Rock And Blues International - November 2023

November 2023

Rock And Blues International Bob Margolin ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

Dokken Blues Traveler Scott Stapp Brother Cane Nelly Furtado KK’s Priest and more!

Foghat

Rock And Blues International November 2023 Hello Rock And Blues International readers. I hope everybody had a great September.

Rock And Blues is happy to announce that we have now entered the era of Podcasts. We would really like you to check out our new Podcast Channel - Rock And Blues International - The Podcast. If you like the interviews we feature in our publication, then you will love our Podcast Channel as we feature those interviews in their entirety there. On our Podcast Channel you can actually hear those interviews as they were originally done. Our special guests so far are Puddle Of Mudd’s Wes Scantlin, The Blackburn Brothers, Coco Montoya, Barry Kerch from Shinedown, Jerry Shirley from Humble Pie, Jim Stapley from Humble Pie Legacy, Kissing Judas,Nick Moss, Devon Allman, Stevie D. from Buckcherry, Chris Henderson from 3 Doors Down, Garnet Grimm from Savoy Brown, Phil Lewis from L.A. Guns, Graham Russell from Air Supply, Robert Jon from Robert Jon and The Wreck, Selwyn Burchwood, J.W. Jones, Chris Henderson from 3 Doors Down, and Warren Haynes from Gov’t Mule. Future podcasts include Bob Margolin, Dokken’s Don Dokken, Foghat’s Scott Holt.

You can check it out on all the major podcast channels as well as at our website at http:// www.rockandbluesinternational.com. We hope you enjoy them.

And now on to the November issue of Rock And Blues International. On the cover of this issue you can see Bob Margolin.

Bob has a new album titled Thanks. Thanks is actually a tribute to several of the people who were his chief influences in the music business We will also be having him as a guest on the Rock And Blues International Podcast later this month. Be sure to check it out. There are also two more great interviews in this issue. Scott Holt from Foghat talks to Rock And Blues International about the band’s new album Sonic Mojo, which is a great new album filled with some great originals as well as a few cover tunes you’re going to love. Dokken’s Don Dokken talks to Rock And Blues International about the band’s new album Heaven Comes Down. We’ve also got a great story by Edoardo Fassio about Rico Migliarini. Be sure to check that one out too, it’s very interesting. There are also stories on Blues Traveler, Vanessa Amorosi, Scott Stapp, Brother Cane, Scott Stapp, Nelly Furtado, KK’s Priest, and more! As you can see, there are a lot of varied genres of music here for you to check out, or as we like to say, there’s a little of something for everyone here. We have even included the current installment of the novella, “The Biker”. Read it and than email us back with your thoughts on this. So far our readers seem to really like this Blues loving Biker.

I sincerely hope that everybody reading this publication finds something here that they like and I would like to encourage you to let your friends and colleagues know about us. Just look for us every month at http://www.rockandbluesinternational.com. I would also like to encourage you to email us for a free subscription to Rock And Blues International as well. Just email us at rockandbluesinternational@gmail.com and in the subject line simply put “Sign Me Up” and we’ll email you a link to the magazine each month when it is published.

Kevin Wildman Kevin Wildman Editor and Publisher

Rock And Blues International Kevin Wildman Editor and Publisher

Web Address Http://www.rockandbluesinternational.com Mailing Address Box 1162, League City, TX 77573 Phone 281-650-1953

For Advertising email us at rockandbluesinternational@gmail.com or call 281-650-1953 For A Free Subscription email us at rockandblues international@gmail.com and in the subject line put “Sign Me Up Now” November 2023 • Rock and Blues International

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Contents

VOL. 4 NO. 4

NOVEMBER 2023

ISSUE NO. 40

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Page 6 Bob Margolin Bob Margolin Gives Thanks His New Album On VizzTone Label Group

Page 34 Rico Migliarini Edoardo Fassio talks about Rico Migliarini and The blues live in his house

Page 20 Foghat Foghat’s Scott Holt Talks About The New Foghat Album Sonic Mojo

Page 36 Dokken Don Dokken Talks About The Band’s New Album Heaven Comes Down

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Rock and Blues International • November 2023

Contents

VOL. 4 NO. 4

NOVEMBER 2023

ISSUE NO. 40

Page 84 - THE BIKER Page 48 Blues Traveler Blues Traveler Release Their Version Of The Dr. John Hit “Qualified”, The Third Single from Upcoming Blues Traveler’s Soul Album

Page 66 Brother Cane The Band’s Anniversary With U.S. Tour Running Through December 2023 With More Dates TBA Soon…

The Continuing Saga Of A Lone Biker On The Road To Explore The Freedoms Of America

In This Issue: 6 Bob Margolin 20 Foghat 34 Rico Migliarini (English) 35 Rico Migliarini (Italian) 36 Dokken 46 Crank Up The Silence 48 Blues Traveler 50 Fred Hostetler 52 Vanessa Amorosi 56 Scott Stapp 58 Enterprise Earth 62 Autogramm 66 Brother Cane 68 Claire Rosinkranz 72 NYTT LAND 74 Stengah 76 Nelly Furtado 80 Therion 82 KK’s Priest 84 The Biker November 2023 • Rock and Blues International

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Bob Margolin 6

Rock and and Blues Blues International International •• November November 2023 March 2023 2023

Bob Margolin Gives

Thanks His New Album On VizzTone Label Group

By Kevin Wildman Blues great Bob Margolin has just released his new masterpiece, Thanks.

Thanks is a very special album to Bob. It’s not just another album of new songs that he hopes people will buy. Honestly, the most important thing about this release is not the money that it might generate, it’s the memories that it generates for Mr. Margolin. It is a Thank You to the Blues music he plays, a Thank You to the musicians he has played with, a Thank You to the heritage he has developed, and even a Thank You to the guitar that helped make it all happen. From the first song on the album, “Going Down To Main Street” to the closing bars of the very last song, “Just Before Dawn,” Bob Margolin has definitely put together an album of Thanks. The very last song on the album is even a Thank You to his mother who was the inspiration behind this song.

Without a doubt this is a very inspirational album. He has become an inspiration to me after talking to him and listening to his story. I really must say that I owe a bit of Thanks to Bob for sharing this with me in our interview. I was very impressed with our interview. It even made me think about all the people and experiences that I owe a Thanks to. I can honestly say that has never happened to me before.

The songs on this album are songs written by several of his influences as well as solely by himself. Bob is a very good storyteller and songwriter and his self-written songs on this album are very good. I just love the way he turns a phrase and the fantastic way he spins a melody.

Take “Mean Old Chicago,” this is a song that pays tribute to an old friend, Mr. Jimmy Rogers. Or how about the song “Lonely Man Blues” that is very special to him because another one of his inspirations, Muddy Waters. Muddy even wrote a verse on it for him. Muddy was perhaps his biggest mentor. Muddy took him into his band, treated him like a son, and set young Bob Margolin on a path that he still follows today. It’s a totally amazing story. Bob also draws inspiration from chance meeting that he has had along this path that he is on. “Baby Can’t Be Found” was partially inspired by a jam and a meeting that Bob had with guitar legend Eric Clapton. Now that’s a cool story. And let’s mention the last song on the album, “Just Before Dawn.” This comes from a saying that his mother

had.

When it comes to the songs on this album that were not written by Bob on this album, I found it very interesting on why he picked those pieces to place on this letter of Thanks to his fans who will be buying this album. I’ll mention a couple of them. The album starts off with a song by Muddy Waters titled “Gone To Main Street”.

Suffice it to say that this one was picked because on the first release of the song back in 1952 featured Muddy and his original band, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, and the legendary Little Walter on harp. This was one of Bob’s favorite lineups of the band. One of the reasons that he picked the second song on the album, “The Shape I’m In” was because it’s a tribute to The Band who were kind enough to ask him and Muddy to be guests at their last concert together, “The Last Waltz,” which also featured a host of other stars at the time not to mention a movie by the same name. Let’s pick one more song here to highlight. How about his treatment on the song, “Hard Working Man” by James A. Lane. For those of you out there who don’t know, James A. Lane is the given name of Bob’s good friend, Jimmy Rogers. As we mentioned before, Jimmy and Bob were good friends, so it’s no surprise that this little gem appears here.

Now I’m not going to explain every song on here because I’m going to leave that up to Bob. I hope. you take the time to read this entire interview and learn something from it. I did. And now without any further ado, here’s “Steady Rollin’ Bob Margolin.”

Rock And Blues International: Hello.

Bob Margolin: Hi there, this is Bob Margolin, how you doing today?

Rock And Blues International: Doing fine. How you doing, Bob? Bob Margolin: Good, thanks. Am I calling the right place and the right person at the right time?

continued on next page November 2022

• Rock and Blues International

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Last Waltz” and it was in November 2019 when I was on a tour that was a celebration of “The Last Waltz” with a lot of today’s finest Americana artists. The musical directors were Don Was and Warren Haynes. Country music star Jamie Johnson was involved in all of that. And on our show that we did in Nashville in November of 2019 Robbie Robertson himself was a guest on it, as well as a whole bunch of great Nashville musicians were there and each got to contribute to that show in some way. I was talking to Robbie and seeing him for literally for the first time since “The Last Waltz”. The first thing he said was a very deep yet obvious truth.

We don’t look like that anymore, because it was over 40 years later. He also remembered more about the rehearsals for “The Last Waltz” than I did. We did it and a lot of the rock stars that were in The Last Waltz we’re watching Muddy’s rehearsal the day before the show. It was a pretty amazing experience for me. I was, gee, was a fetus. I was 27 years old.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I bet it was something to have Eric Clapton standing there watching you. That had to be a little bit, how can I put it? Maybe it put a little pressure on you? I don’t know.

Bob Margolin (continued from previous page) Rock And Blues International: Yeah, you got hold of me at the right time. My name is Kevin.

Bob Margolin: Hi Kevin.

Rock And Blues International: So you’ve got a new album out and I’ve been listening to it. I’m thinking this is a really special album to you at the moment.

Bob Margolin: It is, did you read the... on my website, I did a deep dive liner notes because I could in that situation with links to it that should have been sent?

Rock And Blues International: I’ve read everything.

Bob Margolin: Oh, good.

Rock And Blues International: I mean, I’ve read everything and I’m trying to figure out some of this stuff here. On the new album, it seems like... I don’t know if this is a celebration of your guitar, or the music you grew up with.

Bob Margolin: Basically, it’s three things.

It was pointed out to me that this this year is 50 years since I joined Muddy Waters band and so it is a thank you to Muddy personally, who really, that one Crossroads moment changed the whole rest of my life. I loved that music before I met him. He could tell that. He took me in the band and gave me a chance and he put me on the road I’m still riding. So that’s that’s one part of it. In 1975 I got a beautiful 1956 archtop guitar and used it on some of Muddy’s gigs and I had sold it in 2016 and got it back again at the end of last year. The guitar was so magical for me, I decided to use it on every song of this

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album that’s called “Thanks”. So I’m also thanking the guitar. I’m also thanking all the musicians that I met since having been in Muddy’s band and being around him with a lot of wonderful musicians who loved him and his music.

Some of them during the time he was still alive.

Some of them since then. And so this album is a thanks for all of that.

Rock And Blues International: Okay, I even pulled up “The Last Waltz” last night and watched Muddy’s song on there with you on it to get caught up with everything here and I love the performance.

Bob Margolin: Muddy was very powerful. He was just doing what he did, but look at who we had backing us up on him even though they didn’t know the songs as well as Muddy’s old own band did. They’re just fantastic musicians. They played it their own way and it was very, very strong. Really the music to to that particular song was da-da-da-da-da and that’s it. But it was The Band and Paul Butterfield on the harmonica.

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, Paul Butterfield was to your left and and Robbie Robertson was to your right and Muddy was to your right. Now. I kept noticing that you kept looking down. It looked like you were looking at Robbie’s guitar while he was playing. Do you remember anything about that?

Bob Margolin: No, I don’t. I don’t. I was kind of in the moment and in the music and I don’t recall watching what he was playing, but he did play some very, very fiery answering licks which is a specialty of Robbie Robertson’s guitar playing. He had come up in bar bands and he could play some some blues and play it with excitement and fire and he did exactly that. I did get to see him one more time since “The

Rock and Blues International • November 2023

Bob Margolin: No, it didn’t. I always admired his music. I was just watching a fairly recent concert of his on YouTube last night on my television and he just sounded fantastic singing and playing and then conceiving how to present the songs, many of which were straight Blues songs, which is where he and I intersect.

But I met him that night and jammed with him that night, as well as a big jam that involved a lot of people that were at “The Last Waltz”. That took place like the next morning after six or seven hours of jamming and partying.

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, it sounded like the big highlight of the show was after the show.

Bob Margolin: Well, personally for me, but this was a bunch of musicians sitting around and playing because they wanted to. Bob Dylan was leading that part of the jam and he wanted to play old Blues songs and it was nice that he invited me into it. I was getting ready to leave the jam when he came down and said, ‘I thought we were gonna get to play’. I said ‘okay, I’ll stay’. I kept looking around me and seeing all those faces. Well, this’ll never happen again, and it never did and a lot of them are gone now but Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan are still around. I don’t run into them these days. Amazing memories.

Rock And Blues International: We still have Clapton going strong. He’s still out on the road performing a lot, probably more so than Bob Dylan is, but occasionally Bob Dylan pops up.

Bob Margolin: Yeah, he does. And I have always wondered about him. I had a very good experience being around him twice in the 70s, once in 1975 when he came to a club in New York City where Muddy was playing and another time at “The Last Waltz”, but I haven’t seen him since then. He was very nice to me and we talked a little bit about music both times.

continued on next page

Bob Margolin (continued from previous page) There was one time when on the first night when he came to a club that was very interesting, because we were in a dressing room which is the the size of a child’s bedroom or something. It was tiny. I was at the Bottom Line in New York City and he came down with an entourage of people who very quickly after that became the Rolling Thunder Review, people he brought with him and a lot of them played that night.

But when he came in, it was a really big deal.

Muddy and a lot of the older guys in the band had no idea who the rock stars of the day were.

I did, but most of them didn’t. So he were sitting there, and it was obvious that he must have been a big deal because everybody was trying to talk to him and he was being just very blank, quiet and barely nodding any kind of acknowledgement, and not saying anything. But he was sitting next to where I was in the tiny room. Somebody came in the room and took up some attention for a minute and I turned to him and I said, it’s amazing to just sit here and watch all of this, what happens when you come into a place. And he said, ‘I wish I could just watch’.

Rock And Blues International: It’s probably a lot of pressure on him, he walks in and no matter who’s playing, he becomes the center of attention, which isn’t necessarily what he wants.

Bob Margolin: Yeah, that’s true, The Rolling Stones did not come to Muddy’s funeral because they did not want to distract from Muddy at all. I mean, almost nobody can know what it’s like to be a superstar like that. People like Elvis, or the Beatles, or the Stones, or Bob Dylan and a few others have that level of fame where they’re almost universally known and anybody that’s around them and interacts with them live wants to have some kind of experience or wants something from them, even if it’s only to say, ‘Oh, I was talking to Bobby the other day, and I told him’... I think people are like that and always looking at him and looking for a clue as to what he feels and what he thinks and by this time, he had been famous for a dozen years. It’s something that most people can’t begin to understand or imagine, I think, and I’m sure I don’t know all that much about it either.

But it was interesting to watch that world and he was nice enough to me, but I saw him kind of run power trips on a few other people.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I imagine you experience somewhat of the same thing when you walk into a room full of your contemporaries.

Bob Margolin: Sure, except it’s smaller by a factor of 10,000 or something. That’s somebody that was truly world famous. I’m somebody that is... probably the most interesting part of this interview that we’re doing is when I talk about somebody else that is famous like Muddy Waters or Bob Dylan or other people that we played with during that time. It is interesting though, that I asked Muddy, do you want to have

From the Muddy Waters Woodstock Album. Pinetop Perkins, me, Levon Helm, Muddy, Garth Hudson, Paul Butterfield, Fred Carter Jr. Photo by David Gahr him sit in, I can see if I can arrange that and Muddy goes ‘sure’. He really didn’t know who he was dealing with or what kind of music he was.... What does he play? I say, ‘he can play harmonica, guitar, and so he said ‘okay, we can call him up on harmonica’ and when he did that, he says, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a special guest coming up on harmonica. How about a nice round of acclause’. He used to say acclause instead of applause, and who’s to say he’s wrong? I wouldn’t. But ‘how about a nice round of acclause for John Dylan!’ And there was a little pattering of applause and I kind of stage whisper to Muddy, ‘his name is Bob Dylan like my name Bob’. And then Muddy just turned back to the microphone as though he was repeating himself and says “Bob Dylan” and the crowd goes crazy.

Rock And Blues International: I bet that was some interesting times. Well, on the new album, you start off with a Muddy Waters song. and I’m curious as to how you got to pick these songs. You have so many songs in your repertoire. You’ve written... near as I can tell you’ve got either got 14 solo albums or 18 solo albums, something like that. Every time I look, I see another album title, so is this the 14th? The 18th?

Or the 22nd album?

Bob Margolin: I haven’t counted. I really haven’t. I live more in the moment. Although I have perspective, I don’t say, okay, this is album number three, album number four. I keep the files for them in my computer under folders that say album 2022 or album 2023.

Lately, I’ve been doing one a year. And ready or not. I do one a year and I become ready.

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, you took kind of a break. What was it, between 2007 and 2016? I think that was your largest break in doing any albums, or at least that I can find.

Bob Margolin: There was an album in 2011, right in the middle of that time that I did with an Italian band. But I don’t know if it’s the music. The music on it I thought was pretty

good, but I’m the worst person to judge. I just wonder if people listen, or evaluate with their eyes. Oh, it’s an Italian band. It’s not a bunch of blues musicians that we know or Bob’s own band. I wonder if that’s why that album seemed to get so much less attention that you didn’t even hear of it?

Rock And Blues International: Well, I would imagine distribution in the United States was a bit rough for them if they were from Italy.

Bob Margolin: No, it was done on the VizzTone Label Group and we get totally professional distribution and publicity through that.

However this album just didn’t seem to be as visible. I don’t know what the statistics of it are.

This was before streaming and I don’t know if that makes any difference one way or another. I keep wondering if CDs are even relevant anymore.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I’ll tell you, my views on streaming is... Well, I don’t like streaming. What I don’t like about it primarily is the musician makes about .003 cents per play or something like that. He makes virtually nothing.

Bob Margolin: That’s true. I once read a interview with Mose Allison, a great jazz and influenced piano player from Mississippi who said, ‘an album is just a very expensive business card’.

Rock And Blues International: Okay.

Bob Margolin: Getting gigs, and apparently that’s where he made his money. But that was a long time ago. He’s been gone for a very long time now. But maybe things are getting to be that way again for me with the VizzTone Label Group which is a partnership with artists. I happen to be a partner in the VizzTone Label Group and I’m also one of the artists and I pay for my own album to be made and pay to have

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November 2022 • Rock and Blues International

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he was very happy with those guitars and they’re more visible and more collectible than the kind of guitars that he had that just had a very small body and no headstock on them, that he seemed to use from the 80s on.

Rock And Blues International: Right, yeah, he went after that little Lazer thing that Earlewine had made Bob Margolin: L-a-z-e-r, right?

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, it was a strange little guitar but hanging on to one of these big Firebirds, they’re, they’re fairly heavy, they’re very hard to hold because they’re neck heavy. The way they hook up, you spend half your time holding the neck up while you’re playing it.

1975 The Last Waltz, with Muddy Waters and The Band. Left-right: Rick Danko, Muddy, Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel on drums, me with the ES-150.

Bob Margolin (continued from previous page) it manufactured, the amount of CDs that the distributor wants and to have some on the road with me to sell. And the VizzTone Label Group gets us with a very professional, worldwide district distributor and Amy Brat from BratGirl Media, one of our partners sets up professional publicity with DJs and radio interviews and all kinds of other publicity is in the modern world. She’s on it.

Rock And Blues International: Amy does an excellent job. She even helps me out with a couple of things, so I’m really very appreciative to her as well.

Bob Margolin: That’s what I do, but between that and also with Amy’s great advice, she knows how to make the most of social media. I share or post things about my shows coming up. I post things from my history. I also been writing for Blues magazines since about 1993 and I have this backlog of articles. I can just publish one of those in a Facebook post and people find them interesting, as well as having a four times a year column in Blues Music Magazine, but I’ve got all this writing and I’ve taken pictures over the years. I had a really good Polaroid camera out on the road with me in the 70s and while I didn’t get any pictures of me playing with Muddy because I was playing with Muddy, there are plenty of those out there because he was so famous, but I got lots of offstage pictures.

Rock And Blues International: I saw some of you with with The Band, with Johnny Winter, and with several other people on your website also.

Bob Margolin: Yeah, those would be taken by other people and are published because those people are famous.

Rock And Blues International: You played with Johnny for a while. You were on one album with him, but did you play with him more than that?

Bob Margolin: I wasn’t in his band. We

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used to hang out a lot in the late 70s, because sometimes I would just go spend some time with him. But it was mostly him playing either with Muddy’s band or in the case of the first tour that we did in 1977, some people from James Cotton and his bass player, me and Muddy and Pinetop Perkins, the piano player, and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, the drummer from Muddy’s Band and Johnny. We did a tour that way. Right afterwards we recorded two albums. This was in 1977, around the middle of it. One was the next album with Muddy called “I’m Ready” and the other one even before that, right when we were hot from being on the road and having played together a lot. Johnny Winter took the same band in the studio and made a really good album called “Nothing But The Blues”.

Rock And Blues International: I always liked Johnny’s playing. He was fantastic. Of course he was born down here, not far down the road from me. He was born in Beaumont. I’m just outside of Houston. So it’s all pretty close here.

Bob Margolin: Well, yeah, he certainly was deep into Texas.

Rock And Blues International: Oh, yeah.

Bob Margolin: Sure. He had the accent and has the influences of Texas and Louisiana musicians that he saw live very often.

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, I’m looking at my wall right now and hanging on my wall is a 1976 Bicentennial Firebird that he signed for me and that was certainly a highlight for me.

Bob Margolin: He had a bunch of those guitars, Firebird guitars, which have a kind of for those listening to this, have kind of a trapezoid shape. They also have a wonderful sound and they have a shorter scale than a Fender guitar. Johnny told me very specifically, he liked that shorter scale. He wanted a guitar that sounded like a Fender and he said that was it.

He had at least three of them during the 70s and

Rock and Blues International • November 2022

Bob Margolin: Ah, that’s interesting. I always liked the idea of cigar box guitars. Somebody once built one for me and I said I really want it to function like a regular guitar but just have that very cool construction and it was extremely neck heavy. I couldn’t take my hand off it literally or it just points down.

Rock And Blues International: Oh, yeah, just heads right down towards your feet.

Bob Margolin: Yeah.

Rock And Blues International: Well, let’s get back to the album. You got these songs on here and I’m very curious as to why out of all the songs you could have put on here, why you put these on. “Gone to Main Street” with Muddy Waters, what made you select that one?

Bob Margolin: Well, aside from the fact that it was one of my favorite older Muddy Waters songs, I think he recorded that about 1952 or ’54, somewhere in there. But I listened to and loved that song. We did it very occasionally on the bandstand. In 1975 right after I got that archtop guitar we recorded it for “The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album”, with Levon Helm producing and Garth Hudson playing a accordion on that song and Paul Butterfield playing harmonica. Pinetop Perkins was in on that one too. And so it’s a thank you to all of those musicians and especially Muddy, because we had done that, on that 1977 “The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album”, and the song was on an album by the Muddy Waters tribute band in the 1990s, mid 1990s or so where the band...

We all led some songs and then had a lot of guests come in and sing or play their own parts over them and Levon Helm did that song “Gone to Main Street” and a couple of years after that in 1996 the Muddy guys were on a some shows overseas with the last version of the band when I was doin”Gone to Main Street” on one show and there’s a wonderful video of it. I had Levon come out and sing it with me and boy, that was sweet and that was fun.

Rock And Blues International: I’ll bet it was.

Bob Margolin: Well that song means all of that to me.

Rock And Blues International: Well the

continued on next page

Bob Margolin (continued from previous page) the next song on here is “The Shape I’m In”. I love the blues treatment that you’ve given this song. You know it’s by the band because you’re familiar with the song, but you’ve give it a whole complete new dimension to the sound of it.

Bob Margolin: It’s kind of stripping it down. As much as I love Garth Hudson’s synthesizer work on it and synthesizer was really, really new at the time they recorded that stuff, but that Garth Hudson the musical genius was a master of playing a new exploratory electronic instrument in a context with a group that was literally the ultimate Americana band. The band just had a sound were both you looked at their pictures on the album covers and heard their music and they could have been time travelers from the mid 1800s. Yet Garth Hudson was playing both traditional and what was at the time experimental and just beginning to develop instruments.

Rock And Blues International: So what made you pick that one?

Bob Margolin: Got a good answer for that. So from 2016 on I’ve been doing tours and shows with a celebration of “The Last Waltz” put on by a company called Blackbird presents.

First of all I was invited because I’d actually been at “The Last Waltz” with Muddy and then I tried to do the songs that Muddy did at “The Last Waltz” with a lot of fire and using the power of Blues music to win over the audience, so they kept inviting me back and I loved doing it. Not just for the memories in “The Last Waltz” becoming a lasting waltz, but for the amazing musicians that were on it. Don Was and Warren Haynes were the musical directors. Jamie Johnson, the country music star was on those.

