Blues Music Magazine by Blues Music Magazine

Taj Mahal Andy T & Nick Nixon Nikki Hill Selwyn Birchwood JOE BONAMASSA NUMBER FIVE www.bluesmusicmagazine.com

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COVER PHOTOGRAPHY © ART TIPALDI

NUMBER FIVE

6 KEB’ MO’ Keeping It Simple

5 RIFFS & GROOVES

by Art Tipaldi

From The Editor-In-Chief

24 DELTA JOURNEYS

11 TAJ MAHAL

“Jukin’”

American Maestro

26 AROUND THE WORLD

by Phil Reser

“A Life In The Music”

14 NIKKI HILL A Knockout Performer by Tom Hyslop

17 ANDY T & NICK NIXON Unlikely Partners by Michael Kinsman

20 SELWYN BIRCHWOOD Stuff Of Greatness

Sonny Landreth / Tommy Castro Dennis Gruenling with Doug Deming Thorbjørn Risager / Lazy Lester

37 SAMPLER 5 38 REVIEWS New Releases / Novel Reads

64 IN THE NEWS

PHOTOGRAPHY © ANDREA LUCERO courtesy of SHORE FIRE MEDIA

by Tim Parsons

28 Q&A with Joe Bonamassa 30 Q&A with Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin 32 BLUES ALIVE!

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Art Tipaldi CUSTOMER SERVICE: Kyle Morris GRAPHIC DESIGN: Andrew Miller CONTRIBUTING EDITORS David Barrett / Michael Cote / Thomas J. Cullen III Bill Dahl / Hal Horowitz / Tom Hyslop Larry Nager / Bill Wasserzieher / Don Wilcock COLUMNISTS Bob Margolin / Roger Stolle CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Vincent Abbate / Grant Britt / Michael Cala Mark Caron / Tom Clarke / Kay Cordtz Ted Drozdowski / Robert Feuer / Rev. Keith Gordon Brian D. Holland / Stacy Jeffress / Chris Kerslake Michael Kinsman / Karen Nugent / Brian M. Owens Tim Parsons / Tony Del Ray / Phil Reser Nick DeRiso / Pete Sardon / Richard Skelly Eric Thom / Mark Thompson M.E. Travaglini / Bill Vitka CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Scott Allen / Robert Barclay / Mark Goodman Les Gruseck / Aigars Lapsa / Doug Richard Joseph A. Rosen / Dusty Scott / Marilyn Stringer Jen Taylor / Susan Thorsen SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION Phone Toll-Free: 866-702-7778 Web: www.bluesmusicmagazine.com E-Mail: service@bluesmusicmag.com EDITORIAL QUERIES E-Mail: editor@bluesmusicmag.com BUSINESS AND CIRCULATION QUESTIONS E-Mail: jack@bluesmusicmag.com MEDIA SUBMISSIONS Mail 2 copies to: Blues Music Magazine P.O. Box 1446, Bradenton, FL 34206 ADVERTISING Phone Toll-Free: 888-565-0554 Web: www.bluesmusicmagazine.com E-Mail: advertise@bluesmusicmag.com

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“Leave your ego, play the music, love the people.” – Luther Allison Last May, I attended the Blues Music Awards for the twentieth time. I began attending the W.C. Handy Awards in 1994 and attended through 2003. I missed 2004 to celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday and have now attended 2005 through 2014. I’ve seen it grow from its days in the Orpheum Theater to its present location which turns the Convention Center into a dazzling juke joint setting. Today’s event features an all-access pass to every ticket buyer. There is no VIP pre-party; instead there is an hour cocktail party featuring selected nominees playing for everyone. Beginning at seven, there is a sit-down dinner, award presentations, and non-stop music from nominees until after midnight. The other biggest change is the effort of the Blues Foundation to have as many of the nominees and winners present. This year’s highlights were the pure soul showstoppers of Ronnie Earl and Beth Hart. They were the distilled essence of the blues. But there have been many other vivid moments. In 1996, after Luther Allison won his third Handy Award, Ruth Brown warned, “Luther, you better stay off my stage!” After he copped his fourth, Allison ran out of words of gratitude and announced, “I’m gonna let my guitar talk!” After his fifth, the guitar spoke Luther’s heart-felt LUTHER ALLISON MEMPHIS, 1997 gratitude for over an hour. In 1997, Luther gave me the finest picture I ever took. His leap is forever etched in the events of that night. An hour after I snapped the shot, my camera broke and I have no pictures from the rest of the weekend. There was also the standing ovation for Johnny “Clyde” Copeland who received a new heart on New Year’s Day. Copeland showed no ill effects as he tore through three songs. Tragically, he and Luther passed away within three months of that night. In 1998, it was all Bonnie Raitt. From her acoustic duet with Keb’ Mo’, her finger waggin’ gotta move from this neighborhood with Ruth Brown, and her “Walkin’ The Dog” with Rufus Thomas. However, after the Orpheum cleared out for the jam, I found Ms. Raitt at the rear of the hall talking with her dear friend, the wheel chair bound Jessie Mae Hemphill. Not many saw this simple act of kindness and respect. I’ll always remember the shivers from Ike Turner’s guitar in 2002. I remember Johnny Adams in 1998 running from his sound check to the Peabody lobby to watch the ducks leave the fountain. One of my favorite memories was the 2000 pairing of Gov’t Mule with Little Milton. As Warren Haynes and Milton exchanged guitar jabs, I was stopped walking out of the auditorium by a large, tie-dyed shirt. PHOTOGRAPHY © ART TIPALDI

PUBLISHER: MojoWax Media, Inc. PRESIDENT: Jack Sullivan

“Who’s the dude with the Mule?”... “Huh?” “Who’s the dude with the Mule?”... “Which dude?” “The black dude with the guitar?”... “Little Milton.” “He’s pretty good up there with the Mule.” “Let the music keep our spirits high.” Art Tipaldi, Editor-In-Chief

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opens his current album, BLUESAmericana, with “The Worst Is Yet To Come.” The opening lines on this record, “Woke up this morning,” harkens back to the earliest blues verses. Those archetypal blues songs, recorded on 78s or shared in juke joints after weeks of harsh labor supporting the sharecropping system in the Mississippi Delta, offered some collective relief – the sun is gonna shine on my backdoor someday. Keb’ Mo’s song serves exactly the same objective. He sings about concerns like Americans losing factory jobs and more immediate problems like cars needing work and one’s mate taking everything. Even the dog shows no respect. But through it all, like the resolve in those 78s, there is the determination that if I can survive this, I will survive. Though he will object to the notion that BLUESAmericana is a blues album, the songs Keb’ Mo’ has written address the challenges of our modern world in the same way that Charley Patton, Skip James, or Bessie Smith sang about the issues in their world. These songs hit a modern nerve of where people are in jobs, relationships, and economy in a very powerful way. Songs like “More For Your Money” “For Better Or Worse,” “The Worst Is Yet To Come,” and “Move” all tackle the heavy, dark themes of modern life. At the same time, Keb’ Mo’ counters with songs about the strength that love and companionship provides when one fights the battle with the outside world. “I’m Gonna Be Your Man,” “The Old Me Better,” and “Somebody Hurt You” all address the power to fight against the world when love is at the foundation. “The focus of the new record is that every song tells it’s own story,” said Keb’ Mo’, “and the collective theme of all those stories is about a feeling. I didn’t have any thematic thing in mind. I just wanted to tell stories about my life right there. There are some really heavy songs on it. Then I went back to record ‘That’s Alright’ because that’s the equivalent of going back to something real. That’s the blues. That’s making the mark.” Keb’ Mo’s last CD, The Reflection, was recorded in 2011 and was nominated for a Grammy for Blues Album of the Year. Recorded only months after he and his wife Robbie Brooks Moore moved to Nashville from L.A., Keb’ Mo’ is slowly

integrating himself into the local music scene, especially its songwriting society. “We moved here four years ago to raise our son [Carter Mandela Moore] in a better environment,” said Keb’ Mo’. “The kind of scene here certainly keeps me on my toes. The biggest difference to me is the songwriting community. It’s just stellar. The people, the writers, and the spirit in which it’s done is just fantastic. The bar is so high. If I go to any songwriters’ showcases, I don’t go to play, I go to listen and learn.” Because of that, these ten songs were not dashed out in the studio during the recording process. Rather Keb’ Mo’ crafted them over an extensive period of time. “These songs were picked from over a year of different writing sessions. I like words, so the words come first for me. I thought I ran out of musical ideas 15 years ago [Laughs.] Lyrically, I feel I’m just getting started. I have an idea that I take to a writing session and generally ask, ‘How about this?’ then we proceed to do our best to craft a song in a way where that idea can be best relayed. “My first responsibility throughout the process is to be honest to myself and to the song. Then I have to take that responsibility and craft it to the best of my ability so that people can really get the most out of it. “Once I have a song written and I think it’s finished, then, I’m ready to go into the studio. I don’t want to waste any great spontaneity on a demo. So the demo and record process is all the same. The most important thing is to pick a tempo for the song. If I get the tempo right, that’s half the battle. I can always change small things, but if I get the tempo wrong, the song goes nowhere.” With little workshopping, these songs go on tour ready to compete with Keb’ Mo’ staples like “Henry,” She Just Wants To Dance,” Shave Yo’ Legs,” “Soon As I Get Paid,” or “Dangerous Mood.” “It’s hard because I have a history of songs that people have really latched onto. I could play ‘She Just Wants To Dance’ for days. I have a lot of songs that really work like that. So far, audiences have been receptive. I have a feeling that people are curious and open to this new record. This feels fresh and new people are paying attention. Instead of always going back, it would be great to have this as a fresh start where I can grab two or three songs from the past that are crucial to what I do and move forward.”

