arms around the world - arms around the world

“A conduit of culture” — The New York Times

“The man who blew up the whole wine world” — GQ

arms around the world album Track-by-Track Premiere Exclusive — Magnet

Jon Rimmerman’s main gig is discovering and describing wine. As the voice and vision behind Garagiste, profiled by The New York Times and GQ, he champions small wine and food producers working outside major distribution systems and uses the power of detailed, sensory storytelling to let readers feel why they matter.

But last year, in a now-or-never moment, Rimmerman showed up at Hidden City Studios in Santa Barbara and persuaded Grammy-nominated producer/engineer Elliott Lanam to record arms around the world. Playing every instrument across two weeks, he captured experiments with Rickenbacker guitars through vintage tube amps—one track initially laid down in a California motel room with a 1964 Super Reverb amp, one mic, and an overturned wastebasket as a hi-hat.

With wine, Rimmerman makes the invisible visible—place, people, and process, connection. With arms around the world, he paints those same forces in music, creating a soundscape where analog warmth meets diamond-tipped clarity, and layered guitar interplay delivers melodic hooks. One UK A&R veteran described it as “Kings of Leon having a spot of tea with Cheap Trick.”

As a cultural figure already profiled by NYT and GQ, Rimmerman’s debut album represents a rare late-arrival to indie rock with an unusually complete point of view—one shaped by decades of writing, tasting, listening, and connecting dots across wine, food, and culture.

“Everything is connected—wine, food, music, one thread,” says Rimmerman.