photo by Michael Sparks
Severn Records Release Too Far from the Bar from Sugar Ray and The Bluetones Featuring Little Charlie By Kevin Wildman Here’s another great Blues album that I have the pleasure of letting you know about. It’s called Too Far From The Bar, by Sugar Ray and the Bluetones featuring Little Charlie Baty. It was released just last month on Severn Records. The album was produced by legendary Bluesman, and Roomful of Blues Founder, Duke Robillard and recorded by David Earl at Severn Sound Studio in Annapolis, Maryland. The expert mixing it took to make this masterpiece sing was also engineered by Duke Robillard, along with Jack Gauthier. Duke got so involved in this project, that he even contributed a bit of guitar to 4 songs on the album. The musicians on this project were: Sugar Ray Norcia
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(vocals and harmonica), Little Charlie Baty (guitar), Anthony Geraci (piano), Michael Mudcat Ward (acoustic bass), Neil Gouvin (drums), and Duke Robillard (guitar). Sadly, Little Charlie Baty passed away before this project was released. This was the last recording he did before he passed. Fortunately, we do get the last word on this project from Charlie, as he wrote the liner notes on this fine release, which relate to when he met Sugar Ray and the road they took to finally culminate the recording of this project. The line notes are really quite interesting and the crowning moment on the release of Too Far From The Bar. Too Far From The Bar contains 15 well-crafted Blues songs that span the range
Rock and Blues International • October 2020
of originals by the band to include some fine covers that these folks grew up with and cherish. Consider part of this album a brief history lesson into the Blues. Sugar Ray looks back at the recording of this album and his relationship with Charlie and tells us, “Little Charlie was so excited about this project and what a thrill it was to record together. Charlie and I seem to have been cut from the same cloth and musically we were like two peas in a pod. On this recording, we swing, we jump and we get lowdown. Sadly I’ll miss my brother in the blues, but his music will live forever.” Producer Duke Robillard adds his bit to this also by saying, “Producing this album was extremely special for me. Sugar Ray and
