About John Trollmann

Whether he performs by himself accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, vocals and harp, or backed by his band, John's song writing traverses the ground often trod by prospectors, seers, prophets, and dreamers.  

Armed with a duo of Santa Cruz small bodied acoustic guitars and a harp, his songwriting and guitar style is heavily influenced by the songs of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and The Beatles, the guitar styles of Ramblin' Jack Elliot, the regional rock and blues songwriting of Peter Case and Dave Alvin, and songs of Mike Beck that recall the big landscape country of California and the West.   His songs evoke a sense of place and being in the world.  Think Steinbeck with a guitar. 

About The John Trollmann Band

"You guys sound like Neil Diamond meets The Grateful Dead," said Chuck, one of the dynamic duo in The Midnight Screening.  I laughed.  Myself, I think we sound like Crazy Horse, Neil Young's band, all chunky chords and rhythm, a rootsy blend of country, blues, folk, pop, and rock.

We got together serendipitously.  In the summer of 2008, Gil Dabney was producing Ray's Last Stand, and asked Rusty PIcken's Band bass player Grant McCormick to lay down the bass tracks.  It wasn't until after the cd came out that I got the opportunity to play some live shows in the LA/OC area.  I was still playing solo shows with my acoustic Santa Cruz 000, but wanted to take a fatter sound on the road. With Gil on the Fender Strat and Grant on bass, we soon asked Christopher Bright to do the heavy lifting on drums.  

Discography

Ray's Last Stand CD (2008) (John Trollmann)

Neo-Revisionist Post Modern Revisionist Bio

Mid '70's Huntington Beach.  It was all about the beach, right?  I bought my first guitar when I was 13.  Bought it from RG Music at Warner's Corner, with a sack of quarters from my paper route; $50 dollars is what it cost.  It was a plywood-bodied classical nylon string guitar with a beautiful mahogany neck.  The guitar was a Delta, made in Korea.  Difficult to play.  The strings were too high off the neck and the nut was about 2 inches wide.  I bought the chord book to George Harrison's All Things Must Pass album.  I had a guitar, bike and surfboard.  Nothing else really mattered.   The waves were always good, better at Huntington, south side of the pier than at Bolsa Chica, unless the wind blew from the east, then every break seemed perfect.   Summer swells that rolled in from the south were consistent and fun to ride.  Water temps were in the mid sixties.  Even low tide afternoons when the outside breaks were blown out, the long rolling whitewash was a great place to learn.  Winter swells from the west were a totally different beast; cold, fast and powerful.  Poseidon ruled on those days.

Live music rocked.  I got to go to a few shows at the Golden Bear, in the early '80s, before it was torn down to make way for big money commercial space.  The Surf Theatre on 5th St. showed all the latest surf films.  A great place to see a surf flick on a Friday night before hitting the waves the next morning.  It's where I first saw the Beatles' films and George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh.  I also saw some great surf films of the time; Five Summer Stories, Goin' Surfing, and many more.   I listened to a lot of Beatles back then, bootlegged onto cassette tapes by my guitar teacher Steve - Rubber Soul, Revolver, Magical Mystery Tour - even though they had broken up a few years earlier.  (Steve drove an old blue station wagon back then. It looked like he lived in his car; he had all of his clothes piled in the back of the wagon next to his surfboard. Steve played a beautiful nylon string classical guitar with East Indian Rosewood back and sides and a straight-grained mahogany neck). But It didn't matter.  The music was out there.  It was then I learned to play songs by the Beatles, and later Neil Young.   Neil's songs were much more personal and darker.  I bought Tonight's The Night in 76.  I had no idea!  Stark, personal, stripped to it's essential being.  It felt like Harvest on a downward spiral.  But I loved it.  I didn't know any better.  It's still my favorite Neil Young album.

And I still have that old Delta.  I don't play it any more.  But when I look at it, I can still here the songs that are inside of her.