THE REAL ME

>>> They were my first electric guitars. Well, I had one that my uncle gave me, a Les Paul copy, but really soon after that I got a Strat and then I got another one a few years later. And really my formative years as an electric guitar player were all spent on Fender guitars. So, it was a no brainer for me. “I chose to go with the Telecaster just because I’ve had such a good experience with those instruments on the road. I think the design is probably the best electric guitar design of them all. They’re very reliable and they’re not expensive guitars to make. So, I wanted to do one that was accessible to a lot of people but also versatile enough to where you could cover most styles of music with. And I think we pulled that off.” “I have a custom Sunburst Telecaster that is a little bit darker,” says Isbell when I ask him how he was involved in the design. “But we wanted to do something to sort of differentiate from that 1959, 1960 Tele custom Sunburst finish. So, they lightened up the inside of the finish a little bit. I think it looks great.” For the uninitiated, what’s the difference in playing a Telecaster compared with a Stratocaster? “Well, a Stratocaster usually, not always, but usually they have a bar, a tremolo bar,” explains Isbell. “It’s kind of a misnomer, it doesn’t really do tremolo, but it’s a pitch [bar]. It’s got springs inside it and then it’s a whammy bar. You can make the pitch of the guitar go up and down. A lot of people prefer a hardtail Stratocaster. But the pickups are really the main difference. “The body style’s a little different, the Strat is made to be a little bit more comfortable when you’re sitting and playing it. But the real difference is in the pickups, because a Telecaster has this kind of twang that you hear in a lot of country music, a lot of roots-based rock and roll, like the Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen or something. Whereas a Strat is probably traditionally more thought of as a lead instrument or a solo instrument.” Isbell was an early member of the Drive By Truckers, a band with a heavy and distinctive guitar sound. How did he develop his own style after he left to form his own band? “Well, I just stopped writing songs for that band and really it happened naturally,” he responds. “I think for me, developing my own style started out with imitating other songwriters and other musicians and then figuring out which of my mistakes I should leave in. And I think that’s how it happens with a lot of people. I’ve heard that Nirvana was trying to sound like the Beatles, but they missed the mark in the best possible way. I think for me, that was it. I followed a lot of my songwriting influences, and then when I found something that didn’t sound to me like I had hit the mark, I would decide, well, is this better or worse than what I was aiming for? And if you can figure out which of your mistakes work out for the best and follow those, and eventually you’ll sound like yourself.” Back in the ‘80s there was an expression for the kind of sound Isbell has now. They used to call it a high lonesome sound. How would he describe the sound he gets? “That’s a good question. I mean, it’s rock and roll music really,” is the reply. “The good news is you don’t have to describe it as much anymore because you can just look it up on your phone pretty quickly and cheaply for better or worse. It’s rock and roll music, and it’s not hard rock and it’s not soft rock, it’s somewhere in the middle. It’s like The Three Bears. It’s like the Goldilocks story and the Three Bears. It’s just rock.” On the recent Bandcamp release Live From Macon Auditorium, 2016, Isbell got to play Duane Allman’s Gold Top Les Paul. What is the difference in the sound between that and something like the Telecaster? “Oh, well, there’s a huge difference sonically,” he says. “They had that guitar at The Big House, which is the Allman Brothers Museum and Mecca for a long time now. They take really good care of it and bring it out to certain shows and certain musicians and ask if they’d like to play it on stage. It was an honour for me to get to do that because it is a beautiful instrument and obviously carries a lot of history that’s really important to me because a lot of my playing was influenced pretty directly by Duane Allman, especially in slide guitar stuff. “I think it’s pretty hard to become a slide guitar player worth your salt if you haven’t spent some time with Duane Allman’s playing. So, yeah, it was huge. But a Les Paul sounds really thick and really heavy and it’s not a particularly clean sound but it sustains really well. It’s probably equally expressive to the Telecaster, but the Telecaster is more ringing and, I mean, people say twanging. Sometimes ‘twanging’ is the right word if you’re trying to play something that sounds like country music.” On the six-track album Live from Welcome to 1979, released in 2017 for Record Store Day and available again on Bandcamp, Isbell does absolutely slashing versions of the Stones’ songs ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ and ‘Sway.’ “Keith Richards plays a Telecaster,” he says, “and if you go back and listen to the Rolling Stones when Mick Taylor was in the band – Keith playing the Telecaster and Mick Taylor’s playing a Les Paul – you can definitely tell the difference. It’s kind of like the difference between a whiskey and tequila. I mean they wind up with the same effect, but they go down a lot differently.” Isbell says that he takes a dozen guitars with him on tour because he doesn’t like to tune up between songs.

