Jari Salmikivi

Hi there! Thanks for visiting my website. I´m Jari Salmikivi and I´m a guitarist/songwriter living in Sweden. I was born in Lahti, Finland (thus my Finnish name) but moved to Sweden as a little boy at the tender age of one.

I began playing guitar at the age of 11 when some childhood friends formed a band and needed a rhythm guitar player. We mainly played songs by The Ramones ("It's Alive" was the first-ever record I bought!) and even had a few gigs at some local schools.

As a guitar player, my earliest influences were Gary Moore and Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits). I practiced for hours in my childhood room, playing along with Dire Straits tunes like "Sultans of Swing" and "Telegraph Road" etc.

Gary Moore was a huge influence early on, and when his solo album "Victims of the Future" came out, I was hooked! I already loved his playing from Thin Lizzy's album "Black Rose" and tried to copy his playing for hours!

I later moved on to expand my list of influences to players like Joe Satriani, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Yngwie Malmsteen, Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Jeff Healey, Eric Johnson, Steve Lukather and many more!

Please see a list of musical influences.

I kept playing guitar through my high school years, and in 1991, I attended the Guitar Institute of Technology (Musicians Institute) in Hollywood, Los Angeles, and studied guitar for a year. Upon graduation in 1992, I moved back to Sweden and played in different bands (original and cover bands) and worked as a guitar teacher and a music teacher.

This went on for about eight years, and in 2000, I quit the band I was playing in and more or less stopped playing guitar due to other passions in life and a newborn baby daughter! :)

Recently I picked up the guitar again and have a newfound joy in playing the guitar and making music again. This has resulted in the music you can find on this website and Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, etc.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy the music! :)