We had just an amazing array of great musicians over the years and special guests including Robbie Robertson in 2019 and Garth Hudson himself in 2017. Dr. John also in 2017, the year before he passed away, being on tour with those musicians and hearing those songs every night and watching every rehearsal to watch the way some of the world’s greatest musicians put songs together and develop them to where their own influence on it because all of the musicians in the newer “Last Waltz”, “The Blackbird presents Last Waltz”. They all fill stadiums themselves, if not stadiums, large venues. And it’s just amazing to be around those people, to be friends with them and to make music with them. I never played on “The Shape I’m In’ but I got so it became an ear worm for me. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I just loved that song and I said I’m gonna maybe try that but do it with the Blues influence and not with so much instrumentation because the band did it. When they did it they often had horns, guitar, bass drums, piano, organ, and Garth Hudson’s synthesizer, but I decided to strip it down a little bit and I just played it. It was the the beginning of the album. Actually it was the first song I did, which I did last January. I just developed a guitar part. When I played it and felt like I had it, I said, “that’s it.

Jimmy Rogers and me sitting in, Chicago, about 1992 I’m leaving that guitar part”. I may do more around it. What I decided to do with the song was to overdub a bass part that owed a lot to Rick Danko, the bass player from the band, as well as make an attempt to accomplish or try to do something or say thank you to the way The Band put their vocals together, a very special vocal sound from the group The Band with Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Rick Danko, the way those three sang together. So I put on some harmony parts on with my own voice, just trying to say thank you to those wonderful musicians, both the original band and the ones in the Blackbird presents. It’s been a big deal for me. We did one show in 2016. We toured a couple of times in 2017, then again in 2019 and then last November and December, we did a bunch of dates. We didn’t do any in 2022 or in 2023 and don’t have anything planned for it, but I hope some more will come up in 2024 Rock And Blues International: All right.

Well, next song, “Mean Old Chicago” I can understand why you have it on here. You were great friends with Jimmy Rogers and you wrote this song essentially as a tribute to him.

Bob Margolin: Yes, I wrote it. It just popped into my head as I was flying to Jimmy’s funeral in 1997. I was going into Midway Airport and as the plane was descending over Lake Michigan, I thought, ‘well, here I am coming into Chicago, but it ain’t Sweet Home Chicago’ because Jimmy Rogers, who was a great musical influence, maybe the biggest one after Muddy, and became a friend had just passed away. And the whole song came right into my head. I carried a pen around instead of a phone and I wrote it on a cocktail napkin before they picked up the trash on the airplane. I wrote it and made a song out of it shortly after tha and I have recorded it before, but I did it with this guitar, that special guitar and with everything the years have given me since then, that many more years since 1997 of still loving Jimmy Rogers music, wanting to pay some respects to him again and trying to play it as well as I could on that guitar.

Rock And Blues International: Your next selection is “Who” by Willie Dixon and on your website, it says that you played with Nappy Brown for quite a while and this was this was one of the one of your songs that you did.

Bob Margolin: It is, but Nappy used to do his own version of the song and that was a lot of fun. He used to use it as a showpiece and the audience would participate in it because it’s fun to go “Who”, but I love the original words written by the very clever and deep Willie Dixon. They’re about people being busy bodies and getting Little Walter, who sang the song originally, in trouble for cheating. “I’m sorry I cheated or I did a bad thing, but I did and I’m really mad at whoever busted me and told the person I was cheating on.” I’m not that kind of person and I don’t want to beat up anybody, but Little Walter liked the song and did a very cool version of it and so I took a little bit of all of that. Little Walters is one of my favorite musicians of all time and great Blues harmonica players that changed the whole instrument, the way Jimi Hendrix changed rock guitar.

Rock And Blues International: The next one on here, “Lonely Man Blues” that you wrote with Muddy Waters. That had to be something.

Did you write very many songs with Muddy?

Bob Margolin: No, that was the only one.

I had written this song and it just came to me in the mid 70s, a song about losing the love of your life and what that would feel like and that certainly is a bluesy feeling that people do experience. When we were getting ready to do that “I’m Ready” album in 1977, I approached Muddy and said, I’ve got a song and if you like it, we can record it and he actually added a verse to it, which I didn’t sing on my version of it. I kind of sang it the way I originally wrote it. The musical credits are split 50/50 as well as the songwriting credits, but the publishing was under his publishing company so I pay that to whoever it’s been sold to over the years, just to record a song that I actually wrote. I wanted to continued on next page

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that. I had a friend in Houston and he was on the song “Cotton Eye-Joe” and he goes Kevin, ‘Come here, I want you to see my royalty check’ and it was like for 70 cents. It was just unbelievable.

Bob Margolin: That is the way the music business often goes.

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, there’s some people that are getting very lucky and very rich and there’s others that just were essentially doing it for the love of doing the music.

Bob Margolin: Yeah. I don’t know how to do anything else except be nice to people on Facebook, I guess. I try to play as well as I can and be nice to everybody I see when I go out and do gigs. That’s all I can do.

If I had to stop gigging, which I’m 74 years old, I can still do everything I used to do as long as I get some rest before and after.

Rock And Blues International: I certainly understand. I’m 70, almost 71 now, so yeah, although I still try to keep up with all the young people out there. Sometimes it’s a chore.

Bob Margolin: It is hard. I played in Alabama and Montgomery last Sunday and the club owner says, ‘I can fly you out here. I understand you don’t want to drive that far anymore and you’re not carrying a band, but I’ve got some good people that you can play with. I promise you they’ll be good’. And they were even better than I would have guessed. It was a guy named Skyler Saufley and I’ve never heard of him, but he sure played good guitar and sang well, and it was the old school blues that I like. The other people he had with him could play it too. We had a ball jamming for probably more than three hours all together in a long set.

Last Sunday afternoon, I was having so much musical fun and fulfillment with those guys and we kind of made an entertaining show out of a jam. I never heard of them before and I usually with those things pretty good or hear about whoever’s being publicized. Maybe these people haven’t been publicized much yet, but he knows a lot of the people that I know and a lot of them know him, but I’ve never heard of him until this gig in Montgomery got set up and the club owner made that happen, so there’s always hidden treasures out there.

Rock And Blues International: Tell me about “Baby Can’t Be Found” that’s solely written by you.

1970’s Speakeasy - Cambridge, MA

Bob Margolin (continued from previous page) keep all the business straight. But I think of Muddy and his version of it and it was a tremendous thrill for me to be playing bass on that song. The reason I wasn’t playing guitar is because I had gotten Jimmy Rogers on that album. Muddy expressed a kind of vague interest and Jimmy had once said, ‘gee, I’d love to play with Muddy again, please tell him when you talk to him’. I was able to make it happen because Johnny Winter was producing it when I said Jimmy and Muddy want to play together again, and he says, ‘I’ll make that happen’ and he did, probably with a phone call or two and it was it was just wonderful. In the studio Muddy said, I’ve heard you play bass with somebody else when our bass player was sick. Why don’t you play bass on this album, which I was happy to get to be there, so I did play bass on it. I just kept it real simple because it was a big band. I got to watch Jimmy and Muddy play together for the first time in many years, and Big Walter Horton was on harmonica and Johnny Winter was playing on it and Pinetop Perkins and Willie Smith, and I realized that at this time now, I’m the only one that was left alive from when we did that session in 1977 and the song wasn’t even on the original album. There was a reissue made that I had the incredible generosity of a friend of mine that worked for Sony Legacy, who had the rights to the album and was making a reissue to work on the production of the reissue and so we listened to all the songs from the session and so for the first time in 2002, for the first time and all those years since 1977, I heard the song again, as well as a few other wonderful songs and we put those on the reissue of the album. Now it’s kind of a joke among musicians. If you get songwriting credit for an obscure song or something, you go “I’m gonna make dozens of dollars from this” and one time I actually got a check for $12.

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, I know. I know. I understand

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Bob Margolin: Yes, it’s a song that I wrote in the 1980s inspired by two things. One, Muddy was touring with Eric Clapton in 1978 and I spent a lot of time hanging with him and jamming with him sometimes on stage, sometimes in hotel rooms, but he once said ‘If I’m doing a Blues song, and I forget the words, I can always get out of it by rhyming something with the phrase my baby can’t be found’. I found myself in that romantic situation around that time too, somebody who’s supposed to meet me and never did. You couldn’t reach people wherever they were with cell phones and there was nothing to do but sit there and wait and know that the reason she wasn’t there was probably not one you’d be very happy with and so I put it into a song called “My Baby Can’t Be Found” and it’s very easy to rhyme things with that too. I did that song when I was on Alligator records and the thing that that made me want to record it again using this guitar was that Johnny Winter had heard that song on my Alligator album and said that ‘I really liked that one’. He made a point to tell that to me once and I said, ‘Well, that’s a good endorsement’.

Rock And Blues International: It is.

Bob Margolin: So I recorded it again as a thanks to the call for Johnny Winters compliment and with all the fire I can find now.

Rock And Blues International: Well, sometimes the slightest little compliment is really a big thing to people like you and me. Just something little makes it all worthwhile.

Bob Margolin: Yeah, I’ve been extremely lucky to have had the opportunity. And once again, the whole album is thanks to Muddy Waters for that.

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, Muddy was like going to the university for you. You’ve learned a lot from him.

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Bob Margolin (continued from previous page) Bob Margolin: Oh, it was actually even more than that. It was more like a middle ages, Master Apprentice situation. He was teaching me how to do it while being on the bandstand with him. He put me on his right side on the bandstand so I could watch him play guitar and learn what he was doing and I used it to back him up and give him what he wanted on the bandstand as well as possible, and also to have as a foundation for the rest of my life. I like many kinds of music, but applying the depth that I saw from Muddy Waters. I won’t say I learned that, I don’t think it’s something you could learn, but it was very influential and inspiring to me being around him. People say what was the biggest thrill you had from all that, because people always want to say, well, what’s the biggest? What’s the best? What’s number one on the list? The answer is really simply playing Blues on stage with Muddy Waters. He was such a magnetic and powerful musician as well as a great guitar player and singer. I could take a little bit of his guitar playing and his singing while I can sing his songs in my own voice. He took his own voice with him.

Nobody sounds like that except three of his sons took up Blues singing.

It was a legacy they couldn’t ignore. One of them is gone now. Joseph Morganfield passed a couple of years ago, surprisingly and suddenly, but Big Bill Morganfield and Mud Morganfield are still alive. Morganfield is Muddy’s given name. Well, both of their mouths look like Muddy’s and their throats probably share the same anatomy genetically and they really can sound scarily like him sometimes, but I sure can’t. All I can do is sing his songs with as much feeling as I could find and maybe a little reference here and there to the way he phrased or pronounced a word.

1971 Bob Margolin

Rock And Blues International: Well, Jimmy Rogers had to be a big influence on you as well because you’ve got another song on here from Jimmy, “Hard Working Man”. Although it’s credited James A. Lane, which most people if they just heard James A. Lane, they wouldn’t know who it was. But it’s Jimmy, Jimmy Rogers.

and he put the best of both together in his own style. I tried to use that style of guitar playing in the song as a thanks to Robert Lockwood Jr. and thanks to Pinetop Perkins, and thanks to Paul Gayten, even though I didn’t know who he was till I really took a deep dive into Google and looked him up.

Bob Margolin: Yeah, I’m glad that he got the credit on that. Sometimes musicians didn’t get credit for a song they did indeed write. The record company would just take it and take the publishing or something and have access to the money. But Jimmy was kind of understated. He wasn’t as flamboyant as Muddy, but he was really, really deep. He had a voice that was just really Bluesy and very plaintive. You could hear him kind of crying out his phrases and very often at the end of a phrase his voice would go up as if he was asking a question like trying to offer a prayer to whoever he was singing to. I just loved Jimmy’s voice and so did Muddy. Muddy really appreciated him. Jimmy and Little Walter and Muddy were to me my favorite Blues band ever that was in the early 50s.

We had a pretty good blues band going on in the 70s and Muddy said so.

He said, ‘This is my best band since those days with Jimmy Rogers, Otis Spann, the piano player and Little Walter.’ Jimmy was just so powerful.

His own guitar playing was simple and direct and very tasteful and very deep and he was a just a really nice, fun loving person. He was great to hang with and to play music with. Thanks, Jimmy Rogers.

Rock And Blues International: All right, “No Consolation”. That’s a pretty sad song here. I didn’t hear the original one you did, but this one’s very emotional, this version here.

Rock And Blues International: You do a song on here, “For You My Love” written by Paul Gayten, and I have to admit, I am not familiar with Paul Gayten at all. So, what made this song special to you and who is Paul Gayten?

Bob Margolin: I really didn’t know that much till I looked it up, but Pinetop Perkins used to do that song. Apparently it came out around when I did, in 1949. Paul Gayten did a wonderful version of it, which you can look up pretty easily, however Nat King Cole and some other great singers of the day also sang that that song which is kind of a catchy, catchy tune, and all the versions of it I heard. I listened to every version of it, but Pinetop used to play that very regularly. He was the piano player in Muddy’s band. He was around Muddy’s age, more or less. Muddy always said he was born in 1915. His biographer who is a very good, great music writer, Robert Gordon from Memphis says ‘I’ve got evidence that he was born in 1913'. Whatever it was, they were close to the same age, which is be about 110 years ago now. I used to do that song, so I was really thinking of him when I played it, but also I listened to the original version and the other versions and was influenced by all of them, as well as the guitar playing of Robert Lockwood Jr., another person from around that 110 years ago time, who was just a spectacular Chicago blues guitar player. He was taught Blues by Robert Johnson himself in the 1930s. But he was also interested in more sophisticated jazz music,

Bob Margolin: It’s very personal for me. It’s like telling somebody a story of having suffered a tragedy, and not being able to be consoled in it, which is how I felt at the time I wrote the song 25 years ago, so I added it. I presented the original song mostly as it was, but I added about three more verses to it and it’s a fairly fast song, so it wasn’t like a 10 minute dirge or anything, but I added some verses about the redemption that I eventually felt. While I’d felt no consolation while bad things were happening to me and shortly afterwards, over time well in the very last lines of the song, are “look up and be strong do my best and go on”.

I found doing that, and the very last line it says ‘sometimes consolation is slow’ and so it’s perspective and it’s personal to me as somebody else might like it for the music or not like it at all or find the sad lyrics to be a bummer, but that’s that’s what I felt and what I put out there and I don’t think that’ll be a single on anybody’s radio show, but it’s a song that I wanted to record and I’d done so a long time ago in 1998 and did it again this year.

Rock And Blues International: Well on your web page it says I got very uncomfortable with my absolutely hopeless song of ultimate defeat.

So what feelings are you feeling then that made you write this. What was the ultimate defeat to you at that time?

Bob Margolin” The words to the song answer that. If somebody is interested to see what what it is I’d say, ‘Well listen to the song but for instance, the first verse ‘all those dreaded has now come to pass there’s no consolation being right, all of it was bad it is revealed to be worse, there’s no consolation in sight”. It was just those feelings after a personal tragedy.

Rock And Blues International: All right. You ended the album with “Just Before Dawn”. Well, tell me about that. You talk about how how much the guitar is giving you a sweet time vintage tone on this. Did you record the the original version with this guitar?

Bob Margolin: No, I probably used a Fender guitar on the original version which was in the last millennium, but I wanted to do it again with

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sometimes I can actually remember the gig. But I’m really thrilled with the memories I have and thrilled to be able to keep doing it and to be able to have the shows I do now either on my own going to play or with either a band of people that played with me for a long time, or brand new people that I didn’t know, most of them. On last Sunday’s gig, that day, I was ‘Come in’, I said. ‘Let me listen to you for a while’. And I said, ‘Oh, I see where these guys are coming from’, and then got on stage with them and we had a ball. I felt like I had known them my whole life, but we both loved and listened to the same music. And that did it even though some of them are probably 40 years younger than I am.

Rock And Blues International: When someone picks up this album, what do you want them to come away with? What do you want them to think about the overall album as a whole.

Bob Margolin: First of all, I hope they enjoy the music for its own sake. And if they dive into the story of it, which is there’s an actual QR code on the back of the album that leads to the website or any publicity for it. We put that in there so that people can see the story that you saw.

They can get the story, not just the songs and I hope that moves them to be more curious about hearing the actual songs too. But the first and most important thing is, please, I hope you’ll enjoy the music. I worked as hard as I could to craft it so that it would not just satisfy myself and indulge myself, but that it might mean something to somebody else to make them feel good the way music does in such a challenging world.

Rock And Blues International: Okay, well let’s talk about the Pinetop Perkins Foundation because you’re very instrumental in that and I think we need to add something about that to this interview. Also, it seems to be something that’s very dear to your heart.

Bob Margolin: Yeah, if she was saying something was happening very early, she’d say ‘before dawn’ and so I wrote a song about the type of things you think of if you can’t sleep and you’re awake just before dawn and the things that you wish for and the things that you hope for and the things that weigh on you. It’s having the blues. I think this is another another way to put it.

Bob Margolin: It sure is. For those that don’t know the Blues history, Pinetop Perkins was born in 1913. In the very late 60s when Muddy’s longtime piano player, Otis Spann, left his band and went out on his own and then tragically got sick and died shortly afterwards. Otis Spann was one of the all time great Blues piano players. Pinetop joined Muddy’s band and was with him until 1980. Just an amazing person and musician, very, very deep in his piano playing and his singing, and Pinetop lived to be 97 years old and passed away very peacefully with a big smile on his face in his sleep at the age of 97. Before he had passed, he expressed to his manager ‘I wish there was some way that young people could learn about Blues and Blues piano’. His manager at the time, Pat Morgan conceived the Pinetop Perkins Foundation, found many people to partner with working on that and setting up workshops and we had the first one in 2010. Pinetop was still with us at the time and was right there to inspire just just a few kids. It turned out very quickly when we started off with these workshops. We thought it was going to be piano, but only about four or five people showed up to take that. I said, ‘Well, if you put guitar in there, I can teach the class and you will get people lining up for for guitar. Electric guitar is very popular’. And so I taught the class in Blues and after a while as the foundation developed, I became not the only instructor, because we wanted to have a bunch of different instructors come in because a lot of these young people came in there year after year and it became like a real family of people, both those that are on the board of directors and a lot of the parents of talented kids. We’ve had a bunch of those kids use Blues as a foundation for their own music and sometimes it’s Blues-Rock or other styles of music, and some that would become Blues stars. Kingfish was with us when he was 11 years old. It’s just a thrill to watch the blue light come on over a young person’s head and see them fall in love with that music the way I did and the way it was for the people I learned it from like Muddy Waters and Pinetop, a generation and a half older than me.

Rock And Blues International: Oh, okay. So with your career the way it’s been, are you happy way it’s gone. Has it been what you wanted it to be?

Rock And Blues International: Well, you seem to really love teaching. On your website, you’re teaching Raw Chicago Blues, so tell me how did you get started in that and why?

Bob Margolin: There were hard times within the career, because Blues is not such a commercial pursuit. Nobody’s playing Blues to make a lot of money. They’re playing it because they have it in their hearts usually. If you want to make money go try to be a rock star. For me, I’ve met so many wonderful people. The ugly things that have happened to me that I’ve seen are by far the exception, not the rule. People who love this music or play it tend to be pretty soulful people, so I have a lifetime now. Somebody walks up to me in a bar, and says, ‘Hi, remember me’, it could be from any time in the last 55 years or so since I’ve been, or more than that since I’ve been playing out. So please tell me from where and

Bob Margolin: I’ve been basically on two platforms that are still available now. One was with the Hal Leonard Corporation and their music books. Remember books?

November 2022, The Last Waltz Tour, onstage with Warren Haynes.

Photo by Cyril Neville.

Bob Margolin (continued from previous page) this guitar. It’s just me and the guitar and there’s a tiny touch of slap echo but a little more reverberation which gives... if you’re singing that kind of sad blues, that kind of gives it a lonely sound like you’re alone in a large room or a large world that reverberates more.

Rock And Blues International: And this comes from a phrase that your mother used to use.

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Rock And Blues International: Oh yeah.

Bob Margolin: They have links to videos as well, or DVDs packaged with a large book that has lessons in it. One of them is on Chicago

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Bob Margolin (continued from previous page) Blues rhythm guitar and another one is slide guitar. A couple of years ago, I did some lessons that I titled “Raw Chicago Blues” for a video company called Truefire which does very well with online lessons, and I was thrilled to work with those. Also, I’ve done workshops at Jorma Kaukonen’s “For Peace Ranch” in Blues guitar and done some for the Pinetop Foundation when we’re beyond our summer workshops. We have now branched out and we have a few events each year in other cities. We just did one in Boulder, Colorado recently and we do them in Ohio every year. I love to go in there and just offer anything I can offer to the young people that want to play this music, hopefully give them some inspiration and be a link for them to the generation of legends that I met near the end of their lives. It is a real thrill for me to have the perspective of having been around and talked to and played with Muddy Waters or Pinetop Perkins and to pass on some of that to somebody who may be eight years old. Most of them are older than that. There’s a fine guitar player that’s 18 now named Six-String Andrew in Mississippi that started with us 10 years ago and he is just fantastic and obviously gonna be a pro musician. A tremendous talent. I think evolution is speeding up.

Rock And Blues International: I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, I see videos of young kids playing guitar and it’s unbelievable how fast they can play. It’s amazing.

Bob Margolin: And of course, for blues, it’s not just playing fast, because really tiny little kids can learn how to shred. They really can.

You can if you can move your fingers fast enough and practice a lot. But there’s plenty of them that want to make it mean something as well as having amazing facility on the instrument and I find that very exciting.

There’s a lot of really soulful, young musicians that have the same spirit as the older musicians that I learned from and it’s a thrill to have the perspective to see both.

Rock And Blues International: Any students that you’ve had that have really become extraordinary players that you’re proud to say ‘I’m glad they were in my class’.

Bob Margolin: With The Pinetop Foundation , the obvious one is Kingfish, Christone Ingram from Clarksdale, Mississippi. He was in the Pinetop Perkins workshops for years, first as a student and then as an intern, which is somebody that helps with that huge guitar class and he’s gone on. I saw a picture of him in front of a giant billboard in Times Square with his picture on it. That was a couple of days ago. He’s a real successful Bluesman and kind of the face of the most prominent, well known face of somebody that is keeping the blues alive and as popular and keeping the old school going as well as appealing to younger people and interesting them in that very older style of music that wasn’t played on synthesizers and sequences.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I’m very familiar with Kingfish. I’ve done interviews with him and we’ve had him in the magazine before. Just this last year, I saw him on stage in Houston jammin’ with Steve Miller from the Steve Miller Band, and it was very, very entertaining.

Bob Margolin: Yeah, well, I can believe that. We played a little bit together and got to visit at Big Blues Bender about a month ago in Las Vegas. It’s wonderful to see him doing that. But there’s a amazingly creative musician named David Julia that was in our classes for a while. He is just a fountain of creativity. He lives in mid Florida, and works fairly locally. Just fantastic. That’s just to name two there. There are so many. If I started trying to list them without looking at a list of our alumni, I probably leave some out that don’t deserve to be left out of anything. But lets say that it’s been a thrill for me to see these wonderfully talented musicians grow and sometimes pursue Blues professionally and looking ahead. Somebody that’s Kingfish’s age could very easily be playing 50 years from now and still have this deep Blues in their background, so it could go farther and farther if the world can survive and if the user can survive.

Rock And Blues International: Well, we’ll keep our fingers crossed.

I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere. I think we’re always going to have Blues music.

Bob Margolin: Well, I sure hope so.

Rock And Blues International: I mean, hopefully it’s done tastefully. Some of this stuff I hear now is a little peculiar.

Bob Margolin: Is there somebody that’s young that you really like, are impressed with and knocked out by right now?

Rock And Blues International: Well, Kingfish. When I did the interview with Kingfish, he was very impressive. He was so young and I could not believe how well put together his album was. It sounded great.

He sounds great. He sounded very grounded to.

Bob Margolin” Yeah, he always was very smart, and knew who he was and what he was doing, even as a little kid.

Rock And Blues International: Well, let’s get back to the album.

What have I not asked you that I should have? What have I totally missed that you’re gonna be walking away saying ‘I can’t believe he never asked me this.’

Bob Margolin: Well, this has been an extremely complete interview and I’m not not sure that there’s anything else you could have asked but congratulations on a really great interview question, ‘Is there something that I want to put out there besides what we’ve already talked about’.

The main thing is just something that I said a little while ago. Aside from the stories of how I got to those songs, and how they came about and why they are and what they are on this album, I really hope people just enjoy listening to it, one after the other. When I was putting the album together and listening to it and trying different sequences, I put them in a playlist on my computer and there was no one or two second break, or two or three second break between the songs. They just went right into the other and I started listening to it that way and I said, let’s only put like a one second break on the actual CD, or the album as it’s presented to the public. Let’s have them run right into another like musicians do sometimes on the bandstand and start a new song from the last note note of the song before it. I hope people will enjoy it being presented that way and that it will keep them within the album and want to hear the next song if they listen to one.

Rock And Blues International: Well, it flows beautifully. I love the sequence of the songs as well. Each song as it continues to the next one, complements it as it goes.