“I think it’s pretty hard to become a slide guitar player worth your salt if you haven’t spent some time with Duane Allman’s playing.”

“Also, I like to play a bunch of different guitars,” he adds. “It’s fun for me to play a bunch of different guitars through the course of the set. Yeah, it’s tough. I mean, if you’re playing in clubs, you probably don’t have a whole bunch of guitars with you. You don’t have the space in your van for them, and you also probably don’t have stagehands and a guitar tech to take care of that. “Back when I didn’t have a guitar tech and we were driving ourselves around in a van, I travelled with one guitar. It had to be one that would stay in tune – and very often that was a Telecaster. That’s one of my favourite things about a Telecaster, is that they stay in tune really, really well even in extreme weather conditions. I played a show in Austin, Texas, for Willie Nelson’s 4th of July picnic a few years ago, and my pedal board went out right when I started the set, so I had to play the whole set with just one guitar and I didn’t have to tune the thing. It was a Telecaster and it made it through the entire set and stayed in tune. So, I’ll always be impressed with that.” While Isbell has been exceptionally productive in recent months, 2020 was a tough year for him given that he lost his good friends Justin Townes Earle and John Prine. “He loved it over there. He had a lot of friends over there,” says Isbell of Earle. “It was sad. It was really sad. He and I hadn’t been close over the last few years mostly because of his addiction issues. I mean, it’s just tough. It’s tough when you have a friend who struggles with those things. I can’t say that I was surprised when he passed away, but I was very sad. It’s just some people have their demons and sometimes they can’t quite conquer those. I know what happened was not necessarily his fault. I know it was something that he hadn’t planned on, and it was an accidental thing obviously, but he struggled for a long time. And all the years that I knew him, he never got to stay happy for too very long, so at least he’s not having to suffer at this point.” “I think it would have been harder for me if I was doing a job that I didn’t love,” replies Isbell when I mention that he was able to overcome his own demons and turn his life around. “I think if I’d been roofing or painting houses or teaching school or something, then it would have been harder for me because part of what helped me get sober and stay that way was the fact that I wanted to keep making music and being creative. “I was in a worse spot than Justin was when we first came over there together. He was doing a good job keeping himself together at that point in time and I was a mess. A lot of it is due to just good luck on my part. I had people around me who cared enough to call me out on my bullshit and also helped me when I needed help. And when I needed to get sober and were supportive of me when I was trying to stay that way. I got lucky in a whole lot of situations there that Justin might not have been afforded. But, at that point in time, we were really close and we had a lot of fun and I have a lot of good memories from that trip.” “John was a big deal to me and to Amanda, my wife, and our daughter,” says Isbell of John Prine. “We loved John and learned a lot from his music before we ever knew him and then learned even more from him as a person. He was the same onstage as off, and he loved making music. He never looked at it as a chore and he never did it for the money. He was always out there to communicate with people. And I really think that he made the world around him a lot better just through his art and through the way he treated people. He treated everybody with respect and we loved John. That was a big, big loss. And we’re still close with the family and they’re all doing a great job and staying busy and picking up the pieces of their life, but it’s left a big hole in Nashville and certainly in our house. I don’t know what else I could say about him. I mean, he was a beautiful man. One of the greatest things that ever happened to me through music was getting to be John Prine’s friend. As we finish our conversation I suggest that apart from all the other awards he has won he might now be looking at his first Academy Award. “Ooh, I don’t know. I doubt it,” laughs Isbell. “But I don’t think they’re going to let me screw it up too bad. So, I’m just going to trust them to make me the actor I need to be.”