KEB’ MO’

keeping it simple 6

Keb’ Mo’

PHOTOGRAPHY © DUSTY SCOTT

by Art Tipaldi

Every since Kevin Moore rechristened himself Keb’ Mo’ over 20 years ago, he has been speeding forward on the industry’s fast track. In 1994, I met him during the Beale Street Music Festival where he handed out cassettes and shared the Acoustic Porch with Piano Bob and the Snowman – an hour performance, an hour off, all weekend. He says, “I put some songs together then that worked. It was a little bit of calculation and some dumb luck.” But it was much more then that. He was born in 1951 and grew up in Compton. “My early musical experience was playing steel drum in a steel band when I was 10. I played in that band all the way through high school. At the same time, I was playing the French horn in the orchestra, and I was playing guitar in a cover band at the school.” Yet a chance encounter with authentic blues sowed the seeds that would later mature. A little known singer, Taj Mahal, came to a high school in Compton in the late-1960s. In the audience sat one Kevin Moore. “I’ll always remember my drafting teacher in my senior year of high school because he had the foresight and wisdom to let me go see Taj twice. He singled me out because he knew I that I liked music. No one in the school, including me, had ever heard of him, but I was totally getting it. “Nobody knew who Kevin Moore was. I was virtually unknown. I made my living in L.A. playing a combination clubs, sessions, theaters, and film work. I played with Papa John Creach for three years on the road.” After leaving Creach in 1976, he began honing his song writing skills. In the early 1980s, he spent five years in what he terms, “Song Writing College,” working in a workshop setting with other writers for Casablanca Records. He came into 1994 with years of experience in the industry, working in a variety in L.A. bands, supervising demos for Alamo Music, and working in some theater productions. Today’s developmental standards suggest that to achieve mastery of sport or music, 10,000 hours of practice are necessary before an athlete or artist turns

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He’s the root doctor,

he’s all of it.” –

Keb’ Mo’

by Phil Reser

american maestro TAJ MAHAL

“ He’s an American treasure.

keeping blues music alive, singer, composer, and musicologist, Taj Mahal has felt from the beginnings of his career that he was preserving his African heritage. Born Henry Saint Clair Fredericks in Harlem, New York, on May 17, 1942, he was, from the start, influenced musically by his parents, his mother, a gospel-singing South Carolina schoolteacher, and his stepfather, a piano-playing West Indian jazz arranger. He grew up hearing all kinds of music from his parents’ large record collection and over the family’s short-wave radio. Wandering around New York City as a young boy, he says, “There were all these street players who played tambourines and sang, guitars and sang, harmonicas, accordions, and just singing on the street. A live person playing the music was what I remember. I didn’t have the distance of hearing the music only through the recorded side of it or just on the airways. I heard it as a living thing.” Musicians from the Caribbean, Africa, and all over the U.S. frequently visited his family home, and he became fascinated with the origins of the various forms of music he was hearing. So he threw himself into the study of older forms of African-American music, which the record companies of the day were largely ignoring. “When I was growing up, there was no difference in breathing and music, it was always a part of my family. What I didn’t know was it wasn’t a part of every family out there. My grandparents didn’t speak with an American accent; my mother spoke with a Southern accent, and my father’s people spoke with a Caribbean accent, although my father had a little bit more of an American accent put into it. “Nonetheless, once they started talking together, everybody sounded like they were West Indians, and when I went to my other grandfather’s house, it was all deep Southerners. So, to me, all of it was a great tradition in front of me. I’m just investigating the lines of the music, culture, and traditions that came in to me.”

PHOTOGRAPHY © JOSEPH A. ROSEN

Blues Music Magazine

by Tom Hyslop

a knockout performer NIKKI HILL

was a Sunday afternoon in Duluth, Minnesota, in August 2013. Patrons at the 25th Bayfront Blues Festival had already heard from such luminaries as Robert Cray, Mark Hummel with Anson Funderburgh and Little Charlie, and Nick Moss, and titled artists ranging from Chief (Eddy Clearwater, of course) to Empress (in the person of Irma Thomas) and were anticipating the appearance of the new Queen of the Blues, Shemekia Copeland, when Nikki Hill took the main stage and practically burned it down. With assurance and verve, Hill strutted and shimmied, played off her guitarist (who also happens to be her husband, Matt Hill), and sang a tantalizing blend of wild roots rockers, simmering soul, and hard-edged vintage-style R&B. The set encompassed much of her CD Here’s Nikki Hill, augmented by scorching covers of Little Richard, Etta James, and Bobby “Blue” Bland numbers. Almost from the first notes of the Tarheel Slim and Dale Hawkins classic “# 9 Train,” much of the crowd was on its feet, where it remained, dancing and transfixed, for the next hour, except for a brief interval when Hill, perhaps out of mercy, called for her stunning deep soul ballad “Don’t Cry Anymore,” a move that slowed the set’s tempo momentarily, but did nothing to relieve its intensity. She closed with AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie.” The audacious choice seemed natural, an extension of what came before, and had the audience screaming its enthusiasm and surprise.

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Mighty Mike Schermer, guitarist for Marcia Ball, who was scheduled next, arrived backstage shortly after Hill took control. He listened approvingly to the R&B-singing fireball for a few minutes before leaning over to say, “I haven’t seen her before. She’s great. She’s like Lou Ann Barton!” The comparison is apt vocally, as both singers have effortless control over that essential grind in their voices, and musically, for both, steeped in tradition, lean on a repertoire that leans on roots music from across the spectrum, with R&B ballads, soul, and rock ‘n’ roll shading their blues. The question remained: Was Hill unheralded royalty or an irresistible rebel leader? Just three years ago she was a young lady with a college degree and excellent, eclectic musical taste, a music lover in a relationship with the Blues Music Award-winning guitarist Matt Hill, and scarcely thinking about singing. Today, everyone is talking about her, with good reason. In 2014 she will appear at about 30 festivals, including Australia’s internationally acclaimed Byron Bay Bluesfest

“ THIS IS MUSIC FOR EVERYBODY.” and the Main Stage at the Chicago Blues Festival. Her precipitous rise is evolving as the natural result of tireless hard work, a deep love of music, and talent and charisma (Don “T-Bone” Erickson flatly states, “Best stage presence anywhere”). Felix Reyes, who recorded albums for both Nikki and Matt Hill at his House of Tone studios, says: “She’s poised

PHOTOGRAPHY © AIGARS LAPSA

Blues Music Magazine

now to be on the road, having time to write, and also having the chance to audience-test, too. The plan is to record again very soon when a break comes up. There will be another album comin’ out, which is kinda where I’m leaving it right now. “People ask why I’m making certain decisions. A lot of time there’s not much thought to it. To me, the most important thing is to play. Getting in front of people is our goal, playing and pouring out what we pour out, and hoping the people like it. And it’s really just as simple as that. We’re out on the road, getting new faces into the clubs every time. It’s great to see fan response and see people spreading the word with us and for us.” Hill is justifiably proud of her band: drummer Joe Meyer, electric bassist Ed Strohsahl, and Nikki’s husband, guitarist Matt Hill, who has two solo albums to his credit. Dubbed The Pirate Crew, the trio is the engine that makes touring fun under any conditions (everyone in the group is a genuine hash tag wit and bon vivant). “I consider them the guys. I can focus on the numbers and the press et cetera, and I can lean on those guys musically. I don’t think a lot of people are so lucky. I can put out an idea, I can tell ‘em this is what we’re gonna do, and I know they’re gonna do it beyond better than I predicted. I can just let myself fall into the music, and I can really absorb it and put the passion into it. “The Pirate Crew and I really deliver something solid. I wholeheartedly believe in that. And all I can ever support it with is, just come see the show. Once they see the show, there’s not anybody that disagrees. And that’s the calling card, that’s the business model, and it feels good that we’re able to do that. “I’m thankful I’ve got a great team on my side. It’s like I woke up on January 1st, 2013, and it was ‘Alright, I’m a small business owner, here we go!’ I can’t really ever say that was on my goal list, and then boom! it happened, and that became the ultimate challenge. And things are goin’ great. “It’s good to work on the songs together, record them together, and listen to how they’re changing, and how tight they are, and then all our focus can just go into the show. And as cheesy as it is, it feels good to be able to do something that I love so much, and that my husband loves so much, and that we get to do it together. “We got together not knowing at all that this would be the result, but to be able to work with him and play with him and hear his music getting better, hear me getting better, it is all so cool. What more can you ask for than to be successful, just based on you, based on how you give that to people?” PHOTOGRAPHY © JOSEPH A. ROSEN