Bob Margolin: I’m glad that it worked for you and me. Thank you for letting me know that.

Rock And Blues International: So what else do we need to know?

I couldn’t have asked everything. As soon as we hang up, you’re going to be going, ‘I can’t believe he didn’t ask me this’.

Bob Margolin: Well, I did work very hard to write what I call those deep dive liner notes. I didn’t have to do it in the course of write it down and it’s done and it’s out there or say it and it’s out there like our interview is. And so anything that’s in those notes on my Bobmargolin.com website, there’s probably a few other details or juicy stories about famous people or my thoughts on the depth of the Blues experience that I’m so thankful for.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I love the pictures on there. I loved all the pictures you included. That was fantastic.

Bob Margolin: Now that’s different from regular liner notes, isn’t it?

Rock And Blues International: Well, yeah, somewhat, but it’s still part of it. I mean, you read, you hear about a person, you discuss their songs and all of a sudden you’re seeing a picture of some of the people you’re talking about. You don’t normally see that on on liner notes and things like that. It really adds to the value.

Bob Margolin: I appreciate that. Also I worked hard with the intention of adding to the value of kind of doing and saying everything I could say and in your case, having it inspire interview questions that led me to put out all the important aspects of the album’s reveal as much as I

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hanging out and talking and while I’m telling you a story, I can say ‘oh, I have a picture of that, pulling it up on my phone and showing it.

Rock And Blues International: The most inspirational picture I see on here is you standing at a microphone, saying a prayer. And it looks like Warren Haynes is in the background there. It doesn’t say his name on there. But it looks like to me.

Bob Margolin: It is. That was from 2017, which was the year after I sold that guitar and the person that bought it was a very nice musician.

He brought it to a gig we were doing in New Jersey. He lives near New York City and he let me play it in my “Last Waltz” tour because it seemed like the right tool for the job. It was the authentic guitar that was on stage at “The Last Waltz”, and so he let me play it on there again. It was a big thrill. And as I was telling people about that I made that hands together gesture of thanks and somebody, probably that guy, his name’s Cameron Williams got a photo of me doing that and there so we have it in there of me saying thank you and it was at one of the “Last Waltz” shows in the spring of 2017, but he also brought the guitar. This could be a tear jerker Christmas story for you, but he also brought it out for me to play again at the “Last Waltz” we did in St. Petersburg, Florida at the end of November and I was so thrilled to see the guitar again and to play it. It was just so exciting. The other musicians that were playing with us were digging it to when he brought it down. I played it for all the songs that I was playing. It was the authentic sound and the authentic guitar even still smells the way it did. I know every inch of that guitar because I did own it for more than 40 years and this young man had it now. And at the end of the show, I packed up his guitar and thanked him very profusely and sincerely and I went out to the bus to wait to go back to the hotel with a big smile on my face when I get a call from the promoter who asked me to come in. And after making a joke and saying, ‘Oh, we had some problems with your hotel bill in Atlanta’, there was something on here about, let’s say, prostitutes and drugs. And I knew he was fooling around and just cracked up like everybody else in the room did. A lot of the musicians from that “Last Waltz” show were there and they cut right to it.

Three of the musicians on that show bought the guitar back from the guy and that’s a lot of money, many 1000s of dollars. But these well known and certainly well off, but extremely kind hearted, soulful musicians got together and bought the guitar back from the guy and they gave it to me.

Blackbird Presents’ Last Waltz 40, 2017. Photo by Cameron Williams. I sold the guitar to him in 2016 and he brought it down for me to play at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey. I am literally thanking Cameron, the ES-150, The Band, Blackbird Presents, all the players onstage…and of course, the audience. Throughout the years.

Bob Margolin (continued from previous page) can about my history and myself and the people that I’m thanking musically, and it’s also a thanks to the audience that loves this music and has been nice to me because I try to play it.

Rock And Blues International: Well, they say a picture is worth a 1000 words and I’m sitting in here in my studio looking at this stuff on the computer. Jimmy Rogers and you performing in Chicago about 1992.

That says volumes in itself, just that picture. You do his songs and there he is standing there. You’ve got a very serious looking look on your face with sunglasses. And any of these, the picture of you with Big Walter Horton, Pinetop Perkins and Jerry Portnoy, and Johnny Winter. It’s just amazing to see this stuff that you would never normally see anywhere. A picture of you and Nappy Brown at the Chicago Blues Festival. When you were putting this together, did tears come to your eyes?

Bob Margolin: Honestly, no. But these are all photographs. If I was telling a story, I would have said, ‘Oh, I know. I’ve got a good picture for this one’. Excuse me. And I did have a lot of pictures that people have sent me or I’ve seen on the internet that include me or people that I love in them. So I said, I think I can do better than having somebody write liner notes about me, I can write my own story and myself pretty well and I’ve got all these pictures. I kind of wanted it to be like we were

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Rock And Blues International: To me, that’s extraordinary. That’s a beautiful story there. It is. That’s a Christmas wish come true.

Bob Margolin: Yeah. And it was three weeks before Christmas.

Right when everybody’s trying to pull at your heartstrings, either commercially or for nicer reasons than that.

Rock And Blues International: Well, should I ask why you sold it to begin with or is that just something we don’t want to talk about it?

Bob Margolin: It’s an ugly music business story, but let’s say I needed money. I sold that and another guitar and I needed the money at the time to make a new album that I wanted to be a really good one and I spent a lot of money on the production of the album and so that was the only way I knew to get some. There’s no retirement fund in our pension and in my profession.

Rock And Blues International: Oh, I understand. There’s not one in mind either. That’s okay. I just keep working. I’m not going to ever stop working. I’ll fall over taking pictures in a club or something, or whatever. But no retiring for me ever.

Bob Margolin: Yeah, this music business really does bring a lot of soulful people together and I think in a world of predators, this is kind of.... what you’re doing and what I’m doing are very honorable things to do.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I’ve been involved in the music business or aspects of the music business since 1970. And so this is my 53rd year, soon to be a 54th year, but I would not know how to do anything else. I think it’s kept me younger than if I had become a banker or something like that. At least mentally younger. I don’t know. What do you think? You’ve been doing this a long time. Are you still a kid at heart?

continued on next page

Bob Margolin (continued from previous page) Bob Margolin: I think inside, I can remember what it felt like to be a kid. I know what it feels like to be 74 years old. And from having been around much older musicians, I think I can get an idea of what it’s like to be in your 90s. As Pinetop Perkins was and as my amazing time defeating friend Bob Stroger, premier Chicago blues electric bass player is still out there and traveling by himself with his bass in a little gig bag with a suit rolled up very artfully along in there too, that he can just shake it out and put on a suit and be the best dressed person anyplace he goes. And then he gets up there and can play along with the band on his bass or can lead the band singing. And it’s wonderful to see somebody that’s almost 20 years older than me doing that. He’s going to be 90, I guess 93 in December. So I see what’s possible, but I can go back and remember what it felt like to be just starting to play the guitar. Or let’s say what gave me a real glimpse of what might be ahead was in 1970, that year you mentioned. I went to see B.B. King. I couldn’t believe that somebody that old could still play and sing like he did. He was 44 and I was 21 and I was right in there right underneath where he was playing. It was a high stage in Boston, and I was right there watching every note he played and trying to learn. And at one point, I have no idea why he did this because he certainly didn’t do it every night. But he said, does anybody want to come up and play Lucille for me, that’s his guitar. We can play some blues together and I levitated onto that stage and picked up B.B.’s guitar and played with him a good three years before I got into Muddy’s Band, and what an experience it was to be there and do that. I have no idea why he did that. But it was obviously a thrill for me that I still remember in detail. And you can’t get that no more. Nobody jams with B.B. anymore, much as they love him.

Rock And Blues International: No. Well, I probably kept you on the phone way longer than you were planning to be.

Bob Margolin: Yeah, I have another interview later this afternoon, thanks to the great Amy Brat, BratGirl Media and the VizzTone label group, but you asked amazing questions. You set the bar high. Thank you.

Rock And Blues International: Well, thank you for taking the time to talk to me, I really appreciate that. It’s gonna be a very long story.

Bob Margolin: As much of it as you want to put out there. Well, thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure for me. And without it being usually the curse of my interviews is that most people want to either ‘what’s the best this or that experience’ or who do you know that’s famous? Tell me stories about famous people and I can pretend I’m interviewing them instead of you is the feeling I get sometimes, but not now.

Thank you.

Rock And Blues International: It’s been my pleasure. I want to know about you. It’s great to know about your experiences with other people, but the story is about you. It’s not about them. When I get around to interviewing Eric Clapton again, I’ll ask him what it was like to play with you.

Bob Margolin: Well, he was always very, very nice to me and that that was certainly a thrill.

Rock And Blues International: All right, well, I’ll let you go. And you can tell Amy ‘next time, don’t put me on with someone that wants to talk all day’, because already we are at the end of the conversation and I’ve thought of a dozen more things to ask, but I’m not going to do it. I don’t want to run out of room in the magazine. I mean, I really want to include every bit of this interview in there.

Bob Margolin: Well, I appreciate you very much.

Rock And Blues International: All right. Well, I hope to see you in Texas one of these days. I’m down near Houston and I think I saw you here 20 years ago or something.

Bob Margolin: I’m good friends with Diunna Greenleaf.

Rock And Blues International: I know Diunna, too. She’s a friend of mine also.

Bob Margolin: We don’t get to play together as much as we used to, but I love her very much.

Rock And Blues International: She’s in Europe all the time. She very rarely plays around Houston, but she’s always jetting off to Europe and playing over there.

Bob Margolin: And that last album that she did last year is pretty spectacular.

Rock And Blues International: It is. It’s very good.

Bob Margolin: Glad she’s being acclaimed for it.

Rock And Blues International: Oh, yeah. All right. Well, I’m gonna let you go. You have a great day. Thank you so much for this time. It was a wonderful interview. I’ve loved every bit of it.

Bob Margolin” Thank you very much. I feel the same way. I appreciate you very much.

Rock And Blues International: All right. Talk to you later. Thanks.

Bob Margolin: Bye bye.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the interview with Bob Margolin. I certainly loved every moment of my conversation with him. In fact, it’s not as much of an interview as it is a conversation with one of the Blues most loved and appreciated musicians. Yes there were questions, but I really felt it was much more that just that. It turned out to be a very revealing story by Mr. Margolin about his past, his current status, and his future. It was also about the love of a guitar. That beautiful Gibson ES-150 guitar is featured on every song here and definitely gives this album a beautiful sound to it. In fact it kind of makes me wonder if this album would have even existed if not for that guitar. Perhaps the biggest inspiration for this album was that guitar. It was wonderful to hear how Bob and his ES were reunited after being separated for a while. That part of the story is very inspirational as well. Can you believe it, Bob’s fellow musicians were so impressed by seeing Bob reunited with that guitar for a performance that they joined together to purchase it and put it back in his hands again. For my dollar, I’m going to speculate that the real reason this album exists is because of that guitar, that beautiful Gibson guitar that Bob performed with for most of his life. I would like to thank Bob Margolin on a very interesting and revealing conversation and I would like to see everybody reading this go out and get a copy of his new album Thanks.

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Foghat’s Scott Holt Talks About The New Foghat Album Sonic Mojo

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Foghat (continued from previous page) Those legendary Blues-rockers, Foghat are set to release their 17th studio album this month on November 10th.

The new album is called Sonic Mojo and the first single from this album that has been released is titled “Drivin’ On.” “Drivin’ On” was actually co-written by the late Kim Simmonds from the English Blues-rock band, Savoy Brown. It was one of the last songs he wrote before he passed away just last December. In fact, Kim wrote three songs on the new album, “Drivin’ On,” “She’s A Little Bit Of Everything,” and “Time Slips Away.”

All three of these songs are co-writes with the members of Foghat. These songs are fantastic and well worth getting the album for, however there are 9 other fantastic songs on this album as well. The Foghat treatment is given to some classics on here that were written by the likes of B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Rodney Crowell, and Chuck Berry. Foghat performs some fantastic treatments on songs like Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land,” B.B. King’s “She’s Dynamite, Willie Dixon’s “Let Me Love You Baby,” Howlin’ Wolf’s “How Many More Years,” and Rodney Crowell’s “Song For Life.” In addition to these, the band got together and wrote some wonderful songs on their own also, like “I Don’t Appreciate You,” “Wish I’d Been There,” and “Black Days & Blue Nights.”

The second single that has been released from the band is another Kim Simmond’s song, “She’s A Little Bit Of Everything,” and the third single from the band is “I Don’t Appreciate You,” which was written by the four members of Foghat. Another surprise from the album is the tune, “Wish I’d Been There” whose lyrics were contributed by drummer Roger Earl’s brother, Colin Earl, who you may remember from his tenure with the band Mungo Jerry.

Maybe you remember their hit song, “In The Summertime.”

Another surprise from Foghat is the addition of guitarist Scott Holt into the fold. Scott contributed songwriting and vocals to the band’s last album, “Under The Influence,” but with the release of Sonic Mojo he has become a full fledged member of the band replacing Charlie Huhn who recently retired.

Scott is extremely happy about becoming the new lead singer of Foghat. As he tells us, he plans on being the last lead

singer of Foghat.

Roger Earl, one of the founding members of Foghat is really excited about how this album has turned out. As he tell us,. “I love playing and working with this band. During my almost 60year music career, I have had the honor of playing with some really great musicians. Lonesome Dave, Rod Price, Craig MacGregor, Erik Cartwright, Nick Jameson, Tony Stevens and Jeff Howell to name some that have graced this band.

Many have sadly passed, some have retired or moved on, but I have to say that the current lineup has been one of the most inspirational for me, personally.

Writing with Scott and Bryan has come easy. Words and ideas just seem to fall out at any time and another song is in the works. And Rodney’s input and bass playing has been invaluable. We are a band in every sense of the word.”

Adds Scott Holt, “I feel like SONIC MOJO is a perfect addition to the FOGHAT cannon. For over 50 years, this band has been a celebration of the varied art forms and genres that were created in this country. The pillars of Blues, Country, Soul, R&B and Jazz are woven into the fabric of this band at the molecular level. SONIC MOJO is a

Rock & Roll audio mojo hand. We convened our spirits and went down to the crossroads at midnight and put some Mississippi dirt, black cat bones, and moonlight into the bag, Kim Simmonds donated some soul, the spirit of Dave, Rod and Craig were the essence that created the supreme funk that is the finished product. A soulful expression, an offering at the altar of Rock & Roll.”

“Making a record is an emotionally and physically draining experience,” Holt continues. “As an artist you disengage every other part of your being and focus on the art…the task at hand.

You don’t record like it’s going to live forever, but you know it’s going to live forever. You forget to eat, to drink, you don’t sleep or rest until you’ve got your part correct, and then you rethink it until it’s pronounced “finished.” (You’ll always hear the part that you doubted, even after someone tells you that’s their favorite part.) This record was made under battle conditions. Roger was drumming with one good arm and would keep recording until the pain was too much…and then do another take.” continued on next page

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them back in 2016,. I think we started writing together then. I came in just to be a co-writer and just do some recording with them and it just progressed. We were supposed to write two songs for “Under The Influence” and we ended up writing 17, so we had all these extra songs. We put together another band, so we could release that record. That was called ‘Earl And The Agitators’. Then I just kind of kept hanging around the camp. I mean, anytime they had a recording project or some songwriting that they wanted to do, or if they just wanted to jam, I’m always a phone call away. So we were constantly hanging out with each other and just really enjoying each other’s company and feeding off each other creatively. When Charlie (Huhn) decided to retire last year, they asked me if I’d join the band and I said, “Absolutely”.

Foghat (continued from previous page) We had a chance to sit down with Foghat’s newest member, Scott Holt to find out a little about him and the new album, Sonic Mojo, and it really made for one interesting conversation about his past, Foghat now, and the future of Foghat, so without any further ado, let’s move on to our interview with guitarist Scot Holt of Foghat.

Rock And Blues International: Hello.

side of the coast, back across the U.S., up to the north, back over to California. I mean, who did this?

Scott Holt: Well, we’ve mastered the art of the dartboard tour.

Rock And Blues International: It seems like it. It seems like you’ve got a booking agent and he goes, let’s see where we put them next and he just tosses the dart at the board and whatever it hits, that’s where you’re at.

Scott Holt: Is this Kevin?

Rock And Blues International: It sure is. Is this Scott?

Scott Holt: Yeah, this is Scott. How you doing, man?

Rock And Blues International: Doing good. How about you?

Scott Holt: Doing pretty good.

Rock And Blues International: So you got a couple of nights off right now.

Scott Holt: Yeah, we’re off tonight and tomorrow night, and then we get started up in Boston on Thursday.

Rock And Blues International: I was looking at this itinerary of yours and from one side of the coast to the other 22

Scott Holt: That’s about it. But it does do wonders for your frequent flyer miles.

Rock And Blues International: Does it? So you’re looking forward to that vacation time when you can just jet over to Europe or something?

Scott Holt Well, I’m one of these weird guys that I really, really love my job and so I’m only looking forward to the next gig actually.

Rock And Blues International: Okay. Well, where would you like to start with this? We could talk about how you’re the new guy, but you’re really not that new to the band. You were on the last album they did.

Scott Holt: Right, right, I got with

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Rock And Blues International: Well, you did like eight songs or something on “Under The Influence”.

Was that just backing vocals, or were they lead vocals or a combination of the two.

Scott Holt: It was a combination of the two. There was a couple of songs I sang lead on and then there was some backing vocals and some guitar parts that I played, and just generally, just whatever would help create the songs.

Rock And Blues International: Well, it certainly prepared you for this.

Scott Holt: Well, you’d think it would.

Rock And Blues International: Well, it did, didn’t it?

Scott Holt: It was hard starting because it was such a daunting task.

When you step into a band like Foghat, it’s got a 50 year history and you have a responsibility to the history of the band, as well as to moving forward. And that’s the unique thing about a band like Foghat. We’re still making new music, still writing new material, still recording and still active as musicians. So you have to honor the history of the band, but you also have to keep one eye looking forward.

Rock And Blues International: Right, well with a 50 year history of the band, you’re the third lead singer.

Scott Holt: I tell I tell Roger all the time, I’m the last lead singer for Foghat. continued on next page

Foghat (continued from previous page) I intend to be here until the bitter end.

Rock And Blues International: Well, what was it like when they told you that Charlie was going to be retiring and they wanted you to take over the role? What was the first thoughts that entered into your mind?

Scott Holt: Well, it was really a shock, because what happened was I was actually down at the studio in Florida, where we do most of our recording and rehearsing and stuff. I was down there to help write songs for this album, but that was it. That was the point of my being there. And Roger comes out one day and says, I want to talk to you, which he never says that. So that immediately put me on edge. I was like, oh, no, what’s, what’s going on? And then he just told me that he got an email from Charlie that he was retiring, so would I like to join the band? In that instant, everything changed. We pivoted from working on the record to getting me up to speed on the songs that that we’re doing in the live set at the moment and that was my indoctrination. I spent two weeks just nonstop rehearsing and just listening to Foghat and eating and breathing and sleeping and trying to get my arms around it. And then it’s still taken me almost two years to get comfortable in the role. I don’t sing like Dave, I don’t sing like Charlie, I don’t play guitar like those guys, so I have to find where I fit into that. And then I also have to honor the spirit of Lonesome Dave and make sure that I’m holding that end up. Roger has been a great friend and he and Brian and Rodney have all been real patient and real helpful with me and supportive.

That’s another thing I love about this band. It’s genuinely a band, I mean, these four guys on stage together, giving it their all and everybody lifts everybody up. Brian and I kick each other in the pants playing guitar. He’ll play something beautiful, and I want to play something as beautiful, so we kind of trade off like that and it’s just a great situation.

Rock And Blues International: Well, with the change of a lead singer in a band, it changes the dynamics somewhat. When Charlie took over from Dave, there was a somewhat of a transition there. And now you’ve taken over from Charlie. So how do you think your vocals is going to affect the overall

sound of the band?

Scott Holt: Well, I think it already has, because, like I said, I don’t sing like Charlie, and I’m obviously a southern guy from Tennessee. My career started in the blues, and I’ve come up through the blues my whole career and so the upbringing. I think what I bring to the table is that sensibility, which is kind of a full circle for Foghat’s history. They started as Savoy Brown, which was essentially a British Blues band and I’ve kind of showed up and said, ‘Hey, let’s go back to the Willie Dixon songbook and see what else there is’.

Rock And Blues International: Okay, and how about your guitar work?

How do you think that measures up with the band? You’ve got an extensive history of playing guitar with Buddy Guy. I’m sure you learned a lot from those days in school.

Scott Holt: Oh, I learned everything from Buddy. That was my university. Carlos Santana told me that, he said ‘you’re at the university now,’ and he was right. Buddy’s a consummate showman, amazing guitar player and really an original. When you hear Buddy’s playing, you know it’s him within two or three notes. That’s something that I have always aspired to. I’ve always wanted to be identifiable in my playing. I’m not the fanciest guitar player. I don’t have all the cool licks, but what I play I play it with integrity and with enthusiasm, so my guitar playing in this band is just that. I’m Scott Holt, and I play Scott Holt guitar. That’s what I

want to bring to the band and they seem to be happy with what I brought.

Rock And Blues International: Well, sometimes playing a fancy guitar or flashy guitar solos or something can be a little detrimental to a project, especially something like Foghat. You have to become one of the members of the band. I mean, an actual member, and blend in with everybody else. So how do you think your guitar does that?

Scott Holt: Right, I think Brian and I work our way through it really well together. We’ve always enjoyed playing together. We know how to complement each other, how to stay out of each other’s way, how to support the other person. When one of us is playing a solo, the other one’s playing something beautiful underneath it that really makes it shine. I think that’s the thing. The real trick to a rock and roll band is the drums and all the great rock bands, it starts with the drums. With the Rolling Stones, it was Charlie Watts. With us, it’s Roger and so everything’s built around the drums and the guitars are just part of that sonic thing.

Rock And Blues International: Well, if you don’t have a good rhythm section, you just don’t have a good band.

Scott Holt: Exactly, exactly.

Everything starts with the beat. You can’t dance to a guitar solo. continued on next page

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you talking about? I don’t even know how to play an instrument.

Rock And Blues International: And then when you became 19, if you heard the same thing.

Scott Holt: You know, when I was 19.... well, when I was 20, I got the job was Buddy Guy. So, you know, at that point I was starting my path and I was excited to be Buddy’s guitar player. I was also young enough and green enough not to be intimidated by the pressure of it. I knew Buddy, was a great guitar player and a great blues man and I wanted to play the blues. But the gravity of standing next to Buddy Guy every night and playing guitar, and having the audacity to play a guitar solo on the stage with Buddy, or singing a song for Buddy Guy didn’t hit me until years after I left the band. What the hell was I thinking that I could do that. It’s like being Bruce Lee’s sparring partner or something, I don’t know? It’s was just, it’s really amazing to look back on it.

Foghat (continued from previous page) Rock And Blues International: I don’t know we’ve got solo guitars out there. They’re they’re still playing and people are still dancing.

Scott Holt: Well, that’s true, but as much as I love Segovia, I’d probably rather... if I wanted to dance I’d probably rather play “I Just Want To Make Love To You” or “Slow Ride,” “Pachelbel’s Canon” or something.

Rock And Blues International: Well, when you grew up, did you pay much attention to Foghat songs or was just another song on the radio to you?

Scott Holt: You know, they were part of the soundtrack. I can remember being in school and hearing “SlowRide” on the radio, just like you do today.

That’s another thing about this band, the songs hold up. You know you’re still hearing Foghat on the radio these days.

It’s not in an ironic way, but it’s because it’s a good song. And that’s kind of what they’ve always been, they’ve always just sort of been there as far as my life is concerned. And so, yeah, I’m a big Foghat fan, obviously, and have been, 24

but it wasn’t something that I really studied because I didn’t really start playing music seriously until I was 19.

Rock And Blues International: Well, when was the first time? How old do you think you were when you first heard your first Foghat song?

Scott Holt: I was probably probably 12 or 13. I was probably in middle school or something.

Rock And Blues International: If someone had walked up to you then and said, Look, you like that song? And you go, yeah, well someday you’re gonna be in that band, what would you have thought?

Scott Holt: Well, they could have told me that about anything that’s happened in my career and I wouldn’t have believed it, because it’s been a really magical trip I’m really grateful for.

I’m grateful for the whole journey, but I’m grateful for where I’m at right now.

But if somebody had told me when I was 13 years old, hey, someday you’ll be in this band, I would have said, What are

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Rock And Blues International: Right, now you’ve become a songwriter for Foghat, although you did it on the previous album, but now it’s even more important because you’re an actual member of the band. So what was it like to sit down and do some of the writing?

Kim Simmonds is on here? What was it like to add your thoughts into a Kim Simmonds song? What went through your mind on that?

Scott Holt: Well, I’ve been real fortunate, Kim and I were friends.

Around the time that I started hanging out with the Foghat guys, Kim was in their camp as well. They were friends and so we got to know each other pretty well. I was really humbled that Kim wrote us these three great songs that are on the album. He just sent them to us as demos. It was just him singing and his guitar, and maybe a click track. It was really up to us to make them into songs, to figure out how we were going to put them together. It’s funny, as a songwriter, to me it’s almost like a craft or a trade.