For details on the Jason Isbell Fender Telecaster go to fender.com/AU JASON ISBELL SIGNATURE FENDER TELECASTER

By Geoff King

Guitar choices today are mind-bending. There are about sixty Telecaster models alone listed on the Fender Australia website so the style of music you want to play - and how much you can afford- may just as well be mediated by a signature model if you’re a fan of a guitarist whose style of play you want to emulate. Jason Isbell already has a signature Martin D18 acoustic guitar and, as his star has risen, here’s the Jason Isbell Fender Custom Telecaster. This model is based on a Fender Custom Shop Tele that has been one of Jason’s workhorses: a late 50s body style with nice weight and a solid mid 60s ‘C’-shaped neck that feels really comfortable in the hand. The guitar has specially wound pickups, however, so it’s not identical. It’s made in Fender’s Mexican plant, and while there are slight differences in quality compared to American custom-shop builds at twice the price, this is a well-made, carefully detailed guitar. As you’re aware, Isbell is more a rock guitarist with a country influence than a pure country picker. His playing tends to favour big, clear, rounded tones so while the bridge pickup has some spank and grit it might lack a little twang for a straight country player. The neck pickup is a beauty, full and bluesy, like 50s vintage reissues. The combination of the two is nicely ringing with a lot of natural sustain. The chocolate-sunburst finish with cream double-binding around the edges and a black pick-guard is attractive, but what to make of the ‘distressed’ -aka ‘roadworn’- body, presumably copying the wounds Jason’s original guitar has suffered? From a fandom POV I can dig it but, mostly, I loathe ‘roadworn.’ There are some makers e.g., Nash, who make otherwise excellent guitars but only ‘roadworn’ models meant to simulate years of hard gigging. Up close they always look like they’ve been abused by some guy at the factory using a stack of sandpaper that would make the Australian cricket team proud. Fortunately, the Isbell model has only lightly suffered at the hands of Mr Stab & Rub. (The custom Isbell Telecaster guitar Pickups, designed by in-house Fender tone guru Tim Shaw). Isbell worked with Fender on the design, and his signature Telecaster® comes equipped with all of the same modifications – even his known Road Worn® markings – that the Americana guitarist has sought out for touring and recording throughout the years. It will set you back upward of A$2799 (retail price) which is more expensive than a typical Fender Mexican-made guitar, but this is definitely a Telecaster worthy of Jason Isbell’s endorsement.

Health challenges, both global and private, have finally relented to enable the long-awaited release of the fourth album from Ron S. Peno and the Superstitions, ‘Do The Understanding’.

