If you ever get the chance to hang out with D.K. Harrell and his band, make sure it’s over the breakfast table. The conversation flows fast and thick like our biscuits and gravy and the subject matter ranges from everything family and friends, good times, hard times and all things music. The entire band is well-versed in the latter and all speak fluent blues, jazz, soul, R&B and roots dialects. Not only young and talented, they openly display a shared enthusiasm and serious commitment to the music they love. You see it clearly when they acknowledge influences or when praising those who paved the way, but it grabs you by the throat when they step on stage and you witness it up close and personal with every note they play.

D.K. let’s start with early life; you’re originally from the Peach Capital of Louisiana… “Ruston, Louisiana is my hometown, I was born there on April 24th, 1998. I was there because I marked it on the calendar.” He grins. “And it is the Peach Capital of Louisiana. I spent a lot of my childhood listening to blues music with my grandfather, C. H. Jackson from Spearsville, Louisiana which was 36 minutes North of Ruston, way up in the country. My mother, Christal Jackson was also my inspiration when it came to blues because my grandfather kept blues not only around me, but around the whole family. He was a blues fanatic and he loved old school R&B from the 50s and 60s because during that time in his life he was in his late teens and early 20s. A college kid at HBCU listening to Otis Redding, B.B. King and Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and it stayed with him throughout his life…and he hipped his grandson to it. His other grandchildren and my cousins were more into Hip-hop, that’s what they liked. But there was something about the blues and R&B music that just stuck with me and I loved being around my grandfather. We actually counted how many vinyl albums he had and it amounted to 322 vinyl records in his home. And it was a vast variety of music; blues, gospel, R&B, soul and he liked Elvis. Which kind of blew my mind…but he told me Elvis had come to the Monroe Civic Center which is just 30 minutes away from Ruston and B.B. King had played there, Albert King had played there, and Johnny Cash because back then it was considered the chitlin’ circuit. And my grandfather actually housed Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and his band at his home in 1977 when they were traveling from Jackson, Mississippi to Dallas and instead of staying in a hotel in Monroe they came across my grandfather, who was an educator and he said, ‘you know what, I’ll save you guys some money you can stay at my home.’ If you know about Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland at that time, there were about 8 or 10 people in the band. And we’re talking about a three bedroom, two bath room home; he said he had so many pallets lying out through his house…” (laughing)

Is it true some of your first words were singing along to B.B.’s ‘The Thrill is Gone?’ “I was about 18 months old and I didn’t make much noise as a baby. I rarely cried or didn’t babble or say momma or dada and it worried my family to the point they almost had me tested for vocal cord issues. My grandfather said, ‘Maybe he just doesn’t have anything to say, right now.'” (laughing) “One day my mother and I were going to Shreveport and my grandfather gave her a copy of B.B.’s ‘Deuces Wild’ to listen to and she heard a little voice in the background in a car seat singing ‘The Thrill is Gone.’ And that’s stamped as the day I started talking. But the way my mother puts it, ‘that’s how he started talking and since then I haven’t been able to get him to shut up.” (laughing)

“To play that guitar, I was done living right then, my life was done. Take me now, Lord!”
—D.K. Harrell on playing ‘Lucille’ B.B. King’s guitar.

You got to meet B.B. at a concert, didn’t you? “Russ Bryant, my musical director…” D.K. starts to shake his head. “…the way the universe works is strange. Russ runs PSS the Premier Production and Sound Services in Baton Rouge, Louisiana…Russ, you tell him.“

Russ Bryant: “My company PSS…we were doing all the sound production for B.B. King’s performance at the Baton Rouge River Center Theater and unbeknownst to me, I had never met D.K. but he was there, and Andrew Moss our bass player was there as well. We were all at this show before we met each other and eventually we all realized we had experienced B.B. King together and I still have the microphone that B.B. King sang on. And I think it was one of the last shows he did in Louisiana before he passed.”

DK: “It was January 19th 2013. It was a late Christmas present and my mother had a manila envelope and I opened it and it was two tickets to see B.B. King in the Orchestra section; it was beautiful. At the end of the show I kind of pushed my way through the audience to the front of the stage and everybody is yelling, ‘BB, sign my hat. Sign my shirt,’ and I’m like, Mr. King, Mr. King and he looked dead at me and I swear my legs turned to jelly and he goes, ‘Hey young man.’ And I said I want to be just like you, I got my haircut just like you from the 50s. And he goes ‘Yeah, I remember when I had hair like that, but I don’t have hair like that anymore.’ And he gave me one of his picks and he shook my hand and said, ‘Young man, you can be whatever you want to be, and if you want to be like this old man you gotta’ work hard.’ And as soon as I got out the door of the theater, I busted out in tears and haven’t been to another concert since. It was a very magic moment. My grandfather came to Baton Rouge with us and picked us up after the show and said, ‘Did you get a chance to shake his hand?’ I said, yes sir. He said, ‘Well, maybe B.B. put some good mojo on you.’ And look, ten years later, this is what you got.” (laughing)

I don’t think many people realize you didn’t start on guitar, but on the harp. “Yes. Not harp like classical music, but harp as in harmonica… the Louisiana saxophone. My cousin, Jamari Harris is older than me and around 2009 or 2010 said there’s a movie called ‘Cadillac Records’ and it’s got blues and stuff in it, so you’ll like it. I watched the film and it had music from Little Walter, who is actually from Marksville, Louisiana and I said man, I want a harmonica. I asked momma, can I please have some harmonicas and she said okay as long as you actually play them. She got me three in the key of A, C and D and I blew the reeds out of them in two days.” (laughing) “I shattered them all! I’m pretty sure over the course of two years I went through like fifty harmonicas.“

You’ve mentioned Guitar Slim as another influence for you. “He did a song called ‘Think it over one more time’ and I was like, I really like this song. I like the way this guy’s playing because what I like about the old cats is they just had an ear for music and then of course however they played was just how they played. It was so interesting because he just had a different playing style and it almost sounded sloppy to me. When you listened to the guitar solo in ‘Think it Over’ it’s a weird solo when he starts it but it folds out better as he goes on. My grandfather and I would stay up till like two in the morning watching different artists on his computer like Big Joe Williams, Big Joe Turner, Sarah Vaughan, Slim Gaylord…what I liked about Slim was his humor, but in my opinion his was one of the most underrated jazz guitarists, Slim Gaylord was a very talented musician from piano to guitar he could play anything. That’s one thing I’ve tried to bring to my show from Slim Gaylord…is the humor in the stage presence and lyric wise with the vocals.

Another big influence when I first started playing guitar was Elmore James and Muddy Waters, but I’ve got stupid fingers. I can’t play slide to save my life.” (laughing) “…very stupid fingers. I also listened to Chuck Berry, but the Stones got him down and the Animals and all these guitar players have his sound down so I thought to myself, this was like 2012, who’s an artist that people try to get tone-wise and style-wise and try to have that same approach but just can’t get it? And it’s B.B. because if you think about it B.B.’s playing to me as a guitar virtuoso, is very similar to the approach of Miles Davis an how he handled trumpet because Miles took advantage of space just like B.B. took advantage of space. And that goes hand-in-hand on what my grandfather used to tell me, time waits for no one, so do what you can now. In other words you have to take advantage of time and space because once it’s gone you can’t get it back.“

Russ: “It’s not about how many notes you play or how much you can shred as a guitar player, but rather can you play the right note, at the right time and the right place. And that was B.B.’s style.“

