Interview babaJack

Studio in the round, so ‘live’ in effect, with very few overdubs. Adam really understands what we are about and has the studio and the great talent to translate that into recorded sound and an album.

The response to Rooster has been humbling: nominated ‘Best Album of 2012’ in the British Blues Awards and so many very positive reviews.

Any really memorable or unusual gigs?

The great thing about being a touring band and playing music, is that you go to places you’d never imagine, and you meet all sorts of people. We’ve played gigs at a swimming pool high up in the Alps, on a tall ship on the Seine in France, travelled 12 hours in a force nine gale to get to the Shetlands, and played in a tiny theatre on the Isle of Hoy, Orkney population 400.

We’ve even been joined on stage by Elvis in Switzerland, well, the official Swiss Elvis impersonator; he was good! But the gigs that really stay in our hearts have been in the UK. I know a lot of bands find the UK scene hard, and it is. The money’s too tight, and you don’t always even get offered a drink, let alone a sandwich.

But the grass roots people and support are great, and the gigs that really made us who we are, happened right here: Upton and running the acoustic stage of course, Jaks stage (Butlins,Skegness), Colne, Shetland & Orkney, more recently Ealing Blues Festivals, all spring to mind, and of course the little venues that we grew up in, the pubs and clubs. We still do one or two of them on the quiet. Just because the folk are so good and they’ve become friends.

Nominations and awards are now coming in thick and fast!

We’ve had an amazing year 2012/2013. We were so surprised to be nominated twice at the British Blues Awards in 2012, and we came home as runners up for ‘Acoustic Act of the Year’ and I won the ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ for my percussion. We were chosen to represent the UK at the European Blues Challenge and we came 5th! We were Blues Matters! magazine Band of 2012 in the BM Writers’ Poll and Rooster figured in the top albums. I was in the top three nominations for Fatea Folk Roots Awards for ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’. And to top the lot we have been nominated five times in the British Blues Awards 2013: Best Album for Rooster, Best Original Song for the title track, Best Acoustic Act, Best Harmonica Player for Trevor and Instrumentalist of the Year again for me. And the results are in. We placed in four out of five categories! Runners Up for Best Album, Best Acoustic Act, Best Harmonica Player and I am blown away to be the winner of ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ for the second year running!

Now your fourth album, RunningMan aving reviewed his Rhythm & Blues set, our scribe is eager to speak with the guitar legend and discovers that Buddy Guy is on a Blues crusade.

The first thing to say about Running Man is that it was almost completely financed by our fans through a PledgeMusic campaign.

PledgeMusic is a crowd funding site that enables music fans to connect with their favourite artists to support live music. We launched the campaign in January and by February we had enough to start recording. Of course, we went back to Twin Peaks and our producer, Adam Fuest. And the support of our fans meant that we could do something a little more with this album. We were able to add Tosh Murase on drums, Adam Bertenshaw on electric bass, and the beautiful cello of Julia Palmer-Price. We felt very strongly that we should not lose the energy and roots sound of us as a duo, and it turns out that half the album is with the rhythm section and half just the two of us, with some gorgeous additions from the cello across both tracks.

The second thing to say about Running Man is that we made the decision to release independently again, and to release in a different way. Despite a lot of interest and offers, we decided that we would go with the fans! They are what really matters.

The music industry is in turmoil with the internet revolution.Bands can get their work out there, promote it, but with streaming on sites like Spotify, there is little or no money getting back to the artist. And that means that it’s harder than ever to keep the music coming. But music fans still want great music, and it seems more and more that they are prepared to support it. So we decided not to take the record deals, and instead we have a number of people who have offered to invest in us and the promotion of this album. So our pledgers helped us record the album, and our investors are helping us get it out there. People power!

The pre-launch party in Malvern was amazing. How did the launch proper go?

On the 21st September, we celebrated the launch of Running Man, first at The Grove in Malvern – home of our wonderful friend and cellist on the album, Julia Palmer Price. It was a magical evening, a true celebration of the people who had supported us in the making of this record. And then we did it again on the 24th Sept at The 100 Club in London. What an iconic place to play. I had to pinch myself that I was standing on the same stage as some of the greatest artists and playing our music!