Ron S. Peno is a man on a mission. I’ve spoken to him numerous times over the years – through resurrections of the band that first brought him fame in Died Pretty, to his Louvin Brothers-inspired country evocations with guitar legend Kim Salmon, the Darling Downs, to his most recent reinvention, the Superstitions – but never has he sounded so determined, so focused. Peno’s purpose in life has been confirmed “a thousandfold” he tells me, over the phone from his Melbourne home during a COVID lockdown. “I’ve just got this whole new outlook on creating and moving people and creating worlds of music and bringing people into the world you’re creating on stage,” he says. It’s the sort of clear-eyed vision that facing mortality will muster. In 2018, the Superstitions, led by guitarist composer Cam Butler (Silver Ray), began working on their fourth album. It was seven years since the band’s stirring debut album, ‘Future Universe’, with ‘Anywhere and Everything is Bright’ (2013) and ‘Guiding Light’ (2017) in between. But later that year, Peno started having trouble swallowing food. “I thought ‘oh I must have a hernia’. My friends are telling me, ‘you really should go to the doctor and find out what it is’. And I’m like ‘it’ll be fine. I can drink vodka and sodas, that’s fine’. I could drink plenty of liquid, and I could get soups and noodles down, something soft, but I was losing weight.” Butler says he “just knew” Peno was unwell. “There was a bit of a lead-up to his diagnosis and I had a strange sixth sense that something wasn’t right,” he says. “When he got diagnosed with oesophageal cancer it wasn’t a total surprise to me, but Jesus, it was not good news.” Peno had already given up cigarettes, knowing all wasn’t well. When his stage 1 cancer diagnosis came, he immediately also gave up alcohol. His condition was serious, no doubt, but could have been worse. “The stupidity of it was not going to do anything about it, just prolonging it,” says Peno. “How silly! If it had gotten to stage 4, I would have been gone. I was sooo lucky, my god!” The music community rallied around Peno. A GoFundMe, started by Died Pretty bandmate Brett Myers, raised over $34K. Old friends like Kim Salmon and Hoodoo Guru Dave Faulkner checked in often, as did Radio Birdman’s Rob Younger and Deniz Tek. “Deniz was calling from overseas all the time, wanting to know how I was going and what stage I was at,” recalls Peno. “He called the night before the operation and said ‘we’re praying for you, good luck tomorrow’. So you think, WOW, these people.” Butler says Peno was “very brave”. “He just went with it,” he says. “He had a lot of help from friends and all of us, we stuck with him, and he just decided – ‘I’m stopping smoking, I’m stopping booze, I’m going to get healthy and clean’ and he just went with it. He had his love of music and performance to keep him going too. But it was very stressful.” Radiotherapy and chemotherapy were followed by surgery to remove the tumour. Initially Peno feared for his voice – his tool of trade – until the doctor explained to him that the cancer was just in the oesophagus and the vocal cords weren’t involved. Anyone who has heard Peno sing since the operation now also knows his voice is not only intact, but better than ever. “I think he’s singing the best he’s ever sung, in my opinion – he sounds fucking incredible,” says Butler. “He’s got an extra half an octave in his range, I think. And the timbre of his voice is really really warm and controlled; it’s incredible.” His health woes behind him, the Superstitions – also featuring Tim Deane on keys, Mark Dawson on drums and Andy Papadopoulos on bass – again began working towards an album release. In early March 2020, the band played a show at the Merri Creek Tavern in Northcote. There, they previewed a handful of new songs – the sort of songs that made audience members perk up like meerkats. For a band already renowned for crafting music of elegance, romance and power, the new songs hinted at an even grander vision. Then came COVID. Thought the pandemic delayed production on the record, the recording was always going to be a longer process anyway, says Butler. Having recorded the three previous albums in a more ‘live’ setting, this time around Butler sought to bring in some of the production values from his own solo work and his former band Silver Ray. “Right from the word go, Ron wanted to do this,” says Butler of the grander production. “And it just happened that the pandemic occurred which allowed us to do this. A strange coincidence I suppose.” Butler edited fragments of the playing of Dawson and Papadopoulos into drum and bass loops. “There’s a certain emotional feeling with a drum loop,“ says Butler. “It has an emotional feeling of its own that’s different to a live performance. We wanted to experiment with that on this record. “And I also wanted something that was a little bit ‘hyper’. Ron’s such a fantastic performer, we needed something that really, really showed in a recorded sense how great this music is, rather than kind of like a live band recording; ‘Guiding Light’ was pretty much like that, that was the live band. We wanted to do something different, something with a more intense feeling. Something bigger.” For the first time, Peno‘s vocals were multi-tracked, bringing a new depth, power and warmth to his already improved voice. “I wanted to do lots of vocal things on this,” says Peno. “Lots of high vocals, low vocals, in-between vocals, doubling up, quadrupling up, having a choir of Ron voices – I had this brand new vocal now; I hadn’t had any cigarettes and no alcohol, so it was just this pure voice, and I wanted to use it.” While the previous three albums each stood tall in their own right, ‘Do The Understanding’ heralds an even more opulent world of layered sounds and textures, across seven epic tracks; the album opener, the almost five-minute ‘When Worlds Collide’, which Peno considers the band’s most complex track to date, to the near-whispered vocal and drum loops of ‘Lovelight’ evoking the shadowy trip-hop of Portishead, to the sublime closer ‘I think It’s Gonna Rain’. Butler calls Peno “a renaissance man”. It’s a moniker that could be applied not just to his ability to survive, but to reinvent himself in new musical collaborations that make the most of his talents. After introducing himself to Kim Salmon at a Corner Hotel show in 2003, and explaining his concept for a collaboration that would become the Darling Downs – “we’ll sound like the Louvin Brothers, but we’ll look like we just stepped out of GQ Magazine” – Peno turned up at Salmon’s house three days later with his dictaphone full of song ideas, and lyrical musings. That musical union has so far yielded three stunning albums. Meeting Butler at a gig at Yah Yah’s in 2009 or so (thanks to Penny Ikinger), Peno suggested another collaboration. Within a week, he, his dictaphone and Butler were in a room together. “I had some demos and went around to his place and started working straight away, and it started working artistically, instantaneously,” says Butler. “He came up with great ideas and we just started collaborating. Ron has an incredible – I don’t know what you’d call it, it’s a talent but it’s more than that – if he responds emotionally to an atmosphere, he will just go and improvise, and take off. “He’s an incredibly creative person.” “The reason we’re here is to create,” affirms Peno. “I keep saying to Cam, and other creative friends, ‘this is what we’re here for – to create and collaborate and make wonderful sounds and music and songs, and help people escape, or make them laugh or cry or dance or whatever. As cliched as it sounds, that’s what we’re here for.”