something that’s beyond human!”) and Otis Redding, and continuing through Little Richard, The Faces, Phil Alvin, Link Wray, and Bukka White. “Eddie Hinton and James Carr: I’m a soul vocalist fan, big time. That’s good stuff.” Other touchstones are Booker T & the MG’s and The Meters, Toots and the Maytals, A Tribe Called Quest, Billie Holiday, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Lazy Lester, and Otis Rush (“He’ll kick you off with that good voice and then that fuckin’ slammin’ guitar!”). Live records by James Brown, Sam Cooke, and B.B. King are special favorites. And “obviously Tina Turner, I think she could have fronted AC/DC easily.” (It keeps coming back to AC/DC. “Rock ’n’ roll and soul? Bon Scott nailed it beyond nailed it.”) Hill’s musical awareness makes her at once a traditionalist and an iconoclast who firmly rejects any categorization, although several cliques would claim her. Her own attitude is more inclusive. “My bass player is gonna wear his Notorious B.I.G. shirt sometimes. It’s not to be ironic, it’s because he fuckin’ listens to Notorious B.I.G.. Those people that do like Notorious B.I.G. see us bein’ ourselves and think, ‘OK, I don’t have to feel like if I don’t know all this music they’re playing, that I don’t know anything.’ “I want to reach those people, too. I want them to hear what we’re playing and for them to dig it. You can be an ‘Artist’ about it and say, ‘Nobody label me.’ At the same time, I don’t want to be one of those ‘We’re a rockin’ soulblues-a-billy-honky-tonk band.’ For me it’s important to capture all music lovers. I think a lot of us in scenes get really caught up in just playing for each other. And that is zero of what this has anything to do with. This is music for everybody.” As bandleader and boss lady, Hill is keenly aware of the hard work that has gone into her success. Still, it seems sudden. “What a trip! My very first tour was at the very end of 2012 and that’s when everything started. I quit my job while we were on that tour, and here we are a couple years later. That’s pretty much just how it kicked off. I gotta give it up to the power of YouTube. That really gave me the boost of hearing people asking, ‘Where’s the record? I wanna buy whatever she’s got.’ I didn’t have anything. I didn’t have a thing.” Since then she has recorded an EP that was folded into 2013’s full-length Here’s Nikki Hill CD, as well as a second EP, Soul Meets Country, a side project recorded in Memphis with Deke Dickerson and the Bo-Keys. “Everybody really came together and did a great job. I did miss my band, but man! if you can’t work with your own, I like to set the bar up there. A lot of my stuff has been written on the fly, not necessarily by choice. It’s fun

by Michael Kinsman

unlikely partners ANDY T & NICK NIXON

PHOTOGRAPHY © MARILYN STRINGER

one could have known it at the time, but Andy T and Nick Nixon needed each other for a lot of years. Even they didn’t have a clue. But four years ago when journeyman guitarist Andy Talamantez first heard James “Nick” Nixon sing at a Nashville blues jam, he realized he was listening to a blues voice he needed and wanted. He’d already been in the studio off and on working on his debut CD with Texas guitarist Anson Funderburgh, yet there were holes in the music and both knew it. A couple of singers were called in, but neither proved to be a good match. Finally, Funderburgh challenged Talamantez in 2010 at the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Ark. “You live in Nashville,” he said. “There’s a lot of good singers there, and I’m sure you can find one.” Talamantez already had Nixon in mind, but he wasn’t quite sure how to approach him. “I really didn’t think he would say yes,” Talamantez says. “I knew he liked singing as a hobby and that held me back.” Still, he’d gotten goose bumps the first time he heard Nixon singing at a Nashville blues jam and he trusted that first impression. Nixon, who like Talamantez had set aside his music career years ago to raise a family, decided the time was right to give it a shot. The result was the surprising Drink Drank Drunk debut CD that resonated with blues fans and promptly landed a spot among the top blues CDs of 2013. It also led to an ambitious touring schedule and another date with Funderburgh at the studio controls. Their second CD Livin’ It Up was released in June on Delta Groove and builds on the first CD, depending on more original songs and basking in the confidence of a band that knows where it is going. The recent past has been period of growth for the 58-year-old Talamantez and the 73-year-old Nixon. They count themselves fortunate that the blues isn’t as age-sensitive as most forms of music today. “I’ve always wanted to do this, and I never considered age to be a stumbling block,” Talamantez says. “If anything, I think my guitar playing is better than ever, and I find myself playing things that I never have before. “Part of that comes from Nick. He’s so inspirational. You hear his voice and your own work to rise up with that. It’s really been amazing in how our relationship has developed and how well we seem for each other.”

Blues Music Magazine

by Tim Parsons

stuff of greatness SELWYN BIRCHWOOD

you have a passport?” the old bluesman interrupted. Teenaged Selwyn Birchwood had waited six months for the opportunity to play guitar for Sonny Rhodes, who stopped him in the middle of his song to ask the question which doubled as a direct and sudden offer for a job and an invaluable apprenticeship. A year later, 19-year-old Birchwood asked Rhodes why he had hired him on the spot when there were so many accomplished guitarists from whom to choose. “He just laughed and said I reminded him of himself when he was younger,” said Birchwood, now 29 and with his own band and a new deal with Alligator Records. Birchwood heard that comparison again after he assembled a veteran group, each a jazz aficionado but with many years of experience with blues bands: Regi Oliver, a baritone sax player, Donald “Huff” Wright, a bassist, and drummer Curtis Nutall. “I’ve watched him grow at a startling rate,” 50-year-old Oliver said. “He’s very serious about what he’s doing. He’s not one of those shoot-yourself-in-the-foot, afraid-of-success musicians. That kind of attentiveness and discipline reminds me of a younger version of myself. “We pride ourselves in picking winners and Selwyn’s definitely a winner,” continued Oliver. He has the hardware to prove it. A year after reaching the Blues Foundation’s 2012 International Blues Challenge finals, the Selwyn Birchwood Band won the 2013 IBC, and Birchwood, who plays electric and lap steel guitars, was given the Albert King Most Promising Guitarist Award, which doubtless led to more comparisons. Blues fans covet the exciting new, young gunslinger, and the 6-foot-3-inch (not including afro) tall Birchwood fills the bill. “I don’t think he wants to be another Stevie Ray Vaughan,” Nuttall said. “He wants to be a game-changer more than he wants to take the place, or be in the pantheon, of those guys. I think he just wants to take the blues to what his perspective is. Because when you look at the genre, there are not too many people in his age bracket that are into blues. I like his concepts and ideas because he’s trying to take the blues to the next level.” “I look at him with the perspective of him being more than just a blues guitar

“Do

PHOTOGRAPHY © MARK GOODMAN

by Roger Stolle

Jukin’ know I write a lot about juke joints or at least the music and musicians that call jukes “home.” Jukes are the blues clubs – house parties, really – where the roots of popular music still live and breath, even if the breaths may not be as deep as they once were. The simple truth is that today there are very few juke joints left in the American south and even fewer that still offer regular, live blues music. For these reasons, you owe it to yourself to make a juke joint pilgrimage sooner rather than later. Tonight, you can still fall into an authentic juke joint experience. I can’t promise that tomorrow. Drop by my Cat Head blues store any time you swing through Clarksdale, Mississippi, and we’ll happily point you towards the real-deal.

WHERE THE JUKES ARE Starting on the fringes of Mississippi, you might try a weekend night at Wild Bill’s in Memphis, Tennessee, Teddy’s Juke Joint in Zachary, Louisiana, or Gip’s Place in Bessemer, Alabama. Wild Bill, himself, was an old dude who used to “hold the door” (collect the

with the ladies after the main act begins, always with a beer in hand. His place is unique among surviving jukes since it features as much outdoor partying area as indoor. Like other genuine jukes, it is, less “up to code” than perhaps a modern music venue might be. More on Gip’s in a moment.