Let’s talk a little about your songwriting, do you write with your guitar, do you have a process? “My process is usually, I sit down, not with my guitar but by myself in a room and sometimes I watch movies or TV or talk to random people and sometimes they’ll say something that just clicks and I’ll go…Oh there’s a song in there somewhere and I’ll write it down on my phone but I still believe in a pen and paper, but the phone is right there and I’ll take it out and make notes. And I’ll come back to it and then I’ll sit there and really focus on the lyrics. A lot of people like music specifically for the music; you know the sound of the instruments but I feel like a real artist is concerned for what the audience listens to on a lyrical basis. Because the lyrics are really what makes the audience connect with you. If you think about it, every poet, every painter has details in their speech and in their art and if there is one little thing missing or one word is missing it wouldn’t make sense. It’s the little things that matter and that’s what changes you. When I write songs, I try to be as personal as possible. Even if you haven’t been through it, you can understand it because I’m trying to describe it in detail…and that’s the process I try to use.“

Blues has always been considered a form of communication; do you consider yourself a storyteller? “Oh yeah, watch this…Once upon a time.” (laughing) “I do consider myself a storyteller but the words I use really matter and you know that saying, ‘words hurt.’ What’s the actual saying…the pen is mightier than the sword. That saying is true. If you tell hurtful things to some people, they can hurt themselves or other people just because of what you said. So storytelling is important you try to make it positive and even if it’s a negative subject the idea should be that you overcame whatever it was that was hurting you and that you continue moving forward. Either way, life is short, take it with a grain of sand and keep moving.“

Tell me about your album ‘The Right Man.’ “Jim Pugh is the president of the Little Village Foundation recording label and I owe a great deal of gratitude to this man. About two years ago we met at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis and I really owe my recording career to Jim Pugh and Michael Kinsman. ‘The Right Man’ was recorded in three days with Kid Andersen; we also had Tony Coleman who was B.B. King’s drummer for 35 years. We had Doc Kupka from Tower of Power do horns for us along with Neil Levonius, John Halbleib, Mike Rinta, Mike Peloquin and Aaron Lington. But a real highlight of the whole recording session is we had the original bass player on the recording of B.B.’s ‘The Thrill is Gone’ Mr. Jerry Jemmott.

Jerry is in his mid-70s now and we were recording ‘Leave it at the Door’ and I was sitting there playing my guitar part in the studio and Jerry was listening and said, ‘the red Gibson you’re playing’ it belonged to Kid Andersen and was like a ’66 or ’68, ‘it’s the very same style of guitar that B.B. had when he recorded ‘The Thrill is Gone.’ It wasn’t the exact one, not his, but it looks just like it. He told me recording on this session these past few days has brought back so many memories of recording with B.B. and it’s an honor to be on the record with you. And I wanted to cry; because I was thinking…I should be saying that to him.” (laughing) “But recording that session was like a match made in heaven and Jim Pugh…I love you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

You had the unique opportunity to play B.B.’s guitar ‘Lucille’ at one time, didn’t you? “Yes! September 9th, 2019. I was 21 years old and my very first gig, my first show, was the B.B. King Symposium in Indianola, Mississippi near Itta Bena, B.B.’s home town. Lil’ Ray Neal is usually the guy that plays B.B.’s guitar, he’s part of Kenny Neal’s band and I think he’s his little brother; and Lil’ Ray pulls out ‘Lucille.’ There were several of them but this was the ‘Lucille’ that Gibson made for B.B. when they opened the museum in 2005. At that time only three people had played it; B.B. himself, Keb Mo and Lil’ Ray Neal. I said to Ray, Oh, are you going to play it? And he said, ‘No, today is your day!’ And the first song I played on that guitar was ‘Sweet Little Sixteen.’ To play that guitar, I was done living right then, my life was done. Take me now, Lord!“

Introduce your touring band? “Russ Bryant is our production manager, musical director and saxophone player. Andrew ‘Fingers’ Moss on bass, Orlando Henry on keys, Dan Isbell on trumpet who now goes by Doctor because he’s a professor of music at Penn State University. And the youngest member of the group is Justin ‘the Giant’ Brown on drums from Vicksburg, Mississippi. This band is my dream band. We like hanging out together and I really like how close everyone is. Having a relationship on stage is great but having a relationship offstage makes the energy on stage ten times better.“

Your music draws from so many musical influences; the grittier hill country blues, the Chicago city sound to a soulful R&B feel. Do you consider yourself a student of the music you play? “You know I became a fan of hill country blues after I discovered a film called ‘Black Snake Moan’ and I really see that film paying homage to R.L. Burnside. And that’s when I first heard hill country style music and fell in love with it. The song ‘Alice May’ was one of my favorites, and ‘Stagolee’ which is very vulgar and raw and much grittier than the original…that’s R.L. Burnside. I also get a lot of influence when it comes to guitar from jazz players, Grant Green, Django Reinhardt and even horn players like we mentioned earlier, Miles Davis. I heard some of the licks he does and apply them to what I do on stage. I like to do a mixture of morphed jazz and blues…“

Russ adds, “We try to pull from every area and all the masters, it helps you develop your own sound and your own style. Drawing from everybody helps you create your own vocabulary and rearrange it to what fits your heart.“

DK: “If you listen to ‘The Right Man’ record, in my opinion, of course its blues but to categorize it into a certain genre, it would be difficult because the record contains so much blues, jazz, pop and R&B influence it becomes a mixture of everything. So, sound-wise the record is very unique.“

A number of musicians I’ve spoken with throughout the years have told me that a bands’ energy comes directly from their audiences, does the D.K. Harrell band every experience that? Russ says, “At a show in Lucerne, Switzerland last year we played a special dinner show and D.K. went into the crowd and everybody got up and surrounded him and he was just singing his heart out and they wanted to be in the moment. It was special because we not only want to play for them, but to actually connect with them while we do it. Because if we don’t have the people to connect with, what’s the point? We might as well play in a vacuum, music is meant to be shared and experienced.”

The post D.K. Harrell – Rhythm and Roots in the Key of Blues appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Let’s start with the early years…did you sing around the house when you were young? “I would sing around the house a lot. People assume that I grew up singing in church, but my family didn’t go to church very much. My mom had her own beliefs and the church wasn’t the way for her, but we were raised to believe in God. And my grandmamma and great-grandmamma and grandfather all lived in the same house. My three sisters and me, my mom and my dad lived there for a minute before they got divorced, so we had a little dysfunction there growing up as a child.”

Always Detroit? “Born and raised in the city of Detroit and I listened to a lot of music coming up because that was my peace. Whenever I felt like I needed some peace of mind I would go and put on the record player. The record player gave me my peace; I’d go to the record player and put on my favorite, the Supremes or the Temptations because at that time Motown was happenin’ and that’s what I was listening to and that’s what my mom and dad were listening to at the time. Or anything from Nancy Wilson or Etta James, but as a child my main influence coming up as a singer, Phyllis Hyman was the one I listened to. Everybody assumes it would have been blues but it was Phyllis Hyman that motivated me to sing.”

Did jazz play any part as far as influences? “I would say a little bit but I always thought at the time that blues and jazz were my mom and dad’s music, so I always wanted to listen to the Top 40. Coming up in Detroit in the late 70s and 80s we were listening to the Dramatics, a great Detroit band and a lot of other Detroit acts that made it national (the Spinners, DeBarge) and I listened to a lot of that, too.”

Let’s talk a little about you recording career. “I think at the age of 22…and I had been in a group with my girls called, ‘Chanteuse’ and we were just trying to be heard. It’s hard to get people to listen and it’s hard to get gigs. We never had regular gigs; we’d make our own gigs and go home with $50 to split up. I ended up going to a jam session with an established band there and somebody told them I could sing. They got me up on stage, and at the time they were doing old blues and soul music that I had been listening to with my mom and dad and that I knew. They said, ‘we don’t do Top 40, we do soul and blues. Do you do that?’ I go, Okay…yeah!” (laughing) “I did one blues song with them and I became a blues singer after that, because they asked me to join the band. They were called the Chisel Brothers. I was with them for awhile and started getting a name in the city of Detroit as a blues singer. Then everybody wanted to have the powerful blues singer voice that they’d been hearing about.”