‘Do The Understanding’ is available July 26 via https://ronspenoandthesuperstitions.bandcamp.com/. Album track ‘The Strangest Feeling’ is already available. The album will be launched at the Brunswick Ballroom on September 4.

BLUES BROTHER

After fifty years, Alligator Records is still all about genuine houserockin’ music, and they ain’t done yet, as label founder and president Bruce Iglauer tells Samuel J. Fell.

In late January, 1970, Bruce Iglauer walked into a bar. What happened next wasn’t a punchline but an awakening, as the then 23-year-old longhair from Michigan came face-to-face with Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers whose sets at Florence’s Lounge, a small neighbourhood bar on Chicago’s south side, were the stuff of local legend. Already a mad blues fan (having moved to the Windy City in search of the music some years prior), Iglauer fell in love with Taylor’s gritty guitar playing, the band’s infectious shuffling grooves. Taylor, well known among local players for having six fingers on each hand, had come to Chicago from Mississippi years before and had been playing guitar since he was about 20, in the mid-1930s – he used slide a lot, in the vein of Elmore James, and his playing was boogie-heavy, sweaty and raw. It struck a chord with Iglauer and also, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, it planted a seed. Today, half a century later, that seed has grown and is mighty. Back then, when Iglauer realised Taylor and the Houserockers had never recorded, it became his mission to cut them to tape, to push their music as far and wide as he possibly could, and with the band’s blessing he set about doing just that – he scraped together what money he had, reached out for help to Delmark Records (where he was working as a shipping clerk at the time), and receiving only a ‘thanks but no thanks’, rolled the dice and decided to form his own label. This is when the seed started to sprout, the seed that became Alligator Records, the seed that today, fifty years on, has grown and is indeed mighty, this iconic label still helmed by Bruce Iglauer, still growing and running strong, arguably the most successful blues label in music history. All beginning back on a snowy winter’s afternoon at Florence’s Lounge, listening to the genuine blues of Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers. “I continue to run this label as a fan of the music,” Iglauer smiles. He’s no longer 23 of course, and perhaps it’s rude of me to mention this, but his ‘longhair’ days are behind him. His thick beard is mostly grey, he’s in his seventies after all, and thanks to the wonders of modern technology this bearded face appears before me on my computer screen, regularly smiling, more than happy to talk about the label and the music that he’s been fostering for five decades. “I hope so,” he muses when I venture that one reason for the success and longevity of Alligator, is the fact it’s been run by a fan for its entire existence. “And I hope I have good ears and good talent choices too, for the most part I have… the majority of our artists, people have grown to love.” The history of this now iconic label is well documented – how Iglauer pushed and prodded and publicised the Houserockers’ record, how it then sold enough for Iglauer and his fledgling label to release another album, and then another, and then another. They broke new acts, lured established acts across, lost artists to other labels and to the Big Blues Band in the sky but Iglauer kept pushing and prodding and publicising; there have been highs, there have been lows, lean times and times of plenty, but over the course of its tenure, Alligator has released over 350 records, worked with hundreds of artists, and is renowned around the globe as a backer and champion of world-class contemporary blues – genuine houserockin’ music, as is the label’s motto. “This starts because I go to see the artists live,” Iglauer says on his process, one which has remained unchanged over the years. “And I’m moved by the music, I feel it, and it touches that soul-to-soul communication spot. And so, I figure, if it’s moving me, and I look at the people at the next table or the people who are standing next to me, and it’s moving them, I figure it can move people who hear it on recordings. “So, I’m always looking for that live communication. You know, being a blues artist, you’re never going to make a living sitting at home… the main way they’re going to make a living, is being on the road and performing live. So that ability to communicate live is so essential to my judgement of an artist, and usually I know right away. It’s just obvious.” With Hound Dog Taylor, it was obvious. With Big Walter Horton it was obvious. With Son Seals, Fenton Robinson, Koko Taylor and Lonnie Brooks, it was obvious. Early successes (Koko Taylor’s 1976 Alligator debut, I Got What It Takes was nominated for a Grammy) lured established acts like Albert Collins, Johnny Winter and Professor Longhair. Stevie Ray Vaughn helped out on albums here and there. The music was real, the talent obvious, Alligator was cracking along. Another reason for the success and longevity of this label, alongside the fact Iglauer is a true fan of the music and that the label has made good choices on good musicians, is the fact there’s a very strong element of family within the label / artist dynamic. Family isn’t a word one would usually associate with a record label, and while Iglauer is quick to point out that not every artist on their roster is interested in this sort of relationship, there are many who are, and who have over the years, become close friends. “I’m very close to Lil’ Ed (of Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, who have been with Alligator since 1986), and Ed grew up without a father,” Iglauer says. “Ed says I’m the closest thing to a father that he ever had. And I take that as a huge compliment, he’s a fine human being, I’m very proud to call him my son.” >>>

