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