CHRISTOPHER WYZE & THE TELLERS - STUCK IN THE MUD

As a former owner of an advertising company, Christopher Wyze mastered the art of getting ahead in advertising. While building up his successful career in the art of persuasion, he applied a similar credo to a parallel creative headspace as a ‘one to watch’ blues performer.

WORDS: Paul Davies

Being a former owner of an advertising company, this inveterate copywriter and publisher of five books on the subject, has built up an enviable network of connections in the blues scene. It’s a side passion that has become his overwhelming main occupation. A stalwart of the blues gigging scene, he fronted a versatile band playing blues standards for two decades and more. Now, this Wyze man, with his band, The Tellers, has released his debut solo album, Stuck In The Mud, which has garnered considerable praise and blues chart and radio accolades.

But the origins of this album go further back to over two decades ago as he tells me: “I’ve been playing in a cover band for a long time, almost twenty years singing the blues and whatnot,” he relates. “I started picking up the harmonica and fooling around with it, playing it on stage and so forth and I decided I wanted to get good at it, so I went to a harmonica workshop in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where I met Ralph Carter. He used to play with Eddie Money and recorded and toured with him,” he reveals. “He’s a producer, musician, and also wrote and played with Sugaray Rayford. He’s a great dude and I got to know him there and he said to me, ‘Hey, you’ve got to start writing music’. This was seven, eight years ago. And I’m like, ‘man, what do I know about that?’ He adds: “I’m just trying to learn harp and sing blues standards and stuff like that.” Then an article that Wyze read caught his eye: “About three years ago, I saw an article in a newspaper about a new recording studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and it looked cool. You stay there for the week, and they cook for you and treat you like you’re rock stars.” He smiles at the memory: “I took a picture of it with my cell phone, and I texted it to Ralph. I was just joking. I said, ‘Hey, here’s where we’re going to record our album that you talked about’. A day or two later, I get a message from him, and it says, ‘Yeah, okay, when are we doing it’? And I’m like, holy cow! I think the guy thought I was serious. Well, it turns out that he was. I had never written a song at that point, so I started writing songs.”

Fast forward a little...”I would say six months later, I had a pile of song lyrics written and I said, ‘Ralph, you’re in Mississippi. I’m about eight hours away in Indiana. How about I drive down there’? He was already there for another workshop. He lives in Ventura, California, but he does guitar workshops. I said, ‘I’ll meet you down there. I’ll bring my pile of lyrics and let’s see if we can make them into songs’. And we did.” He furthers: “We sat in Clarksdale, Mississippi, at a picnic table at the Shack Up Inn and we made songs out of them.” Keeping on top of the momentum, they took the next step: “Then we were recording in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with studio musi- cians, and with Ralph Carter producing.” This greased the wheels of commerce as he says: “Maybe a year forward, I signed a record deal with Big Radio Records in Memphis, Tennessee. It’s run by the Phillips family.

“That’s Sam Phillips of Sun Studios and Elvis and all that stuff. And his nephew, Johnny, is the guy who signed me, and he and his brother run it.” He continues: “At that point, I began working with Betsy Brown and with Blind Racoon, who’s a great promoter and publicist out here in the blues world, and we decided to put a few more blues songs on the album. So, we went back to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and recorded three more songs that are very blues-oriented, and I wrote one the morning of the recording session, because I thought I’ve got all these guys here, I’ve got a filmmaker here, I’ve got a recording crew.”

“If we have time, I’d like to do another song and we did, and I wrote a tune that me and my bass player had played and never did anything with and that’s how the album came to be.”

The authenticity of recording in Clarksdale, Mississippi and Muscle Shoals is imbued in the fibre of Stuck In The Mud. Wyze’s deep drawl adds a further gravitas while interpreting these groovy tunes as he details his writing process: “I’m a writer. I’ve been a writer my whole adult life. I’ve been an advertising guy. And I wrote for a newspaper and for a magazine. I’ve written books. I’ve got five books in print - all non-fiction. Business stuff. But I’ve always loved the blues,” he declares. “When it came to the realisation that I wanted to write music, I’d already done my work learning how to be a word guy. I’d had decades of doing it and I wouldn’t say that I struggle trying to find words”.