Bruce Iglauer: By Christine Monaghan

>>> With this sort of dynamic comes sacrifice, and Iglauer has made plenty over the years, putting his artists before himself, thinking only of their wellbeing and their music and the spreading of same. He’s fond of telling one story in particular, which took place on his 60th birthday in 2007, involving one of his artists, from out of town, who the night before Iglauer’s birthday, was arrested in Chicago. “[He was arrested] for a non-violent thing that was stupid and he shouldn’t have been arrested for, but it happened,” he explains. “So on my 60th birthday, at nine o’clock [in the morning], I was at Cook County Jail for his bail hearing… and they said to me it was a thousand dollars, and this is where I learned about posting bail for people, which turned out to be a much more complicated process than I thought – I had to go into jail, through security, call a bail bondsman from inside the jail, go out of the jail, pay the money by credit card, go back and prove I’d paid the money… by the time I did this, they’d put him back in the general population. “So, then they had to go find him,” he laughs, rolling his eyes. “So, I was there from nine o’clock in the morning, until they released him at eleven o’clock at night. And then I took him for some food… and then I took him to my home, put him to bed in the guest room, and the next day I took him to the airport, bought him a ticket, and he flew home, which is what he needed to do.” You’d not find many label heads willing and able to offer this sort of support to an artist, and yet Iglauer did because it’s how he is, and how he cares for his artists – indeed a reason why Alligator is so highly regarded among blues players the world over. The results of course, speak for themselves – Alligator Record this year celebrates fifty years of genuine houserockin’ music, and despite lean times at the turn of the century with music piracy, and now music streaming, and of course the Covid pandemic, it continues to keep its head above water. So, how to celebrate such a milestone, then? How does Iglauer and his dedicated team (his longest-serving employee has been with the label since 1981), properly pay tribute to what they’ve done since 1971? The answer, in hindsight, is a no-brainer – release a 3CD set that lays down the label’s history through its artists, which is just what they’ve done. Alligator Records: 50 Years Of Genuine Houserockin’ Music is just as it sounds, a fifty-year retrospective of the label, beginning appropriately with Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers and covering dozens of artists, clocking in at over 230 minutes of music. The obvious question, to my mind, is how did Iglauer and his dedicated staff, once they’d decided on the idea, come up with the track listing? How long did it take? How many litres of coffee, beer and whisky went into its creation? Iglauer laughs. “You ask that question in a very appropriate way,” he smiles. “I worked on the choices for about three months. It was fun, because I went back and listened to some of the records we’d made that I hadn’t listened to for twenty years, or longer. And I discovered some tracks I didn’t remember or didn’t know that well. The hardest part was deciding who to leave off.” Bruce Iglauer & Professor Longhair: By Michael Smith

