Jon Kinyon

The Jimi Homeless Experience

On August 23, 2007, I released a full length CD of parody songs I had written and produced, all inspired by a webcomic I had been publishing for a year or so. The first CD by The Jimi Homeless Experience was released on the exact day of the 40th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’ first album release Are You Experienced, my Are You Homeless? features “Weird Al” Yankovic-styled parodies of some of Hendrix’ biggest hits. In 2009, a follow-up EP was released featuring a parody of the Hendrix hit “Red House” and a heavy blues/rock cover of the classic blues song “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl”. Various lineups of the band played live venues all over Southern CA. between 2007 and 2010. In the last incarnation, I was playing the part of Jimi myself.

On March 6, 2008, I was honored as the first “featured animator” on MyToons.com, which was a brand new YouTube-styled website specifically geared for 2-D and 3-D animation. My stop-motion clay animation which caught the site’s attention parodied Jimi Hendrix’ key performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. The piece features a fictional character named Jimi Homeless who first appeared in a series of webcomics published as The Jimi Homeless Experience (webcomic). The webcomics were written by me and drawn by my friend and underground cartoonist known only as Big Tasty.

Between 2008 and 2010, several hours of footage was shot for a Jimi Homeless mockumentary feature-length film but it will likely never be completed.  

In the summer of 2023 I released a book featuring more than 300 Jimi Homeless quotes and jokes, which "Jimi Homeless" had posted on social media over the course of more than 10 years. The book, "Street Smarts: More Than 300 Jokes & Quotes" can be found on Amazon and other sites that sell books.