When did you get involved with the band, Big Chief? “Big Chief was an alternative rock band that came out in the nineties, ’95 or ’96 time period. They were signed to Sub Pop Records, the label based in Seattle. They came to me and said, ‘we want your voice.’ And you know at that time there was always a soulful voice wailing over the rock songs. You know, Boy George had ‘Church of the Poison Mind’ with that soulful voice. When someone wanted a soulful voice wailing on their records in the 90s, I was the one to get the call in Detroit. So when Big Chief called me, the label liked me so much, they said, ‘we want to do a record with you.’ I had been with the Chisel Brothers for about ten years by then, so I had to make a big decision. It was like stepping out on faith because I had been loyal to these guys for so long, but I wanted to do something…different. I wanted to step out. So I decided to do this record with Big Chief. I still wasn’t used to doing my own thing because I was a person that just showed up and did what they told me to do. I sang…I wasn’t in charge of my checks; I wasn’t in charge of anything. I would just show up and sing. Basically, when I stepped out on faith and decided to do that thing with Sub Pop, I got my own career.”

How did that impact your direction? “When I did the Sub Pop gig, it did not make me a lot of money because they didn’t know what to do with me. I’m a blues singer who sings rock!” (laughing) “It was a grunge label! They didn’t know what to do with me. And I had just started writing, so when they signed me and I told them I wasn’t a writer. About three months in they said, ‘Look, we’re about to drop you if you don’t start writing. At the time I was in a tumultuous relationship that I just couldn’t seem to get out of, so I started writing songs about it. It motivated me to write, so then I became a songwriter. The album is called ‘Sunday Morning Music.’

You’ve worked with so many people and in so many genres. Your versatility has really worked for you. Let’s start with working with Bob Seger? “Yeah, I’m on some tracks with Bob and I actually got to do some live performances on television with him.”

Kim Wilson? “Yes Kim Wilson. He’s on MY album!” Thornetta giggles. “I called Kim, I got his number like years ago and I said whenever I record my album…because there’s a span of 20 years between ‘Sunday Morning Music’ and ‘Honest Woman.’ Both of those were original music. A 20-year span of hoping and praying some label would sign me. And it didn’t happen. In between that I recorded a ‘live’ CD of cover tunes. But I’d managed to keep working because of my fan base and people like you, who just want to see me perform. Thank you for keeping me working.

I told myself when I met Kim Wilson, when I record my next record I’m going to get him on that album. So I wrote the song ‘I Gotta’ Sang the Blues’ I called him and left a message, I said Kim, I’d love you to be on my record and I didn’t hear back from him. I scheduled the date that I knew he was coming to the area to play; it was about an hour from Detroit. So I set the recording date anyway, talked to the studio and told them what time I was going to do it. And the night before his gig in the Detroit area, he calls me. He says, ‘what’s this thing you want me to do?'” (laughing) “And it was late at night, like two in the morning.” (laughing) “Oh, I just want you play harp on it and I’ll come and get you and bring you back to your gig and I’ll pay you some money. So, I paid him good. While I’m at home preparing to go get him, I’m singing my song and I realize the second verse would sound good with him on it, so I color-coded the lyrics and when my husband and I went to pick him up and passed him the lyrics and said what do you think about singing this?” (laughing) “And he read it and we listened to it, it was about an hour between where we were and the studio and he said, ‘Oh, I’ll give it a try!’ So he’s on my record, singing also. You got to hear it, it’s great! It was one take and it was nominated for a Blues Music Award.”

Talk a little about Bonnie Raitt and Katie Webster. “That was in 1992 and Bonnie had just won all of those Grammy’s for ‘Nick of Time.’ I was in my 30’s; and in your 30’s you’re thinking you’re getting old! I’m getting old in this business, starting off too late, you know? But here’s Bonnie in her 40’s and winning all these awards and she was a major influence for me and keeping this going. And then I get the call to open up for her at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival. I’m backstage sharing a dressing room with Katie Webster because she was on tour with Bonnie and we were back there just whoopin’ and hollerin’ it up. And I just loved Miss Katie, she was a beautiful spirit. And here comes Bonnie, ‘Ooo girl, what’s you got on? I’m gonna’ have to go change my clothes!'” (laughing) “Cause I had beaded up this vest by hand and she liked it so much; she went back and put her bedazzled vest on. Then at the encore for her show, I was not expecting it but she asked me to come up, ‘C’mon up Thornetta’ and she asked me to sing with her. So I’m on stage with Katie Webster and Bonnie Raitt…it was surreal.”

How did your music get on the hit television show, the Sopranos? “‘Sunday Morning Music.’ I didn’t even know what the Soprano’s was, because I didn’t have HBO. I though the Sopranos was a show about some singers.” (laughing) “It wasn’t! I didn’t have HBO so I didn’t know. And this guy calls me, ‘you know I’m one of the producers of the show for HBO called the Sopranos and I was wondering if I could use one of your songs?’ And I’m like, sure. And when he told me how much I was getting, I was like…Yeah!” (laughing) “Then I went and looked it up and it was a mobster situation, it was the Isabella episode, where they were trying to whack him.”

You mentioned the ‘live’ album of cover tunes. “That was one of the things that kept me going after I did Sub Pop and didn’t know what I was going to do. I did a jam session in downtown Detroit at the club called the Music Menu and it kept me going for about five or six years.”

You covered some wonderful songs on that recording. Big Maybelle, Percy Mayfield, Etta James. How did you decide what songs to cover on that project? “There were friends of mine that performed with me, one major guy, Leonard King who would always introduce songs to me and I’d end up doing them in my shows. And I did them for so long, so many years my girlfriend Sue said, ‘We need to record this.’ It was a party every Wednesday in downtown Detroit. The room was busting at the seams every Wednesday, so we decided to record one night and it was magical.”

Let’s talk about the music you write, what inspires you? “For me, what I go through. I ask God to speak through me and it’s an inspiration. I’m hoping that it uplifts people and that people can relate to it, helps them feel better or if they’re going through something they understand they’re not the only one going through it. And they can find a way out of it.”

Talk a little about your song, ‘I Believe.’ “I believe everything’s going to be alright. We’ve been through so much, you know? That’s one of those songs I believe God gave me as a message to persevere. We’re all here. So many of us did not make it to this point in the last couple of years, so if you’re here you’ve got to do something with this life, you’ve got to make it better. You’ve got to make the planet better.”

Am I Just a Shadow? “Do you like that song? Mostly men like that song. Luis Resto (Eminem) played keys on that and Luis Resto is the guy that produced the music from 8 Mile. I thought I was going to be able to afford him but after he finished playing on it he goes, ‘Don’t worry about it; I think I did that to somebody!’ (laughing) “Wow! So he played on my record for free!” (laughing)

Your band plays everything; the versatility from an a cappella Bill Withers ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ to the Allman Bros. ‘Whipping Post?’ “I love that song! Nobody expects me to do it, so that’s why I like doing it. What is she doing? Whaaa…!?”

You knew Alberta Adams, didn’t you? “Alberta Adams was the original Detroit’s ‘Queen of the Blues’ and she was one of my mentor’s. I called her ‘Mama’ and my girlfriend Nikki and I were there one of the last days she was alive, right before Christmas. She passed away on Christmas. She’ll always be in my heart.”