It’s just what you do and you just get to the work of doing it. I wasn’t intimidated or anything like that. It’s just my job to put these chords together and get these lyrics straight and figure out how to make this sound like a song. And that’s what you do.

Rock And Blues International: Well, let’s talk a little bit about your contributions to these three songs. I think continued on next page

Foghat (continued from previous page) “Driving On” was the first single released from the album. What were your contributions to that song?

Scott Holt: Well, that specific song. We got the demo and it was me and Roger, kind of sitting in the music room down at the studio where we do our recording and we’re listening to it.

We just kind of looked at each other and I said, Slim Harpo. And he just immediately said, ‘I got it. I know exactly where you’re going’. And so we just started playing what Slim Harpo might have played on that song, and added a dash of John Lee Hooker, and all of a sudden, the song came to life.

Rock And Blues International: There’s a lot of slide on this album. Are you doing the slide?

Scott Holt: No, no, no, that slide is all Brian’s department. And, in fact, I’m always the one when we’re recording saying “this needs to be a slide solo, this needs to be a slide.” I’m actually a guitar player that’s trying to get the other guy to play more. But yeah, he plays beautiful slide and I love to hear him play.

Rock And Blues International: Okay. the next Kim Simmonds song is “She’s A Little Bit Of Everything”. Yeah.

Tell me about that one.

Scott Holt: Well, we just approached it. I mean, it’s pretty much just speaks for itself. It was it was just a straight up rocker and it sounds like something that would have been on a Foghat album back in ’74 or ’75. It’s got those great amped up guitars and a really solid drumbeat which you always had to have. It’s just a great rockin’ song.

Rock And Blues International: I think the next single coming out is “Time Slips Away”.

Scott Holt: I think the next thing is going to be, “I Don’t Appreciate You”.

Rock And Blues International: Okay.

Scott Holt: And that song was a lyric idea that Roger had. He had a person, a business associate that he’d had a conflict with and he wrote him a letter to tell him how he felt about him and then he decided that he wanted to use

part of the letter to write a song. So, he hands me his lyrics and says, well here, put something to it. I didn’t know the guy that he was upset with and so I couldn’t get mad at that guy, so I had to channel somebody else that I didn’t like and write it about him. So it’s just a very nice, polite F.U. song to somebody that you don’t really appreciate.

Rock And Blues International: Well, it’s nice that when someone you don’t appreciate actually contributes to something positive for you.

Scott Holt: That’s true. That’s true.

That’s a little bit making lemonade out of lemons. I’ll point that out to Roger too the next time we talk, but for that song, we looked at each other and said, the Ramones, let’s do something punk with it. And so once again, you’ve got Foghat celebrating all American music, not just the blues, but country and r&b and soul and even punk.

Rock And Blues International: Well, that’s interesting. I would have never thought that Foghat would take a little bit of inspiration from the Ramones.

Scott Holt: You just never know where you’re gonna find your inspiration mostly.

Rock And Blues International: Right. Well, besides all the original songs on here, which we’ll talk a little bit about some of them. I’ve really liked the treatments that you’ve done on some of these others, like the B.B. King song, the Chuck Berry song, the Willie Dixon song, and the Howlin’ Wolf song. I love those treatments that you’ve done there.

They’re unlike the original versions, but

it gives it that special Foghat feel to it.

Scott Holt: Yeah, well, thank you for that. That’s again, keeping with the Foghat tradition. If you go back and listen to the early Foghat stuff, the way they would treat a Chuck Berry song like “Maybelline”, it doesn’t sound like Chuck Berry. It sounds like Foghat. And the way they did “I Just Want To Make Love To You doesn’t it sound like Muddy Waters, it sounds like Foghat. So what we wanted to do is reimagine, if Howlin’ Wolf had written the song and Foghat recorded it, what it would sound like, what it would sound like to do a B.B. King song as Foghat and I’m proud of what we ended up with.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I listened to “Mean Woman Blues” and the first thought through my mind is what would Elvis have thought if he had heard that?

Scott Holt: I don’t know, he might be freaked out by it. I was freaked out when Roger told me what he wanted to do with it because I love that song and I’ve listened to it since I was a little kid with Elvis’s version and Jerry Lee Lewis’s version, especially “Live from the Star Club”, which is one of the greatest live rock and roll records ever.

But he calls me up and he goes, ‘man, I want to do “Mean Woman Blues”’, and I’m like, ‘okay, cool’. And he goes, ‘but I want to do it as a Latin kind of Latin groove”. It completely threw me, I was like, ‘really?’ He goes ‘Yeah’. He goes ‘think about it’. So we got down to the studio and started whacking away at it and it took a couple of tries for me to continued on next page

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lent themselves to your style?

Scott Holt: Well, my first inspiration was Jimi Hendrix. That’s why I play the guitar. That’s why I wanted to play the guitar. I spent a long time just trying to sound like Jimi Hendrix before I realized that there’s only one Jimi Hendrix, and that I was never going to sound like anybody but me. I started just really listening to all the musicians that I listened to and their stuff shows up in my playing, but sometimes it’s so morphed that you can’t tell it. B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix are kind of like the trifecta for me and that’s where a lot of my playing comes from, trying to imitate those three guys.

Foghat (continued from previous page) figure out how to get it to bounce right, but he was right as always, and it turned out to be really cool... If we did done it like Elvis or Jerry Lee, it would just be another nice cover time that another band had done and anybody could do, but this version that we did is definitely Foghat’s own personal take on it.

Rock And Blues International: Oh, without a doubt, without a doubt. It doesn’t even really resemble the Presley song.

project. It was just a sheet of lyrics and I just kind of looked at it and we all talked about it and decided, well, it’s about Hank Williams. it’s about missing the ‘Hank Williams Show’, so it’s obviously going to have a Country taste to it in some way. So we just started banging it out and there it came and then once we get together, the creativity starts flowing and the things just fall into place.

Rock And Blues International: Well, it definitely has a Country twang to it and it sounds almost like there’s a steel guitar on there.

Scott Holt: No, not at all.

Rock And Blues International: When Claude Demetrius was writing songs, he started out with Louis Armstrong, and from Louis Armstrong to Elvis and now you’ve picked up on it and moved it to Foghat. That’s quite an evolution of one of his songs.

Scott Holt: Well, I’m honored to be in that train wherever I’m at in it.

Rock And Blues International: So let’s talk through a couple of these other songs on here. “I wish I’d Been There Now”, that that was written by Roger’s brother as well.

Scott Holt: Right. All right, that was written by Colin, Colin Earl, who of course was in Mungo Jerry. He had given Roger the lyrics a few years ago and Roger just kind of been hanging on to him and so he pulled them out for this

Scott Holt: Well thank you for that.

That’s a combination of me playing a really clean telly and Brian playing those beautiful slide licks that he We just kind of, you know, we morphed it into a Foghat, a Country Foghat song.

Rock And Blues International: It’s a new dimension for the band.

Scott Holt: Well, it’s a transition. I grew up 45 miles from Nashville, so I’ve obviously got a pretty strong Country influence in my musical tastes and Roger and I are both big fans of Johnny Cash.

We share that together. Roger is kind of like me. We listen to all kinds of music and like all kinds of music, and it all ends up filtering into your playing in some way.

Rock And Blues International: What artists in the past was one of your inspirations? How do you think they’ve

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Rock And Blues International: Well, I’m sure that Buddy Guy was just a helluva influence on you. You virtually had to learn every lick that he did just to keep up with him.

Scott Holt: I was really blessed and he always treated me so well. He’s still treats me well, but he was a mentor. And he never refused to tell me anything. I would ask him questions. I’m sure it got annoying that we’d be sitting backstage and I’d say, ‘How did you play that John Lee Hooker lick that you did last night?’

And he would show me and he just nurtured my talent and tried to help me in every way that he could and gave me 10 Great years to get my career started.

And, yeah, I learned everything from him.

Rock And Blues International: And now he’s gonna retire, supposedly, which I think it’ll just be from touring. I don’t think that... When they say they’re retiring from touring, they still pop up on stage.

Scott Holt: Well, the thing about musicians is there is no retirement plan, because a musician is not a musician by choice. You know, it’s not what you do, it’s who you are. It’s like I told him when he first announced the farewell tour, I said, Well, what are you going to do to sit home and watch fishing shows all day? He laughed. He said, No, he said, I’ll do gigs. He said, I’m just not gonna do 300 one-nighters. And I understand that. I mean, Buddy’s 87 years old and he’s seen it all and he’s done it all and he deserves to enjoy it.

Rock And Blues International: I saw his last concert here in Houston. He was fantastic. continued on next page

Foghat (continued from previous page) Scott Holt: He always puts on a good show. I’ve never seen a bad Buddy Guy Show.

Rock And Blues International: I haven’t either. I’ve seen him several times over the years and it’s always an eye opener, no matter what he’s doing.

Scott Holt: Yeah. And the other thing is, my wife and I were talking about this the other day... you can’t be at a Buddy Guy Show and not smile. And you won’t even realize that you’re smiling or why you’re smiling, But it’s just Buddy is just such an electric performer that he just, he just exudes joy.

Rock And Blues International: Well, he’s such a personable person on stage as well.

Scott Holt: Yeah, he’s one of the three best entertainers I’ve ever seen in my life.

Rock And Blues International: Who were the other two?

Scott Holt: Elvis and Prince.

Rock And Blues International: Prince, he was extraordinary as well. I’d seen Prince perform. I’ve never seen Elvis Live. I’ve seen clips of Elvis performing, the concert film, and all those strange movies that he would do, filled with nothing but women running around in bikinis or whatever.

lights went down and the music started, and then he came out, it just exploded the place.

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, them $10 tickets, I’ll tell you.

When I started going to concerts, the tickets were like, two and a half dollars, three dollars.

Scot Holt: Exactly, exactly.

Scott Holt: That’s called let’s make the money fast.

Rock And Blues International: Well, he did.

Scott Holt: My parents took me to see Elvis when I was nine years old. It was my very first concert. He played in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which is not too far from where I live. I remember they really discussed whether or not they were going to take me and my little brother because the tickets were so expensive, tickets were $10. Of course this was back in ’75. $10 was a little more than it is today, but I remember we went to the concert and just going in before the lights even went down, the building just felt like it was pulsing. I can’t describe it, but the energy that you could just feel in there and once the

Rock And Blues International: I’ve been going that long. And then they went up to five and it was like, Oh, this is highway robbery.

Scott Holt: Yeah, yeah.

Rock And Blues International: Now it’s nothing to pay $300 for a ticket to a show.

Scott Holt: No, now it’s a car payment.

Rock And Blues International: You really have to like that artist to shell out $300 for a ticket and $60 for a parking place.

Scott Holt: Exactly. And then, you gotta you gotta go out to eat, or you gotta

get a babysitter. There’s all kinds of extra costs that go into it. But, you know, that’s why, of course our tickets aren’t that hard for most of our shows, but that’s always in the back of your mind, let’s make this show worth it. And that’s our goal as a band is we want people leaving and going ‘I want to come back and see another Foghat show.’

Rock And Blues International: Right, right. Let’s talk about another song on the album here. “Black Days and Blue Nights”. I found that one to be really interesting as well. Tell me about that song. What does that mean?

Scott Holt: Well, that’s a tribute to a Rod Price, which was the original slide guitarist in Foghat. Roger and Linda had written down a bunch of lyrics, Linda’s our manager and also Roger’s wife. And they had written a bunch of lyrics of things about Rod. I never met rod and didn’t know him, so I just didn’t feel like it was my place to really write a lot of stuff. I took mostly what they had written and just sort of rearranged it and kind of made it poetic in some ways, so it would kind of read right when you’re singing it.

And then we just, recorded it as a tribute to Rod, so it’s all slide guitar work.

Brian, like a rented mule, would play continued on next page

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Houston called Rockefellers and I would sit over to the corner of the stage there and watch him every show that I could that he went there and just sit over there.

He’s very nice guy. I talked to him several times over the years.

Scott Holt: Yeah, he was. B.B. was a really sweet, generous person. I remember one time. we’re on the road.

We were on a package tour and we were at the airport sitting at the gate waiting to leave early in the morning and it just so happened that Buddy’s band and B.B.’s band were both on the same flight. So I’m sitting in this chair and B.B. comes and sits down next to me and then in a few minutes, one of his guys brings in a plate of food for breakfast. I don’t realize it but I’m probably staring at B.B. King and he’s sitting right next to me and he turns around and he goes, ‘you want some food’ and like, ‘oh, no, no, no, sir.

No, sir. I’m fine. Thank you.’ But it was a cool little, little moment. He was always very generous and very kind.

Foghat (continued from previous page) that song. It would be more slide here, one more slide. But it turned out really good. I’m really proud of it.

Rock And Blues International: When you look at this album, what do you think is the most personal song to you with your songwriting and your guitar work on there? What would be the most personal song to you?

Scott Holt: That’s a good question.

I don’t know that I’ve thought about it that much. I’m real proud of the Blue stuff. One of my responsibilities in the band is reminding people of the Blues artists that came before and I make a point every night of saying Willie Dixon’s name and Muddy Waters’ name and Jr. Wells’ name during the course of the show as I’m introducing songs and stuff because I want those names to stay in the atmosphere and for that music to stay alive. So the most personal songs for me on the record are probably the Howlin Wolf’s “How Many More Years” and B.B. King’s “ She’s Dynamite”. I love those two songs.

Rock And Blues International: All right. Had you ever performed with B.B. King.

Scott Holt: We did a lot of touring with B.B. when I was with Buddy back 28

in the 90s and I never missed an opportunity to stay on course. BB would close the show as expected, so I always got the opportunity to stand on the side of the stage and watch his show after we had performed. I never missed an opportunity to do that because he was one of my biggest influences and just watching him play every night was magical.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I knew that he and Buddy Guy toured quite a bit over the years.

Scott Holt: Yeah.

Rock And Blues International: I just wondered if maybe you had a chance to get up there one day with him.

Scott Holt: You know, it’s funny.

He’s really the only person I’ve ever asked if I could play and he kind of, I don’t know what it was. He didn’t say no, but he didn’t say yes. It was sort of open ended and I was too scared to push the subject, so I just backed off and just basked in the opportunity to get to stand on the side of the stage and watch him play.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I always enjoyed watching him perform and he was such a personable person. He would play at a club in

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Rock And Blues International: I’ve never seen him lose his temper. I’ve never seen him get upset. I’ve never seen him frown. It’s just that big smile continuously.

Scott Holt: Yeah, yeah, he was one of a kind. There will never be another B.B. King. That’s for sure.

Rock And Blues International: So what’s it like now playing with Foghat?

You’ve had a chance to go on the road now and hit a few dates as a member of the band. I don’t know if you went on the road when they did the “Unusual” album. But what’s it like now to be a member of Foghat? What do you look forward to at the shows and what have you learned from stepping on stage with the rest of the guys in the band?

Scott Holt: Well, it’s a great honor and a great privilege to get to play with them. They’re three of my dearest friends. I love making music with those guys. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned because like I said, when I started to be the singer of the band, there was a long steep learning curve. The first couple of rehearsals were pretty ragged for me and it had me actually doubting if I could even play. I had to remind myself, Hey, man, you’ve been doing this for 30 years. I think you got it. So I had to I had to keep pressing on that. But it’s just, it’s been a great experience. I always consider myself a guitar player who sings. And in this band, I’m a singer who continued on next page

Foghat (continued from previous page) plays guitar. So those two sides of the brain have to kind of flip around and it’s given the opportunity to really focus on the entertainer side that I didn’t have to in the past when I was just playing guitar.

Rock And Blues International: Well, what’s the hardest part of becoming the lead singer?

Scott Holt: Remembering all the words. That would be the hardest thing probably is just keeping track of all the lyrics, because occasionally I’ll blow a line somewhere. Roger will pat me on the back and go, ‘Well, it’s a lot of words.’

Rock And Blues International: Well, Foghat has has quite a repertoire.

What is an average show like now?

Scott Holt: We usually play about 75 to 90 minutes. And we usually ask them if we can play longer. And sometimes they’ll say yes, and we’ll even go a little over that. But we start out high energy, and we don’t let up. It’s the explosion of enthusiasm for us because we’ve been waiting since the last gig to play this gig and so that excitement is genuine. The enthusiasm that we put forth every night is genuine, because this is what we do and this is what we’re here for and it’s all about the music.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I know you’re not going to be able to play every song of this new album on your set,so what songs are you doing or pulling out of the new album to perform on this tour?

Scott Holt: So far we’ve played the two singles that have been released, We play “She’s A Little Bit Of Everything” and we play “Drivin’ On”, and we’ll probably add “I Don’t Appreciate You” after it’s released. We’ve actually already played it one night and “Moving Forward”. That’s always the conundrum with Foghat. You’ve got new songs that you want to play, but you but there are songs that people are coming expecting to hear. I wouldn’t want to go to a Foghat show where they didn’t play “Slow Ride” or “Fool For The City” or “I Just Want To Make Love To You”, so you get to play some of those songs too. So it’s always a dilemma trying to figure out what songs don’t get to be played.

Rock And Blues International: Well, yeah, with 17 albums under the band’s belt, that’s a lot of material. Even with that we’re talking over 200 songs.

Scott Holt: Exactly, exactly. And when we were gathering to figure out the setlist for this year, we were talking with each other and somebody would say, well, we could take out this song and somebody else would go Oh, no, I like that one. And then somebody would go, well, we can take this out. And we did this for about, I don’t know, for a long time. and finally I just pointed at Roger and I said, ‘Well, this is your fault, because y’all got too many great songs.’

He just kind of laughed, and we finally quit armwrestling and figured out how to get the set together. But when you have that many classic songs and they’re all good, it’s a tough choice.

Rock And Blues International: Well face it. You just need to do a six hour set.

Scott Holt: Well, that’s what it could end up being. There’s a couple of times when we’ve had to play a shorter set and the real hard dilemma is trying to figure out how to do a 45 minute Foghat show?

Rock And Blues International: Well, yeah. You leave a song out and you got a fan out in the audience going, ‘dammit, I want to hear that song’.

Scott Holt: Yeah, I came all this way to hear “Home In My Hand” and they didn’t even play it. And so you know, you’re never gonna satisfy everybody’s desire for the deep album cut that they’re looking for, but we try.

We play the staples, and then we put the deep cuts in there and then we also try to put the new stuff in too, so it’s a pretty well rounded show. And then the thing with us is, we play everything with the same amount of energy and integrity and the fans all had been really beautifully accepting of the new stuff, as well as the old stuff. So it all kind of goes together for us.

Rock And Blues International: Well, there’s got to be at least two or three classic songs, classic Foghat songs that you play, that you just love playing and you can’t wait to get on stage.

You’ve been practicing these songs.

You’ve got it down to pat. What three classic. Foghat songs do you just love playing every night?

Scott Holt: Of course “Slow Ride”.

You gotta love that. Like I said, we grew up listening to that song and I get to play it with Roger every night and it’s an honor. I love playing that one but I love “Home In My Hand”. That’s a great song that we all sing harmonies on so I love the extra vocal treatments that we do to it. Rodney sings a song right now called “Slipped, Tripped, And Fell In Love” and I love that song, and it’s great because he’s singing it so I get to just be a guitar player on that one.

Rock And Blues International: Well, speaking of Rodney’s, you do a Rodney Crowell song on here, “Song For Life”, that’s been covered, near as I can tell, that song has been covered by about 17 artists from Johnny Cash to John Denver to Waylon Jennings, to Alan Jackson to Alison Krauss. How did you pick that song and why did you pick that continued on next page

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Scott Holt: Well, you know, they they did it on their first record. That’s the thing about Foghat, is if you go back to their history, they actually did a Rodney Crowell song before. they did “Ain’t Livin’ Long Like This” on one of the albums. They’ve drawn from all genres of American music since the very beginning and I think that’s one of the most profound things that the band has done, is they’ve celebrated American music from the time they started.

Rock And Blues International: All right. Well, what haven’t we talked about that we should have, that I totally missed. There’s bound to be something I totally missed on this interview so far.

Scott Holt: I don’t I don’t know.

Man. I think we covered everything.

Foghat (continued from previous page) song?

Scott Holt: Well, that was Rogers idea. He was driving one day, and the song was on the radio and the first line of the song is “I don’t drink as much as I ought to” and he just loved that line. So he tracked it down and figured out what the name of the song was. When we’re putting together songs for this record, he says I want to do this Rodney Crowell song called a “Song For Life”, so with the modern age, all I had to do was go to YouTube and pull it up and it’s straight up Country. You know, three, four time, ballady kind of thing and I’m listening to it, and I’m going well, how in the world is this gonna be a Foghat song? I kind of pushed back a little bit. I was like, ‘are you sure you want to do this song, because it’s, you know, and he’s like, ‘yeah, yeah, I think we can make something cool out of it. So this was one of the first things we were kind of messing with. We were working on it and just kind of, by accident, I started playing a rhythm part that Roger liked and we kind of built the song up from there, but it’s turned into a really, I don’t know, maybe my favorite songs on the record that we did.

Rock And Blues International: Well, it’s definitely a lot different from the very first version that came out by Jonathan Edwards. It’s like light years apart.

Scott Holt: I would say it’s probably different from all those versions you just mentioned too. I can’t 30

imagine that Johnny Cash would have done it like we did it. But, but that’s fine, we’re, we’re gonna try to do our own thing with it.

Rock And Blues International: Well, what do you want people to know about the new album, the new band?

How do you think this album stacks up in their catalog of music?

Scott Holt: Well, I want people to know that this is a statement from the band, that the band is a active, forward moving band. It’s a celebration of the history of Foghat. We draw from all genres of music, just like Foghat’s done forever, and I hope they hear the love and the joy that we put into it. I mean this was really a project of love, just the four of us together and just recording and bouncing ideas off each other. It’s a real, real creative force, this band. So I hope they hear that in the record and I hope they like it as much as we did.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I loved every moment on here.

Scott Holt: Well thank you.

Rock And Blues International: I mean, every song from the opening track, “She’s A Little Bit Of Everything” to Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land”. I love the variations in styles although it does sound like Foghat from the beginning to the end. And I’ll tell you, taking a Chuck Berry song and making it sound like a Foghat song is a chore in itself.

Rock and Blues International • November 2023

Rock And Blues International: You sure?

Scott Holt: Yeah.

Rock And Blues International: You know, as soon as we hang up, you’ll be going ‘Oh, damn, I should have told him this’.

Scott Holt: He didn’t ask me about this. Oh, man. So you have you lived in Houston all your life.

Rock And Blues International: I’ve lived in Houston since ’68.

Scott Holt: Okay.

Rock And Blues International: So I’ve been here quite a while, but I’ve been in other places. I was born on an island off the coast of Canada and I’ve lived all over the world, but I’ve lived in Houston since ’68.

Scott Holt;. Yeah, so you must love it if you’ve been there since ’68.

Rock And Blues International: Well, I wouldn’t know where else to go.

If I move up north I get cold, right. I can’t afford to live in California.

Scott Holt: No one can. Even the people that live there can’t really afford to live there.

Rock And Blues International: Maybe Nashville I don’t know.

Scott Holt: Nashville is growing so much now it’s crazy man. It’s count the cranes when you go to Nashville. continued on next page

Foghat (continued from previous page) They’re just building high rises on top of high rises and the traffic’s a nightmare.

So as soon as I get off the phone with you, my wife and I’ve got to run up to Nashville for a minute. I’m looking forward to riding with her. I’m not looking forward to driving to Nashville.

Rock And Blues International: I’ve got a cousin that’s a session player in Nashville. He plays the fiddle.

Scott Holt: Wow. Good for him.

Rock And Blues International: He’s been doing that for forever. He used to be in Boxcar Willie’s band.

Scott Holt: Really?

Rock And Blues International: Yeah.

Scott Holt: That’s cool. I remember Boxcar Willie. They used to do a telemarketing thing for Boxcar Willie albums. That’s the only way I knew him was the TV commercials late at night.

Rock And Blues International: All right. Well, so you’re getting ready to leave to go somewhere now. Now I’m holding you up.

Scott Holt: No, not at all. I’m enjoying talking to you, man. I appreciate you taking time.

Rock And Blues International: All right. Well, I appreciate you talking to me. This is just, it’s been very interesting so far. Really, anything else that we need to let people know about the album or the tour? Other than you won’t be coming to Houston on this tour, which is very depressing.

Scott Holt: I like Houston too. I like Houston, I want to come there. I’m hoping that we get a date there next year.

You know, we’re dedicating this record Kim, to his memory. I mean, he essentially gave Roger his start in music back with Savoy Brown, when Roger and Dave and Tony Stevens left Savoy Brown, to form Foghat. That started that part of their journey. But Kim’s hand was the thing that started it all off. So to have him write some songs for us that we could record on the album brings that story kind of full circle. And the fact that we were all friends with Kim, and we all

loved him and appreciated him as a musician, I think it’s great that we get to dedicate the record to him.

Rock And Blues International: Most definitely What a legacy. Some of the last songs he ever wrote are on this album, which is fantastic.

Scott Holt: Yeah, yeah.

Rock And Blues International: All right. If there’s nothing else, I probably ought to let you get on the road.

Scott Holt: Alright, man, I really appreciate talking to you.

Rock And Blues International: All right, well it was a pleasure talking to you and hopefully one day we’ll see you in Houston.

Scott Holt: I hope so. Man. I hope so.

