From power pop to cult roots music songwriter via managing Philip Glass.
You would struggle to script Jim Keller’s career if you were working on a piece of fiction and make it believable. He first tasted some success in the early 
‘80s with San Francisco’s Tommy TuTone, writing the power pop standard ‘867-5309/Jenny”. In the ‘90s he was running Phillip Glass’s publishing company and subsequently managing Glass. He also worked on the business side of the music industry with friends and associates like Tom Waits, Ravi Shankar and Nico Muhly amongst others. In the 2000s he returned to his own career as a songwriter and performing artist. In 2021 he worked with Mitchell Froom and co-producer David Boucher on “By No Means”, which also featured David Hidalgo, Bob Glaub, and Michael Urbano, and whose songs ranged across American roots music and invoked the experimental spirit of Los Lobos’s “Kiko”. This was the first of a planned trilogy of albums, and the same team has now released ‘Daylight” which was recorded in a studio that has remained unchanged since the ‘60s. Americana UK’s Martin Johnson caught up with Jim Keller over Zoom to discuss ‘Daylight’ and his varied career. While he has had a varied career, it is very clear that at heart he is a songwriter. He also shares his admiration of David Hidalgo and marvels at how he always manages to sound like himself, whatever the genre he is playing in.