You’ve gone global; the French honored you a few years ago with the La Academie du Jazz Award for your album ‘Honest Woman.’ “There was a 20-year span between both of those original albums, because I was waiting for somebody to do it for me. I said, by the time I’m 50 this and that is going to be happening. I turned 50 and it wasn’t happening. Then I realized I was waiting on good things I already have. All I need to do is step out on faith and make it happen. I turned 50 and went into the studio; I recorded the first five songs with some great Detroit musicians. I started having ideas on who I wanted to play on it, like Kim Wilson. And before I knew it the record was done, on my own dime. I got inspired by the young people that are doing it these days. You don’t need a record label to do that, put yourself out. It might take a long time, one song at a time. But just start doing it. And that’s what happened with ‘Honest Woman.’

And weren’t you just in Australia at the Sydney Opera House? “I performed with a performance artist named Taylor Mac. He has a show called the Bark of Millions and we’re going to be out this way in L.A. in February. The Bark of Millions is a fabulous show and it pays tribute to the LBGT community historians, people nobody knew about and all the songs are about certain people throughout the history of the world who were LBGT. I sing about Wilbur ‘Little Axe’ Broadnax who was actually a woman and nobody knew. He performed songs with an all-male gospel group. And there are a couple of other singers that I perform.”

Thornetta Davis is one hell-of-a-dynamic and inspirational singer\songwriter. If you ever get the chance to see her perform live, take my advice and do it. It’s an evening you won’t soon forget.

The post Thornetta Davis: Detroit’s Queen of the Blues appeared first on Traveling Archive.

When you grow up in a family where your father is known as Lil’ Howlin’ Wolf, the chances are pretty good that you may end up as a bluesman. If you come of age on Chicago’s Southside and your band is forced to practice in the basement laundry room of the projects, you may end up as a bluesman. But when childhood memories include your dad taking you by the hand into some of the Windy City’s most legendary bars and you witness B.B. King live for the first time at the Burning Spear on State Street, damn you have to be a bluesman!

That’s exactly what happened to Michael Stone; you and I know him better as Stoney B. The twist and turns of his musical road, including four years in Army khakis, have taken him from the streets and bars of Chicago through a maze of clubs and juke joints across the entire South. Over a decade of that period he honed his performance and entertainment skills around the Big Easy. Those years of dedication would pay off with an invite to the New Orleans Jazz Festival. It would take Hurricane Katrina to force him to leave and with a short stop in Texas, Stoney B would eventually find his way to the West Coast and San Diego. And that’s where we caught up with him.

Let’s start with your childhood, born in Chicago…when did you realize who your father was and what he did for a living? “First of all.” Stoney says. “My father was the friend of a guy named Earnest Stone and they were good friends. Earnest Stone was with my mother and they broke up. When Earnest left, my father and mother got to be friends and I was the first product of that. My father, Lil Howlin’ Wolf (Jessie Sanders) has five kids by my mother, and I’m the first one. My mother had four girls and when she met my father, I was my mother’s first son. My mother and father broke up when I was eleven years old. We were living in Chicago; in the projects on the Southside of Chicago.”

Did you ever have the chance to meet Howlin’ Wolf? “I didn’t know Chester Burnett, ‘the Howlin’ Wolf’ and it’s in question, whether or not my father was Howlin’ Wolf’s illegitimate son. When Howlin’ Wolf left Mississippi and went to Chicago, my father followed him and the word I got through family is that when my father went to Chicago, Howlin’ Wolf didn’t want him because Wolf had his family with him. You see my father sounded, vocally just like Howlin’ Wolf! Let me tell you, my dad and Howlin’ Wolf had the same kind of vocal chords and it wasn’t a put-on that was my dad’s natural voice. I don’t know if Chester Burnett is my biological grandfather, all I know is they were close. Back in Mississippi they went down to juke joints and my father would follow him when he could.”

“Jimmy Reed, Elmore James, B.B. King and Muddy Waters were my main influences. You even say their names and I lose my mind.” — Stoney B.

You said your mother and father broke up when you were young? “My father left when I was eleven and it was about two years later when I got into music because of my upstairs neighbor. We lived on the thirteenth floor and my friend Derek, lived on the fourteenth floor. His father was into gospel music and had bought him a bass guitar. I’m sitting at home and I hear this boom, boom, booma, boom coming through the walls and I go upstairs to find out what’s going on. Derek had a bass guitar and I was really infatuated with it. I was thirteen and said let me try it. It was the first musical instrument I had ever tried to play in my life. I would go up to his house everyday…let me play on that bass. After a couple of months, Derek’s dad said let me buy Derek a guitar and let Michael Stone play the bass and that’s what he did. One thing led to another and we learned to play by ear. Everything that Derek learned, I learned. We practiced it. The first song I learned to play was ‘Get Ready’ by the Temptations. You couldn’t tell me shit! I knew how to play that!” (laughing)

Any special memories stand out from that first band? “When Derek and I were learning about music, Derek on guitar and me on bass and my next door neighbor, Gregory Hunter turned out to be our drummer. We were called the 4947 Laundry Room Band. We were kids, 14 or 15 years old and our parents loved that we were interested in music but nobody wanted us in their house.” (laughing) “You all go on down to the laundry room in the middle of the building where the elevators were. And later on my brother, Larry started singing and he had a fine voice. We entered a music contest at the Regal Theater in Chicago and one of our competitors was the Jackson 5. Michael Jackson sang ‘Who’s Lovin’ You’ and boy the women just went crazy. Joe Jackson really pressured them, they had to dress, they had steps, they had the music lined up and they were professional. We were amateurs. I mean, they just came and blew everybody else away…three times in a row. During that time we were known as the Rayshons and we had these little purple and red outfits that Derek’s father had gotten for us. I remember one night when Jermaine Jackson showed up and something was wrong with his amp and he borrowed mine. At that time I had no idea that these guys out of Indiana would go on to be world famous.”

Did your father ever take you to meet some of his musical friends? “I remember the first time my dad took me to see B.B. King at the Burning Spear club on State Street in Chicago. He got me in because everyone knew he was Lil’ Howlin’ Wolf. He started taking me out to Silvio’s and Theresa’s and people got to know me before they knew I even played music.”

Your father lived a good portion of his life in Memphis? “He was still doing shows but he had touches of Alzheimer’s and my dad would talk to anybody, he was friendly like that and everybody knew him. At his funeral, all of the kids one-by-one would get up say something and thank people for coming. I loved my dad and that was the first time I admitted to myself that I wanted to be just like him. I never said that before, I’m looking at him in his casket; the music, the personality and the character, everything that he was…was inside of me.”

He played with Jimmy Reed, Little Junior Parker…“Koko Taylor, the list is endless. Billy Branch, Sugar Blue, everybody in Chicago.”

It’s little wonder why your sound is so diverse. You play Delta and Chicago style blues, but there are traces of R&B, Soul and even Gospel in your current sets. “It was fed into my ears and remember I’ve never had a music lesson in my life. Blues and Gospel music has a feeling to it. It’s an emotional real thing. You either feel it or you don’t. My favorite number one Gospel group is the Mighty Clouds of Joy. I used to go right across the street to the DuSable Auditorium when I was living in the projects; the DuSable High School was directly across the street. And on Sundays they had the Gospel show and at the time I think it was $1.25 to get in. And I would go listen to the Gospel music, sometimes they would have the Mighty Clouds of Joy, the Jackson Southernaires and all these groups traveling out of Memphis and Mississippi.”

Let’s talk about influences outside of the family. “Jimmy Reed, Elmore James, B.B. King and Muddy Waters were my main influences. You even say their names and I lose my mind. They got that beat and the music goes right along with it. You don’t even know your feet are moving. The blues will grab you.” (laughing) “The last two times B.B. came out to San Diego, I got to open for him at Humphrey’s main stage.”