So the album is out, and we have agreed a distribution deal with Proper, the biggest independent music distribution company in the UK. We have made an agreement with a UK agent and all is looking like the sun might keep shining.

What’s next for Babajack?

BabaJack are always on tour … because we love to play! And we have plans to develop the show, and take it further afield. We are working with Golly Gallagher, and GFI Promotions, and Proper Music and now have a UK agent. So everything is happening and evolving, and with their help, and the fantastic support of our fan base, it looks like it could all really happen for BabaJack and we’ve started working on the next album. Playing so much in Europe this year has been a great experience, and they have really taken us under their wing. But we will always make time for the UK. We’re a British band after all.

BM: Good morning Mr Guy – we want to talk about your new recording if that’s OK with you, sir?

BG: Yes, that’s fine!

Where are you now? Are you in Chicago?

Yeah I’m at home for a couple of days and then we go back out for about three weeks.

OK. Now I’ve been listening closely to the Rhythm &Bluesalbum and I’ve reviewed it in the magazine. I ask how many artists of your age are still so lively and so electric? What’s the secret, Buddy? What’s the secret to doing this?

(Laughs ) We just went into the studio and y’know, throughout my whole career; I’ve been trying to hopefully make something that can get a little more airplay cause’ for some reason America (and around the world, I think), they just don’t play blues records regularly on the radio any more. It’s four’oclock in the morning, one day a week something like that.

Yeah... you have to search it out!

Man, I want to fly the blues flag! That’s why with Rhythm and Blues I had some slow blues on it, then I tried to pick up the tempo to get a kind of dance beat and hopefully I can get some airplay.

Cos’ my main concern right now is keeping the blues alive, and there’s only a couple of us left who are still travelling and that’s me and B.B. King. He’s eighty-eight years old and I’m seventy seven. Blues is kind of scary now!

When American guests come over here, such as a friend of mine from New York Hit Man, we do your hits like WhenMyLeftEyeJumps, in tribute to you at shows.

Well thank you so much. Me and B.B. King always talk ‘every little bit helps’. I had bad reviews in newspapers and B.B said ‘Even if you get bad news Buddy, you made the paper!’

Mr Guy, you’ve got some notable guests on this set. Did you approach them or did they approach you? How does it work?

Well you know, just about every musician I know, we’re friends man. It’s all music. I mean

Beth (Hart) she was there when I received the Kennedy Award about three or four months ago and I love her voice.

She can sing. Kid Rock, I’ve been knowing him for a while and the tune we did with him was for my late friend Junior Wells. That was his biggest record. I said ‘With your name being Kid and the song being called Messin’ With the Kid I thought he was beating me to it. He laughed and said ‘Yeah I’ll come in’ and he did a good job with it.

I think so. I saw you two at the Hammersmith Odeon do that song. You and Junior Oh yeah. He’s missed so very much.

I thought that you were the template for guitar and harp duets. There’s no act using that configuration that doesn’t owe a debt to you Well thank you so much!

Now Tom Hambridge I know from his own recordings. This man knows how to get the best out of Buddy Guy, does he not?

I’m sure you know about the late Willie Dixon.

Yes sir!

In the Muddy Waters days and Howlin Wolf and people like that who create that Chicago sound, Willie Dixon was affiliated with it and Tom has that approach, y’know? whenever I’d talk to Tom like I’m talking to you now, he’d have a thing, he’d say ‘You don’t realise Buddy when you just talk to anybody you’re writing songs.’ I’d say ‘I didn’t get a high school education, so I used to listen to my parents, uncles and aunties a lot.

The older people would say things that were associated with everyday life.’ He’d say ‘Man this is kind of strong.’ Especially when we wrote the one my dad always used to tell me ‘Son, whatever you do don’t be the best in town. Just be the best’.

OK. You see, Tom Hambridge to me is like a picture framer. He’s getting those songs sounding with the right collection of musicians, the right weight and the right light touch. He’s framing what you’re doing. Well he’s great at that, I agree. He played drums on all that and I didn’t know he was that good on drums when I met him! I used to dig the late Ritchie Hayward who passed away.