MISSISSIPPI AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT A JUKE In Mississippi, there are three jukes left that get most of the headlines (when occasionally a headline finds them).

RED PADEN AND GIP GIPSON

PHOTOGRAPHY © ROGER STOLLE

GIP’S PLACE

money) at his namesake juke in Memphis. He’s passed on, but his joint still rolls on each weekend, which is a rarity since most jukes go the way of the dodo upon their proprietor’s demise. Wild Bill’s offers a deeper Memphis juke experience than anything you’re likely to find on betterknown Beale Street. Teddy’s is a bit down and out of the way in Louisiana, but well worth seeking out. The owner has made the trip to Clarksdale several times is as colorful a character as you’re likely to find. His place comes highly recommended for blues tourists headed to Louisiana. Then, there’s Gip’s. Mr. Gip is the “Old Man” in the game. Now in his nineties, he seems blissfully unaware of the math involved. Like a much younger man, he often plays the first Saturday-night set – awesome old blues slide guitar numbers – and is fond of dancing

Blues Music Magazine

by Bob Margolin

A Life In The Music Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, Jimmy Rogers. I joined Muddy Waters’ BOB: Terry, your photos and the I met Muddy using the band’s bathroom at band in August 1973, songs you’ve written show how much you Alice’s Revisited. He was regal and digniI met some of his friends. I remember the love the spirit of blues music, and you had fied, but tremendously generous of spirit. I first time I loaded my amp into Muddy’s so much access to it while the legends took his picture, talked about how I dug van, double parked outside of Paul’s Mall were still with us. Tell us more. Cream’s version of “Rollin’ And Tumblin’.” in Boston as the band left to drive back to TERRY: I had the luck of being a But there was another level to the Chicago the day after my first gig with teenager in Chicago in the ‘60s, weaned allure of the blues. These Muddy. Suddenly, Bo were the Civil Rights years. Diddley pulled up to load My dad made sure I underin for his own gig and stood and valued all that. greeted and joked with And here were all these his friends in Muddy’s guys who had gotten out of band. I realized I’d be Mississippi, and brought me meeting legendary music their music. It had weight, icons through my new history. Muddy connection. The blues became my I also met a young man religion. In college, I joined who was about my age a group producing shows but had already been with Furry Lewis, Jimmy friends with Muddy for a Dawkins, and Hound Dog couple of years: Terry Taylor. In ‘73, I moved to Abrahamson. Boston and brought Jim Terry hung out with Brewer out on tour. And Muddy’s band often then. the more guys I had I shared his awe of the missed – Robert Johnson, legendary blues musiElmore James, Sonny Boy cians we laughed with, Williamson – the more I and I enjoyed Terry’s valued those who were musician-like sense of still around, and became humor – cynical, vulgar, obsessed with not just and quick to laugh at life’s seeing them, but knowing challenges. He had a them. I wrote songs with camera and used it often. Muddy, fried chicken in a In February 1974, when I FREDDIE KING AND MUDDY WATERS, RHODE ISLAND BLUES FESTIVAL, 1975 motel with Hound Dog, first recorded with Muddy sat in Homesick James Williamson’s at the last Chess studios in Chicago, Terry on The Stones, Yardbirds, and Cream. In bed with him and his sister passing the had written some of the songs Muddy 1969, I went to see a band I’d read in the moonshine jar, sat in Willie Dixon’s front recorded. newspaper did The Stones’ “Little Red room – just us two – as he played the After 1980, Terry and I sent an Rooster.” That was Howlin’ Wolf, the first session he’d just done with Reverend occasional hello through mutual friends, real Chicago blues singer I’d ever heard: Balenger; I still have the cassette. I crebut I didn’t see him much until the last few powerful, primitive, and totally rocking. ated a Levi’s commercial for John Lee years when he showed me his new photo And somehow familiar: he had a lot of Hooker and wrote the song he played. book, In The Belly Of The Blues. I was moves I’d seen from Mick Jagger. He I even cast Willie Smith in a Bar Mitzvah deeply impressed with how Terry had preroared through “Killing Floor,” “Spoonful,” video. And as Eddie Shaw sings in my sented his now historic photos, and his “Sitting On Top Of The World,” “Back Door song “All That Stuff,” soulful stories from a time we now call Man,” and the light went on and my life “back in the day.” This is not a review, I just was changed. want to introduce you to Terry, who deeply I went home, checked my record colI started out when I was young, loves blues, other blues lovers, and the lection and realized the music of the And get ready baby, ‘cause I ain’t done. musicians, and shows you his memories bands I loved originated with a bunch of today in photos and recordings. Now I Black guys who were all in Chicago. I BOB: You told me at the Blues Music invite Terry to tell you in his own words. started going every weekend to see Awards that it’s a thrill for you to get back PHOTOGRAPHY © TERRY ABRAHAMSON

When

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PHOTOGRAPHY © TONY KUTTER

& JOE BONAMASSA America’s finest songwriters for his next recording, Different Shades Of Blue. When we spoke, Bonamassa was preparing to play another sold out experience, his blues tribute at Red Rocks Amphitheater. Blues Music Magazine: What was the artistic aftermath after your Tour De Force project? Joe Bonamassa: We had all this press booked in New York City after the gigs

PHOTOGRAPHY © TONY KUTTER

rarely takes a break. A look at Joe Bonamassa’s recent touring and recording schedule confirms that this self-professed guitar geek thrives on a non-stop musical carousel. London, Vienna, Amsterdam, New York, his guitar cases could be plastered with hundreds of travel stickers. At the same time he was completing the exhaustive Tour de Force – Live In London project, Bonamassa was taking time to jet to Nashville to work with some of

and I was so exhausted from that week of rehearsals and gigs. It was a really rewarding week, but it was very stressful and work infused. I lost my voice so that I couldn’t do interviews. Kevin Shirley, my manager Roy Weisman, and I were at the Montreux Jazz Festival eating Thai food next to Taj Mahal. On paper it seemed pretty straight-forward. I know all the tunes, I wrote some of the tunes, I’ve played them all live before, so this shouldn’t be that hard. By the time the first three piece gig at London’s Borderline was done, it was clear to me that this was going to be more involved than I thought. That was an intense gig in front of 200 people, and now I have to wake up the next morning and do the horn band at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Then wake up the next morning and do Hammersmith Auditorium. Then, I get a day off and then do two sets, one of them with the acoustic band, at the Royal Albert Hall. By the time it was over, I was spent.

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PHOTOGRAPHY © MARILYN STRINGER

& DAVE ALVIN PHIL ALVIN

1979, brothers Dave and Phil Alvin were founding members of the Blasters which gained international recognition playing with bands like X, Black Flagg, the Cramps, and Queen. The music was called L.A. punk roots and rockabilly, but the brothers learned music playing blues by mentors Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, and Lee Allen. Phil was 12 when he started harmonica lessons with Sonny Terry. The Blasters’ best known song was a cover of Little Willie John’s 1959 tune “I’m Shakin.’ Jack White’s recent version of the song is basically a cover of the Blasters cover, which is highlighted by Phil Alvin’s shouting blues vocals. Dave Alvin left the Blasters in 1986 to pursue a solo career and other projects. After a Phil survived a serious health issue in 2012, the brothers decided to make their first record together in almost 30 years. On June 3, Yep Roc released Common Ground: Dave Alvin And Phil Alvin Play And Sing The Songs Of Big Bill Broonzy. Blues Music Magazine: Is it true this reunion was inspired by a close call with Phil? Phil: I had a close call, a brush with death, in Spain in June 2012. And I guess that motivated David. I always liked playing with David, periodically, since the Blasters, and we did a song together on his last record (in 2004), “4-11-44.” But I think the imminent flat lining possibility probably motivated things a little bit. BMM: How is your health, Phil? Phil: I am doing fine. I was doing fine afterward. But they gave me a tracheostomy so I had to let that heal before I could do anything.

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Dave: We hold Big Bill in such high regard, there was really nothing to fight about. I think the only heated discussion that we got in over anything was over an F sharp note that I wasn’t playing. Then he showed me, and I said, “Oh, you’re right.” BMM: You used to fight? Phil: The whole band fought. Dave: We all grew up together. Phil was already playing with Big Joe Turner and Lee Allen when he was 16 years old. Guys like that were part of our childhood – Lee Allen, the great tenor sax player from New Orleans who was on all the Fats Domino, Little Richard and Professor Longhair records – we grew up with them. The Blasters, it’s a hackneyed phrase now but we were a family band and we would fight.