Rock And Blues International: Okay, thanks for your time. We’ll talk again.

Scott Holt: All right, man. Have a good one.

Rock And Blues International: Okay, bye.

Our thanks goes out to Scott Holt for gracing us with this interview about Foghat. You could probably tell that Scott is very excited and proud to become an official member of Foghat

now. He had been hanging out and contributing to the band for quite a while now before he got the invitation from Roger Earl to join. And now he plans on staying with the band till the very end.

You can also tell by this interview that the next best thing for Scott besides being in the band is joining them onstage performing all the classic Foghat tunes that have been a part of our lives for decades along with all the new songs that the band will be producing in the future.

If you’re reading this before November 10th, you have a great album to look forward to getting. If you’re reading this after November 10th, then you need to get out there and find your copy today anywhere you can. This is going to be a great addition to you Foghat collection.

Now, in 2023, Foghat consists of Roger Earl on drums, long time member Bryan Bassett (Molly Hatchet, Wild Cherry) on lead/slide guitar, bassist Rodney O’Quinn (Pat Travers Band) on bass and the newest member of Foghat who has played with Foghat side project Earl &the Agitators for 8 years, vocalist and guitarist Scott Holt (Buddy Guy).

These four members remain true to the original spirit of Foghat. They play in reverence to those that have gone on.

They understand that Foghat exists solely to share the music they create with anyone who wants to hear it. They deliver each and every night, with giant smiles on their faces, for they are doing the same thing that every one of their fans is doing: Enjoying another Foghat

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Rico Migliarini - The blues live in my house

By Edoardo Fassio When Riccardo “Rico” Migliarini first became aware of the blues, back in the 1970s, it was then emerging rockstar, Edoardo Bennato, who instilled the passion in him. Later came the flashing encounter, in his hometown Gubbio, with Buddy Guy & Junior Wells performing live, but what won him over were the immediacy, sincerity and stage presence of the Neapolitan singer-songwriter, armed with guitar, harmonica and a set of stories sang in his language that were well suited to the form of the blues.

Here was born not only Rico’s successful career as a harmonica player cemented by years of studying the secrets of Sonny Terry, James Cotton, Slim Harpo, Little and Big Walter - but also his feeling that the blues was a universal language, and somehow you could even sing it in Italian.

For twenty years Migliarini was the frontman of the highly esteemed Rico Blues Combo, which won everyone’s favor without giving up anything in terms of quality, creativity, and inventiveness. Assembled in 1996 with Maurizio Pugno, in five albums, also distributed overseas, the band produced a very personalized blues, distant from the standards. It explored swinging nuances, paying uncommon attention to the originality of lyrics and melodies.

Now that his friend, guitarist Pugno, is busy with Sacromud, who will represent Italy at the next International Blues Challenge, Rico is ready for a turning point, bringing the blues back “to his home”, that is, to people like himself, that speak his tongue. His new opus, which declares Suono i blues a casa mia (I play the blues in my home), chooses beats, metrics, and harmonies typical of neoclassical blues, often integrated with temptations from Latin, pop or imaginary movie scores, but is composed and sung exclusively in Italian.

Bassist Mirco Capecci and drummer Giuliano Bei guarantee full cohesion to the project, thus reproducing three quarters of the old Blues Combo, along with guitarist Edoardo Commodi.

Proud of the vitality of his new-born baby, the harmonica player and bandleader exhibits as proof the title track where, after an introduction a la Sonny Boy Williamson, he overtly declares its intentions: “like a hurricane, a kind of madness, I play the blues at my home, that’s all I know.”

The surreal “Manca il Treno” (“The train is missing”), a train time rocker, laments the absence of the railway in Gubbio, while the chromatic instrumental “Sicilian Heart” lends an ear to Santo & Johnny. “È finito lo show” (“The show is ended”), in mambo time, one of the songs that hit the mark the most, along with the TV cabaret tongue-twister “Inseparabili” (“Inseparable”), announces that “The show is ended.” Time to start over again, right away.

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Rock and Blues International • November 2023

Rico Migliarini - I blues abitano a casa mia

By Edoardo Fassio Quando Riccardo “Rico” Migliarini si entusiasmò per la prima volta per il blues fu Edoardo Bennato, emergente superstar del rock nazionale, a trasmettergli la passione. Più tardi arrivò il fulminante incontro dal vivo, nella sua Gubbio, con Buddy Guy & Junior Wells, ma a conquistarlo furono l’immediatezza, la sincerità e la presenza sul palco del cantautore napoletano, armato di chitarra, armonica e di un repertorio di storie raccontate nella sua lingua che ben si acconciavano alla forma del blues.

Qui nacque non solo una fortunata carriera di armonicista - cementata da anni di ricerca per carpire i segreti di Sonny Terry, James Cotton, Slim Harpo, Little e Big Walter - ma anche la sensazione che il blues era un linguaggio universale, e con determinati accorgimenti si poteva cantare anche in italiano.

Per vent’anni Migliarini è stato frontman di una formazione di grande prestigio, Rico Blues Combo, che piacque a tutti senza cedere nulla in termini di qualità, estro e fantasia. Messa insieme nel 1996 con il chitarrista Maurizio Pugno, in cinque album, distribuiti anche oltre Oceano, produsse un blues personalizzato, lontano dagli standard.

Esplorava sfumature swinganti rivolgendo una non comune attenzione all’originalità dei testi e delle melodie.

Ora che l’amico e partner Pugno è impegnato con i Sacromud, che rappresenteranno l’Italia alla prossima International Blues Challenge, quella vicenda è almeno temporaneamente conclusa. Rico è pronto per una svolta, e riporta i blues “a casa sua”, ovvero a quelli come lui, che parlano la sua lingua. Il nuovo lavoro, che dichiara proprio “Suono i blues a casa mia”, adotta beat, metriche e armonie del blues neoclassico, spesso integrato da tentazioni latin, pop o per colonne sonore di film immaginari, ma è composto e cantato esclusivamente in italiano.

Garantiscono la piena sintonia al progetto il bassista Mirco Capecci e il batterista Giuliano Bei, riproducendo così tre quarti del vecchio Blues Combo, e il chitarrista Edoardo Commodi.

Fiero della vitalità del nuovo nato, l’armonicista e bandleader esibisce come prove la title track, che dichiara i suoi intenti dopo un’introduzione sulle linee di Sonny Boy Williamson: “come un uragano, una specie di follia, suono il blues a casa mia, è tutto ciò che so”, lo strumentale cromatico “Sicilian Heart”, con l’orecchio a Santo & Johnny, o lo scioglilingua da cabaret televisivo “Inseparabili”. Nella surreale “Manca il treno” è un ritmo ferroviario a lamentare l’assenza della ferrovia a Gubbio, mentre uno dei brani più azzeccati annuncia a tempo di mambo che “È finito lo show”. In realtà è già arrivata l’ora di ricominciare.

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Don Dokken Talks About The Band’s New Album Heaven Comes Down PhotobyLeahChris 36 Rock and Blues International • November 2023

Dokken (continued from previous page) Dokken fans will have a chance to rejoice this month as the legendary rock band has finally released it’s new album, Heaven Comes Down. Heaven Comes Down was released at the end of last month on October 27th through Silver Lining Music and is the band’s 13th album. Fans have been clamoring for a new Dokken now for about 10 years and it’s finally here. As in true Dokken fashion, this new album is filled with 10 great songs that carry on the fantastic sound that only Dokken can deliver, but with a few surprises.

“The long anticipated new Dokken album, ‘Heaven Comes Down’, is finally done and the first single is titled ‘Fugitive’!” declares Don Dokken. “The inspiration for the lyrics came from what seems to me to be an uncertain world these days. It’s an up-tempo Rokker as are many on the album. I don’t know what the future holds for our world, so I decided to take a step back and watch it all unfold… Yes, I guess I’ve become like many these days a fugitive from life.

Hence the title!”

As Don Dokken trades the streets of Los Angeles for the serene wilderness of New Mexico, he also embarks on a new chapter in his career. Working with engineer Bill Palmer and Kevin Shirley, Don has crafted what just might be the best songs he’s ever written. Gone are the lyrics of chasing women and fast cars. His new focus is a new sensibility focused on the more mature aspects of life and with that has created a wonderful album of new music with a more mature sound to it. He has finally reached that height of spirituality that he has always wanted to achieve.

No, he’s not preaching here, he’s singing with a new found attitude and a drive unlike he’s ever had before as he conquers all the setbacks that he has incurred during the last few years. Yeah, he’s still rockin’ and you’re going to love all the songs on the new album. If you want some searing guitar-work, you’ve got it here as guitarist Jon Levin pulls out all the stops, especially on songs such as “Fugitive.” Looking for Ballads? You’ll just love “I’ll Never Give Up”. Perhaps you’re looking for a

mystical experience. Well then take a good listen to “Saving Grace” and “Gypsy”. It’s all here in Heaven Comes Down. The album even concludes with something just a bit different for Dokken as Don Dokken and guest guitarist and producer Bill Palmer end it with a beautiful acoustic piece titled “Santa Fe” that traces Don’s journey from the street of L.A. to the warm wilderness of New Mexico. Who would have thought that Don Dokken could tell his life story in just four minutes, but he does it and with style.

This wonderful return to the world stage is produced by Don Dokken himself along with Bill Palmer and was mixed by the master of mixes, Kevin Shirley who has worked with so many artists, we only dare mention a few here such as Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, and Joe Bonamassa. Without a doubt, this just may Dokken’s best album yet. Don’s partners in crime on this new album are Don Dokken (vocals), Jon Levin (guitar), Chris McCarvill (bass) and BJ Zampa (drums).

As Don moves forward in life now, he doesn’t really want to concentrate on

the past as much as he wants to reinvest in the future. “I’m so tired of hearing about the fighting and the ‘this’ and ‘that’… this is about a new record,” he declares, “a new record with my new band. It’s been a long process, but at the end of the day, I think we have lightning in a bottle.” – Don Dokken We sat down with Don recently to discuss the new album as well as his setback with his arm being paralyzed and found it amazing that despite going through this turmoil, he is just as focused as ever on his future. Don is surrounded by his fantastic band and they have encouraged him to go on and Don is more that ready to take the bull by the horns and continue on delivering the great music he has been known for. We would like to share that interview with you now.

Don Dokken: This is Don Dokken.

What’s your name?

Rock And Blues International: My name is Kevin. How you doing? continued on next page

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sleeping on the streets. They’re shitting on the streets. They’re living under tarps.

There’s motorhomes parked all over Hollywood, expensive Boulevard, people living in and it’s not cool.

Rock And Blues International: All right. Well, let’s talk about something a little happier. Let’s talk about the new album, your new album, “Heaven Comes Down”. It’s been quite a while since you had an album out. So can you comment a little bit about why it took so long?

Dokken (continued from previous page) Don Dokken: I’m sorry. I see it now. I told my label I said the conference calls are really tough. I apologize if we get dropped because I live so remote up in the mountains that we have shit phone service, so anyway, we’ll see how it goes.

Rock And Blues International:

Don Dokken: Yeah, it’s amazing you can hear me.

Rock And Blues International: Well, you’re living in New Mexico now.

Right?

Don Dokken: Yep.

Okay.

Don Dokken: Can you hear me?

Rock And Blues International: Yeah.

Don Dokken: Can you hear me all right.

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, I can hear you just fine.

Don Dokken: Okay. That’s amazing.

Rock And Blues International: What, that I can hear you?

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Rock And Blues International: So what made you move to New Mexico.

Don Dokken: Radical difference.

I’ve been in LA my whole life. You know, like a beach guy, surfer. I lived down Manhattan Beach, born and raised, I just wanted to change. So then I left the beach, sold my house, bought a house up in the canyons of Hollywood Hills in Beverly Hills for 10 years and I didn’t like that. I just honestly... it’s just too crowded, man. Too much going on, like the homeless. I don’t know where you are, but it’s happening everywhere. I mean, I was in L.A. a month ago or two months. There’s homeless people

Rock and Blues International • November 2022

Don Dokken: 10 years.We didn’t think we’d make another record because we made our careers in the 80s, early 90s and the world changed. There’s no record stores, people don’t buy CDs or records. You can bust your ass and spend 10s of 1000s of dollars making a great album and it comes out on Monday and on Tuesday, it’s up on the internet for free downloading. So I thought, what’s the point, but then things happen. I got paralyzed. It’s common knowledge on the internet. I had surgery and my right arm was paralyzed, so I can’t play guitar anymore or piano. I can’t compose music. And then the bass player got his arm shattered, using therapy for a year, guitar player had surgery. It’s just one disaster after the other. And after you go through the depression, I finally said ‘Screw this, let’s make a record’. We had the luxury, I guess, of COVID for two years. We couldn’t play, unless you could play for 500 people or less. So we just slowly started writing music because we had nothing else to do. I tell many of the journalists, when I write a record, I don’t just write 10 songs. I write 20, or 25. I write every day and you pick the best of the best and make a record. So I started looking at all my old tapes, all my old demos, song ideas, and this is good, this is crap. And slowly, over a year and a half, we came up with 14 great songs.

Unfortunately, they’re only putting 10 on the CD. The four songs they took off, we actually loved them, but they had their reasons. So we just started making an album. It took a long time. We didn’t plan on making any more records. It’s expensive. You have to have a studio. We thought well, with Dokken, we’ve had so many hits over these years, 10 million records. We can just tour and play the hits forever. But I got the itch, I wanted to write new music and I wanted to write a record that was up tempo and positive lyrics and stories. instead of me talking about love found, love lost, and I miss continued on next page

Dokken (continued from previous page) you That seems to always have been my go to in my career, and I said I don’t want to write about that anymore. I’m over it. So all the songs in this record are very up and they’re more like stories, like “Fugitive” and “Gypsy” and “Over The Mountain” which we’re working on right now for the next video and they all have subliminal messages. I tried to write a bunch of songs that were positive to give people inspiration in these hard times.

Rock And Blues International: Well, it sounds like “Santa Fe” is more of a biography for you.

Don Dokken: Boy, talk about the easiest song to do on the record, it turned out to be the hardest song on the record.

How do you write your whole life journey from L.A. to Santa Fe in four minutes? I had four minutes and that was an accident song. I was just in the studio when I talked to my producer, Bill Palmer and he asked me, ‘how’d you end up in New Mexico’ and I was just talking about living in L.A. and I liked it and just didn’t like it anymore. I just wanted more peace in my life and more quiet on some land and I found a very eccentric looking old house that kind of looks like a church. We were just talking and he had the microphone on and he was recording me and then I played it back and I just started grabbing little pieces of my story of my life and just dumb luck inspired. I did my whole trip with the lyrics. I wrote my own story from being in L.A. to being here in four minutes.

Rock And Blues International: Well, that’s quite a feat in itself. It’s hard to even sit down and even talk about a fraction of that in four minutes.

Don Dokken: Yeah, I pulled it off.

I don’t know how. Everybody in my band said Jesus, Don, you wrote your whole life story in four minutes. You know, living in L.A., never had a reason to leave, cruising down Sunset Boulevard, stay up all night with my friends, go to work, travel around the world, missing home, yada yada yada. So I said it was most difficult song to write on the record, which should have been the most simple. We decided at the last minute I

Jon Levin was gonna put drums and guitars and solos and my producer Bill said that I think you should just leave it alone. Just an acoustic guitar and you singing, kind of like a folk song.

like 12 times’. So I took a left turn.

Things change when you get older, you see the world differently and even musically. You just see things differently.

Rock And Blues International: Right. Well you’ve still got a lot of rockers on here.

Rock And Blues International: Right.

Don Dokken: And on Dokken records, we are always known for all our records to end our albums with a burner, “Tooth and Nail,” “Till The Living End,” “ Lightning Strikes Again,” “Paris Is Burning”. We would always end the record with the best song, so I took a left turn and ended the album with a chill song like “Santa Fe”.

Rock And Blues International: That’s a wonderful change.

Don Dokken: I liked the song, band loves it. I really honestly didn’t think it would end up on the record. I thought the record company would say ‘well, what the hell’s this all about. Give us a rocker, give us a typical Dokken, you know, uptempo, double bass, burning guitar solo, rocker to end the record’. And I said, ‘Well, I’ve done that,

Don Dokken: Oh, yeah. I’m working on “Over The Mountain” right now in the video and it’s a tough one.

We’re doing it in AI animated, like “Gypsy”, but it’s, for some reason, it’s turned out to be a real pain in the ass trying to get the storyboard for “Over The Mountain” and there’s songs like “I Remember”. I love that song, and “Is It Me Or is it you?”. That’s kind of a psychological song about relationships, like are you the bad guy, or is it her, or you? Everybody’s been through relationships where you start getting along and you’re thinking, is it my fault, or is it her fault? That’s what that song is about, who’s the one in making this relationship go to hell in a handbasket and that’s what that song is about. continued on next page

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couple of years and they saw where I lived, they came up and we were playing here in New Mexico at a venue. I can’t remember who said it, and they just said, man, you’re like a fugitive. You’re like you dropped out. You’re reclusive, you’re hiding out. I have no neighbors. I have nothing. I look out every window of my home and it’s just mountains and desert and sunsets and no traffic and no people. No houses next to me. And somebody just said, yeah, it seems like you’re a fugitive from life. And I said, hum, fugitive from life. Yeah, that’s kind of true. Yeah, I’ve kind of gone from the rock and roll lifestyle of the Rainbow and the girls and the partying and all that. I’m over it. I’m too old for all that stuff.

Rock And Blues International: Oh, you’re never too old for all that stuff.

Dokken (continued from previous page) Rock And Blues International: Well, you’ve got this song on here, “I’ll never give up”. So tell me a little bit about that one.

years and my right arm is still paralyzed.

So I will never play guitar again. I will never play piano again, or bass. And I said, Well, it’s over boys, we can just go on tour and play the hits and I don’t know who said it, the band, it was Chris or BJ. ‘You can’t give up Don. If you can’t play guitar, you got a great guitar player. John Levin will help you, we’re all gonna write and somebody’s made some offhanded comments, and you can’t give up. And I went, Oh, it’s a good time with this song.

Don Dokken: Well, it was probably inspired, unfortunately, about my botched surgery. I just was having problems with my left hand, two and a half years ago it has been now, playing guitar on tour with Queensryche. I opened up for them acoustically and I was starting to struggle playing an acoustic guitar. My fingers weren’t moving the way I wanted them to and I Rock And Blues International: Tell said, there’s something going on with my me about the song “Fugitive”. hand. So I went to the doctor and they gave me an MRI and they said, your Don Dokken: “Fugitive” is about spinal cord is crushed. I said, Oh, that’s another offhanded comment. It seems like I always write songs during just a great news. So I had surgery, and unfortunately, it went bad. I woke up, my conversation with somebody. They’ll say right hand was fine and I’m right something and it kind of sparks me and I’ll go, huh, and then I’ll just start typing handed. I woke up and my whole arm out lyrics. I can’t write, I can’t hold a from the shoulder down was paralyzed pen, so when my band came to visit me and they said, give it time and it will after I moved to New Mexico after a come back. It’s been three and a half 40 Rock Rock and and Blues Blues International International •• November November 2020 40 2023

Don Dokken: You know, I’ve gone to L.A. and it’s different now. In the 80s you’re around them. Yeah, girls wear miniskirts and push up bras and then showing off their new boob job and their butts hanging out. And the world now is PC. If you say anything to a woman, like you’re ass looks great, they can sue you for sexual harassment. So we have to remind ourselves, when we meet people not to say things like that. That was okay in the 80s. A girl walks in dressed to the nines, I compliment them. Now you compliment them and they say you’re harassing me. We have to zip your lip.

The whole world’s like, you have to check everything you say or somebody goes after you. It’s just the world’s changed. People now come in jeans and T-shirts and that’s my audience. I look out now and people are just dressed in regular street clothes. As you know in the 80s, everybody had big hair and aqua-net and they’re dressed up to go to a concert. They get all dressed up but that that’s not the way it is now. It’s a very young audience. We have a very eclectic audience now. I see people in their 20s, 40s, 50s, 60s and upward. We do meet and greets, and I meet these younger people in their 20s and I saw them in the front of the stage singing all of the lyrics and I asked him how do you know our songs. You weren’t born wherever these songs were made and they say well, my mom and dad got married and they got jobs. They buy a house and they stopped going to concerts and they give their record collection to continued on next page

Dokken (continued from previous page) their kids. And I meet a lot of kids that say, not kids but young people, that say we got turned on to Dokken but we were only 14. We couldn’t come see you.

Then you guys broke up. So now they’re in their 20s and they can come see us.

When I talk to the older fans, I hear the same thing a lot. And they say when I was in college, or I was in high school, Dokken was the soundtrack of my youth.

I’ve heard that many, many, many times from people. And I’m like, great. So I realized there’s a lot of nostalgia involved in what we’re doing now. It’s nostalgia. People go to see bands from the 80s and it brings back the memories, maybe simpler times and better times. So there’s nostalgia involved and there’s the younger audiences now. We’re playing for a whole new generation that just got turned on to Dokken in the last couple of years, and our audiences are now four or five, 6,000 people and I’m like, holy shit.

So it’s pretty cool.

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, I got turned on to Dokken when you first came out.

Don Dokken: Yep. “Breaking The Chains”. 1980 was a long time ago and you know, we still play that song live.

Rock And Blues International: Well, it still sounds as fresh now as it did then.

Don Dokken: I agree. And I say to the audience when I’m on stage, some of you people won’t know this song. I’m going to play the first hit I ever wrote that came out in 1982 in America, and it’s called “Breaking The Chains” and it still stands up today as good as it did over 40 years ago. A good song’s a good song.

Rock And Blues International: Exactly. Back to the album. What was the easiest song for you to write on this album?

Don Dokken: God that’s that’s a hard question. It’s like having seven kids and saying, which one’s your favorite?

Rock And Blues International: I didn’t ask your favorite one, I just said

Chris McCarvill which is the easiest. Which just really came to you and kind of just flowed naturally.

Don Dokken: I was in L.A. at Jon Levin’s house and he was playing me all these guitar licks and saying what do you think of this? What do you think of that?

And then he goes he had some other songs, ‘I wasn’t going to play these for you because they’re not typical Dokken guitar riffs’ and I said ‘well play it for me anyway. I want to know where you’re going. What does it mean Dokken sounding, it is what it is’. And he played me “Is it me or is it you?” It’s kind of a bluesy, Whitesnake-ish kind of guitar bluesy riff, something we had never really did in Dokken and he started playing it for me and I just grabbed some paper and I just wrote it like in a half an hour. I didn’t write it, I just started singing and I’d say ‘oh, hang on. I guess I got a better lyric here’ and plug this in and ‘Oh, hang on. I got a better lyric Levin’. I just spent about an hour and it was done, done, done done.

Rock And Blues International: Wonderful. Let’s run over a couple of these other songs. “Gypsy”. Are you a gypsy now? Or how does that enter into it?

Don Dokken: No, that’s a parable.

That is a... How do I put it, more of an esoteric type of lyric I wrote, that I do live in New Mexico. We have a huge Navajo Nation here. I do see a lot of gypsies down in Santa Fe, when I go into town. And “Gypsy” is about hunting and searching for answers. You can talk to a psychiatrist or you can talk to a psychologist. You can talk to your friends and “Gypsy” is just kind of about this woman that I come across. It’s a story... come across in the desert and that’s the lyric. Gypsy wants to tell me I’ve lost my way got no place to go. So it was just kind of a story about... this woman’s a sage and she’s got all this knowledge and she’s like 85 years old and I sit around the campfire and she gives me all this sage advice. And that’s what that song is about.

Rock And Blues International: Great! continued on next page

Don Dokken: I was inspired.

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Bop”. It’s just not my style. I’m not. I’m not knocking Poison, but I had to ask Bret Michaels what’s that “Unskinny Bop Bop” mean. He goes, it’s about strippers, you know, “Unskinny Bop Bop.” I go oh, okay. I had no clue what was about. It was about being a stripper I think he said, but I don’t write like that.

You know, I, I just don’t and it’s probably because in the last 40 years of my life I’ve read hundreds of books from Thoreau, Walt Whitman, to... I can name a dozen brilliant writers. So reading all these books, I felt these writers were geniuses. They didn’t write stories like that. So it kind of influenced me to write, I guess you could say more intelligently.

Rock And Blues International: Perhaps with more of a purpose in it?

Dokken (continued from previous page) Rock And Blues International: Okay, you said you’re doing a video.

Don Dokken: Yeah, we’re working on our third video now which is “Over The Mountain”.

Rock And Blues International: Tell me about “Over The Mountain” and tell me a bit about the video.

Don Dokken: Yeah, well I’m struggling with the video to be honest with you right now. They sent me the first draft. It’s animated and I don’t like it. I am not happy with it, so I’ll tackle that later on today. And “Over The Mountain” is again, my way, the way I talk, think, and just instead of saying, I’m lost, I can’t find myself, I need to find happiness, in just normal conversation or talking. “Over The Mountain” was written about being lost in L.A., and I didn’t want to be there anymore and I wanted to get out of there. So like the first line, “I was sailing on an ocean 42

blue, no end in sight, only an ocean blue.