Had you met him before? “When I was living in Atlanta, B.B. was playing somewhere downtown and I was playing at a blues club called Blind Willie’s in Virginia Highlands. I went to the show and when it was over and everybody was leaving, I walked up toward the stage and the security guy was there. I said look here my man can I go back and see B.B. and he said I can’t let anybody back. I went in my wallet and got one of my business cards and put a twenty dollar bill with it. Do me a favor and just tell B.B. Little Wolf’s son is here to see him. He said stay right there and he went in the back. In two minutes he came back and said follow me. I went in the dressing room and B.B. was in there with a couple of women and when I came in he said, ‘Who is your Daddy?’ I said Lil’ Howlin’ Wolf. He said, ‘Oh man!’ And another thing I was told to say hi to you from somebody in Leland, Mississippi. And when I said Leland, Mississippi B.B. sat straight up and asked, ‘Who said to say hi?’ I said, ‘Lil Bill.’ And he clapped his hands and smiled. (Alex ‘Lil’ Bill’ Wallace) taught B.B. how to play. Lil’ Bill was a used car salesman in Leland, Mississippi and when I was living in the Delta area I knew him; I got to play in the Mississippi Delta Blues Festival twice.”

Music has been such a big part of your life, how did your military service affect that? “I played bass from the time I was thirteen until I was twenty and then I went into the Army. In the Army I bought a guitar. I took my second military pay check and bought a Fender Stratocaster guitar. I taught my little brother Lonnie how to play the bass. When I came out of the Army, Lonnie was better on the bass than I was. I sat on the edge of my bed trying to figure out what to do with them bottom two strings.” (laughing) “The bass has four strings and a guitar has six. No amplifier but I could hear it and put things together, little by little and when I got out of the Army after four years, I went back to Chicago with a guitar and they were laughing at me…until they started listening to me. All of the blues music my dad influenced me with coming up, stayed with me.”

“I’ve been on the stage since I was fifteen years old, but I didn’t actually start singing and fronting a band until after I came out of the Army. When I was a bass player in Chicago, I wasn’t singing I was just playing bass. That’s why they were laughing at me when I came out of the Army because I got a guitar and I’m singing. Then when people came out to see…just who the hell is Stoney B blues? One year after I got out of the Army, I formed the first Stoney B blues band. We played from 1979 to 1986. At the same time, I was playing behind so many musicians in Chicago, it wasn’t even funny. I could sing, open up the show, play guitar, and MC. I was with Queen Sylvia Embry. She was a bass player out of the church and she could sing like an angel. Johnny ‘Guitar’ Embry was her husband and they broke up and got back together, broke up and got back together. One of the bands was Johnny ‘Guitar’ Embry and the Blues Kings and Sylvia saw me playing with him one time. Then when she found out I could play bass and guitar…AND sing, she pulled me aside. So, I was playing with Queen Sylvia and Johnny’s Blues Kings and some months I only had four days off. I was playing music every damn night. My own band played every Monday at Lee’s Unleaded Blues with Buddy Scott and the Rib Tips. He started me off at the club’s Blue Monday party.”

It would be a fan who recorded one of those ‘party nights’ that Stoney says, turned him around. “I did not like what I heard because I was drinkin’ and smokin’ weed. I thought I was feeling my own, like King Kong higher than a MF’er. My singing wasn’t clear, my guitar playing was sloppy. So, I quit! No drinking and performing.”

Did you play around Chicago with your dad? “I didn’t play with my dad much. All together, I maybe performed with my dad just three times. My dad had his own band and they were all seasoned musicians. Musically, my father was my biggest influence because he took me from the beginning until he passed away. I looked up to my dad and admired him.”

Some of those Chicago clubs are still considered legendary. “Kingston Mines, B.L.U.E.S. Yeah, I played at Wise Fools, Biddy Mulligan’s…” Did you play at Silvio’s? “No, but my dad did, my dad played Silvio’s a lot. And there was Theresa’s. Junior Wells gave me a harp one time. It was a C harp and I’ll never forget it. And I tried to play it and it made my lips sore and I never put another harmonica to my mouth again. And Junior Wells used to call me, ‘Lil’ MF’er!’ (laughing) “Junior would walk around saying, ‘Where’s that Lil’ MF’er at?’ (laughing) “I admired Junior Wells so much. First of all, he was one of the sharpest dressers and he’d always sit at the end of the bar, by himself. He got to liking me because I respected him. He was so much older than me. Junior Wells and Buddy Guy knew my dad very well.”

You had a chance to work with Son Thomas and Roosevelt ‘Booba’ Barnes? “Son Thomas I met and played with and I had the chance to talk with him a little bit, but Son Thomas was one of the older guys. And another guy named T-Model Ford…and Roosevelt ‘Booba’ Barnes. When I left Chicago in 1986, I went to Greenville, Mississippi. I was living in a little motel right outside of town and a cab driver told me, I see you’ve got a guitar. You know they play the blues down on Nelson Street. I waited till Friday night and the cabbie took me down to Nelson Street to Roosevelt ‘Booba’ Barnes’ Playboy Club. I walked in carrying a guitar and Booba had a bass player, a drummer and some other guy who could play guitar a little bit and Booba said, ‘I’m gonna’ get you to come up and play a couple of songs.’ You know, to see if I was worth a damn. So I got up and played and people liked it. Booba asked me, ‘what’s your story?’ I said look man, I just got in town I’m stayin’ in a hotel out by the highway and I’ve got no place to stay, no money and no job. He said, ‘Well man, I could use you in my band.’ He was living in the back of the club, so I was sleeping on the pool table!” (laughing) “I was playing with Booba for a couple of months and sleeping on the pool table and I’d help him at night when the club closed, cleaning up and emptying the trash, mopping the floor. Right down the street was a place called the ‘Flowing Fountain’ and that was Little Milton’s hangout. The guy who owned the ‘Flowing Fountain’ was named Perry Payton and he was a mortician, he had his own funeral home business.”

Your music and most blues is based on storytelling…are you a storyteller? “When my dad was singing and playing the blues in the house, he’d be singing and playing like it was real. Even though it was nothing but a song, I was young and impressionable and I’m learning and you can have me believing anything if you know how to do it. And the blues, every song that I sing, when I sing it, I put myself into that song. I’m going to try and make you believe. Whatever I sing, I want you to believe me. You can feel me better if you believe me and I like that connection. That’s why I love playing for the senior citizens over at St. Paul’s…they’re not drinking, they’re not dancing, they’re sitting there listening. They tell me, ‘Oh, I was so into what you were doing, I listened to every syllable that came out of your mouth; I listened to you!’ No distractions. You know that meant a lot to me.”

The early 90s you find your way to New Orleans and you meet a blues guy by the name of Bryan Lee. “Bryan Lee! That’s my boy! Blind Bryan Lee, man he was playing the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street. One of the first nights I got there, I was walking down the street and I heard the blues and I walked up and looked in this place and Bryan Lee was up there playing. I didn’t know at the time he was blind. About six or seven month later I was opening up for Bryan Lee at the Old Absinthe Bar. When I first got to New Orleans I was a street musician. I’d been ripped off and didn’t have a guitar, but someone gave me one but it didn’t have any strings. I took that guitar and right off of Jackson Square on St. Peters Street, I got up on the wall and with no strings on this guitar I put my tip box out and told people I can play any song you name. How can they tell if I’m right or wrong, I didn’t have any strings on the damn thing? It was like I was a comedy act out there.”

