their final US Top 50 entry.
After the group fizzled out in the early ’70s, Sohns spent time road-managing Chicago punk group Skafish, often joining them on-stage for the group’s encore of Gloria. Later, while serving in East Moline Correctional Center he formed prison group Jimy Sohns And The Cons. “We were really good, really bluesy,” he says fondly.
Since his release, he has led different incarnations of The Shadows Of Knight, but it was reuniting with McGeorge in 2016 for a sort-of 50th anniversary show at the H.O.M.E Bar in Arlington Heights, Illinois that motivated the pair to record again, this time with new multi-instrumentalist recruit Michael Weber. “It felt right,” says Sohns, who won’t be drawn on the possibility of a new album, before recklessly adding, “Who knows where it might lead?”