That’s just a very poetic way esoterically of saying, I was trying to find my way to a better life. When I said I traveled so far the sun was shining on the horizon over the mountains to better days. It’s just a poetic way of saying, I’m looking for something better over the mountain to better days. Yada, yada, yada, goes on and on and on. I can’t remember the lyrics right now. I lost a bit, I found my way. And so the video is about, I’m on a ship, like an old pirate ship and I’m sailing along and then it gets to the beach and the ship wrecks and I start climbing the mountain and the video gets to the top of the mountain and you see like the Shangri la, type of city, like Tibetan temples and golden buildings and like Utopia. And that’s what the video storyboard is about right now. But that’s song is all just esoteric lyrics. I’ve changed my style of writing. I realized I think people are smarter than we think they are sometimes. and you don’t have to write a song like “Unskinny Bop

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Don Dokken: Yeah, I mean, if you’re gonna write a song, why not have a message for somebody? I kind of got inspired years ago, I remember I wrote “Alone Again”. It’s just a ballad about a guy and a girl and he’s missing her and back in those days there was no computers. There was no cell phones and people used to mail us letters. Our girl that took care of the band would wait a couple of weeks and send us this huge bag of mail and some would be to George and some to Mick and some to Jeff and some to me and I read a lot of letters from people that were in mental hospitals and were suicidal and they felt despair. They told me in these letters, wow, you’re famous and you’re living a life and even you get lonely and even though you miss people and they said that it would inspire them to try to get better and think more positive and get out of their dark darkness, being depressed or suicidal or hope, a feeling of hopelessness. And I get a lot of letters and they say, well, even Don Dokken gets down and even Don Dokken gets lonely. You know that whole songs about being alone and It inspired them to say, if he can pull out of that, I can pull it off so I started thinking about that, and I started changing my writing style.

Rock And Blues International: You wanted to help people a lot more than before, instead of just... Well, it sounds like you just wanted to help people more.

Don Dokken: Yeah, I mean, if you’re gonna write a song.... I’ve met every musician on the planet and I’ve continued on next page

Dokken (continued from previous page) had a lot of musicians say,’I just came out to L.A. because I wanted to get famous and get rich and buy a mansion, have a Ferrari, and have a bunch of girls and I can name a lot of musicians that are still into that. And I thought, well, there’s more to life than fancy cars and a big house and having money. And there’s more to life than that and I don’t see the world that way, maybe because we got lucky and we made a lot of money and we got famous. And I thought, if I’m going to write songs, why not have a message, a hidden message. I don’t think I should insult my fans to think I have to write these very juvenile lyrics anymore, because I’m thinking that that’s all right, oh, people are not stupid. They’re intelligent. So I thought I don’t need to write what I would call trite lyrics. So every song in this album has a message about, be positive, live your life, there’s always a better day tomorrow. And yeah, you might wake up some afternoons, which I still do. I’m totally bipolar. You know, I wake up, and I’m totally blue. I don’t want to do anything. I should be up on my property, cutting trees and trimming and pulling weeds and all that crap. But I just wake up sometimes, and I’m down and losing my right arm was a very, very tough thing to eat for three years, because I can’t do the things I used to do, like washing dishes and making the bed and just simple things like mopping the floors. I’ve tried some time with one hand really hard, right, because my right arm was just dead. So I had my blue days, and I had my happy days. The simplest things in life in New Mexico that make me happy is when I’m watching the sunset, and it’s orange, and purple, and pink, and yellow’ These beautiful sunsets, you don’t really get that in L.A. because there’s too much smog. So my inspirations now come from a lot of different input. And most recording studios have no windows.

You’re in a dark room with four walls, soundproofed and now my recording studio is just solid windows overlooking mountains and desert plains and trees, and it’s just a dip in inspiration.

Rock And Blues International: What was the inspiration with “Lost In You.” Is “Lost In You” about you or another person, or with an idea? What is

BJ Zampa the subject in that?

Don Dokken: Last in us about probably about my first love 50 years ago, and I couldn’t escape. She left me and I just couldn’t let her, I couldn’t let her go for a long time. So that’s where the lyric comes lost in. In other words, I’m so deeply, involved emotionally in you and now even though the relationship has ended, and even years later, she would come into my mind and I would think about or think what the hell am I doing? I’ve had lots of relationships.

Most of them always fail and I always say, it’s probably me. It’s probably not them. So “Lost In You” means lost in your soul, like you’ve got me spiritually.

I’m lost inside of you and I can escape you. And I’m sure a lot of people go through that, 1000’s, hundreds of 1000’s.

Rock And Blues International: Right. How about the song “Saving Grace”. Some of these are very inspirational titles in themselves.

Don Dokken: Yes, “Saving Grace”.

It’s self explanatory. “Saving Grace, guess I left it in that other place”.

“Saving Grace, It’s human nature to get caught up in your own life. We’re all somewhat narcissists. We’re caught up in our own lives and our family and we have kids and our homes and our jobs

and we get caught up in our own lives.

At some point, hopefully if you live long enough like I have, you want to find saving grace. You want to have some grace in your life you want to be nice to people and kind to people and not be a prima donna and don’t be arrogant and try to have love. Even when a homeless person walks up to you and they’re filthy dirty, and they’re like, do you have a dollar, I sometimes would say, I don’t really like to give money to the homeless a lot. I’m not there now. I’m thinking they’re just gonna go get fentanyl or oxycodone or a bottle whiskey and then I catch myself and I say, Well, you know, they’re having hard times, man. They’re homeless, living on the street. I don’t know their story, but I shouldn’t pass judgment on what their circumstances are. I think I wrote “Saving Grace” when I was flying into Burbank and there was literally about two miles on Sepulveda of 100 motor homes and people are living in their motorhomes and lost everything.

They’re sitting on the side of the road because of the wide thing on Sepulveda and I was leaving the airport to avoid traffic and it was like ‘What the hell’s going on’. There’s like 100 motorhomes, and people are just sitting out with chairs and barbecuing and you can tell they went up a telephone pole and are continued on next page

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Dokken (continued from previous page) bootlegging the electricity to run Rock And Blues International: their air conditioning. And for a moment, Okay. When someone listens to the I thought, why don’t these people get a album, what do you want them to come job? Why don’t they get a job? You away with after listening to this album in know, COVID has gone down now. particular?

COVID happened! Everybody quit working! And I think I caught myself Don Dokken: I want them to come thinking why are these people just sitting away, hopefully, that after a 10 year on the side of the road waiting to get hiatus, if it’s our last record, which it their stimulus check every week, or get probably is... I want them to come away their ATM card so they can go out and buy groceries. The government gave him with... well Dokken went out with a bang. They put out a great record, but we $500 a week. That’s a lot of food. And I think I caught myself thinking it’s not for didn’t have to. I could still play in my 80s. Paul McCartney and there’s a ton of me to pass judgment on them. I don’t know their backstory. I don’t know how musicians out there. What is it, Willie Nelson’s 90 something. He’s still out they went from having a normal life to there playing. He doesn’t need the living on the side of Sepulveda Boulemoney. He doesn’t need the glory. He’s a vard in a piece of crap, beat up, legend. I think at some point in your motorhome that probably barely runs. I career, if the only thing that drives you to don’t know their circumstance. And keep going as a musician is money and a that’s when it came into my head, I bigger house and a better car... I don’t should have more grace and not pass think that’s a good reason to continue judgment on people’s situations. And that’s what that’s what “Saving Grace” is performing. You should perform because about. you love performing, and I still do.

44 Rock and Blues International • November 2023

That’s why we have six shows coming up next week. I like being onstage and feel the rush of the people with their fists in the air singing the lyrics I’ve written in my lifetime and big smiles on their face and singing our lyrics. It makes me happy. It gives me happy feelings. So my world’s changed. People know what I believe in and none of my friends say, ‘Oh, you’re wrong. You’re wrong’.

People believe what they believe. And maybe because they have low IQs. I remember when Mick “Wild” Brown left the band four years ago, we were all in SUV driving to a gig and we were talking about my son, Tyler who’s a pilot and he flies for United Airlines and he flies the big giant 767, the biggest jets they make and he flies all over the world.

And Mick said something to me because he reads the dark web and reads all this bullshit and Mick said, Well, you know, the world is flat. We don’t know what’s at the end and just the whole band, the crew were just thinking he was kidding us, right. Like you’re not serious, right?

You’re not serious. Yeah, the world’s flat. I said, Well, what’s at the end?

Nobody knows he said, I said, Well, Mick, you should talk to my son because he flies around the world, it’s round. And there’s gravity and Mick really, truly, passionately, told us that the world is flat. And we don’t know where the end is. It’s just a big, giant, flat piece of dirt.

And it goes on for millions of miles. And I said, Well, maybe you should educate yourself, Mick. They have telescopes.

There are millions of galaxies and anybody that believes that we’re the only intelligent species out of... Now we’ve discovered with the new telescope, millions of other galaxies and planets.

But Mick was really serious. He really said, I believe the world is flat. And we just kept thinking he was kidding around.

So we’re trying to explain to him about gravity and the moon. This man, he just didn’t believe this. So the point I’m making is everybody believes what they believe. I thought that was something we all believed 3000 years ago. So I was shocked. Mick’s a bright guy intelligent, that he reads too much of these crazy things on the internet and we’re all just dumbfounded. So the point I’m making is everybody believes what they believe.

Rock And Blues International: Right?

Don Dokken: You think the world’s flat, okay. You don’t believe in continued on next page

Dokken (continued from previous page) God, okay. You know, you believe that when you die, you rot in the ground and you have no soul or spirit, okay? You know, it’s not for me, to try to convert them and try to open their eyes, it’s not my position.

Rock And Blues International: Exactly.

Don Dokken: Things like that, conversations like that. I go, holy crap.

And now it makes me understand that there’s radicalized people, and they believe, either you believe what we believe in or we’re gonna kill you. It’s insanity. I gotta run, because it’s 1:30.

And I’ve got my next interview.

Rock And Blues International: All right, well, thank you for talking to me about this. I certainly wish you the best with all of this. I’ve seen what you’ve gone through lately. I see you as more of an inspiration to people. You’ve been able to overcome certain things that have happened in your life and you seem to have prospered from it in a way, at least spiritually.

homes all over the place. I was 14 and I didn’t have some rich upbringing. I had to fight my way and I always said, I want to be a musician. And my father was a well known musician. And I remember, I told him... he asked what are you going to do, go to college, are you going to be in the military, I said, I want to be a musician. And I’ll never forget it. My father, who was a very successful musician said, Don, the chances of you making it in the music business are one in a million and I said, Dad, I’m going to be one and that inspired me. And I went to the one and I got it.

Rock And Blues International: That’s great. Well, we have one more thing in common then because I was adopted out of an orphanage in St. John’s, Newfoundland in Canada.

Don Dokken: Oh, yeah, I know where that is. So you know how it was.

Yeah. You know, 20 kids sleeping in little cots in a big giant dormitory, the old school converted into an orphanage and it was hard times.

Rock And Blues International: It

Don Dokken: Spiritually, and musically. After my arm got paralyzed, it definitely changed. They say you go through three things. First, you go through depression. Then you’re angry, because the doctor butchered you. And then you want revenge. And I can’t wake up every morning now that I’ve lost one of my limbs with hate in my heart, and anger. There’s no point. It’s not going to change anything. I’m not getting my arm back. And I have to keep that in mind when I get up in the morning and do my meditations. There’s no point waking up every morning hating. And I am just boggled by what’s going on in the world right now. It’s just boggles the mind.

Rock And Blues International: Right.

was.

Don Dokken: My family believe that... they always said... my brother was super smart. Ricky’s really smart. My children are successful. I was the dark sheep of the family. Trust me. You know, I had my hard times. I’d spend weekends in jail for stupid things back in the days when we didn’t have brake lights and they gave you a ticket and you didn’t go fix them. They did arrest you for no brake lights. And then have the county jail. Now what are you in for murder?

Rape? Bank robbery? What are you in for Don? Broken taillight.

Rock And Blues International: Yeah, it’s embarrassing, isn’t it?

lights and I didn’t go and fix them because I couldn’t afford it and they changed those laws, thank God. You know, you don’t go to jail for parking tickets anymore. So you know, I would just say I wasn’t on the path to success and music saved my life. And I’m not trying to be trite about it. It’s music that saved me.

Rock And Blues International: You’re right. I think it’s wonderful.

Don Dokken: Thousands of musicians saying ‘How’d you make it? I said, Well, maybe half talent and a lot of luck. Right place, the right time, and I’m very grateful. I’ll let you go Kevin.

Rock And Blues International: Okay. It was a pleasure talking with you.

Don Dokken: Take care boss.

Rock And Blues International: Goodbye.

As you can tell by this interview, Don Dokken is more focused than ever and is determined to make everything work. He is very proud of the new album Heaven Comes Down and considers it a new beginning for him and the band. He is also very content to accept the possibility of this possibly being the last studio album, but is not resigned to that. From what we’ve learned here, he has a backlog of songs from this recording and the drive and ambition to create new music, so we don’t expect this album to be his swan song. We expect to still be hearing a lot more from him in the future. I’d like to thank Don Dokken, Doug Weber and the folks at Silver Lining Music for setting up this great interview with Don and I hope to be talking to him again down the road when he follows up this album with his next masterpiece. Thanks so much Don, you’re an inspiration to all of us!

Don Dokken: Yeah, I had no brake Don Dokken: It’s sad. It’s sad. So the point you said, this record, my spiritual enlightenment, or whatever I’ve gone through, and my paralysis, and never been able to do the one thing that saved me since I was nine years old when I lived in an orphanage and then I was raised in foster homes. I was in an orphanage and then I was in foster

Follow Dokken Online At: Website: https://www.dokken.net/ FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/DokkenOfficial YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DokkenOfficial X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dokken Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dokken_official November 2023 • Rock and Blues International 45

Conversations With The Professionals

by John in Houston

Presenting A Whole New Sound Reminiscent Of The Great Era Of Rock Crank Up The Silence, the soft spoken, laid back intellectual group of creatives off stage that transform into a multi-dimensional mega-rock presence on stage is, simply stated, outstanding! Their original compositions carry a flavor of originality that, on one side, is like a habanero hot sauce that stings with every bite but you love it to the max — and on the other side a presence, overflowing with personal messaging that reaches the heart a completely different way. That is Crank Up the Silence, and this on-stage delivery is by design, well thought out. The design comes through, it communicates, it rocks the house, and on another plane Crank Up The Silence also presents mind-blowing, thought-provoking material.

This combination keeps bringing the crowds back.

Plus, they have captured this presence on high res 4k video as well as in high fidelity audio recordings captured at Sassafras Studios in Houston, Texas, USA. John Edward Ross, Owner/Producer, shares: “Working with Crank Up The Silence is a joy, we share a commitment to musical creativity and quality as well as a way of working together that’s full of fun and good communication.” Currently the band is back in the studio recording a creation that is a vast departure from their norm and therein lies the beauty of this multi-national gathering continued on next page 46

Rock and Blues International • November 2023

Page 2 - Conversations With The Professionals of top shelf professionals. A group of seasoned musician from both the USA and abroad. The Nordic, Celtic, Caribbean, and American collaboration blends together exceedingly well, yet does so with distinct ideas constructed from unique experiences and varied cultural back grounds. At the introduction of the era of specialty rock with the Moody Blues melodic trance and then later Jethro Tull’s technicality, no one could have imagined the mind blowing effect their contributions would go on to captivate internationally. Some fifty plus years later enter Crank Up The Silence, the modern embodiment of such creativity can be witnessed first hand on You Tube through videos such as “Stand Up Tall”, a driving rock number that incites participation but does not lose the blend of musicianship that often comes with poor mixing. “Can’t Take That Away” is another example of one of their high quality YouTube listings, only this one reveals the polar opposite of the driving, foot tapping experience just mentioned. This on-screen performance envelopes the viewer, the listener, with dramatic cinematic flair while the music and the lyrics meld with this storyline of love lost. The first video, a live performance gig shot in hi-res format and the second a dramatic story line presented in story-telling lyrical narrative through onscreen portrayal and precision musicianship. Crank Up The Silence is forging a whole new era for innovative rock music, and if you haven’t caught them live, this is one show you will not want to miss. To learn even more about the band and their music: crankupthesilence.com linktr.ee/Crankupthesilence

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master pianist and songwriter in his later years.”

Rebennack recorded “Qualified” (co-written with Jessie Hill) for In the Right Place, his sixth and biggest-selling album that was released on Atco Records in 1973 and featured his signature song, “Right Place, Wrong Time.”

Dr. John passed away in June 2019 at the age of 77 after a long and colorful career as a singer/songwriter associated with New Orleans’ melting pot of blues, jazz, funk and R&B. A six-time Grammy Award winner, Rebennack was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by John Legend in 2011. His posthumous Things That Happen That Way album was nominated for a Grammy for Best Americana Album in 2022.

Blues Traveler Release Their Version Of The Dr. John Hit “Qualified”, The Third Single from The Band’s Upcoming Blues Traveler’s Soul Album Listen: https://s.disco.ac/dhwtrgfcnqqt Watch Visualizer Link: https://youtu.be/SNxwoTT3B0k Veteran rockers and jam band icons Blues Traveler have announced the release of “Qualified,” their cover of the Dr. John classic song and third single from the band’s 15th forthcoming studio album, Traveler’s Soul.

“We wanted to pick a deeper cut and ‘Qualified’ hit the bill perfectly.” “Dr. John is one of the singular artists in American music,” added Wilson. “From session guitar player in his early years to

“Qualified” is a funky cover of another New Orleans stalwart, Dr. John (Malcolm John Rebennack Jr.), that features a swinging harp solo and Crescent City-inspired vocal performance by Blues Traveler’s John Popper, as well as a stirring turn on the ivories by Ben Wilson – returning the favor for one of his primary musical influences.

11.03.23 11.08.23 11.09.23 11.11.23 11.12.23 11.14.23 11.16.23 11.17.23 11.18.23 11.20.23

“We knew we needed to do a Dr. John song, because our keyboardist Ben (Wilson) is such a huge fan,” said guitarist Chan Kinchla about the choice.

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Blues Traveler consists of John Popper (vocals, harmonica), Chan Kinchla (guitar), Tad Kinchla (bass), Ben Wilson (keyboards) and Brendan Hill (drums). With three gold-selling records, one platinum album, and the 6x-platinum opus Four highlighted by the Grammywinning “Run Around,” Blues Traveler’s 14th studio album, 2021’s Traveler’s Blues, represented a career highlight, earning a Grammy nomination last year for Best Traditional Blues Album.

“We had so much fun with Traveler’s Blues that we wanted to try something similar but with a different style,’” recalls Chan. “We have so many influences, going from hip-hop and blues to pop, rock, and R&B. We wanted to honor soul and R&B and challenge ourselves by trying our own take on some of our favorites from those genres.”

BLUES TRAVELER 2023 FALL TOUR DATES Crystal Grand Music Theatre – Wisconsin Dells, WI Rialto Square Theatre – Joliet, IL Manchester Music Hall – Lexington, KY Brown County Event Center – Nashville, IN SKyPAC – Bowling Green, KY Tannahill’s Tavern – Fort Worth, TX Downstream Casino Resort – Quapaw, OK Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort – Hot Springs, AR IP Casino Resort & Spa – Biloxi, MS Montgomery Performing Arts Center – Montgomery, AL 11.21.23 Ryman Auditorium – Nashville, TN

Rock and Blues International • November 2023

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March 2021 November 2023 ••• Rock Rockand andBlues BluesInternational International 73 49 August 2023 Rock and Blues International 69

Fred Hostetler Releases His New Single “Rain Walking” 50

Rock and Blues International • November 2023

Fred Hostetler has just released his new single, “Rain Walking”. The single was self-produced, recorded, and performed and written by Fred himself. Eric Troyer contributed additional vocals and keys to this composition as well as mixing the project for Fred.

Casting a mood of reflection, acoustic guitars and keyboard blend together to create a poignant floating layer of support to Hostetler’s lyric vocal. It is a state where ‘rain walking’ is the natural course of life. Efforts and failures and the resulting growth end with resolve to keep walking through it all one step at a time.

Still standing, moving on with a sense of gratitude for an experience that has ripened into a valued moment in time.

Fred tells us that “There is something about walking in the rain that reaches into the soul. Here, the story of personal travails and vicissitudes translates into a universal life experience. It can at once be uplifting, evocative, and sentimental, pulling up memories of struggle and hardship, but somehow harmonizing it all with a joy that seems to emanate from the experience itself. I call it ‘rain walking’”.

‘Rain Walking’ (F.Hostetler) Just a walking in the rain Just thinking how we met Something magic happened then And it’s a feeling, that hasn’t stopped yet My clothes are soaking wet, and I’m trying, trying to forget All the rain, all this walking in the rain...rain walking, rain walking Time and distance softly talking To the tune of dropping water Caught in the rain your face splashes Cross my mind in crazy crazy sunshine patterns A rain of change swept us apart Rearranged our days, our separate ways Now all, that remains, is rain walking...rain walking And they say it’s raining ...all over the world tonight But I’m still feeling the heat of the warm warm sunlight You brought...to life, yeah ...

I’m still rain walking...

All music can be purchased from the artist’s website: fredsheartradio.com.

Available for streaming and downloading at Amazon, Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify, and nearly everywhere.

Fred Hostetler has been a blue spruce in a forest of music sequoias,

Fred Hostetler Releases His New Single “Rain Walking” journeying through blues, folk and the rock era cycling through many aspects of the music business and playing a supporting role to other musicians. He has worked with Jeff Beck, Billy Squier, Graham Parker, Johnny Winters, The Knack, been on stage with Buddy Guy, Mick Taylor, Jeff Healy, and recorded with the Grammy winning producer Jack Douglas. For 9 years he was the manager, rhythm guitarist, and co-writer for the popular southern California blues band Blue By Nature with Karen Lawrence and Rick Dufay formerly of Aerosmith. Transitioning to his move to India he entertained in hospitals and senior centers with ‘Fred’s Folk and Blues Revival’, a solo acoustic set of old-time music, 50’s favorites and blues, all filled with plenty of fun, finger-picking, strumming and banter.

After 15 years of voluntary service in an ashram in Tamil Nadu, India, Fred returns to the USA. ‘Heart Radio’ marks

his first solo effort. The eight song CD is a genre-jumping romp of all original tunes, recorded and produced in the spartan seclusion of rural India and an island in the Pacific Northwest. The tracks reflect the threads of his years abroad and in the ‘swamplands’.

Heart Radio is all about introspection and self-examination while walking the inner path of self-discovery in the outer world. Hiding beneath the ‘genre jumping’ tunes on this CD is a unity that holds its diversity gracefully together like different colored beads attractively strung on the same thread. To catch just a glimpse of this underlying unity is to experience totality in a split second. The beads themselves are glimpses into an unfolding life, moments in time given form and permanence through feelings. It is the artist’s desire that any who listens, will receive a glimmer of the sustaining light.

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Vanessa Amorosi To Release Her New Album Memphis Love Co-produced by Dave Stewart New Single “How Long” Out Now! credit: Tyler Lee Aubrey 52

Rock and Blues International • November 2023

Award-winning, platinum-selling and highly-acclaimed singer, songwriter and powerhouse vocalist Vanessa Amorosi has announced her new fulllength studio album, Memphis Love. Coproduced alongside legendary creative Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), the LP is set to be released on Friday, November 17 via Bay Street.

After sharing lead single “Wolf” — an unshakeable earworm delivered September 1 — The Australian singer is gearing up to release her hard hitting rendition of the English band Ace’s “How Long” due October 20 with an official music video. “The moment the opening riff of this iconic song reaches your ears, you’re immediately attuned to its rhythm,” she shares. “I had to cover this and include it on the record. It’s a powerful thing to have a song make you feel happy and relaxed but lyrically be touching upon sadness and hurt. It’s what makes music magic.”

With a commanding music video that parallels with the song’s storyline of betrayal and infidelity, Vanessa is pictured strong, stoic & pensive paired with moments of spying on her partner, hungry for revenge.

Marking her eighth studio album and first release on Dave Stewart’s Bay Street Records, Memphis Love finds Amorosi diving deeper than ever before into her passion for soulful, blues-centric music. The 10-track album is packed with high-energy vocals, punchy brass instrumentation and captivating melodies, all punctuated with riveting gospel textures delivered by the Tennessee Mass Choir. “Singing with a choir like The Tennessee Mass Choir has always been a dream of mine,” shares Amorosi.

“I’ve stood on stage next to Vanessa Amorosi on several occasions and I’m always immediately taken aback by the intensity and the power of her vocal delivery,” says Dave Stewart. “In getting to know her as a friend and as a true artist, I’ve found that her vocal capabilities are just the tip of the iceberg.

Underneath is an emotional and powerful storm brewing that I think we captured on this album in a way that’s a slight shift from other recordings during her amazing career. This record means so much to me and her, and in writing lots of it together we touched on subjects that were so close to home for Vanessa that I knew something was bound to pour out.

And here it is at last.”

Watch the official “How Long” music video here at https://youtu.be/yTeM5pF6iUM While crafting the album, magic was found in the hallowed walls of Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The essence of Al Green shined upon the sessions with Vanessa Amorosi singing into the iconic soulful R&B artist’s mic alongside some of Al Green’s original players who performed on multiple tracks across Memphis Love.

songwriting and dynamic vocal range have seen the artist sell over two million records worldwide. She has released seven commercially and critically acclaimed studio albums, received sixteen ARIA and APRA nominations, and stopped the world in its tracks with her performance of ‘Heroes Live Forever’ and ‘Absolutely Everybody’ at the Sydney Olympics.