BMM: Before the one song in 2004, when was the last time you two had recorded together? Dave: Phil and I hadn’t made a full studio record together since the Blasters Hardline in 1985. Over the last few years both of us have lost family members and very close friends. It just seemed like BMM: I hear Big Joe Turner in Phil, and time. We’d never done a full album both of your singing styles has the cadence together, just the two of us. It was always and delivery that you hear with blues. in relation to the Blasters in a band Phil: I never distinguished between concept. I just thought the sooner we rhythm and blues. The first time I saw can get this done, the better because no Big Joe Turner it was just magic. I have a one knows how much longer we’re loud voice and I used to imitate Joe hanging around. Turner. He gave me a piece of advice So I called Phil and asked if he wanted to do some Big Bill Broonzy “ HE LASTERS, songs and he said, “Yeah.” IT ’S A We did four songs and that sounded really good HACKNEYED (then decided to make a) PHRASE NOW whole album. He BUT WE WERE [Broonzy] had not only A FAMILY BAND great material, but material that will stand all sorts AND WE WOULD FIGHT.” of styles from ragtime, finger-picking blues to Chicago blues to urban blues to jump blues. There was a lot to choose from.

BMM: One of the songs was “You’ve Changed.” How did your working relationship change? Phil: Of course on “You’ve Changed,” I don’t sing, so that changed. And we didn’t have anything to fight about.

SONNY LANDRETH Hugh’s Room Toronto, Ontario, Canada whether adding whole chords or fragments behind his slide as he played, his right hand hammering, tapping or picking the strings for effect. Deep in concentration, the occasional smile will appear as he succeeds in achieving something particularly pleasing, otherwise impossible. “The Promise Land,” with a tip of the hat to hero Sonny Boy Williamson (the “d” dropped intentionally), lost a little steam in its pursuit of paradise, Landreth’s usually strong vocals weak in the mix. Biting into Skip James’ “Cherry Ball Blues,” vocals stronger, Landreth steered his styling back into the straight blues of his youth while “The Milky Way Home” underlined an absolute fleetness-of-fingers, Brignac lending a tasteful, tonal approach on drums. Song after song, a reordering of traditional compositional design committed to the satisfying journey that only Landreth’s otherworldly, slide-driven approach and driving, Delta-born rhythms can offer. Yet, as stand-out as covers like Elmore James’ “It Hurts Me Too” and Robert Johnson’s “Walking Blues” were, buttressed against his own raucously slinky “A World Away” and the storm-warning known as “Blue Tarp Blues,” it was the gentle touch of Elemental Journey’s “Brave New Girl,” segueing into the head-spinning, grinding groove of a hyper-blasted “Uberesso” that proved the true gamechanger. The molasses-thick power shuffle of “All About You” merged with a gentler “Back To Bayou Teche,” uniting the voices of all three players, deeply steeped in Cajun soul. A compulsory encore brought on the near-feral, always ferocious “Pedal To The Metal” which, when it comes right down to it, is core Landreth – his high-energy assault a lifelong tribute to the rich musical influences of his upbringing. To have reinvented the very nature of his instrument and the way music is played is suitable legacy – but only the beginning. To meet the man after a show deserving of a full-bore, Saffir-Simpson hurricane rating is a surprise. This unassuming musical giant remains completely ego-free and a soft-spoken, Southern gentleman – his generous persona reinforced by a personal elegance. – Eric Thom PHOTOGRAPHY © ERIC THOM

Sonny Landreth has, long ago, surpassed what is expected of a guitarist, having reinvented many of the rules and playing techniques through his endless exploration of the instrument. He is one of Louisiana’s most explicit exports, creating original compositions which reflect a heady, distinctive sense of place more accurately than any travel campaign could. His praises are shouted from the mountaintops by the biggest names in the industry –lauding him for his jaw-dropping accomplishments and serious inroads into the musical process itself. The opportunity to witness Landreth live satisfies the need to hear

the music you’ve grown so attached to. It’s also a chance to watch it unfold – a magic show unlike any other – devoid of deception, tricks or pretense. Some of these custom techniques already have names – many do not. He creates new ones as he searches for just the right note, the ideal tone –while his accomplished bandmates (Dave Ranson, bass; Brian Brignac, drums) set the stage, maximizing his creative space through touch and feel – fueling Landreth’s inner flame as they respond to each unconventional cue. Each composition is alive – an evolutionary process benefiting from ever-refined skills and the subtle nuances of live performance. There’s always something different to watch or listen for. Each song gets fresh girth under the watchful care of a perfectionist who seems unable to accept personal limitations in his quest to take things further, constantly raising his personal bar. “Z. Rider” was the entry point into this 13-song, two-hour set, replete with a scorching encore. “Native Stepson” continued his fluid assault with a dizzying display of artistry,

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Blues Music Magazine is featuring a Digital Sampler for download in every issue. Please go to www.bluesmusicmagazine.com/BMM5 to download this Digital Sampler and visit the artists’ websites. Enjoy!

Jim Liban with The Joel Paterson Trio –“I Say What I Mean” from the album I Say What I Mean on Ventrella Records. Singer, songwriter, and harmonica player Jim Liban joins forces with Chicago’s Joel Paterson, who has distinguished himself as a talented guitarist who is expert in all forms of American music. www.americanbluesband.com

Jim Byrnes –“Somebody Lied” from the album St. Louis Times on Black Hen Music. Byrnes takes listeners on an intimate journey through St. Louis’ place in American music. This song is Byrnes’ homage to the musical legacy of Jimmy Reed and features John Hammond on harmonica. www.blackhenmusic.com

Lisa Biales –“Graveyard Dead Blues” from the album Belle Of The Blues on Big Song Music. On this offering Biales is, as advertised, the Belle of the Blues. “Graveyard Dead Blues” is a deadly love song. With the help of some mighty fine Dobro work from Tommy Talton, Biales belts it out Bonnie Raitt-style. www.lisabiales.com

John Mayall –“World Gone Crazy” from the album A Special Life on Forty Below Records. In 2014, John Mayall celebrated his 80th birthday with the release of his first studio album in five years. Joined by guest C.J. Chenier and Mayall’s touring band, Mayall has recorded classic songs on this album by Jimmy Rogers, Albert King, Eddie Taylor, and Jimmy McCracklin. www.johnmayall.com

The Nighthawks –“You’re Gone” from the album 444 on EllerSoul Records. Now in their fifth decade of recording, Mark Wenner and The Nighthawks continue to follow the band’s unique blueprint to reinvent blues and rock ‘n’ roll. Led by founding member Mark Wenner, 444 is a jam-packed record of blues, soul, roadhouse country music, and rock ‘n’ roll performed through the trademark Nighthawks sound. www.thenighthawks.com

Jimmy Carpenter –“Walk Away” from the album Walk Away on VizzTone. For over 25 years, Jimmy Carpenter has lived in the music. His tenor has been a constant part of the bands of Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Jimmy Thackery, Mike Zito, the Honey Island Swamp band and many, many others. www.jimmycarpenter.net

Raoul and The Big Time –“High Roller” from the album Hollywood Blvd on Big Time Records. Canadian harmonica player and singer, Raoul Bhaneja thrives in recreating the harmonica-driven styles from the 1950s Chess catalogue. This record features guests Curtis Salgado, Rick Holmstrom, Junior Watson, Rusty Zinn, and others. www.raoulandthebigtime.com

Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and Terry “Harmonica” Bean –“Lonesome Church Bell” from the album Twice As Hard on Broke & Hungry Records. Together guitarist Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and harmonica Terry “Harmonica” Bean continue the Delta guitar/harp legacy as they recreate the blues of Jack Owens and Bud Spires. www.brokeandhungryrecords.com

Trudy Lynn featuring Steve Krase –“Every Side Of Lonely” from the album Royal Oaks Blues Café on Connor Ray Music. On the heels of her 14th record, Trudy Lynn was nominated for her fifth Blues Music Award. On this cut, Steve Krase adds harmonica and Jonn Del Toro Richardson brings guitar behind Lynn’s expressive vocals. www.trudylynnblues.com

David Vest –“That Happened To Me” from the album Roadhouse Revelation on Cordova Bay Records. Recorded live at a house concert just outside Edmonton, Canada, this cut is a gritty blues shuffle that gets its depth from Vest’s dynamic piano. www.davidvest.ca

Madison Slim –“Close But No Cigar” from the album Close But No Cigar on All About Blues, Inc. Madison Slim bought his first harmonica after hearing Little Walter. He has toured with the Legendary Blues Band, Sam Lay, Jimmy Rogers, and many others. This is Slim’s first recording under his name.

Bad Brad & The Fat Cats –“Leghound” from the album Take A Walk With Me on Fat Cats Entertainment. Bad Brad represented the Colorado Blues Society at the 2011 International Blues Challenge in Memphis as its Youth showcase entrant. www.fatcatsofficial.com

Now in their fifth decade, The Nighthawks, led by harmonica master and vocalist Mark Wenner, continue to hang close to the music that initially inspired this iconic band.

