Many music fans have seen John Juxo supporting other roots and blues musicians at shows in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Juxo stands out for his keyboard work as well as his distinguished appearance. Many present might be uncertain who he is. The only thing they know is he showed up to play. So, who is this mysterious man with the white hair and sideburns who plays piano, organ, and accordion and often sings with some of the biggest names in the New England music scene? Let’s go back to Juxo’s childhood, where it all began.
The accordion was actually Juxo’s first instrument. He played it during his elementary school years. He became a rhythm guitarist and squeeze boxy player as a young man. He eventually purchased his first keyboard when he was just starting his middle years.
“I played some squeeze box as a kid,” Juxo said. “Playing accordion as a ten year old kid gave me a little bit of knowledge of the keys and that’s a good thing.” When Juxo was 40 years old, some friends of his that had a band called The Big Nazo needed a keyboard player. Although he didn’t own a keyboard, Juxo was able to figure out how to play the one he had to purchase for his new job.
In between his childhood accordion playing and his conversion to a keyboard play at 40, Juxo did play some rhythm guitar in a band but didn’t bring out his squeeze box until the late 1980s, early 1990 with a singer-songwriter friend named Dan Lily. “I would play my guitar and then I would play the squeeze box and go back and forth on those two,” he said.
Juxo just recently played a gig with Lily, though he hadn’t seen him in some time. He also played all of the keyboards on Lily’s most recent CD, for Lily’s band The Keepers.
About seven years ago, Juxo had to purchase an actual piano because his keyboard wasn’t the best practice instrument when he plays piano on gigs with his friend, blues singer Lisa Marie.
Juxo didn’t play accordion during the intervening years between childhood and young adulthood. Sometime in the late 1980s, he found an old accordion in someone’s trash, and it reminded him he knew how to play it. His career as a musician went through circuitous routes. At age 20, Juxo decided to get up and sing. At age 24, he was playing guitar in a few punk rock bands.
“That was kind of a trip,” he said. “I’ve been through some reinventions in my life, from punk rock guitar player, the band was called The Mumbling Skulls, that was a good band. To go from that to being in more of a Americana band like the Flying Ditch Diggers playing hollow body guitar and accordion, that was a reinvention. To go from that to being a keyboard player is another reinvention. I’m always learning. I’m always looking for the next thing I don’t know.”
Juxo explained that the relationship between keys and accordion is a close one, as the instruments are like second cousins.
“If you see an accordion that has piano keys, that part is the same,” Juxo said. “You hit that piano key, C, it’s going to sound like a C no matter what you do. If you see a squeeze box with buttons on both sides, that’s different. Now, you hear the note when you pull out. When you push back in, it’s a different note, like a harmonica player has to blow in and out through the same hole.”
These days, Juxo has a fondness for working with local blues and roots artists like Ed Scheer, Diane Blue, Racky Thomas, and Lisa Marie.
Racky Thomas said Juxo’s accordion work added a lot of good quality to his album Goin’ Home.
“His accordion playing really put it over the top,” Thomas said. “I love playing with John. He’s got such a cool vibe and brings so much joy and levity to the gig wherever he goes. He has that certain ‘je ne sait quoi’ that really captures the audience and reels them in. I can’t say enough about Mr. Juxo.”
Juxo finds his own space in a song to contribute to albums like Thomas’s. He just uses his ear.
“I’m trying to add a little bit of my sound without taking away from the singer, and the song,” he said. “Play for the song. Find space. Make some space. Fill it up a little and get out again. It’s all about listening, listening to what is going on around you, the other people who are already playing.”
Juxo said the kind of listening he has to do depends greatly on the size of the combo he’s in. With Lisa Marie, it’s a duo gig. With Racky Thomas Band, Juxo works with Thomas, keyboardist Matt McCabe, and guitarist Pete Henderson
“Let’s say I’m doing a gig this weekend with Lisa Marie,” he said. “It’s just me and Lisa. Well, it’s her voice and my voice and the piano or the squeeze. OK, that’s cool. When I play with Racky, all of a sudden Matt McCabe’s on piano. Pete’s there on guitar. Now I got to play the same song, but I have to play it different because you have other people going on. I can’t fill in every space I was filling in when they weren’t there.”
