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Mike Jackman
Mike Jackman, founder of ALL IN, began learning music at about six years old, taking classical piano lessons on the spinet piano his grandmother gave his mother, though piano didn’t take, to the dismay of his frustrated teacher.
His next stop was clarinet, which he played throughout junior and senior high school in Queens, NY. It was the late 1960s, and winsome summer camp counselors playing Joni Mitchell around the fire led him to his first musical true love: the guitar. Playing his divorced dad’s battered acoustic guitar with obscenely high action, which his mother found in the back of a closet, he enrolled in an after school guitar class. From there it wasn’t long until he won his high school battle of the bands with Mike playing lead on his brown Gibson SG.
He cut his songwriting teeth in his late teens, early 20s, working as a lyricist for jazz pianist David Bravo, who went on to record and compose for Deodato.
In 1976, thereabouts, he enrolled in music composition at Queens College, sang in the music department choir, and studied classical guitar for a bit. From then to the early 80s, Mike gigged solo and with groups around the New York metropolitan area. With his duo Jes’ Folks he and his partner, fiddler Fritz Goron, played regularly in Manhattan at Chillie’s on 46th Street and the Back Fence on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village.
Mike dropped out of music school 12 credits shy of a BA and moved to Nashville, where he attempted unsuccessfully to break into songwriting. After a year, disappointed with the results, he gave it up. He returned to college, completing a degree in English Lit at Belmont College. Grad school at the University of Louisville brought him to Kentuckiana, which he has called home ever since. Later, he grabbed an MFA in poetry from Spalding University’s low residency program, directed by his writing mentor, Sena Naslund.
But even before retiring from teaching creative writing and composition at Indiana University Southeast, he began returning to his roots as a musician, playing in a band with fellow professors, then Molly’s Mutts, a guitar, dulcimer, stand-up bass trio. He took up flute, studying with Louisville Orchestra flautist Margaret Jamner. Always seeking to squeeze every bit out of whatever talent he has been given, he currently takes lessons with jazz flute virtuoso Matt Eakle of the David Grisman Sextet. With Barry Smothers and two other friends, he founded the local band Crazy Chester, which still gigs in the area. His life has come full circle as a member of the Kentuckiana music scene, performing locally as a vocalist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, with The 207s, a community jazz big band, and with ALL IN.
Read more about Mike at michael-jackman.com, YouTube & on Facebook
Barry Smothers
It all started when I was 11. My mother bought me a drum set secondhand. I was in a band back when Wipe Out just came out, played drums in various bands with high schoolers when I was still in sixth grade. When the bands gave out I picked up a guitar. Somebody showed me two chords. I started writing songs and singing. Then I tried fiddle, wasn’t very good at that, so I picked up mandolin, and have been playing it ever since the 90s. My brother and I were The Other Smothers Brothers duo, well known in the area. I made a living at it for 10 years, then I put it down for 15 years, picked it back up and have been jamming and playing ever since. The Other Smothers Brothers opened up for a lot of major acts in the country field. Our largest crowd was 22,000 when we were the opener for Trace Atkins. Mike Jackman and I have been playing together for a little over three years now. It’s been a hell of a ride.
John D’Amato
John D’Amato is a singer/songwriter and recording artist from Long Island, New York, and has been performing professionally since 2008 when he started recording his first solo project. At the same time he and slide guitarist Craig Ligman formed the band Dust Radio and would play all over Kentucky and southern Indiana. John still fronts the band under the new name Dust Radio Revival after Craig retired. John also plays with local Louisville band ALL IN fronted by multi instrumentalist and singer/songwriter Mike Jackman. To date, John has released four studio albums. The most recent is a collaboration with his wife, singer/songwriter Kim DAmato, called Fireflying, Without Fear. (Available wherever music is digitally consumed.) They both perform regularly in different bands and recording projects and currently reside in Taylorsville, Kentucky. John is the newest member of ALL IN.
Read more about John at johndamatomusic.com
Dennis Maguire
Dennis Maguire is a well established bass player in the Louisville music scene. It all started about 50 years ago when his older brother placed a guitar in his hands at a garage jam because they didn’t have a bass player. Since then he has honed his skills, playing with many musicians in various musical genres; from bands covering rock, country, pop, bluegrass and blues to singer/songwriters performing original compositions. He is proud to be a member of a band of top-tier musicians, ALL IN.
Maguire has played with a host of musicians and bands, including Frank Maguire, The Che Brothers, ALL IN, DawGs, Jim Needler, Sam Gaddis, John D’Amato, The Boogie Shoes Band, Tom Boone, Crazy Chester, Norbert Blocker, John Robertson with Norbert Blocker and Mike Logsdon.
Larry Godhelff
My father & his brother had a big band in the 40s & 50s in Lexington, Kentucky. My dad played drums. Because of that, I play drums. In fact my first kit was his kit!
I started in band in the fifth grade and continued on through Jr. and Sr. High with orchestras, concert band & marching band at Bryan Station in Lexington, and in the Central Kentucky Youth Symphony Orchestra. During that time, I played in a band called The Intruders. At one gig we ran into a young Jim Varney who was trying to impress us with his hog calls! That gig was at Cardinal Valley Elementary, the school at which I ended up teaching.
At the University of Kentucky I played in concert bands, marching band, and the UK orchestra. Also while in college I was able to perform in The Lexington Philharmonic, an orchestra primarily for older & more seasoned musicians.
Next I played blues with the famous Rodney Hatfield, in The Hatfield Clan. Later I joined the rock band Junction with some buddies from Lexington. (Junction had a rhythm player, Jeff Silbar, who went on to co-write “Wind Beneath My Wings.”)
Among my experiences, while in college, one night I heard a coffeehouse band called Coffee, Cream & Sugar. The lead singer was Fontilla Timmons from Brooklyn. l let them know how much I loved them and they immediately asked me to join, as their drummer was quitting. (Since there were four of us, and since the band was called Coffee, Cream & Sugar, I must have been the Saccharin.)
For a very long time, I played in a country-rock house band at the absolutely most dangerous bar in the U.S., Al’s Bar (6th & Lime) in Lexington.
While in Louisville, I played with the Mary Driver Blues Band. And now I’m ALL IN!