THE NIGHTHAWKS 444 EllerSoul The first time you hear it, you’ll think somebody’s put the wrong record in the sleeve. Until Mark Wenner jumps in on harp, “Walk That Walk,” sounds like a rockabilly band doing doo-wop. The cut is from the ‘50s gospelturned-R&B group the Du Droppers, and is way out of line from The Nighthawks’ usual fare. But as soon as Wenner jumps in with his Little Walter-style harp contribution, he puts it firmly back in their sack of blues. The group quickly gets back into recognizable Nighthawk territory with “Livin’ The Blues,” an apt description of the band’s five decades on the road promoting that genre. The current lineup of ten year alumni Paul Bell on guitar and bassist Johnny Castle with five year vet Mark Stutso on drums is one of the tightest units the group has ever had. As an extra-added attraction they all sing, making for smooth four-part harmony on several cuts. Castle penned the title track, a twangy rockabilly number glazed with a thick coat of Wenner’s bluesy harp varnish. Stutso contributes “You’re Gone,” a bluegrass number written by his brother-in-law that Stutso vocalizes on and Bell renovates with some shimmery Jimmie Vaughan guitar. Wenner’s “Honky Tonk Queen” sounds like a Dr. Hook translation of the Stones’ country honk style. There are a couple of Elvis tributes. “Got A Lot Of Livin’” is from Elvis’s second film, 1957’s Lovin’ You, capturing Elvis in his rockabilly years. The ‘Hawks replicate it perfectly from the Jordanaires’ backing vocals to Scotty Moore’s twangy guitar licks. The Hawks’ version of “Crawfish” is a bit different than the version Presley performed in ‘58’s King Creole. His was a duet with a female street vendor taking the high parts on the chorus, while the ‘Hawks harmonize smoothly on the chorus and clone Presley moaning like Hank Williams on the swampy verses. As is customary on any Nighthawks project, Muddy Waters gets a turn on “Louisiana Blues,” done here in lockstep with Waters’ ‘59 version. As usual, The Nighthawks are still dead on, preserving the blues tradition in a way that never gets old. – Grant Britt

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JOHN NÉMETH Memphis Grease Blue Corn John Németh’s 2007 Blind Pig debut Magic Touch and his four subsequent albums were prologues to this scintillating set of soul-blues that includes ten originals and three choice covers. Now living in Memphis, Németh recorded his dreamcome-true album at producer/bassist Scott Bomar’s Electraphonic Studios with the Bo-Keys (drummer Howard Grimes of the legendary Hi Rhythm Section, guitarist Joe Restivo, keyboardist Al Gamble, trumpeter Marc Franklin, tenor saxophonist Kirk Smothers, baritone saxophonist Art Edmaiston, and veteran vocalist Percy Wiggins). The predominant sound is a seamless mix of muscular funk and Southern soul testifying with a touch of the blues (provided by Németh’s raucous and slashing harmonica). Each song is a gem and Németh sings with passion and poise throughout. One important indicator of a soul singer’s fervor is the deep ballad and there are three magnificent, transcendent ballads that lay bare Németh’s soul: the lilting “I Wish I Was Home,” the gospel-tinged “Testify My Love,” and Roy Orbison’s ethereally plaintive “Cry.” These last two tunes were gripping showstoppers during Németh’s recent Philadelphia performance. The other covers are the Howard Tate pleader “Stop,” also a showstopper live, and Otis Rush’s “Three Times A Fool,” which is given a funky arrangement so unlike the original. A few other favorites are “Her Good Lovin’,” a slinky slab of percolating funk, “Sooner Or Later,” a Southern soul stroller, and Song of the Year contender, “Elbows On The Wheel,” an infectious boogaloo twister about life on the road.

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I’ve had the opportunity to talk with Németh on several occasions about the long history of Southern soul music recorded by the famous and the obscure. He is a devoted and knowledgeable fan who can’t learn enough, and it is reflected in his music. Németh fans, as well as fans of harp-slinging soul singers like Tad Robinson and Curtis Salgado, will want Memphis Grease. So will fans of Southern soul. It is among the year’s very best. – Thomas J. Cullen III

KENNY WAYNE SHEPHERD Goin’ Home Concord It must be tough having been a child prodigy. Get a few years on you and people start sayin’ stuff like, “Yeah, he’s good, but you should have seen him when he was 15.” But with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, that’s not a problem. As his latest on Concord demonstrates, at 36, Shepherd still blazes as hard as he did as a prodigious teen. On Goin’ Home, Shepherd covers a wide spectrum of guitar heroes. The three Kings, B.B., Albert, and Freddie, are included as well as Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Muddy Waters, Magic Sam, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bo Diddley, and Johnny “Guitar” Watson. The selections are impressive enough, but the guests Shepherd assembled to help him really take it over the top. Warren Haynes steps in for Al Jackson Jr.’s “Breaking Up Somebody’s Home,” recorded by Albert King. Shepherd had played the tune with Gov’t Mule in a couple of their shows, and their blistering rendition here mixes the best of the Allman Brothers, Mule, and King for an electrifying performance. Shepherd follows that with B.B.’s “You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now.” Shepherd says King has mentored him since he was 15, becoming a father figure for him. There’s as much piano here as guitar from Shepherd’s keyboardist Riley Osbourn, but Shepherd manages to get in enough King-style guitar to firmly establish B.B.’s personality before tossing in a fistful of fiery chunks of his own design. Joe Walsh steps in on for an interpretation of Muddy Waters’ version of

Willie Dixon’s “I Love The Life I Live.” Shepherd says Waters’ vocals intimidated him so much he didn’t sing for years because he wanted to sound like Muddy and couldn’t. But here, his Muddy Waters vocal impression is spot on. Walsh flays the flesh off the melody with Kim Wilson’s harp Little Walter-ing off the walls. Shepherd brings in Robert Randolph for another Waters’ tune, the hill country drone of “Still A Fool” broken up by Randolph’s frenzied string manipulations. Shepherd’s cover of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “When The House Is Rockin’” sounds like it’s about to fly off the rails. Double Trouble pianist Reese Wynans’ electrifying boogie-woogie piano is captured perfectly by Osbourn, with Shepherd paying homage to Vaughan’s fiery, twangy glory with some of his own pyrotechnics. Shepherd says he felt like he was retracing his steps here, going back and listening to artists and songs that inspired him to master the guitar as a child. Obviously he’s learned his lessons so well that this could be a tutorial for the next generation: keeping the tradition alive while inserting your own interpretations without compromising the integrity of the originals. – Grant Britt

RONNIE EARL Good News Stony Plain Hot on the heels of his triumphant return to Memphis as the 2014 Blues Music Award Guitarist of the Year, Ronnie Earl has given his world of fans another stunning reflection of his deep soul. Though he’s been nominated 18 times as Guitarist of the Year, Earl has only won three times, 1997, 1998, and 2014. That record speaks of the critical acclaim

Earl’s playing generates. His mostly instrumental outings feature Earl’s sharp phrasing and tight, compact lines cresting to emotional crescendos that ebb and flow into fresh musical vistas. This effort continues to deepen Earl’s journey into the connection between spirituality and artistic output. Though he rarely tours outside of his New England base, he is prolific in the studio, recorded nine records since 2000, keeping his legions of fans around the world enthralled. As on his past six Stony Plain recordings, Earl’s emotional meditations are supported by his veteran Broadcasters band, Dave Limina (piano and B-3), Lorne Entress (drums), and Jim Mouradian (bass). His guests include Diane Blue (vocals), Nicholas Tabarias (guitar), and Zach Zunis (guitar). Each song explores human passions. His opening “I Met Her On That Train” features the heavy thumb picks on the E-string augmented by a twangy, country marching drum beat. Here Zunis handles the first guitar solo Tabarias the second, and Earl the third. On Junior Wells’ “In The Wee Hours,” Earl, Zunis, and Blue deliver a slow blues knockout performance. Blue sings of the darkest hour while Zunis’ handles the first solo until Earl’s guitar playing bends, dives, and soars through his own dark meditations. Limina’s after hours piano oozes a similar sensibility. For more then ten minutes, these musicians have transformed the deepest emotions into notes on a canvas. By following that with the swinging title cut, Earl provides the artistic euphoria of tension and release. Blue and Earl take Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” into rarified air with their stirring voice and string give and take. “Marje’s Melody” has Earl exploring within a jazzy trance for over six minutes. With the church-like B-3 of Limina, there is almost a gospel quality to every note, bend, or run. And Earl’s “Blues For Henry,” a song originally recorded on 1995’s