Dave Stewart adds: “Working with Boo Mitchell in the first phase of recording, it was amazing, and to witness Vanessa’s enthusiasm to be in that soulful room oozing with history. And then, to record Vanessa in a church with a 50-piece Tennessee gospel choir and to see the command she had over the choir with her vocal prowess, was something I’ll never forget.”

“The journey of recording Memphis Love is one I’ll never forget,” she adds. “A career highlight for me.

Collaboratively producing this with Dave Stewart was a dream; inspiring me to explore boundless vocal possibilities, free from any constraints. While laying down these tracks at Memphis Royal Studios with a smile on my face, the unforgettable experience of entering a room filled with the Tennessee Mass Choir left me in sheer awe. From start to finish, I hope you listen and feel the love, energy and soul of the record.”

This far into her stellar career, Vanessa Amorosi remains one of the most exciting singers on the planet. Her

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Grammy winning, platinumcertified artist Scott Stapp will release his fourth solo album, Higher Power (Napalm Records) on March 15, 2024 before the iconic frontman returns to the stage with Creed for the first time in ten years. His upcoming ten-track triumph turns the rocker’s experiences on the razor’s edge into an acknowledgement of grace. The album is available for preorder now as title track “Higher Power” ships to radio and emotive new single “What I Deserve” debuts today on all DSPs. When hard-hitting single “Higher Power” debuted in August, Loudwire stated that Stapp is “primed for a big decade, sounding just as powerful as he did at half his age with a sense of newfound heaviness resting beneath his iconic voice.” Now, mid-tempo anthem “What I Deserve” (out today) addresses the inherent duality within relationships and smolders with the blistering yet delicate guitar work of multi-award winning guitar great, Yiannis Papadopoulos.

photo credit: Sebastian Smith

Scott Stapp Announces Forthcoming Album Higher Power - Set for March 15, 2024 Release Ahead of Creed Reunion Higher Power to Feature Appearances by Dorothy, Guitar Great Yiannis Papadopoulos & Multi-Grammy Winning Songwriter/ MusicianSteve McEwan 56

Rock and Blues International • November 2023

Stapp says: “We all want back what we give.

‘What I Deserve’ is about two people understanding who they are individually and coming to a place where they can express exactly what they each want, need, and deserve. The duality in the song is that both sides are expressing the same thing and coming to an understanding of the faults of the other. This song pleads both guilty and innocent with Yiannis’ guitar solo being the voice that articulates a chaotic search for deliverance and the epic release of passionate closure.”

Higher Power follows 2019’s The Space Between the Shadows, which debuted at #3 on the US Current Rock Albums chart, the US Current Hard Music Albums chart, and the UK Official Rock and Metal Chart, among countless other top chart positions.

On an album that traverses themes of loss, frustration, betrayal and near defeat, Higher Power features stand-out performances by hard rock queen Dorothy on a deeply raw duet and, throughout the album, Papadopoulos’ guitar leads and solos are such invaluable contributions that he is credited as a continued on next page

Scott Stapp (continued from previous page) featured artist on three tracks. There is also a co-writing appearance by multiGrammy Award winning songwriter and musician Steve McEwan on Higher Power, which was produced by Marti Frederiksen and Scott Stevens, with coproduction by Stapp.

Stapp explains: “Higher Power was born out of never ending consequences with triggered, yet naive defiance. It’s the realities and realizations of being human in this experiment we call life - holding onto hope in the dark waiting for the light.”

One of the most iconic voices in rock, Scott Stapp first emerged as the high-energy, post-grunge frontman of Creed. With anthems like “Higher,” “My Own Prison,” “My Sacrifice,” and “With Arms Wide Open,” the band sold over 50 million albums, including a Diamond certification. Throughout the early 2000’s, Creed broke airplay records, sold out arenas, earned countless Billboard Music Awards and American Music Awards, and a Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group. As a solo artist, Stapp has released the Platinum-certified The Great Divide (2005), Proof of Life (2013) which featured his first solo #1, “Slow Suicide,” and 2019’s The Space Between The Shadows. In April 2024, Stapp will reunite with his Creed bandmates for the first time in a decade, as he returns in fighting form and stands as an inspiration to others who are struggling.

Pre-Order Here At https://www.napalmrecordsamerica.com/scottstapp New Single “What I Deserve” (feat. Yiannis Papadopoulos) Out Now - Acclaimed Title Track “Higher Power” Already On Radio Listen Here At https://youtu.be/vq7Y0ICM8EQ SCOTT STAPP online: WEBSITE @ https://scottstapp.com/ FACEBOOK @ https://www.facebook.com/ScottStapp/ INSTAGRAM @ https://www.instagram.com/scottstapp/ TWITTER @ https://twitter.com/ScottStapp NAPALM RECORDS @ https://label.napalmrecords.com/scott-stapp Higher Power track listing: 1. Higher Power 2. Deadman’s Trigger 3. When Love Is Not Enough 4. What I Deserve (feat. Yiannis Papadopoulos) 5. If These Walls Could Talk (feat.Dorothy) 6. Black Butterfly 7. Quicksand (feat. Yiannis Papadopoulos) 8. You’re Not Alone

9. Dancing in the Rain (feat. Yiannis Papadopoulos) 10. Weight of the World Higher Power will be available in the following formats: -Digital Album -CD Digisleeve -Solid Viola Gatefold Vinyl LP -Black/Red Splatter Gatefold LP - Die Hard Edition w/ Slipmat & Record Butler (Napalm Mail Order Only, Limited to 300)

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Speaking on today’s news, the band shared: “‘King of Ruination’ ushers in the new era of Enterprise Earth, a violent and punishing force of groove-centric metal. This is merely a glimpse of what we have in store for you all on ‘Death: An Anthology’, thank you for listening.”

Enterprise Earth Announce New Forthcoming Album ‘Death: An Anthology’ Out Feb. 2 via MNRK Heavy With Features From Ben Duerr (Shadow Of Intent), Matt Heafy (Trivium), Darius Tehrani (Spite), + Wes Hauch (Alluvial) Pre-Save Here At https://enterprise-earth.ffm.to/deathananthology The Also Unleash A New Single and Official Music Video “King of Ruination” (ft. Ben Duerr) Watch Here At https://youtu.be/U33QwhZDMo0 Listen Here At https://enterprise-earth.ffm.to/kingofruination Find Enterprise Earth Online: Twitter @ https://twitter.com/EEarthBand Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/enterpriseearth/ Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/enterpriseearthband/ Youtube @ https://www.youtube.com/@enterpriseearth8547 TikTok @ https://www.tiktok.com/@enterpriseearthband Web @ https://enterpriseearthband.com/ Enterprise Earth fans, rejoice! The band has made their triumphant return with the announcement of their forthcoming new album, ‘Death: An Anthology’, stacked with features from some of deathcore’s finest including but not limited to, Matt Heafy (Trivium), Darius Tehrani (Spite), and Wes Hauch (Alluvial). The upcoming full-length 58

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will be released on Friday, February 2 (via MNRK Heavy). In celebration of the news, the band has unleashed their apocalyptic new single “King of Ruination” featuring Ben Duerr from Shadow of Intent (which premiered on SiriusXM’s Liquid Metal) along with the hauntingly brutal official music video directed by Nick Chance.

• November 2022

Vocalist Travis Worland also commented: “Coming from a heinously religious upbringing and background, death has been at the forefront of my mind since childhood.

Going to Hell, going to Heaven, going nowhere at all, being stuck between two polar opposite eternities. So, I wrote about it. From all manner of perspectives. The death of self, the death of someone or something important to you, the death of a relationship, the death of individuality, fantastical stories of what awaits us when we die. Death takes many forms and can be spoken of in so many different lights. This is my story of death and dying. This is ‘Death: An Anthology’.”

‘Death: An Anthology’ will also be available in “Black Ice” and “Inferno” vinyl formats exclusive to the band (available here), as well as “Ghostly” and “Copper Nugget” vinyl formats through the MNRK Heavy Shop.

Enterprise Earth Is: Gabe Mangold [guitar, backing vocals, production], Travis Worland [vocals] , Brian Zackey [drums], and Dakota Johnson [bass] DEATH: AN ANTHOLOGY Track Listing: 1. Abyss 2. Face of Fear 3. The Reaper’s Servant (ft. Darius Tehrani) 4. Spineless 5. King Of Ruination (ft. Ben Duerr) 6. Casket Of Rust 7. I, Divine 8. Malevolent Force (ft. Wes Hauch) 9. Accelerated Demise 10. Blood And Teeth 11. Curse Of Flesh (ft. Matthew K. Heafy)

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Rock and Blues International • November 2023

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December2023 2020 •• Rock Rockand andBlues BluesInternational International 61 71 November

Photo Credit: Tyler McLeod

Autogramm Announce New LP With Advance Video-Single WannaBe Through Stomp Records Music That Humans Can Play Releases November 17th, 2023 62

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Autogramm, synth-driven powerpoppers from Seattle, Chicago and Vancouver, have just announced their latest LP Music That Humans Can Play with an advance single and video for the track “WannaBe”. Their first album in over two years will be released on vinyl and digital formats world-wide on November 17th via Stomp Records (and Beluga Records EU).

They continue the band’s tradition of crafting new wave gems with a power pop twist. Drawing on influences from the likes of The Cars, The Go-Go’s, Gary Numan, 20/20, and Devo, Autogramm have delivered an album that will fit in easily into the 80’s section of your record collection, with songs so well-crafted they probably deserve to be on the soundtrack of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

The video for the first advance single “WannaBe” was shot and directed by Jeffry Lee in East Vancouver. The greenscreen video captures the band on superimposed digital static while they perform the track live, and in true to form 80’s fashion.

Drummer/singer The Silo reflects on the inspiration behind the song, “WannaBe began as a way to say to the most important person in my life that I will stand beside them no matter what their direction, self-opinion, or physical state of being.

Upon further reflection, I thought it could apply more broadly to all of our relationships in life: it’s a declaration of love and support to any friend, child, or lover who is going through a change in their selfperception; the idea that gender, occupation, size, skin, are all merely physical manifestations of being and will never matter as much as the person underneath it all.” With a meandering bass run through the verses and spacious synth and drum parts, Autogramm leaves room for the song to breathe before building to the climax of the song where band members CC Voltage, The Silo, Lars Von Seattle and Jiffy Marx all harmonize to the refrain: “Be My Alien!”

Autogramm has a long standing connection to the art, punk, and skateboarding communities world-wide. Since their inception, Autogramm has performed throughout Canada, Mexico, the US, the UK, and Europe in notable venues such as London’s Lexington, Berlin’s Wild At Heart, and San Francisco’s Bottom of the Hill. Autogramm has graced the pages of international press like Under the Radar, Louder Than War and Exclaim! Their last

DISCOVER Bandcamp:https://autogramm.bandcamp.com/releases Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/autogrammband/ Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/autogrammband/ Twitter:https://twitter.com/Autogrammband Spotify @ https://open.spotify.com/artist/1Yq0GO9ZFd9aK9iKEVNe6D Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM-YkwLUwK8r5UDgRgTnlog album No Rules climbed to #3 on CBC Radio 3, and charted for five months at college radio in both the US and Canada.

The single “Mantra” also saw rotation on SXM’s The Verge, Rodney on the Rock, and Little Steven’s Underground Garage.

The band members are: Jiffy Marx of Brooklyn’s Hard Drugs, Vancouver’s Night Court, and Blood Meridian; CC Voltage of Berlin’s Dysnea Boys, London’s Loyalties, and Vancouver’s Black Halos and Spitfires; Lars Von Seattle of Bread & Butter and The Catheters; The Silo of Vancouver’s

Black Mountain, Lightning Dust, Destroyer and more recently, Chicago’s Spun Out. Music That Humans Can Play was recorded in Vancouver BC during the heatwave of August 2022. Somehow, between visits to the beach, barbecues, and a newborn baby, the band laid down ten tracks at two sweaty studios on Vancouver’s Eastside. The result is a blissfully cool album with music that will appeal to all listeners, from record store snobs, garage rock slobs, and even synthpop heartthrobs!

Stream Advance Single “WannaBe” @ https://bfan.link/autowannabe Watch the Video for “WannaBe” @ https://youtu.be/Wq9wYXmlAVA Order New Album Music That Humans Can Play @ https://autogramm.bandcamp.com/album/music-that-humans-can-play November 2023 • Rock and Blues International

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Rock and Blues International • November 2023

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released as a special 7” vinyl simultaneously.

As founding member Damon Johnson explains of reuniting, “It was our manager, Kevin, who suggested we do this now after hearing from fans at my other shows who kept asking ‘when is Brother Cane coming back?’ After Glenn and I had loosely talked over the years of playing music together again, we all felt the time was right for us now.”

Co-founding member, Glenn Maxey echoes the same sentiment, “Seldom does a person get the chance to relive a dream that they pursued in their twenties. It’s hard to put into words. I’m just extremely grateful for the chance to play great music with great friends at this time in my life. Let’s go!”

Brother Cane Celebrates 30th Anniversary With U.S. Tour Running Throgh December 2023 With More Dates TBA Soon…

Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/brothercaneofficial Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/brothercane/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/RealBrotherCane Bands in Town @ https://www.bandsintown.com/a/108628

BROTHER CANE is set to make a triumphant return commemorating their 30th Anniversary. A U.S. celebration tour is set to begin October 26 in Woodstock, GA continuing through December 2nd in Memphis, TN. More dates are expected to be announced soon, see below for the initial itinerary and full details. In addition, their 1993 self-titled debut album, a timeless classic, will be 66

reissued on October 20, 2023, and offered on vinyl for the first time igniting a wave of nostalgia and excitement among fans. Adding to the anticipation of this re-release, the band went back into the studio with longtime collaborator and multi-platinum producer Marti Frederiksen and recorded two brand new songs. “Blinded By the Sun” and “Are You In There Anymore,” are set to be

Rock and Blues International • November 2023

As they hit the stage once again, fans can anticipate the live renditions of the band’s chart-topping favorites (“Got No Shame”, “And Fools Shine On”, “I Lie In The Bed I Make” and more), each performance capturing the energy and essence of Brother Cane’s signature sound while reigniting the passion that made them favorites of their generation.

This highly anticipated reunion tour promises to deliver an unforgettable experience, as they take audiences on a nostalgic journey through their extensive catalog while also introducing some exciting new material. Brother Cane’s resurgence serves as a testament to the enduring power of their music.

At the heart of Brother Cane’s long-awaited reunion are its founding members, Johnson (lead vocals, guitar) and Maxey (bass) who originally formed the band in 1991 in their hometown of Birmingham, AL. Johnson’s distinctive guitar skills, vocals, and captivating stage presence, combined with Maxey’s solid bass lines and rhythmic foundation, formed the core of the band’s signature sound. Brother Cane found immediate success with the release of their selftitled debut album which delivered three singles: “Got No Shame”, “That Don’t Satisfy Me,” and “Hard Act to Follow” with “Got No Shame” reaching #1 on the Mainstream Rock charts earning the band U.S. tours with Aerosmith, Robert Plant and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The reunion of these talented and road tested musicians brings an added sense of authenticity and excitement to the tour. The chemistry between Damon continued on next page

and Glenn has stood the test of time, as their musical connection effortlessly translates into electrifying live performances. With their reunion, fans can expect a renewed energy and a deep sense of camaraderie on stage, as the founding members of Brother Cane join forces once again to captivate audiences with their raw talent and unwavering passion for their craft. Joining the duo for this reunion are longtime friends and fellow bandmates Jarred Pope(drums/ Tom Keifer Band), Buck Johnson (keys/ Aerosmith, Hollywood Vampires), and Tony Higbee (guitar/Tom Keifer Band).

Brother Cane is an American rock band originally from Birmingham, Alabama. Formed by singer/guitarist Damon Johnson and bassist Glenn Maxey in 1991, the group released three studio albums and several charting singles including three number 1’s and five top 10 hits. Brother Cane found immediate success with the release of its self-titled debut album which delivered three singles: “Got No Shame”, “That Don’t Satisfy Me”, and “Hard Act To Follow.” “Got No Shame” reached #1 on the Mainstream Rock charts and garnered the band U.S. tours with Aerosmith, Robert Plant, and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The band’s next album, Seeds, yielded another #1 Rock track, the haunting and swampy, “And Fools Shine On.” This hit led to a lengthy and successful tour in support of the mighty, Van Halen. Their last release, Wishpool, brought Brother Cane’s third #1 song at Rock Radio, “I Lie In The Bed I Make”.

After major personnel changes at Virgin Records, the band’s label, as well as a major shift in style at rock and alt radio formats, the band went on what turned out to be an extended hiatus. During this time, Damon toured the world as the guitarist for legends, Alice Cooper and Thin Lizzy. Just when he thought all of his musical dreams had come true, In early 2021 Damon was asked to fill in for the legendary Guitarist and founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Gary Rossington. A position that Damon still holds today. While touring with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Johnson was pleasantly surprised on how many fans not only remembered Brother Cane but shared their stories on how much the band and those songs meant to them. “Will you ever get back together? Would you ever tour again? Please!!??” Those are big questions, and they deserved a big answer, “Hell Yes!”

Will Reissue Self-Titled Debut Album ~ Brother Cane Set for Release on October 20th With Two Brand New Songs to be Released as a 7” vinyl Brother Cane Reunion Tour w/ Jared James Nichols and Cage Wills supporting (except where noted) October 26 - Madlife Music Stage, Woodstock, GA * October 27 - Mars Music Hall, Huntsville, AL * November 1 - The Tin Pan, Richmond, VA November 2 - Rams Head on Stage, Annapolis, MD November 3 - Tally Ho, Leesburg, VA November 4 - Mickey’s Black Box, Lititz, PA November 5 - Sony Hall, New York, NY November 7 - The Winchester, Cleveland, OH November 8 - Madison Live, Cincinnati, OH November 9 - Wildey Theatre, Edwardsville, IL November 10 - King of Clubs, Columbus, OH ** November 11 - Jergel’s Rhythm Grille, Warrendale, PA ** November 12 - Dunellen Theater, Dunellen, NJ November 15 - Miramar Theatre, Milwaukee, WI November 16 - Castle Theater, Bloomington, IL November 17 - The Token Lounge, Westland, MI ** November 18 - Arcada Theatre, St. Charles, IL ** November 29 - The Concourse, Knoxville, TN November 30 - Barrelhouse Ballroom, Chattanooga, TN December 1 - Exit IN, Nashville, TN December 2 - Minglewood, Hall, Memphis, TN *Brother Cane only ** Plus Orianthi November 2023 • Rock and Blues International

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Claire wrote and recorded Just Because with producers Afterhrs, Paul Phamous, Stint, Elie Rizk, and her most frequent collaborator and executive producer Ragnar Rosinkranz. The album etches together a coming-of-age story documented in real-time from the frontlines of growing up. On the focus track “Swinging At The Stars,” glassy harmonies give way to a bouncy beat as Claire recounts a series of memories depicting a short-lived romance.

On the song, she says, “‘Swinging at the Stars’ is about wanting to experience the fullness of living, and about experiencing beautiful things with someone else. I love to feel everything. I’m obsessed with the abundance that comes with being alive. The fact that I’m capable of feeling all these things and all these emotions - and so if I can touch all the corners of that, that’s what this song feels like.” Stay tuned for the arrival of the official music video, which features a very special guest!

Among many standouts, electric guitar shimmers over a head-nodding beat on album track “Dreamer.” In a punchy cadence, Claire declares, “You’re a dreamer, I’m a thinker, cruise control, turn up the speakers.” On “Gum,” her sticky melodies entangle with melodic guitar and build towards a hypnotic hook, “I’m just living in a timeshare in the clouds, temporary highs, and I don’t want to come down.” The album concludes with the last track “Mess.” On the song, Claire confronts insecurities and regrets without filter or apology. Her stark vocal delivery resounds, as she sings, “It’s sad that I run to somebody else, ‘cause I’m too afraid that I’ll mess up the one thing that’s good in my life.”

As if reading a diary aloud, she finally wonders, “Is this a curse or is this a blessing?”

Claire Rosinkranz Releases Debut Album Just Because Featuring New Single “Swinging At The Stars” And Announces New Tour 68

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Claire set set the stage for Just Because with latest single “Wes Anderson.” It received praise from the likes of DORK, Clash, Mystic Sons, and more, with Clash proclaiming, “The single finds the 19 year old talent pushing past heartbreak, learning to place focus and emphasis on the aspects of her life that give value. Beautifully melodic, she sings: ‘When will you wake up? Get over your heartbreak.’

Just Because also boasts the fan favorite “Pools and Palm Trees.” Rolling Stone touted it among “The Songs You Need To Know This Week,” and Popdust proclaimed, “Rosinkranz is a dynamo to watch in the music industry.” Earlier this year, Claire paved the way for Just Because with her singles “Screw Time,” “Sad In Hawaii” and “Never Goes Away,” piling up millions of streams and stirring up excitement among fans. Not to mention, she also teamed up with Louis The Child on their summertime anthem “Walls” and even performed the song with them live for the very first time at Lollapalooza during their headline set. continued on next page

Claire Rosinkranz (continued from previous page) Over a soundtrack of alternative pop spiked with just the right amount of punk and electronics, Claire Rosinkranz asserts herself as a true Gen-Z storyteller whose vision instantly captivates. Since releasing her breakout Gold-Certified debut “Backyard Boy,” the buzzing artist has built a diehard fanbase worldwide, racked up over 1 billion global streams and counting, won the MTV Trending Award for “Best Breakthrough Song” at the 2021 MTV VMAs, garnered a “Social Star” nomination at the 2022 iHeartRadio Music Awards, toured with Alec Benjamin and sold out headline shows across North America, and performed at a slew of legendary music festivals, including Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, Life Is Beautiful, and more.

Claire Rosinkranz turns idyllic days of a teenage summer, road trips, post-high school adventures, and the butterflies of young love into breezy alternative pop anthems. In 2020, the 19-year-old, GoldCertified Southern California singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist emerged as a smart, sharp, and savvy voice for Gen-Z with her independent breakout “Backyard Boy.” It not only amassed north of 1 billion total streams, but it also picked up a gold plaque. She maintained this momentum with fan favorite EPs, such as BeVerly Hills BoYfRiEnd [2020] and 6 Of A Billion [2021]. Along the way, she collaborated with Jeremy Zucker, ROLE MODEL, Clinton Kane, Hauskey, and Aidan Bissett, in addition to touring alongside Alec Benjamin. Beyond praise from The New York Times, Billboard, HYPEBAE, and many more, Claire garnered the MTV Trending VMA for “Best Breakthrough Song.” On her full-length debut album, Just Because out now, Claire captures all of the joy, confusion, anxiety, and wonder of growing up with songs set to a soundtrack of gleeful guitars, lo-fi production, and chantable choruses—all under the California sun.

JUST BECAUSE TRACKLISTING: 1. “123” 2. “Sad in Hawaii” 3. “Never Goes Away” 4. “Dreamer” 5. “Swinging at the Stars” 6. “Screw Time” 7. “Gum” 8. “Wes Anderson” 9. “Banksy” 10. “Polarized” 11. “Jupiter” 12. “Pools and Palm Trees” 13. “Mess”

CLAIRE ROSINKRANZ SOCIALS: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clairerosinkranz Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clairerosinkranz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clairerosinkraz/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/clairerosinkraz Following the release of her debut album Just Because out now, 19-year-old Southern California singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Claire Rosinkranz announces her 2024 headline North American tour. “Claire Roskinkranz: A Live Experience” kicks off on March 5th in Portland, OR at Wonder Ballroom and makes stops at Los Angeles’ The Fonda Theatre on March 12th, New York’s Irving Plaza on March 29th, and more. See the full list of tour dates below and on www.clairerosinkranz.com/shows/

March 5th March 7th March 8th March 10th March 12th March 15th March 17th March 19th March 21st March 23rd March 26th March 27th March 29th March 31st April 3rd April 4th

CLAIRE ROSKINKRANZ: A LIVE EXPERIENCE Portland, OR Wonder Ballroom Vancouver, BC Fortune Sound Club Seattle, WA Showbox San Francisco, CA The Fillmore Los Angeles, CA The Fonda Theatre Phoenix, AZ Crescent Ballroom Salt Lake City, UT The Depot Englewood, Colorado Gothic Theatre Chicago, IL The Metro Minneapolis, MN Varsity Theater Silver Spring, MD The Fillmore Philadelphia, PA TLA New York, NY Irving Plaza Boston, MA Royale Montreal, QC Studio TD Toronto, ON Danforth Music Hall November 2023 • Rock and Blues International

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Check us out at http://www.rockandbluesinternational. com Also available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Podcast Index, Amazon Music, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Pocket Casts, Deezer, Listen Notes & More!

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NYTT LAND’s unique sound highly recommended for fans of Heilung, Wardruna and Runahild has always been inspired by the sound of Siberian nature. Their musical roots are deeply connected with mythology, historic themes and ancient shamanic culture. In the Finno-Ugric languages of the indigenous peoples of Siberia, Torem means “Great Sky” - the Great Sky on which ancestors sit, and where the souls of people and animals are reborn in the form of birds. This is also the place where the shaman makes his first journey to learn the wisdom of the Great Spirit.