Stoney demonstrates and sings ‘My baby left me’ and strums an invisible guitar without strings. ‘I got the blues, pretty baby.’ “And people just stopped they’d never seen anything like that before. Even other musicians were wondering what the hell is going on? Here’s this black man down there with a guitar and no strings on it and there’s a damn crowd around him and a half a box of money. What is the world coming to?” (laughing)

After establishing yourself in New Orleans what were some of the clubs you played in? “The first club I performed in on Bourbon Street was called, The Funky Pirate. I also played the Famous Door, the R&B Club, Tropical Isle…”

I’m amazed at the number of clubs and bars you’ve played all over the South, From Blind Willie’s in Atlanta to the Mean Woman’s Grill in Lubbock. “Man, I done played so many of them Chitlin’ Circuit juke joints and I’m talking about the real juke joints, down in Mississippi, I played Clancy’s in South Carolina, Spartanburg and people were comin’ up in there, man. People were comin’ from other clubs to come to Clancy’s to see this black guy playing the blues. It was full on the inside and people lined up outside with people looking in the windows.”

You also played the Jazz Fest in 2008. “Yeah, I can’t remember the year but me and Grandpa played there.”

Talk a little about Grandpa Elliott (Elliott Small). “Grandpa was the leader of an a cappella group in New Orleans and every now and then would pass me when I was playing in Jackson Square. I had Chili Groove on the tub bass, you know the No.#2 foot tub? He had a string in the middle of it and connected to a pole. He would hit that string and pull on it and change the tone. When we started playing together Grandpa and I were with each other almost every day for 12 years and we never once practiced or rehearsed…and every year we played at the Washington Parish fair, we were small stage specialists. There was never a better harmonica player; he was the best in town, period. There was no harmonica player in New Orleans better than Grandpa. Smoky Greenwell was No. #2. The first time Grandpa and I played together all I had to do was tell Grandpa what key the song was in. And he would know which harp to get. When we started playing, I had perfect vision and Grandpa had perfect vision. Slowly, glaucoma took his vision away and Grandpa went blind. Now here I am with glaucoma…man, I went through nine months of depression.”

Stoney B and Grandpa Elliott

You were evacuated out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and eventually made your way out to San Diego. You put together your own blues festival; tell us how the Blues Summit came to be? “The Blues Summit was a gathering of blues musicians, performers and blues lovers. If you like the blues, this was your event. First of all, I wanted it to be free and I wanted it to feature all the blues musicians in this area. The origins are from when I used to run the blues jam at a place called, Hennessey’s Speakeasy at Fourth and Market. And on Monday’s blues musicians had a place to come out and play.”

You’ve been very active with a number of charitable events in Southern California. “My wife is involved with the Blues Society and the Blues in the Schools programs along with the Blues Summer Camps. I got to play in the Blues in the Schools program with Michele Lundeen and Fuzzy Rankins. We’d do presentations explaining to the students what the blues were about and where they came from and how they originated. I was proud to be a part of that because I fit right in. I could speak the language they could understand.”

You’ve also worked with the Doors of Change, a program designed around homeless kids in Southern California. “In Ocean Beach there was a church organization that had us teaching homeless kids how to play music. I was teaching blues to the kids and after they came, I think it was six times, that would gift the kids a guitar. I loved that, man. And I worked with Rachelle Danto. Just a few weeks back I ran into a young person who said, ‘you don’t remember me, but you showed me the Jimmy Reed style.’ When he said the Jimmy Reed style…I knew that was at the church!”

You’re playing a lot, who’s playing with the Stoney B Blues band now? “Paul Carlomagno is my drummer and Joe Torres plays guitar. We have Pat Kelley on keyboards and Karl Dring on harmonica, guitar and bass.”

What’s next for Stoney B Blues? “I’m going in to the woodshed and I might have to disconnect from everything for a few weeks until I get through writing and putting together my next CD. There’s a lot of music that’s original…that’s still in my head. I’ve promoted everything I’ve ever done. I’ve never had a manager or agent; you see growing up in Chicago you couldn’t trust the damn booking agents and managers because they had a bad reputation for ripping people off. I just do it myself.”

You’ve lived a lifetime of blues, do you have a ‘most memorable’ moment or experience? “I was coming off the stage after a performance and a lady about 70ish, came and stood right in front of me. I stopped and put down my guitar and amplifier and she reached out and grabbed my hand and said, ‘I want to tell you something.’ She said, ‘You are my B.B. King!’ I looked at her and didn’t really understand. She said, ‘I don’t have much money, and when B.B. King comes to town I can’t afford to go see him. But I’ve seen you a number of times and I can get that same feeling.’ She said, ‘B.B. is my number one to listen to, and that I was the next best thing.’ The whole time she was holding my hand and she said she just want to tell me that. Then she just turned around and walked away. And for the first time somebody said something to me that I didn’t have an immediate response to. She said it with all sincerity, from the heart. I didn’t have a response; it was like my vocal chords couldn’t hook up, and so I just watched her walk away. And that meant so much to me. I wish I could find that lady and speak with her; it was such an intimate thing.”

Any last calls, any other stories that led you to where you are now? “Do you know I was the first attendee at Muddy Waters funeral? When Muddy had his funeral in Chicago on South Park, its called King Drive now, I only lived a block and a half from the funeral home. When they opened the door at the funeral home I was standing there, by myself. When they pulled the door open and I went in, Muddy’s casket was already open and in the front. I walked up to it and looked down on Muddy. You know how he used to have his hair processed, they had Muddy looking good. I stood there and said, ‘Muddy, one thing for sure I’m going to keep on playing the blues until I join you.’ And when I was walking out there was a line of people walking in…”

Stoney B is a man of his word. He and his band play regularly in and around Southern California so get out and enjoy the show. Check out his website, StoneyBBlues.com for dates and times near you.

The post Stoney B Blues – ‘Like Father, like Son’ appeared first on Traveling Archive.

RJ Mischo has been dropping blues records and discs since the 90s and his latest is out right now. The new release was captured ‘live’ in Studio late, last year at Suprovox Analog Recording in Karkkila, Finland. That certainly comes as no surprise when you consider RJ’s popularity and fan base in Scandinavia and throughout Europe is just as wide-ranging as it is across the U.S.

RJ Mischo and the Tomi Leino Trio

Mischo’s style of play has that rich, Chicago blues tone with an uptempo West Coast swing. It’s the type of music that forces you to get up and get on your feet. And what’s really interesting, you can almost hear his influences in his playing. From ‘Mojo’ Buford and Lynwood Slim to Rod Piazza and Kim Wilson; Mischo’s sound has that feel of the familiar but with added bends and phrasing that create the unexpected. How does that even happen? “I’m a very spontaneous musician,” RJ says. “And I work with so many pick up bands, that all shows are one of a kind, I can’t repeat myself even if I try.”

The new CD has 12 tracks, eleven of which are Mischo originals and one track ‘She Got Next to Me’ in homage to the late Sonny Boy Williamson II. “The one Sonny Boy cover has no real significance.” RJ shares. “Other than Sonny Boy is one of my major influences and I usually cut at least one of his tunes on every CD project.” That tradition continues even if you are recording in Finland. “What happened here is after we cut all my originals, then we just jammed out for some tunes off the cuff and that one made it, but actually I had no plan in advance to do that tune.”

The Blues are truly a universal language and RJ reinforces this by putting together a very tight and extremely talented rhythm section. “The Finnish band on this CD is the Tomi Leino Trio, I’ve known and have toured in Europe many times so we have great chemistry, we have never rehearsed…and those guys can play! I love ’em! The band includes Tomi Leino and Jonne Kulluvaara on guitars, Jaska Prepula on bass and Mikko Peltola on drums.

Whether you like shuffles, slow blues or uptempo boogies; ‘In Finland’ offers up a little taste for everyone. RJ Mischo is without a doubt a performance artist and that is the best way to experience his blues. ‘In Finland’ captured ‘live’ as it happened, is a strong second. Enjoy.