Yes indeed, saw him with Little Feat. He said ‘I can play this.’ So I said, ‘Show me.’ When he’s stopped playing, I said “I don’t need to go no further.” This guy’s got all kinds of talents.

If I was pressed to play one cut from R&B to illustrate what’s going on I’d probably go for Devil’s Daughter. How do you get such a deep performance, because it’s very haunting that track? Well you know, during the Willie Dixon days at Chess Records I didn’t learn to play by the books. I taught myself how to play and I always was a pretty good listener. I would just go in there and play.

Some of these British acts were saying they were picking stuff up from me. Like Eric, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck. He said that he listened to me and I said “What did you hear?” I didn’t know I was coming up with a Buddy Guy sound and I still don’t feel like that. I’d go into the studio and Tom he’d close the door and say “I want you to do what you do best.”

I really love the track with Beth Hart, WhatYouGonnaDoAboutMe?

That girl is unbelievable. There’s this little kid I’m trying to get exposed called Quinn.

I heard him on Mick Martin’s radio show on Saturday and he said he was fourteen ?

He’s amazing. Do you know when I first met him he was seven years old? He can play like Eric Clapton, me, B.B King. Beck and all these people, On Beth, chills come over when you hear her sing. She was at the award show and I heard her sing. I said ‘If I could get her to sing on the record then maybe I can sell a few more albums.’

It’s a beautiful pairing, man. It sounds like you’re living that song out. Yeah, she did a tremendous job.

Now I’ve got two (three I suppose) real favourite Buddy Guy albums. I really like Feels Like Rain and on that album you do Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man. Did you ever meet Marvin Gaye?

Not in person but he was such a great guy. Actually, I was doing that album and that song, it wasn’t scheduled to be on the album, and the producer heard me fooling around with it in the studio and said ‘Man you can do that and we can put it on the album’.

I loved Marvin, he was doing his thing in those Motowndays. He said “If you don’t have any money, hang around with somebody who’s got money!”

(Laughs) The other song of yours I really love is called ManofManyWords and that’s on Buddyand JuniorPlaytheBlues on Atlantic That is such a blazing song. How did you sound so intense on that? When I come play in person, I forget about myself. My parents told me: ‘When you give a hundred per cent and someone don’t like you they can still say ‘I didn’t like him, but I can tell he gave me everything he had.’ I don’t like to cheat nobody out of nothing.

If I give you the best that I’ve got that’s all I can offer. I hope everybody would do that. That cut, I kinda took off there!

Right. That delivery thing goes if you’re an actor or a painter, Buddy? Oh yeah.Whatever you’re creatin’.

Will you play any dates in Europe to support R&B?

I haven’t been there in a few years. But if I’m invited back I’d never refuse to come to Europe because I came to London in February 1965 and Rod Stewart and The Yardbirds toured England with me.

Neither of those guys was a superstar like they are today. Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck they’d be at that concert and they didn’t know blues could be played on a Stratocaster. I said: “What do you mean?”

At the time, we had seen Buddy Holly with a Stratocaster, and we didn’t know you could make it sing like a horn.

Well that’s EXACTLY what they told me. I was just trying to make people happy, which I still do. When I go to the stage I just go to make someone happy because if you go and play my main concern is just let me make you happy.

We’ve got so many people in the world unhappy. Everybody’s got a problem. Music speaks in all languages. I just try to make people smile and if people pay to see me, I just wanna give you the best that I’ve got, lift you.

John Lee Hooker said ‘Blues is the healer.’ Yeah! Pete – the first time I met John Lee Hooker I was not in America. I met him in Europe because they would bring us together over there.

Over here we were just blues players and we’d play blues clubs. Now we come to Europe and people would say ‘Bring on the music!’

I tell you what, it was because I was a young guy growing up hearing your stuff. I saw Jimi and Stevie Ray, but the Chess Records you made, are so intense that they will live forever. It is captured on a record. Captured for us to enjoy many years later.

Thank you so much. I love the people over there. They’ve been supportive of me ever since I’ve been coming over there. I just hope I can be a little explosive because there’s only a few of us left.