Croatian Shred: Insights From Damir Simic Shime

By: David Konow

Damir Simic Shime "The Quest"

Last year in Guitar World magazine, ubershredder Yngwie Malmsteen recalled his journey to America, a country he called “truly the land of opportunity.” He came off the plane with a guitar, an extra pair of pants, and a dream, and since his breakthrough, many other European guitarists came over hoping to follow in his footsteps.

Damir Simic Shime is one such guitarist. Although not as commercially successful as Malmsteen, Shime has also accomplished a lot since coming over from Croatia in 1991, and he still has dreams he hopes to fulfill. “The way I look at my whole American quest, to me it’s just one big adventure,” he says. “It’s still an adventure to me. I’ve accomplished some things, I didn’t accomplish some things I wanted to, but the adventure still exists.” Although it was infinitely easier to try and make it in the U.S. than in his native Croatia, Simic’s journey has been no overnight success. In fact, like a lot of post-Yngwie shredders, he’s still in there punchin’ after overcoming some tough obstacles.

It’s easy to take for granted how accessible everything is in America, especially in the internet age. So try and imagine being a young music fan like Damir, and having to cross the border into another country just to buy an album.

“Croatia was part of Yugoslavia up until 1991,” Shime says. “Growing up in a Socialist regime, it was very hard to get a hold of any foreign music. If you could find The Beatles in the early eighties, that was about as good as it got. You couldn’t get it through the mail at that time, that wasn’t really developed.”

Although Damir’s father was a jazz guitarist, he didn’t get the itch to start playing until he discovered Ritchie Blackmore. Simic first saw Blackmore in action when they would show Deep Purple concert films in local clubs. But like many guitarists, the player that made him want to take on the instrument was Eddie Van Halen. Simic’s father also had an Akai reel-to-reel tape recorder, which Simic used to tape guitar solos, then slow them down so he could learn them note for note.

The first Van Halen album Simic was able to discover was 1984, and he went backwards from there, going all the way back to their self-titled 1978 debut. By this time, he had better luck getting his hands on albums. “At the time, my dad worked in Germany, so it was a phone call away to tell him, ‘I really need you to find me this album.’”

Working in Germany, Simic’s father was also able to get his son his first good guitar and amp combination, a Hamer and a Mesa Boogie. “You couldn’t buy a Fender in Croatia twenty years ago,” Simic says. “I think the first Fender and Gibson dealers started in the mid ‘90’s.” Once he was old enough to drive, Simic would travel up to Trieste, which is on the border of Italy, or Leibnitz, which is on the border of Austria, to buy strings, picks and tubes.

Through Guitar Player magazine, Simic learned of the new generation of shredders that were coming up in Yngwie’s wake like Paul Gilbert and Tony McAlpine. “I got acquainted with all these great guitar players of that era, and that also inspired me to move to the United States.”

Simic came over to the U.S. in 1991 when he was 22 years old. “It was a really far-fetched idea, because for any 22 year old to move to L.A., even if you’re from Wisconsin, it’s a big step in your life. Especially in a country like where I was growing up, it was almost like saying, ‘Hey dude, I’m gonna move to the moon.’”

Still, like a lot of parents, Simic’s mother had a hard time understanding her son’s rock ambitions. Simic reasoned, “One day when I am old before I die I want to look back on my life and know I at least tried it. If I don’t try, I’m gonna be a miserable fuck, I’m gonna die in agony. That’s the inner driving force I had, fuck everything. I just gotta go here and try.

As he made his way to the States, Simic had a great run of luck paving the way. He was able to get his Visa by enrolling in GIT’s summer program, and he also signed a publishing deal with Warner Chapell Music. He also got featured in Guitar Player’s Spotlight column, the same column that first featured Yngwie and numerous other players, and hooked up an endorsement with DiMarzio pick-ups.

Simic was featured in DiMarzio’s ads even though he was an unknown, and the company’s been behind him ever since. “Larry DiMarzio and Steve Blucher have been extremely supportive,” Simic says. “Larry placed several ads with me, which I’m really proud of, because he put me neck to neck with all my heroes like Yngwie and Satriani. And I’m still not that famous of a guitar player in those terms, but the DiMarzio guys have been behind me.”