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From his teenage years with Sleepy John Estes and Hambone Willie Newbern through his ramblin’ days with John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson and a man known as the ‘Devils Son-in-Law’ Peetie Wheatstraw, Rachell’s musical road is paved with legends. With pianist, Jab Jones, his first recording sessions took place in Memphis with Sleepy John on September 24th, 1929 and were released on the Victor label. It would be the start of a musical career that would cover most of the 20th Century.

Sleepy John Estes and Yank Rachell – ‘Diving Duck Blues’

At a blues festival in Southern California back in the early 90s I ran across the man they called ‘Yank’ while he was entertaining the crew backstage with a favorite memory about traveling with Sleepy John Estes. “So the next time I carried him with me…he played so good and sung good. We came to a man’s house and the man’s wife got stuck on him and he got stuck on a man’s wife…” (laughing) “The man run all of us away! We all left!” (laughing) “We all ran away from there!

Then Sonny Boy and I started playing together. You see, Sleepy John didn’t stay in one place; he’d go all the time. I wouldn’t go because I had a family but he didn’t have no family; he went everywhere. He’d pick up anybody to go with him. I was from Jackson, Tennessee just 25 miles from Brownsville and Sonny Boy would come stay with me weeks at a time and I go out and stay with him and Walter Davis, a man sent him down to Silver Springs to make a record for Bluebird. But I kept on working; I’ve always worked and never quit my job to play music.”

Working outside music Yank says he held lots of jobs. “I worked in a factory all the time and I farmed. When I quit the farmin’ I went to the city and worked in a factory. I retired 15 years ago.”

Living and playing acoustic mandolin in those early years, did electrification impact how you played? “You know, I didn’t think not much about it. I could play the blues on anything, electric or un-electric; it didn’t make me no difference. I could play a barb-wire fence!” (laughing) “if you could play the blues on it, you can play it on it! They say, ‘how you play the blues on a mandolin?’ You can play it on anything, if it’s got a string on it. I can play the blues on a banjo; I used to play it on a banjo and fiddle, too. Blues…that’s the blues, you know? The blues is here to stay.”

Tappin’ That Thing

He remembers playing with all the greats…Memphis Minnie. “It was alright” Yank grins. “Me and her made a record together with Jab Jones and Memphis. There aren’t many I haven’t met and played with. She’s a nice person and a nice personality. She’s a nice girl and ‘Kansas Joe’ McCoy, all of them. I met many a musician and played with many of them.”

How long will you continue to play? “How long?” Yank smiles. “As long as I can work these fingers.” (laughing, he wiggles them in my face) “Cause you see, that’s a job. People holler and come tell me one day, ‘Why don’t you quit playin’ and go to church.’ I go to church; yeah I go to church, too. But I’m playing music to make me some money.” (laughing) “I’d be a fool if God gave me a talent and I don’t use it. I go to church and the preacher gonna’ ask for some money.” (laughing) “If I don’t give him some money, he’s ready to turn me out of the church. If I got some money, I can give him some money!” (laughing) “The preacher he wants the money and he’s gonna’ ride in them Cadillac’s and Lincoln’s and all that. And you’re comin’ there in an old Model T…He don’t care he’s going to get up there and preach to ya’. I told them if you got a religion the blues don’t bother you. You listen to it but if you got religion the blues don’t take it from you. I don’t go no where and play and tell them not to go to church. I go and play the blues, if they like it they yell, if they don’t like it…they leave. But I’m going to play it. God gave me the talent to play it and I know how to play it. There’s no harm in playing the blues, ‘Oh! He’s going to Hell! He’s playing the blues.’ But you go to church and you hear, ‘oh, did you see what she had on, Sunday? I wouldn’t wear that to a dog-fight!’ That’s the way people do, you know?” (laughing) ‘I wouldn’t wear that. Did you see her hair?’ That ain’t right, you know? I’ll go and sit down and play. God Blessed Me and I thank the Lord for it.

Did you ever meet Bill Monroe the bluegrass player? “Never did, but I played with a guy named Burns, a white guy…Jethro Burns, (Homer and Jethro) that was his name and we played together in Alberta, Canada. He was a jazz player and he could play some jazz. He didn’t play bluegrass and I never did play no bluegrass. I just played the blues on everything I played because I loved the blues, you know? I just love playing the blues, now I probably could play bluegrass, but I haven’t tried.”

As one of our blues elders, describe Yank Rachell’s blues. “Well, I just will hear something and play it, you know? It comes in my mind and I’ll sit down and play. I’ll lay down at night and play. I never write a song when I go in the studio, it comes to me. I ain’t never got no paper or writing or reading and I made many a record, but they come to me and I match them up, that’s the way I do it.”

You worked with Taj Mahal. “Yeah, I played with all of them. Taj Mahal, me and him made a record. ‘She Caught the Katy’ that was my song. And he made the record, I went to Los Angeles and Sleepy John went there and we stayed with him instead of going to the hotel to help him out. So he would carry us to the place and he recorded ‘She Caught the Katy’ but it ain’t exactly the way I made it, but he made it and put my name on it so it would sell, ’cause he had never made a record. So I’ve been getting money from it, too! I got $15,000 dollars from it; I got a check from him last month. $10,000 and it’s in the bank now.”

Taj Mahal ‘She Caught the Katy’

I asked a friend and blues historian Al Blake (Hollywood Fats Band, Hollywood Blue Flames) if there are recordings he felt typifies the best of Yank Rachell? “Sonny Boy played his best behind Yank…The Yank Rachell/Sonny Boy/Washboard Sam recordings should be where every blues harmonica player starts but they don’t. For me these recordings are pretty much the Holy Grail! Yank is playing guitar, not mandolin. Sonny Boy plays wonderful harmonica in support. Far more harmonica from him on these as opposed to the recordings he sings on. I believe Little Walter paid close attention to these recordings as a very young man. Later and unlike other harmonica players Little Walter’s support work was ALWAYS exemplary!! Sonny Boy w/ Yank inspired? I’d say yes. Here’s a list of Yank, Sonny Boy and Washboard Sam classics that I personally love in no special order… ’38 Pistol’ ‘Worried Blues’ ‘Biscuit Baking Woman’ ‘Peach Tree’ ‘Hobo Blues’ ‘Up North Blues’ ‘Army Man’ and ‘It Seems Like a Dream.’

Peach Tree Blues (1941)

Do you feel blues players are getting more recognition today? “Oh yeah, it’s comin’ to ’em now! They’re just now learning how to get it; ’cause I got a lot of money out there and didn’t know how to get it. I had millions of dollars out there and didn’t know how to get it. If I did I’d be a retired millionaire.”

Did you ever dream back in the 20s and 30s that you’d be playing in front of huge festival crowds like this one? “I sure didn’t. Not then…those old country suppers and they’d be shootin’ guns in there and you’d have to jump out the windows and run.” (laughing) “I run into the stable with a mule one night, some guy was shootin’!” (laughing)

Who was shooting? “I don’t know who he was!” (laughing)

Was he shooting at you? “No, he wasn’t shootin’ at me. He got to fightin’ in the house, you know? And he shot…BOOM! When he shot I went out the back door and the man’s barn was out there.”

The post Yank Rachell: When a Mandolin Plays the Blues appeared first on Traveling Archive.

As a bluesman who had been there and done that, Willie lived his life exactly like he wrote songs; simply, without pretension and at gut level. A huge man both in girth and talent, he became a voice for the broken man and the troubled woman. He had a genuine gift for musical arrangement and composition and is, to this day, still considered one of the blues’ most prolific songwriters. He was incredibly intuitive when it came to pairing songs with musicians and musicians with sessions, then successfully capturing on vinyl, the best from both. Just look through any of the Chess or Cobra libraries.

As a studio producer, songwriter, session player and stage performer, Dixon had few peers. His remarkable body of work remains the watermark for today’s generation of blues players. A keen ear for talent and ribald sense of humor made him versatile, but Willie’s observations of the human condition and flair for innuendo, made him legendary.