Blues And Forgiveness Live In Europe, provides seven minutes of Earl’s instrumental testimonial for this friend. The CD ends with Limina’s torrid B-3 as the support, Earl’s “Puddin’ Pie” which again eradicates the blues-jazz boundaries followed by Ilana Katz Katz’s very moving “Runnin’ In Peace” which is dedicated to the Boston Marathon bombings and vividly captures the emotions of that horrific day. Earl spent most of his days in Memphis sharing his inner joy through his peerless playing; Good News announces that joy to the world. – Art Tipaldi

RICK ESTRIN AND THE NIGHTCATS You Asked For It...Live! Alligator Sporting Clark Kent-style glasses, a pencil thin moustache, custom made threads, and a combination smile and sneer, Rick Estrin leads his Nightcats in a memorable live concert on his October birthday in 2013 from San Francisco’s Biscuits and Blues Club. Estrin’s Nightcats address the audience with a sound that would be the envy of any blues artist. Enough can’t be said for the guitar talents of Kid Andersen, who also mixed and co-produced the CD. The night showcases with clarity his facile ability to coax virtuosic sounds from his Epiphone guitar that can replicate jump, swing, and traditional blues. The 13-song set list includes all of Estrin’s most popular songs like “Clothes Line,” “That’s Big,” and “Smart Like Einstein.” Finally, near the end of the set, the audience yells out in unison for a rendition of “Dump That Chump.” Opening the set with the shuffling “Handle With Care,” Estrin produces a full sound via a chromatic harp and then allows each of his fellow musicians to showcase their chops. Throughout the set, Lorenzo Farrell switches from organ, piano, and synthesizer and also provides the bass via a standup instrument. And drummer/vocalist J. Hansen gives Estrin a break as he handles the vocals on his “Baker Man’s Blues.” Estrin’s commentary and slick lyrics are worth the price of this CD alone and the recording invites the listener to be part

of the fraternity that binds the band with the audience that night. There is a bit of a theme to some of his songs with titles such as “My New Old Lady,” “My Next Ex-Wife,” and “Never Trust A Woman.” After bringing the music to a fever pitch, Estrin wisely chooses his final song to be a more traditional and softer blues rendering Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Too Close Together” that has Andersen jettisoning his versatile electric guitar for Lorenzo Farrell’s stand up bass – a perfect way to dismiss the riled up audience without incident. – Pete Sardon

TORONZO CANNON John The Conquer Root Delmark Despite Toronzo Cannon’s fine songwriting and excellent musicianship circa 2013, there’s something retro about him, too. Like many of everybody’s favorite blues heroes past and present, Cannon has a day job as a city bus driver. In addition, like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and a host of other bluesmen, he uses the world of voodoo and magic as a leitmotif. In this case, the opening track – with reprise – is drenched in old school blues hoodoo. Then, he pays superb, creative tribute to his forbears from Texas and Mississippi all the way to Chicago, marking nearly a century’s progression in rich and inventive guitar licks, in your face vocals, superb arrangements, and a percussion and horn section the envy of any South side blues band. Cannon praises blues musical history from early electric Chicago to New Orleans and down to offering up props to blues fusionists like Stevie Ray Vaughan. This is definitely not all straight Chicago by way of the Delta.

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On “Cold World,” for example, we get more of a taste of mid-20th century R&B (a riff on Sam Cooke’s “Mean Old World”), with stellar horn work from Dudley Owens (sax), Kenny Anderson (trumpet), Jerry Di Muzio (sax), and Norman Palm (trombone). Listen to the excellent backing vocals by Kay Reed, Theresa Davis, and Vanessa Holmes that add additional texture and depth. On the other hand, “Gentle Reminder” is more blues-rock, offering up a nod and wink to Texas blues-rock icon Vaughan, especially when it comes to the guitar riffs on this catchy track. Some standout tracks include a swing-style tribute to Big Ray Bop and the Latin-tinged “Shame.” For a nice change-up, “Been Better To You” opens with a big horn blast in New Orleans-style funk that has us easily convinced that Cannon knows much about a lot of blues and jazz musical idioms and has the chops to write and perform an album that even jaded Chicago fans are going to like. – Michael Cala

DAVE SPECTER Message In Blue Delmark Like his mentor Ronnie Earl, Dave Specter is an expressive guitarist who is

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equally adept at wringing the deepest blues or exacting the hippest jazz from his strings. Specter has long understood that his talent is fingers on strings, thus, like Earl, Specter has always called upon the finest Windy City vocalists like Tad Robinson, Lenny Lynn, Jimmy Johnson, Barkin’ Bill Smith, and many others to augment his musical messages. On Message In Blue, his tenth album on Delmark, Specter enlists Chicago soul icon Otis Clay to deliver the emotional essence on three soul blues classics. The massive Chicago Horns coupled with Specter’s Cropperlike guitar riffs provide a Stax feel to Clay’s leathery “Got To Find A Way.” Clay and Specter next pay tribute to Bobby “Blue” Bland on his timeless classic “This Time I’m Gone For Good.” Clay’s tour de force voicing of the Wilson Pickett classic “I Found A Love” is a masterful blend of Specter’s succinct guitar jabs with Clay’s pleading vocals. Keyboardist Brother John Kattke handles the vocals on three other tunes, Don Nix’s “Same Old Blues,” Lonnie Brooks’ “Watchdog,” and Specter’s name checking tribute to his hometown, “Chicago Style.” The other seven songs are Specter originals featuring guitar and keyboards vocalizing the emotional colors. “New West Side Stroll,” a remake of his 1995 “West Side Stroll,” opens the record with a healthy dose of the Chicago blues championed by Magic Sam, Otis Rush, and others that has always been at the center of Specter’s music. Adding Bob Corritore’s harmonica to “Jefferson Stomp,” a vivid Chess-styled blues, and “Opus De Swamp,” a slow blues meditation, Specter further establishes his place among the finest guitarists in the genre. But, like Earl, Specter can also coax a variety of stringed approaches. With its funky underpinnings, Specter erases the lines that separate jazz and blues on “Funkified Outta Space.” Ditto the tenor sax guitar jazz featured on “The Spectifyin’ Samba.” While the title cut has faint phrasing references to Jimi Hendrix instrumentals. Dave Specter knows his place is to allow his strings a freedom of expression that, like the finest vocalists, can capture every human emotion from the fervor of a gospel sermon to quiet contemplations of love. – Art Tipaldi

WALTER TROUT The Blues Came Callin’ Provogue This isn’t an album surrounded by the light-filled redemptive power that it might have had today. After all, when Walter Trout was in sessions for The Blues Came Callin’ last year, the bluesman’s health was failing as he desperately awaited a liver transplant that seemed like it would never come. Then, less than month before the scheduled June 2014 release of this already completed, scorching new project on Provogue, that miracle happened. Trout is recovering his health, even as fans await what at one point looked like it might be his final musical testament. The Blues Came Callin’, then, is a peek inside the roiling emotions of someone facing dark prospects, a certain doom, and it plays like that. Don’t come looking for messages of happy uplift on songs like “Wastin’ Away,” “The World Is Goin’ Crazy (And So Am I),” or “Hard Time,” moments that push back against that sad fate with a ferocious tenacity. Trout, who was in fact wasting away, was determined to go down swinging, and The Blues Came Callin’ is that kind of record. There are times when doubt creeps in, as on “The Bottom Of The River” when Trout becomes entangled in an inexorable current, one that’s dragging him ever deeper. Later, he ends up in the belly of “The Whale.” More often, though, Trout lands blow after blow after blow with his suddenly fraying voice, with his still muscular guitar upon the forces working against him. By the time Trout settles into the impassioned groove of “Nobody Moves Me Like You Do,” a furiously connective assertion of life-long love, it’s easy to see how Trout made it through these unimaginably difficult times. He’s a fighter. – Nick DeRiso

THE BEST OF THE

EUROPEAN BLUES CHALLENGE 2014

the top 10 at the 2009 International Blues Challenge in Memphis. They have steadfastly improved and matured to a well-honed, talented group. – Karen Nugent

DOWNCHILD Can You Hear The Music Linus The Downchild Blues Band changed its name simply to Downchild many years back to avoid the stigma and perceived limited appeal of the genre. But this leopard hasn’t changed its spots. It’s still your utilitarian Canadian blues band founded more than four decades ago by guitarist and harp player Don Walsh, who was smitten at age 16 when he first heard Jimmy Reed in the mid-60s. They are to Canada what The Nighthawks are to the United Sates blues scene, stalwart meat and potatoes electric blues based on postwar Chicago blues but, with double the manpower six strong, there’s some jump blues thrown in. Walsh runs the show. He produces, writes most of the songs, and plays guitar, slide guitar, and harmonica, but doesn’t sing. He’s had the same engineer for 30 years, and the current lineup solidified 15 years ago. This is a good band. To be a great band, they’d need more soul than I hear, although vocalist Chuck Jackson does rise to the occasion, particularly on the slower, simpler numbers like “This Road” and “Don’t Wait Up For Me” with its fundamental Elmore James-styled slide with piano filigree. Walsh calls “One In A Million” a guitar melody different from anything he’s written with a juicy slide guitar sound and almost gospel feel: “My crutch when I’m limping. My compass when I’m lost. One in a million is what you are.” – Don Wilcock

Anyone looking for proof that the blues is alive and well and living in Europe need look no further than this year’s European Blues Challenge, organized by the European Blues Union and held in Riga, Latvia, on the second weekend in April. There, 18 acts – each of them a winner of their respective national competition – showcased their talents on two consecutive nights of 20-minute live performances. The event felt less like a contest than a celebration: An enthusiastic crowd made up of locals, visiting fans, and participating musicians cheered each band in a spirit of community and fair play. On the surface at least, no one seemed to care much about winning.