Siberian Dark Folk Duo NYTT LAND Captivates with New Music Video for Third Album Single, “Rise of Midgard”!

New Album, Torem, out October 6, 2023 via Napalm Records Pre-Order Here At https://www.napalmrecordsamerica.com/nyttland Watch the New Music Video for “Rise of Midgard” Here at https://youtu.be/nrb5rcFMsTg NYTT LAND online: FACEBOOK @ https://www.facebook.com/nyttland INSTAGRAM @ https://www.instagram.com/nyttland_official/ BANDCAMP @ https://nyttland.bandcamp.com/ NAPALM RECORDS @ https://label.napalmrecords.com/nyttland To celebrate their forthcoming album release, today, the duo has premiered a captivating new music video for their third single, “Rise of Midgard”! The band reveals that the song is the culmination of the album, which “marks the appearance of the image of birth to the shaman, the uprising from the body of the giant Ymir of the middle world (Midgard) as the highest creation of the Gods in their power” - providing the perfect musical soundtrack!

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On Torem, the shamanic couple Natasha “Baba Yaga” and Anatoly Pakhalenko invites listeners into a mystic world of ancient percussive instrumentation and mesmerizing vocal spheres. The album, sung in old languages Khanty (Siberian Native Tribe) and Old Norse (Old Icelandic), will take you on a sonic experience and journey of the band’s new trilogy, dedicated to the three worlds in the cosmology of their land.

Rock and Blues International • November 2023

Torem was produced, recorded and mixed by NYTT LAND, with mastering by Anatoly Pakhalenko.

With intelligent, captivating storytelling, haunting visuals and atmospheric, ambient yet massive melodies encapsulated by unique throat singing, meditative grooves and an otherworldly spirit of mythology and nature, NYTT LAND is about to deliver a surefire highlight of 2023!

Torem Tracklist: 1. Olenmet 2. Nord 3. Risu Raknar 4. Johem Ar 5. Manito 6. Huginn ok Muninn 7. Rise of Midgard 8. Torem 9. Iavel Torem will be available in the following formats: - 1CD Digipak - 1LP Gatefold CLEAR - T-Shirt + 1CD Digisleeve - Digital

Maybe You Should Run Your Next Tour Schedule In Rock And Blues International! email: rockandbluesinternational@gmail.com or call today 281-650-1953 For Fast Service

STENGAH To Release Downward Mechanic EP on Dec. 1 via Mascot Records Present Video for “The Earth Awakes” Watch the first taste with ‘The Earth Awakes’ video here: at: https://youtu.be/ou_1tm7SJz4 Stengah online: https://www.stengah-music.com/ https://www.instagram.com/stengahband/ https://www.facebook.com/stengahproject https://www.tiktok.com/@stengahband https://www.youtube.com/c/STENGAH 74

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Crushing French metallers, Stengah return with the DOWNWARD MECHANIC EP, which will be released via Mascot Records on December 1. To celebrate the announcement, they have revealed the video to the first track, “The Earth Awakes,” which you can watch here at https://youtu.be/ou_1tm7SJz4.

It’s a year on from their debut album SOMA SEMA, which featured the award-winning video for “He and the Sea”- picking up the #1 prize from the Munich Music Video Awards and International Sound Future Awards. During that time, the band played ferocious sets at Hellfest (France), Bloodstock (UK), Mystic Festival (Poland), Metal Days (Slovenia) and was voted France’s Best New Band by Guitar Part magazine.

The EP serves as an extension of SOMA SEMA, where the songs were written during the same sessions as their debut, meaning that they are utterly entwined with each other, breathing the same air, delving into the awe-inspiring scope of the mind as well as its fragilities, with bludgeoning brutality.

The EP opens with the adrenaline-injected lead track, “The Earth Awakes.” Its ethereal, dreamlike narrative marries continent-shaking nightmarish riffs and takes the listener to the first light on the earth.

With the time rewinding fast with excessive blast beats and bright chords blinding them at first, the lyrics paint the majesty of witnessing the very first sunset in the world. “It is a fast and very massive song to sing in an epic way, how mother nature awakes and draws its strength over the ages, and how humble we

must remain as we are simple dwellers on this planet,” says Eliott Williame.

‘The Earth Awakes’ video shows the blinded musicians alone with their inner sight. “To show what’s inside, we choose the opportunity to bring back the ragdoll monster from the previous videos for the album SOMA SEMA and let them reunite with old artefacts and characters from ‘He and the Sea, At the Behest of Origins, and Above Inhumanity,” Williame adds.

The recording “Reign of an Apocryph” follows as a direct sequel.

“This song was one of the very first that the band played together back in the early days,” Williame explains.

“As the song is about endless creation and a permanent evolution of all: beliefs, knowledge and even absurdity, it has known a constant change of arrangements and performances. In 2023, this is how the song is shaped. And what’s exciting with ‘Reign of an Apocryph’ is that it will probably continue to change and evolve differently, according to the song’s subject. We like to think that our music, even once recorded, is never really achieved.”

The record’s most personal song also sees the band take a moment of contemplation on the acoustic ‘Resurface (September’s gone),’ which tackles escaping depression - emerging your head from dark waters and finally taking a breath. The dark and claustrophobic ‘Sheltered Within’ features the most impressive feral lines the band have ever recorded to feel how the character would in the song, as he loses his mind to madness.

Ever in a state of perpetual motion, the closer ‘Inner Space’ offers a glimpse into the evolution of Stengah. Also, it rests as the ‘grand final’ of the introspective era initiated

by SOMA SEMA. The last level of coalescence between body and mind, the very last dialogue, both getting free from any duality as they part ways, mastering the perfect balance between the real world and the dream realm.

Founded by drummer Eliott Williame, the band is completed by bassist Benoit Creteur, guitarists Maxime Delassus and Alex Orta and captivating frontman Nicolas Queste.

“Even more than we did in SOMA SEMA, we want the listener to identify with the human being behind the vocals, the drums and the guitars,” explains Williame. “That was the main goal during the process: how do we express all those extreme feelings through the sound? Then came those five musical pieces for a long meditation, opening on the original sunset of ‘The Earth Awakes’, and taking you to the endless journey of ‘Inner Space’.”

Downward Mechanic is the opposite of a human becoming a machine. It is something mechanical turning into something organic.

Downward Mechanic Track listing: The Earth Awakes Reign Of An Apocryph Resurface (September’s Gone) Sheltered Within Inner Space

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NELLY FURTADO SAYS IT RIGHT WITH 2LP VINYL EDITION OF LOOSE 76

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ballad “In God’s Hands,” and the touching “Te Busque,” featuring a guest vocal from Juanes. All 12 of the core songs on Loose prove why Nelly Furtado became such an international superstar.

(A bonus track, the Spanish version of “Te Busque” (Feat. Juanes), is included at the end of Side 4.)

12x-Platinum-Selling 2006 Third Album From Groundbreaking Canadian Pop Singer/ Songwriter Returns with a 2LP Edition on Dec. 1 Preorder or Listen to Loose Here at https://nf.lnk.to/LooseVinyl

NELLY FURTADO: LOOSE 2LP

http://https://nellyfurtado.com https://www.ffacebook.com/nellyfurtado https://twitter.com/nellyfurtado https://www.instagram.com/nellyfurtado https://www.YouTube.com/NellyFurtadoVEVO On December 1, IGA/UMe will release Nelly Furtado’s masterful dancepop third album, June 2006’s Loose, on vinyl. Catapulted by a trio of No. 1 hits — the suggestive serve-and-volley relationship conversation “Promiscuous (Feat. Timbaland),” the percussive drive of the pleading “Say It Right,” and the sultry declarations of “Maneater” — Loose became an international sensation, having sold 12M copies globally to date.

Loose will be released in two vinyl options. The standard 2LP version comes in a gatefold sleeve and is available on standard black vinyl, while the LimitedEdition version comes in an exclusive red and white color vinyl. Engineer Dennis “Roc” Jones recently used the

Loose peaked at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 as well as in Furtado’s native Canada and on ten more charts across the globe, including those in Australia, Ireland, and Germany. It also reached the Top 10 in 14 other countries, including the UK, Austria, Finland, France, Scotland, and Italy. In addition to its 3x platinum certification in the U.S. by the RIAA, Loose has also been certified as 3x platinum in the UK, 6x platinum in Canada, and 5x platinum in Germany and Switzerland. “Promiscuous” peaked at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, as well as in her native Canada and New Zealand. “Say It Right” climbed to No. 1 on ten charts internationally in addition to four separate U.S. charts, including the Billboard Hot 100, while “Maneater” hit No.1 on U.S. Dance Club Songs, UK Singles and Canada CHR/Top 40. Both “Do It” and “In God’s Hands” also made it to No. 11 in Canada.

original master files to create a truly special 2LP edition of Loose. Preorder or Listen to Loose HERE Furtado’s phenomenal, genredefying album Loose expanded the Canadian artist’s reach both creatively and commercially by testing the boundaries of pop by incorporating a litany of dance-music elements, reggaeton and R&B influences, and hip-hop beats into the tenets of her forward-thinking songwriting and arranging. Produced primarily by Timbaland and Danja, along with Nisan Stewart, Lester Mendez, Rick Nowels, and Furtado herself, the aptly named Loose bursts forth with an evendozen winning tracks like the falsetto encouragement of “Do It,” the heavenly

Side 1 Afraid (Feat. Attitude) Maneater Promiscuous (Feat. Timbaland) Side 2 Glow Showtime No Hay Iqual Side 3 Te Busque (Feat. Juanes) Say It Right Do It Side 4 In God’s Hands Wait For You All Good Things (Come To An End) Te Busque – Spanish Version (Feat. Juanes)** ** Bonus track

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Check us out at http://www.rockandbluesinternational. com Also available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Podcast Index, Amazon Music, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Pocket Casts, Deezer, Listen Notes & More!

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THERION photo credit: Mina Karadzic 80

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Swedish Symphonic Metal Band THERION Announce Final Album of their Leviathan Trilogy - Leviathan III to be Released on December 15, 2023 via Napalm Records A perfect collision of Metal and Classical Music!

Swedish symphonic metal legends THERION have unveiled the first single, “Twilight of the Gods”, off of their upcoming album, Leviathan III, out December 15, 2023 via Napalm Records! With the new album, THERION return to deliver another masterpiece fulfilling the Leviathan trilogy. With more than 35 years under their belts, the band around mastermind Christofer Johnsson is considered one of the most style-defining acts of symphonic metal. Down to the present day, Johnsson claims Swiss Celtic Frost and their way to combine opera vocals and orchestral instruments in the late 80s as one of his main influences back in the days, leading to THERION’s Symphony Masses (1993) and Lepaca Kliffoth (1995) to set the stages for the genre in the early 90s, followed by symphonic metal milestone Theli in 1996.

“Twilight of the Gods” delivers the finest of epic and symphonic metal, finding a harmonious and balanced blend between guitars, choirs and orchestra. Join THERION on their versatile and style-melding musical journey, and watch the brand-new official music video for “Twilight of the Gods” below!

The album sets off with the powerful “Ninkigal”, catapulting the listener directly into the dramatic universe of THERION with skillfully crafted compositions and operatic female vocals by Lori Lewis, alternating with grim growling and pleasing melodies. It’s followed by “Ruler of Tamag”, enchanting with a gentle acoustic guitar intro and lingering female vocals that open up to a fairytale-like scenario of old times. This then bursts into a heavy track with gloomy parts, building up to a fascinating score-like symphony. THERION once more draw charm from the courage to mix styles ranging from gothic parts to melodic death metal and neo-classical elements to power metal in a complex and versatile way, thus challenging their listeners. The songs are quickly engaging and skillfully employ catchy melodies, as witnessed on uplifting tracks like “An Unsung Lament” and “Baccanale”. Advancing melodies are combined with rock elements, captivating lyrics and choir parts, while lively “Maleficium” is structured around a duet between Thomas Vikström and Lori Lewis.

Stomping “Ayahuasca” is a true musical journey featuring a male choir and psychedelic elements, while speedy “Nummo” offers splendid hard guitar explosions and the finest classic vocals and choirs.

Overall, the compositions lean towards the magnificent and theatrical, offering a high variety of musical styles while deftly blurring the boundaries of metal and classical music. With their newest opus, Leviathan III, mastermind Christofer Johnsson proves his incredible talent once more, and that THERION have perfected their very own combination of versatile styles - resulting in the creation of a symphonic league of their own.

THERION are: Christofer Johnsson – guitars and keyboards Sami Karppinen - drums Nalle “Grizzly” Påhlsson - bass Thomas Vikström – lead vocals Christian Vidal – guitar Lori Lewis – vocals Leviathan III tracklisting: 1 Ninkigal 2 Ruler Of Tamag 3 An Unsung Lament 4 Maleficium

5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Ayahuasca Baccanale Midsommarblot What Was Lost Shall Be Lost No More Duende Nummo Twilight Of The Gods

Leviathan III will be available in the following formats: 6-Page Digipak CD 2LP Gatefold in Black 2LP Gatefold Silver LTD to 500 copies Die Hard Deluxe Edition Gold / Black Marbled Album Cover Slipmat, Covert Artprint & Alternative Album Cover Artprint LTD to 300copies Digipak Bundle Pendant, Cotton Bag, Patch Digipak & Shirt Bundle Shirt Die Hard Deluxe Edition Gold / Black Marbled Vinyl + Album Cover Slipmat, Cover Artprint & Alternative Album Cover Artprint – ltd. to 300copies

THERION online: WEBSITE @ https://www.therion.se/ FACEBOOK @ https://www.facebook.com/therion/ INSTAGRAM @ https://www.instagram.com/therionband/ TWITTER @ https://twitter.com/_therion November 2023 • Rock and Blues International

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photo credit: Mind Art Visual

KK’S PRIEST Reveals New Track, “Hymn 66”, Marking the Release of New Album, The Sinner Rides Again Out Now! 82

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The iconic KK’S PRIEST - featuring Judas Priest alum and GRAMMY Award musicians K.K. Downing (guitar) and Tim “Ripper” Owens (vocals), along with A.J. Mills (guitar), Tony Newton (bass) and Sean Elg (drums) - have finally unveiled their new sophomore offering, The Sinner Rides Again, to the masses today!

The album is already being praised by critics around the world as an impressive follow up to the band’s acclaimed 2021 debut. “The Sinner Rides Again is an absolutely ripping metal record, with a huge, gleaming production job and performances that crackle with passion and intensity,” offers Blabbermouth, while Metal Hammer UK lauds the album as “…tapping into the fist-pumping energy of classic heavy metal like it’s 1983 all over again.”

In celebration of this release, the band has revealed another blistering new music video, this time for the menacing track “Hymn 66”. The weighty riff-fest boasts slow and low, metallic-soaked punches of heavy metal fire!

K.K. Downing says about “Hymn 66” and today’s album release: “It’s time to take a look into another world - a world where the most powerful have to succumb to enduring their penance for all eternity. So best beware, as those of the highest power may one day gather to summon you as their victim, and be certain there will be no escape as your presence will be demanded by singing ‘Hymn 66’!

I am truly excited that the time has come to release our second album, The Sinner Rides Again. I hope that fans all over the metal world will enjoy it, and I am looking forward to playing these songs for you on our upcoming world tour.”

On the heels of their highly-lauded 2021 debut album, Sermons Of The Sinner - which debuted within the Top 20 on charts in the United States, the UK, Germany, Sweden, Finland and more KK’S PRIEST return to sin again! With The Sinner Rides Again, KK’S PRIEST double down on the ripping melodic force of their debut, Sermons Of The Sinner which Metal Hammer UK dubbed “hugely enjoyable” and Metal Injection cited as boasting “catchy hooks and plenty of guitar wizardry”. The Sinner Rides Again wields nine tracks of pure hellfire, produced and written by Downing and mixed/mastered by Jacob Hansen.

After stepping out of the Judas Priest spotlight, the return of K.K. Downing was uncertain. Nearly ten years after its onset, the genre-defining guitar icon returned from his hiatus with proof that he was nowhere ready to cease writing

Order Here At https://www.napalmrecordsamerica.com/kkspriest Watch the Official Music Video for “Hymn 66” Here At https://youtu.be/5NKkdaGjl3s KK’S PRIEST online: WEBSITE @ https://kkdowningofficial.com/ FACEBOOK @ https://www.facebook.com/KKsPriest INSTAGRAM @ https://www.instagram.com/KKsPriest/ NAPALM RECORDS @ https://label.napalmrecords.com/kks-priest classic metal songs or to put away his famous Flying V guitars - taking part in acclaimed international comeback performances (including with his former Judas Priest bandmates when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November 2022) that would act as harbingers of the formation of KK’S PRIEST. Downing was recently quoted saying, “We’ve lost a lot of great people – Dio, Lemmy, for example – but this amazing and unique style of music must be preserved for as long as possible and I feel it within me to continue to play my role, as I always have, and to defend this metal genre, which we all know and love.”

The Sinner Rides Again is a testament to this call for the classics while speeding full force into the future, delivered by some of

heavy metal’s most essential performers.

The Sinner Rides Again track listing: 1. Sons Of The Sentinel 2. Strike Of The Viper 3. Reap The Whirlwind 4. One More Shot At Glory 5. Hymn 66 6. The Sinner Rides Again 7. Keeper Of The Graves 8. Pledge Your Souls 9. Wash Away Your Sins KK’S PRIEST is: Tim “Ripper” Owens - Vocals K.K. Downing - Guitar A.J. Mills - Guitar Tony Newton - Bass Sean Elg - Drums

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The Biker, The Blues and Military Bikers Celebrating Veteran’s Day If you can read thank a teacher, if your health is fine thank a doctor but if your rolling free thank a Vet

My best friend growing up, Wayne P. Howe, went off to war when we were in our senior year in high school in 1969. He came back but only after his jeep was blown up by a road mine in Vietnam. He was never the same, mentally or so I thought he was ok, but his knees had been injured so severely that he would never walk right again nor hold his kids on his lap. Years later, after I visited with him after not seeing him for years he took his life that very same night. I still cannot believe it and it’s been decades now. I was with him and then he was gone, never said a word to me. I still think about it to this day wondering if I missed a tell tale sign because we were so close that we told each other every thing at least up until that point. This month and rightfully so our nation celebrates our military.

Today allow me to take you inside the workings of military bike associations and what they do for their fellow men and women wearing the uniform. The unifying component of what you are about to read is about vets with bikes that have a strong desire to care and ride.

It was an unseasonably warm fall day in October and I had scooted from Albuquerque New Mexico on in to Phoenix. There’s a blues club there named The Rhythm Room which is owned by the internationally famous blues harp player Bob Corritore. If you know blues then you know both names and this is the place to go when in town. That night the place lit up as usual and I was not disappointed at all. The next morning I sat outside my motel room in the fall weather at the No Tell Vamp Inn. It seemed appropriate to stay there as Halloween had just passed and with a name like that well one never knows what you will find on the road. The previous night when I was just about to go to sleep I could hear a woman in the next room eating candy bars. Yep she kept screaming Oh Henry! Oh Henry! The woman really like candy bars is all I can guess. When I got up in the morning I decided to grab a stogie (a Macanudo Orange fifty ring to be exact) and took a chair outside with me. Got situated, put my headphones on and fired up iTunes. La Grange seemed like a nice way to set the morning groove and so that was the choice. As I cut off the end of the cigar and looked around the parking lot and that is when I noticed about maybe ten to twelve motorcycles. I never even heard them come in the previous night, how interesting, guess I was focused continued on next page

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the candy bar lady but no matter what there were the scooters. So there I was a nice morning, a good smoke and I was listening to ZZ Top, what could be better? Well for one thing the door to the room next to mine opened and there were the two shall we say close friends. I didn’t pay much attention to him but she was a knock out and I could fully understand the excitement in that room the previous night. Now I am not some ordinary kind of pervert I guess unless you include sheep in your definition but I mean they were making the noise, no I take that back she was making all the noise. Well they put her pink night bag in the car, they got in and away they went. A nice breeze was blowing out of the west, it was a warm breeze and coupled with the sunshine plus the cigar and the music well you just don’t get much closer to heaven on earth. It wasn’t long after that a big ass biker came my way, smiled and said you the guy that put that chopper in the motel room? I said yep and he said I get it and smiled broadly. He saw my hat and asked if I was military and I said no and he said cool hat. Then he told me that he belonged to a military bike association and they were on their way to a run. The run would celebrate brothers and sisters of the uniform and raise cash and goods for those that need someone to look in on them. I had never heard of such a thing and he invited me to ride along. He told me that the growth of military bike associations has been huge over the last nine or ten years. Since leaving the service he joined the association because of what he saw in Iraq. He left to go get two cups of coffee up in the front office. When he came back he had three cups of coffee and gave one to me. That was cool. He asked about my scooter and I told him the engine and transmission were a 1975 Shovelhead completely rebuilt going ten over on the cylinders with an Andrews cam. The rest of the bike was either hand made such as the frame, gas tank and fenders. Running a two forty rear tire, 45 degrees on the neck and fourteen over glide like front tubes. He said the tubes looked like military shells and I said yes they do then he asked where the oil tank was and I told him inside the frame itself, he thought that was way cool. After that short conversation he needed to get going as the coffee was getting cold. He said not to forget the offer and I shook my head in agreement. As I sat there I decided to search the internet on my cell while I was continued on next page November 2023 • Rock and Blues International

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smoking. I came across a number of web sites and each one detailed what their members do to keep the health and spirits going for their fellow servicemen and women. With over 100 chapters worldwide The Green Knights definitely stand out. According to the U.S. Air Force’s Air Mobility Command publication The Green Knights: “they serve they ride”. Another one is Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association. These are the people that have over 100 chapters. Completely committed to the welfare of their fellow veterans. I was blown away by how many more exist. Very cool in a world that otherwise as you read or watch the news you tend to think that all is lost, but not so. This bit of online education reinvigorated my faith in my fellow Americans and to learn that all of them are up on two wheels well that’s a bonus. I finished my cigar, picked up my stuff and took the chair inside. Ran the shower and did my three S’s (sh*t, shower, and shave) grabbed the bungees and attached the sleeping bag “personal goods pack” to the front end. Backed the bike out the front door, spoke to it a little bit and she fired right up. I dropped her into first gear and immediately began thinking about Thin Lizzy singing their rowdy “The Boys Are Back In Town”. My hunger alarm had gone off and that told me it was time for some brunch.

Now if you are ever in Phoenix try Joe’s Diner on 7th Avenue. Talk about good and the place is clean. Nice, young perky gal came by to take my order and asked what she could give me today. Well I knew what was on my mind but I just smiled and said I would have their three egg ham and cheese omelet to which she said I think you are blushing. I said no not really change of temperature from being outside I suppose. A Short time later she returned with the order and it was as good as I thought it would be. While I was there I saw a uniformed cop sitting by himself and he was getting ready to leave and asked for the bill. The young lady that had waited on me told him there wasn’t any bill as someone else had picked up the tab. He asked who and she said they already left. They told me that we all need to stand with those who protect our neighborhood. I thought about that for a moment and realized that no one had left since I came in. Hmm. Aha! That might mean that the waitress did it.

So when she came back to check on me I asked her if she was the one who paid for the officer’s breakfast and she said why no not me but boy was she ever blushing.

So I said to her now look at who’s blushing and her face got redder and she left. That made it two good things I continued on next page 86

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learned about so far and it was only 11 am, cool. I distinctly remember wanting a Bloody Mary after brunch and thought about this gal named Renee who makes the damn best Bloody Mary I’ve ever had but Renee was in Houston, well actually a suburb of Houston, Spring and I am in Phoenix Arizona. So now I was on a quest for a good Bloody Mary. You see as you may well know you have to your Bloody Mary just spicy enough with the right garnishment including the lime, the olives and of course the celery. Well I found a place and it was named Carly’s in the Roosevelt area. Now you tell me what’s not to like?

The place had class all the way. Plus the Bloody Mary’s were over the top, so another nice thing that happened that day. Now it was after 12 and I was feeling a bit of a light buzz. Well you don’t ever want to waste a good buzz right? So now I wondered where a person might find some blues rock with a cigar store close by. Found the blues bar a place named Bliss/ Rebar and it was open. Now I just needed to load up on cigars. Found that too a place named Magnums plus it’s both a bar and a cigar store, home run baby!

Needless to say I was smiling from ear to ear, I was having an absolutely marvelous day. Now what else could a man think about having on a day like today?

Oh I know what you naughty readers are thinking and

you would be 100% right on the money. So off I went after having that interesting conversation at the motel, a good brunch, a great Bloody Mary and then finding that cigar bar and on to find a venue with blues rock. By the time I arrived at Bliss/Bar (I stayed awhile at Magnums) they were open and already filling up. So “I sat myself down by a tender young maiden” (sorry Mr. Kristofferson just had to steal your lyrics for a few moments) but the silver tongue devil and I were at work on this fine day. I smiled, she smiled but my voice wouldn’t work, what the F? The bar tender furled her eye brows wondering what was wrong and asked me what she could get for me. Now you know when you are having a really great day and the same question comes at you from the second pretty gal in one day well sometimes you just sit there and smile. This was one of those days. However, the lady sitting next to me said nice tat on your arm was that you on the bike that pulled up? Well folks let me tell you that once you ask a biker about their bike well they just cannot shut up. Swear God bikers are all the same…. Later….

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