“The real trick for me is coming up with a story and once I get a story, I know how to use words.” This is evident throughout Stuck In The Mud in which he translates everyday observations with a wry wit. He continues: “Once I get a good story, then that’s where all the work is. I write all the lyrics and there’s no question that I collaborate with guys like Ralph Carter, and he may have some suggestions for the lyrics, of course. I may say, ‘Hey, I’m hearing something like Howlin’ Wolf or Jimmy Reed, and I kind of dig that groove. He’ll grab his guitar, start playing and maybe an hour later we’ve got a little quick demo and I turn on the cell phone and record it.” From these improvised beginnings, the songs get more serious: “A few months later, we’re in the studio making it happen. He’s written charts for the musicians, and he’s there directing the sessions.” It’s abundantly obvious that Chris is a collaborative team player as he shares: “I also wrote songs with Cary Hudson, who wrote the single Stuck In The Mud with me. It was a song that Ralph and I had fooled around with, and I had the lyrics, and it just wasn’t working. One year later, I met Cary and I said, ‘Hey, would you be willing to work with me on this song’? Within ten minutes we had it worked out and he recorded a little demo, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on my phone and helped me adjust the lyrics. He’s just playing, and I worked out the melody. Then we recorded a demo three days later and a couple months later, we recorded the song right back there, in Clarksdale.”

Old tried and tested on-the-road band mates also chipped in with their musical contributions: “Gerry Murphy, my bass player, I’ve been playing with for almost twenty years in bands around Indiana and the Midwest, he came and recorded every song and he and I wrote a couple of them. In fact, one of the songs, Back To Clarks- dale, became the number one song on the blues charts over here,” he proudly confirms. As a blues artist, Wyze is heavily inspired by the legendary almost mystical blues atmosphere that permeates around the Clarksdale area as he tells me more: “I wrote almost all the lyrics in Clarksdale. The Mississippi Delta just means everything to the blues. It’s ground zero. Every day of the week, you walk down the streets, and half the people are from England or from other parts of Europe. It’s such a culturally and musically important place.”

Given the blues provenance of Clarksdale and Muscle Shoals, I ask Christopher if recording and soaking up the historical ambience in both places helped due to them being epicentres of blues music? “It goes back to that newspaper article and I’m not sure I even thought about it much. I knew Muscle Shoals and saw this cool studio, and the guy in the article, Michael Wright, who’s the studio owner and engineer; he engineered and mixed the entire album. He said, ‘we’re open for business and people need to come’, and a couple of weeks later I’m on the phone with him and we’re booking the recording session and I don’t even have the songs done yet. But playing and loving the blues for many years and being a writer, I just can’t tell myself anything other than I can do this. So, we did it at Muscle Shoals.” He continues: “The reason we also went to Clarksdale is because my co-writer and producer of the entire album, Ralph Carter, three or four times a year, travels to Clarksdale, Mississippi and spends a week doing guitar camps, harmonica camps and songwriting camps. I said, ‘Hey, Ralph, I’ve got three more songs I want to do. You’re going to be in Clarksdale, this week. I could drive down there and bring Gerry our bass player. I know you work with a drummer out of Memphis, and I know Cary Hudson and he’s over in Mississippi’. We’re all so close it made sense for me and Jerry Murphy to drive there. We set up a recording studio in the Juke Joint Chapel and we recorded live in this big music hall where Kingfish recorded and filmed his 662 video.”

Fronting blues standard bands for decades, whilst running a successful parallel business, I enquire which blues covers he played to prepare him for the success of his debut album? “Stuff like Big Boss Man (which is what he was in real life), They Call Me The Breeze, Green Onions, songs by The Doors and Savoy Brown and other kinds of rock and blues stuff and one-hit wonders for mature audiences. We played cool songs most people wouldn’t play. We’d play These Boots Are Made For Walking and turn it into a blues song. They weren’t just straight-up covers and we put our own spin on them. And, of course, I found myself able to write words. So, it all came together.”

With Stuck In The Mud undergoing heavy rotation on American Blues Radio stations, Christopher Wyze And The Tellers has undoubtedly put a unique spin on the blues.