Why I spent 15 years playing guitar to killer whales: “I thought I was going to be the next Eric Clapton. As it turned out, I did something very unusual”

Jim Nollman playing guitar with orcas from the bow of a boat.

Jim Nollman once wanted to be the next Eric Clapton. Instead, his guitar playing took a surprising detour – specifically, via a sea cove in British Columbia – as he piped his sound underwater to create 65 hours of whale song/guitar recordings.

Now he is releasing a compilation of these interspecies jams on Smithsonian Folkways, collecting together highlights of the tapes made between 1985 and 2002 at his Interspecies non-profit in B.C.