Jim West

James "Kimo" West is an LA-based composer, guitarist and music producer. He is also well-known as long-time guitarist for the world's most successful musical satirist, "Weird Al" Yankovic and also as one of the world's top "slack key" guitarists. For over twenty five years, he has composed music for features, network and cable TV, advertising, documentaries and web series. He also lists engineering as one of his talents. Completely self-taught, he learned orchestration "on the job" by re-scoring music for thirteen classic Fox films, entirely by ear. Scores for such films as "Journey To The Center of the Earth", "The Diary Of Anne Frank" and "The Sun Also Rises" were being released in foreign markets with new language tracks and, since many of the music elements were missing, Jim was hired to "re-score" the original music under dialog. His interest in "ki ho'alu" or Hawaiian slack key guitar began during his first visit to Hawaii, in the rural town of Hana, Maui. It was there he fell in love with the lilting sound of slack key. Evidently director Alexander Payne did as well, featuring slack key music for the score of the Oscar-winning film, "The Descendants". "Kimo" as he is known in Hawaii is recognized as one of the masters of slack key and has received many awards such as The Hawaii Music Award, The LA Treasures Award and and is twice-nominated for the Na Hoku Hanohano Award (the Hawaiian "Grammy". He performs in slack key festivals and concerts ad his slack key compositions grace five CD's, documentaries and national TV spots. His work with "Weird Al" has produced three Grammy's, many gold and platinum albums, international touring and TV appearances on The Tonight Show, The View, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Late Show with Craig Ferguson and countless others.