Wiki
Jimy Sohns
The Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66 pays tribute to one of its own Chicago Legends.
Starting at 16 years old, he was given the title “King of Garage Rock” having the multi-million seller single “Gloria ” in 1966, along with a 55 year span having five National charted hits as “Oh Yeah”, “Bad Little Woman”, “Make you Mine”, “Someone like Me”, and the 1 million-seller “Shake”! Which completely change the bands direction and shed new light on the career of Chicago’s “Wildman” Jimy Sohns of the Shadows of Knight, Which with his wild & crazy career this currently brings us to the reunion of an original member Jerry McGeorge and a newly found music partner Young Michael Weber. Together they have released the new hit single selling over a 1/4 of a million copies in two months & growing! “Wildman” The Name! go figure ?
This story will touch on some of the exciting things in Jimy’s career and will be in our Wikipedia site with a full bio soon-to-be-released
Phase1
In 1964 The original Shadows of Knight formed in prospect Heights Illinois, spelling “Knight” from the sports teams of prospect High School being called the Knights! The band consisted all of Jimy Sohns vocals, Warren Rogers lead guitar guitar, Norm Gotch, Tom Schiffour drums, Warren Purcell Bass, later members have changed to the addition of Jerry McGeorge, Joe Kelly, David (Hawk) Wolinski, Jeff Millar saxophone.
These recent members toured the nation for many years with bands like Rolling Stones & The Sex Pistols, were Jimy actually punched out Sid Vicious and started getting his crazy wild man name. From 1975 to early 80s there is many versions of Shadows a night with many popular Chicago musician’s like Tommy Gauvenda, Bobby Bastanchi, Paul Roy, Cindy and Michael Gotshall, Gary Levin, Dennis Tekin, Steve Dubin, Bruce Gordon, Billy Sullivan, Ron Romero, Rick bar, Kevin Lee and many many more.
Phase2
In the early 80s Jimy took a break from touring to do producing of Music and Sound Engineering for also many popular Chicago bands as Bitch ,Tough love who he toured with 250 cities and produced the Bitch record in Mexico as well as doing sound for Off-Broadway, The B’zz & Trillion. In 1983 his career took a turn which led him into starting a new band called Jimy Sohns and the cons which toured all the prisons in the Illinois area. After graduation from his obligations in 86 to 87 the band Tyrant became the shadows of Knight for a while then then he reunited with Michael and Cindy Gotshall, Rick Bar & Bruce Gordon and worked with Wolfman Jack.
Phase 3
In the late 90s Jimy relocated to Naples Florida to work with little Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen and the little Steven’s underground garage Rock Sirius radio show. little Steven’s love for 60s music put together a compilation tour up the Florida coast with Jimy & a new Florida Shadows of Knight along with the romantics did a 30 city tour. The last night of the tour featured Jimy on stage for a special VH1 Halloween trick-or-treat show playing Gloria with Cheap Trick and Steven.
Phase4
Sohns returns home to Chicago and & re connects with a high school sweetheart, Kathy Strahan, fell in Love again & moves in with her & are happily together till this day! Then he teams back up with the Gotshall version of the shadows and once again plays dates throughout the Chicagoland area along with many solo special guest appearances with every local Chicago band wanting to end their set with Gloria, which in 2019 the second year of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s newly rock and roll song category Gloria was inducted and Jimy received the induction ceremony from once again Steven Van Zandt in New York.
Phase5
“WILDMAN”
This brings us to the main part of our story The Wild Man part where Jimy teams up with his new partner Michael Weber and brings back on original Shadows member Jerry McGeorge, the following is quotes from Michael Weber on how Wild Man began!
Micheal Weber Stated-My intent was to take Jimy’s ability to get rev’d up and put it in overdrive. I wanted Jimy to play with musicians who constantly push him beyond his perceived limits. When Jimy tells us to slow down, we play faster! With this, we revitalized the snotty garage spirit.
-Since 2017, my band, The Michael Weber Show, has been backing up Jimy as The Shadows of Knight. With my band behind Jimy, comprised of musicians in our early twenties, it’s common to see confusion and snickering in the audience when they realize that we are certainly not members of the band’s golden era. However, after the first song, we turn those doubters into believers because we can harness the youthful spunk it takes to drive Jimy and carry on The Shadows of Knight legacy.
– The “Wild Man” single germinated from a demo I wrote for Jimy. I’ve always seen Jimy as a rebellious creature of rock ’n roll insanity and figured that a semi-autobiographical tune would be cool! On the record, I play lead guitar, drums, bass, transistor organ, and I also produced it. I also wanted to include Jerry McGeorge on the record because both myself and the longtime fans would find intrigue in this duo reuniting for the first time in 53 years for a studio recording. After a successful independent release followed by interest from multiple labels, we cut a B-side and signed with Little Steven Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records. The single debuted as “Coolest Song in the World” on Sirius XM’s Underground Garage and finished 4th in their year-end poll of coolest songs for the entire year of 2020.
LINK TO VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0TpTmyngW4