In the end, a panel of industry insiders gave Spain’s A CONTRA BLUES top honors. The abundant talents of this five-piece outfit from Barcelona are apparent on their 2013 CD release Chances. The opening two numbers, “A Hole In My Pocket” and “Just Arrived” – the former rooted in rockabilly, the latter in Elmore James-style blues – show off the key double-barreled weapon in their arsenal: Héctor Martín Díaz and Alberto Noel Calvillo Mendiola, two equally gifted guitarists who create an exciting and playful tension. In contrast to the band’s previous album, which relied heavily on classic covers, Chances shows off impressive songwriting chops. “Barkin’ Dog,” for example, is a tense and gripping acoustic track immediately followed by an exhilarating swing workout, “Don’t Do That City,” recalling Brian Setzer’s finest moments. The singing of Jonathan Herrero Herrería is rather heavily accented, but his phrasing, tone, and feel for rhythm make him a riveting front man. Dark-haired, tattooed Finnish singer INA FORSMAN was surely a visual highlight of the weekend in Riga, and what she lacked in vocal finesse, she more than made up for with her undeniable spirit and energy. As she did at the EBC, Forsman teams up with harmonica veteran Helge Tallqvist on Ina Forsman With Helge Tallqvist Band, an entertaining collection of covers recorded in the summer of 2013. The material here paints a pretty clear stylistic picture: Several cuts by Magic Sam, Slim Harpo, and some popular tunes made famous by Etta James. The cheeky video clip to “What Have I Done,” easily located online, provides a glimpse of what these Finns have to offer both the eyes and the ears.

The EBC’s strongest country blues entry came from Denmark by way of Brazil, Marc Rune aka BIG CREEK SLIM. The Danish singer and guitarist is inspired by the first generation or two of recorded bluesmen – Charley Patton, Son House, Muddy Waters – and has a voice rough and tough enough to pull it off. Ninety-Nine And A Half, recorded in 2012, is a solo effort showcasing Slim’s unique feel for the old-school blues. And he’s not just copying, either: “Biggest Leggest Woman” and “Should I Chase The Wind” are excellent examples of a young inhabitant of the 21st century tapping into a well of musical history 100 years old.

Overlooked somewhat and thus deserving of a very honorable mention here: DAVID MIGDEN & THE TWISTED ROOTS, the hard-to-categorize representatives of the U.K. in Riga. Voodoo blues? Jazz-inflected soul? Whatever you call it, the quintet’s current release Animal & Man is a gem. Every tune is laced with compelling imagery and chock full of atmosphere. The playing is top-notch without once going over-the-top and the production lets it all shine through – above all, Migden’s soulful voice, which is almost too pretty for the blues. This brilliantly executed album belongs in the hands of anyone for whom music is the ultimate medicine. – Vincent Abbate

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Opening with “Corinna, Corinna,” the duo demonstrates a synthesis of talent that spanned half a century at that point. With Nixon alternating with Sleepy John on vocals, and accompanying him on blues harp, jug, and kazoo, this tune has a call-and-response quality that surprises those of us used to the Blind Lemon or Mississippi Sheiks versions. This symbiotic playing is evident throughout, punctuated numerous times by spontaneous audience applause. Also contained on this 21-track recording are reprisals of tunes the duo had performed at the peak of their careers, including “The Girl I Love,” “Broke And Hungry,” “Divin’ Duck,” and “Stop That Thing,” [all Delmark] and “Rats In My Kitchen,” which Estes had recorded for Sun Records in 1952. Given their long history together, the men play seamlessly, with Nixon effortlessly accompanying Estes’ acoustic guitar and vocals on every tune, alternating among blues harp, kazoo, and deep-down vocals that complement Estes’ lighter voice. Other tunes reprised by the duo include “When The Saints Go Marching In,” “Holy Spirit, Don’t You Leave Me,” and Nixon’s version of “Fox Chase.” The last four tracks – “Sleepy John’s Twist,” “Love Grows In Your Heart,” Brownsville Blues,” and “Jesus Is On The Mainline” – feature the Japanese blues band Yukadan backing Estes and Nixon with taste and reserve. – Michael Cala

GILES COREY Giles Corey’s Stoned Soul Delmark Guitarist-singer and bandleader Giles Corey is a Chicago-based musician who just happens to also be the guitarist for Mississippi Heat. Upon graduating from the University of Chicago in 1997, Corey joined Billy Branch and the Sons of Blues. This was his first exposure to national and international touring. In addition, Corey played shows and recorded with Syl Johnson and Buddy Miles around that time. In 2001 Corey was hired by his long-time guitar hero, Otis Rush, to play in his band. Corey toured with Otis Rush until the elder guitarist’s 2004 stroke sadly made live performances impossible.

Blues Foundation Hall Of Fame Construction

The Blues Foundation officially began construction on the Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis, Tennessee. Led by sledge hammer-wielding Hall of Famers Bobby Rush and Eddie Shaw, the assembled crowd of Board members, former Board members, musicians, and fans from around the world cheered as Rush and Shaw took the ceremonial first swings. The Blues Foundation, founded in 1980, inaugurated its Blues Hall of Fame induction program that same year. In the intervening 34 years, 143 performers, 51 non-performers who played behind-the-scenes roles in the continuing saga of the blues, 83 iconic blues singles (or album tracks), 76 blues albums, and 40 “Classics of Blues Literature,” have been enshrined into the Hall of Fame. The Blues Hall of Fame will occupy a 12,000 square foot site located at 421 South Main Street, directly across from the National Civil Rights Museum, and is scheduled to open on May 8, 2015 during the Blues Music Awards.

BOBBY RUSH AND EDDIE SHAW – BLUES HALL OF FAME CEREMONY

AWARDS UPDATE MAC ARNOLD Vocalist, bass player, and gas can guitarist Mac Arnold received an honorary degree of Doctorate in Music from the University of South Carolina. In addition, Dr. Arnold opened his Plate Full O’ Blues Restaurant on Pendleton Street in West Greenville, South Carolina. CYRIL NEVILLE Cyril Neville was awarded OffBeat magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Neville has made his fame as a member of the Neville Brothers, the Meters, the Voice of the Wetlands Allstars, the Uptown Allstars, and Tribe 13. Currently he combines his solo career with his integral part of the Royal Southern Brotherhood band. ROBERT HUGHES Guitarist Robert Hughes from Teeny Tucker’s band is also an internationally recognized photographer. This year, for the seventh year, Hughes earned the title of Photographer of the Year of Ohio. He won the Kubiac Award for the most outstanding and creative image, the juried LexJet Sunset Award for the highest scoring print, as well as the Kodak ASP State Elite Award.

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Mamie Smith Headstone Project In 1920, Mamie Smith, a polished cabaret performer and erstwhile blues singer, broke the race barrier by recording “Crazy Blues,” the first release by an African-American. That song is reported to have sold over a million copies in its first six months and paved the way for a major talent search and the ascent of America’s first blues stars, the classic blues women of the ‘20s. Sadly, Smith has been buried in an unmarked grave in Frederick Douglass Memorial Park on Staten Island, New York, and has been without a headstone or grave marker since her death in 1946. That has all changed thanks to the efforts of Blues Music Magazine writer Michael Cala. Through his first Inddiegogo internet fundraising campaign, Cala raised just enough to place a down payment on the headstone, which is to feature an etched likeness of Mamie Smith in addition to the following epitaph: BY RECORDING “CRAZY BLUES” IN 1920, SHE INTRODUCED AMERICA TO VOCAL BLUES AND OPENED THE RECORDING INDUSTRY TO THOUSANDS OF HER AFRICAN-AMERICAN BROTHERS AND SISTERS. So far, the Inddiegogo campaign has attained 70 percent of its goal. All funds raised beyond what is needed for the stone and its installation are being donated to the Frederick Douglass Memorial Park, one of the first all-black cemeteries in the United States.