For the song “Ready, Willing, & Able,” recorded on Thomas’s CD, Juxo felt it needed a fun rhythm from his accordion. He was playing a small squeeze box with only two octaves. “That’s not a very wide range, considering the piano has eight octaves,” he said. “There’s not a lot of places for me to go, high or low. That’s where I’m playing. I tried to play it very rhythmically.”
“Mary Don’t You Weep,” also recorded on Thomas’s CD, managed to sound triumphant but sad at once. The lyrics being: “Pharaoh’s Army Got Drowned.” Juxo doesn’t read music, so, as usual, he had to listen for it. “I know the notes I’m playing resonate with me, and that’s what I shoot for,” Juxo said.
Juxo doesn’t actually have his own band. His 1984 band, called Ditch Diggers, was his co-owned band with Dan Lily. Since 1990, he has been a keyboardist for others, preferring people who gravitate to his favorite kinds of music.
“I’m a team guy. I like to be a part of something. I don’t really like it to be about me,” he said. “Booking and fronting a band is a lot of work with a certain mind set that I’ve never desired to do. But to be up there with Racky, or Lisa, or Diane, or Eddie, and working with the bass player, working with the guitar player. Now, I’m working with a team. I think my playing lends itself to that.”
A lot of the artists that Juxo works with record their own original music, requiring him to learn their songs and their arrangements of older American music. He likes to hear different arrangements of older songs, citing as a favorite Joe Cocker’s rendition of The Beatles “With A Little Help With Their Friends.”
“I’ve always been a big fan of that,” he said. “I think some people are not. Later in life, I’m finding out that some people in the audience or on stage are like ‘it doesn’t go like that.’ But, I’m always excited about people who have their own take. Like, Racky’s albums usually have original songs on them, but this last one doesn’t. But yet, he has his own take on the songs, and, he sings songs that are not that well known. It almost brings an original thing to it. The same with Diane Blue. Her album has some great Diane songs on it. But the songs she didn’t write, she brings herself into it. I can’t help but feel inspired to play with as much feeling and emotion as they are.”
Many in the music scene have asked Juxo about his cool personality. While nobody can really explain how they got the personality they have, Juxo did offer this: “I spent the first 25, 30 years being not very worried about liking people or being liked. I just kind of embraced being angry and shitty. But, I’ve tried to do the opposite the last 25 years. I’ve tried to get along with everybody. I guess if they’re musicians who are describing it, then it’s about my personality as affected by the music. Music is a great thing that brings people together instead of pulling them apart. When people listen to music there’s something pretty much they can agree on. It’s an uplifting, beautiful sing. I know that when I’m watching somebody else play, which isn’t that often, not often enough, I don’t just want to hear good music. I want to feel the energy that they’re giving off in the way their music or you can feel their personality when they’re playing.”
Many in the Rhode Island and Massachusetts music scene looking to hire a keyboard player or accordion player will likely find it difficult to get Juxo on their gig. His calendar is constantly loaded with gigs, and that is just with people he’s already been familiar with. It took him several years to get to where he is.
“Most of the people I play with already, it’s usually word of mouth or I get sent by another keyboard player who couldn’t make it,” Juxo said. “I met Lisa Marie that way. I got on a Diane Blue gig that way, although I’d kind of known her before. With Racky, I was sent to fill in. Through them, I got to meet other people.”
Aside from playing roots and some blues music, Juxo plays semi-regularly with a Rhode Island band called The Goods which offer British Invasion music and classic rock material.
“I think deep down, everything I play comes from that Kinks, Stones, Who, Beatles mentality,” he said. “I bring that to everything else I play because that’s what I liked as a kid. That’s different from what I play with Diane, Racky, or Lisa. But, it’s in there.”
Juxo believes many contemporary blues and roots music were listening to oldies, British Invasion, and classic rock music on their local radio stations before they learned about blues when they finally noticed a songwriter named Willie Dixon credited on Led Zeppelin and Doors albums.
For the future, Juxo just wants to keep doing what he’s been doing for decades, play his keyboards and squeeze box. “I’d like to keep doing what I’m doing, keep playing on good recordings, keep playing with the best players, and just get a little better at it and learn more songs every day. After being back in New Orleans last year, I could see myself, if I couldn’t see well enough to drive, or if I couldn’t move my piano any more, I would just sit in the Quarter and play accordion every day. I could do that. How’s that for a retirement plan?”
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