“But there were artists who were obvious,” he goes on, “the artists who are most closely identified with the label, like Hound Dog Taylor and Koko Taylor and Albert Collins and Son Seals and Lonnie Brooks, and more recently Marcia Ball, Coco Montoya, a number of others. “So, I wanted to include those artists, and I wanted to include the artists we have a current commitment to, so I wanted to include our entire current roster, which is about fourteen or fifteen artists. So, I put them on the third disc, the ‘What’s going on with Alligator today’ disc. So, the first one was fairly easy, because it was going to be [the old guard], those people were givens. And the third disc was going to be artists who are currently [on the roster]. “The middle disc was the difficult one. Because that was primarily music that was recorded between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s, with artists many of whom are deceased,” or whose work didn’t perhaps hit the heights both they and the label were hoping. “The wonderful Michael Hill’s Blues Mob, from New York,” Iglauer smiles. “I loved them, we did three albums with them and I’m still in regular touch with Michael, but we just could not sell his records. No matter what we did, I think they were simply too progressive for traditional blues fans; they pushed the envelope too much.” “So, I knew, [on the second disc], I wanted to include them. I knew I wanted to include Carey Bell. I wanted to include CJ Chenier, another underrated artist who we couldn’t sell – you know, people love to dance to zydeco, but they don’t necessarily want to take it home; it works live. And we included an Australian, Dave Hole, who is not only a wonderful musicians and human being, but he became quite a good friend of mine during his tours of the United States… he’d stay at my house. I have to say, he was probably the nicest house guest I ever had.” Listening to Iglauer talk about who he wanted on these discs, it’s all you can do not to share the passion he exudes, not only for the artists which ‘made’ the label, but also those who he was so excited about and yet failed to sell records. To him, it’s about the music, it’s about making that music and it’s about sharing that music, and this is what this celebration album is all about – sharing the music that Alligator has been working with, for fifty years. As we wind up our chat (and indeed, to cover fifty years of history, we need much more time), I ask the man who’s done it all how he feels about it, about what he and the label have achieved over this time. Typically, he evades the question, because as far as he’s concerned, it’s not about him: “Most of what I’ve done every day, is just get up and do it, I’m constantly inspired by the music and the people who make the music.” Yet another reason Alligator is still houserockin’ after half a century. And so, where to next? Iglauer mentioned at some point during our interview that he wasn’t ever going to retire – as far as he’s concerned, there’s still more to do. “The mission going forward, after the first fifty years, is to find and nurture the artists who will be creating blues that will speak to contemporary audiences for the next fifty years,” he says. “I’m not going to find another Hound Dog Taylor, because to be him you have to have grown up in Mississippi, you have to have come north after somebody burned a cross in front of your shack, and so you fled and slept in drainage ditches and then worked a labour job and played for tips. That doesn’t happen anymore. You learnt from listening to other musicians, but now you learn from listening to records. Someone like Selwyn Birchwood, he discovered the blues listening to records, then when he was 17, he went and saw Buddy Guy and it changed his life, like Hound Dog changed my life. “You can’t grow up in the ‘tradition’ anymore, that tradition is history. For someone like Hound Dog Taylor, the blues chose him. For someone like Selwyn Birchwood, he chose the blues.” We wind up our chat, Iglauer smiling and gracious to the end, a man whose life has been spent in the blues, a life he couldn’t imagine any other way. One would think that there’s not a chance in hell Bruce Iglauer will walk away from this, not voluntarily, anyway. “You know the Blues Brothers movie, where they say they’re on a mission from god?” he laughs. “I’m not so much a believer in god, but I do believe that I was lucky enough to find what I’m supposed to be doing with my life, so why would you stop doing what you’re supposed to be doing?”

Alligator Records: 50 Years Of Genuine Houserockin’ Music is available now via www.alligator.com

Bruce Iglauer & Hound Dog Taylor: By Nicole Fanelli By Nicole Fanelli