Things were moving along just fine for Simic until Nirvana hit the next year. “Everything appeared to be phenomenal right from the get go,” Simic recalls. “The problem is about a few months later Kurt Cobain came on the scene. We didn’t really see it coming, but he single-handedly kind of like removed guitar soloing from the mainstream. All throughout the ‘90’s, soloing didn’t exist. Soloing just recently started creeping back in. The past three, four years I’m seeing this movement where all these young bands are coming along. They’re starting to shred, and it’s becoming more popular again.”

Damir Simic Shime in Action

Still, Simic knew the market for shred guitar playing was limited when he came to America, and was prepared to stick it out. “It’s like boxing,” he says. “You’ve got a champion, and the guys who make millions of dollars. You’ve got the contender, and he gets paid pretty darn good for one fight. Then the number five or seven guy on the list boxes at the local gym, teaches kids how to box, and struggles to get some endorsements so he can get free gloves and whatever. You can translate that to shredding instrumental music too. I think God put me on earth to play guitar and play this kind of music. Whether I make a big career or not out of it, it’s almost irrelevant.”

“Music is an art of passion more than anything else,” Simic continues “We’re drawn to it because it’s bigger than our common sense or logic. If 95% of the musicians today used common logic, they’d probably leave their instrument, and start studying something else that at least guaranteed some money returned on the time invested. But this is what makes us happy, and that’s priceless.”

Where a lot of guitar players dreamed of joining a high-profile, high paying band, Simic’s always been an instrumental guy at heart. “I can’t see myself playing rhythm guitar 90% of the song and having maybe a 16-bar solo,” he says. “If David Coverdale or Billy Idol would call me, I’d love to join those two artists. But besides those two, I would have to think really long and hard of who’d be on my list of bands I’d love to play with. I love playing instrumental music.”

Gear wise, Simic’s guitar and amp set up are fairly traditional. Simic is primarily a Strat man, and his favorite guitar is a ’69 Fender in Olympic white, “Jimi Hendrix’s color,” Damir says. The oldest Strat in his collection is a ’58 pre-CBS sunburst model. “I don’t really play that guitar much,” Simic continues. “It’s just cool because it’s a piece of rock and roll history.”

Although he says he’s “primarily a single coil guy,” he’s also a Les Paul fan as well. “Sometimes I have this saying that a Strat can be like my wife, and a Les Paul is like my mistress! The Les Paul is an instant gratification guitar. When I grab a Les Paul after playing Strats for a long time, it feels like somebody just shifted into a higher gear in terms of how much easier it is to get a solid tone out of it, and how much easier it is to play.” Yet he still finds himself going back to his old Strats “because I really like that classic, bluesy tone you can get from them.”

His amp selection is also in an old school vein, with a few boutique Bogners thrown into the mix. Simic’s two favorite amps are a ’71 100-watt Marshall, and a ’68 Fender Super Reverb. He also has a 50 watt ’73 Marshall, and three Bogners, an Uberschall, a Shiva, and an Ecstacy (Simic also works for Bogner as the company’s general manager).

Looking back on his journey so far, Damir says he’s accomplished a lot of his childhood dreams, but hasn’t accomplished his main dream yet. “I came here because I wanted to be one of the boys, one of the guys who left some considerable impact on the guitar.”

Like a lot of shredders still in the game, Simic sells CDs through his website, and his promo and live clips are all over YouTube. With the major labels floundering, and the music business as we knew it collapsing, artists now have more control than ever over their music and their careers.

As George Lynch told Guitar Player, “These days, selling 10,000 records on your own is as profitable as selling half a million on a major.” But to even get to that point is still a lot of work, as Simic attests.

“The beauty of today’s Internet, YouTube, and MySpace is you can do so much on your own and make it work,” Simic says. “But it’s not easy to sell 10,000 albums on your own. It requires hard work and dedication. You have to figure out how to pitch it out there, and what means you have to promote your product.” Simic says he’d also love to be on a G3 style tour in the future: “Satch, if you’re reading this, give me a call!”

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About David Konow: David Konow has written for many publications and websites including Guitar World, Fangoria, Made Loud, HD Video Pro, MovieMaker, Creative Screenwriting, Geek Monthly, pop culture / technology site Tom’s Hardware/ Tom’s Games, Decibel, and many others. He is the author of Bang Your Head, which was published by the Crown division of Random House in 2002, and is currently working on his third book for St. Martin’s Press.

Copyright 2010 David Konow