Born seventh in a line of fourteen Dixon children, Willie could trace his education and understanding of the blues directly to his family upbringing. “One of the phrases my parents used to teach me, especially my mother, ‘Think twice before you speak once, and think the third time before you act.’ And another thing she always said was, ‘Anybody can get mad, but anybody can’t get smart. It pays to get smart but it don’t pay to get mad.’ When I was a youngster I couldn’t understand it because it didn’t make sense. But today it makes sense because the world can make anybody mad.”

“Another thing, ‘If you don’t listen you can’t learn’ and those are three things in life that a person have to do to really understand and learn to enjoy life, because if people make you angry you will never enjoy it. And these are the kind of things that had a great influence on me after I got grown, even though I knew them as a youngster.” Shaking his head, he admitted, “But many a-times I done things without thinking.”

The True Facts of Life

Willie had the unique ability to relate life’s experience through his music. A twelve bar documentary of the world around him. “That’s why I wrote so many songs, because I’ve been writing about the true facts of life that exist today and what I hope, tomorrow, will be a better future. I’ve been writing songs all my life, you know? I used to walk around with a gunny sack full of songs. I couldn’t get nobody to do them. I used to sell them outright for $10.”

If there has ever been a central figure or seminal root of the blues, that list of names would begin with Willie Dixon. From a dirt-poor youth in Mississippi to the revered and respected elder of America’s only indigenous music, Dixon began his pursuit at the tender age of eight.

“I was a kid in Mississippi and we used to be outside of a place called Zack Lewis’. He had a little tavern; they called it a barrelhouse in those days, and Little Brother Montgomery would be in there playing piano with his band. We used to follow Little Brother all over town. I’d be bare-footed, running up and down the road behind them, they’d be up on a wagon bed or a T-model Ford truck and he had a piano up there. Little Brother was short and little at that time and we always thought he was a kid, but he was several years older than we was. I know every time we chased him all day long, I’d go back home and get a whippin’ for missing school and following the band all day.”

Those first short, dusty steps would begin a lifelong journey for Willie Dixon. A path he embraced with open arms and sometimes clinched fists. Occasional brushes with the law and time spent in reform school exposed Dixon to the serrated edge of life.

I’m Ready

“I used to be a fighter, you know?” I used to train at Eddie Nichol’s Gym in Chicago. Fightin’ is a hard job. Of course, I won the Golden Gloves in 1937 and I fought pro a few times. After I found out everybody was getting money but me, my management company was taking advantage of me, so we got into quite a hassle and it caused both of us to get expelled. Fights get into your system like everything else, you know? Until you finally get beat enough to give up. I got a chance to train with the ‘Brown Bomber’ (Joe Louis) down to Eddie Nichol’s gym I was supposed to go on a tour with them, but I never did go. My manager didn’t want me to get shell-shocked before I got out there too far, you know?”

Shell-shocked is the pivotal word here. As often happens with dramatic and unforeseen turns in life, Willie, while somewhat disappointed, began to contemplate his options. “After sparring with Louis, I knew from that point on, and for the rest of my life, that I wanted to be…..a songwriter. The music don’t fight back and you don’t have to be ducking and dodging and running and keeping yourself together, you know?”

Eddie Nichol’s place may have witnessed the end of Willie’s fight game, but it also provided the catalyst for his next career. A fellow musician and delta native, who was also a ringside regular, would steer the impressionable Dixon in a totally different direction. That fight fan was Leonard ‘Baby Doo’ Caston.

“He was the one teaching me about the musical things, you know? He used to come around the gymnasium where I was training and sitting around there playing guitar and singing all day. The first instrument I started on was a one-string tin can ‘Baby Doo’ Caston made for me. I had been singing bass in the south as a youngster on the spiritual side, I knew a pretty good bass line and I’d learned how to play that on one string, so it wasn’t hard for me to learn.”

As part of the short-lived ‘Five Breezes’ in the late 30’s and later “The Big Three Trio”, Dixon and Caston were fast becoming Chicago’s original blues brothers. The Windy City was experiencing post-war prosperity where jobs were abundant and high-paying. The continuous migration of southern laborers and struggling musicians along with the sudden influx of returning, cash-laden military personnel combined to make the south side of Chicago an entertainment flashpoint.

Venues materialized as quickly as the crowds. Clubs, bars and boulevards (Maxwell Street) beckoned to blues players from every region of the country, especially the talent-rich Delta. Some clubs were more prestigious than others.

“Playin’ in some of them old dives in Chicago, every night when you walked in you was lucky to get out. I could name a lot of places we used to play, you know? Like 708 when they was first gettin’ out, and they used to have a place down on Indiana they called ‘the Hole’. You’d have to look goin’ in and look comin’ out because you didn’t know whether you were gonna’ make it goin’ in or comin’ out. I remember the I Spy Lounge, that was on 43rd street. Richard Stems owned the I Spy. The Green Door was another place; they used to have a lot of those rough places. People now days don’t even know what rough stuff is. A lot of times guys you were workin’ with had their guns and things and I was more afraid of them than I was the folks out there.”

The Gospel According to McKinley

Chicago, in the late 40’s, was Mecca for blues players but their styles were diversifying and experimentation produced a new, amplified city sound. On any given night you could find Willie, Big Maceo, Sleepy John Estes, Sonny Boy, Memphis Slim, Memphis Minnie or Son House hanging out at Tampa Red’s place.

“Tampa Red had a big old room back there, he lived right up over a pawn shop on 35th and he had an old, raggedy bed sitting in the corner and a broke-down piano in another corner. Everybody could get in there and could sit on the bed or on the floor or on the piano and they’d all be in there arguing about songs, you know and making songs, like that. Lester Melrose would be in the front room and he’d always have the old lady cooking something; chitlins or something. He’d come back there, ‘What you fella’s got?’ And each one would come up with what he got.”

Creative juices flowed like hot grease down the Melrose stove. Working with Leonard Caston and Ollie Crawford at local clubs, The Big Three would occasionally find themselves on stage with another Delta musician. Willie’s personal association with this one time plantation resident would last a lifetime and their collaboration would become legendary. McKinley Morganfield and Willie Dixon were about to alter the world’s perception of the blues.

“Muddy Waters was one of the first ones that starting doing some of my tunes, you know? I was walking around with 200 songs in a bag and nobody would do none of ’em. I’d go around and sing ’em to him, so he said, ‘Man, I like that song.’ I had a little trio called the Big Three Trio at that time; we had recorded for Columbia and also for Bullet Company. We done that song about the ‘Signifyin’ Monkey’ and ‘Wee, wee baby you sure look good to me’ and other songs.

So this ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’, Muddy Waters liked it, you know? So I started to go out there and jam with him with our trio. He told me, ‘Man I sure like that song, if you let me, I’ll record it.’ Sure enough he got with his manager. I got with Muddy over on 14th Street one night, I took the song over there and he said, ‘Dixon, I’m gonna’ do that song tonight.’ He didn’t know the song, he’d just heard me singing it.

So I took him in the washroom on the intermission, and we practiced the song. He walked out of there and he said, ‘Man, you better let me do it first, so I won’t forget it. By the time he came out of the washroom, he went on the stage and he started doin’ the ‘Hoochie, Coochie Man’ and he done it til the day he died.”

Writing music occasionally created conflicts among Willie’s friends, especially if an artist wanted, or didn’t want to record a certain song. And Dixon was the first to admit that writing the song wasn’t necessarily the most difficult part of the recording process.

“Sometime I just have the idea of the experience that people go through involving themselves in different things, and this is what I write about. And then sometime I try to find people that I feel like can properly express these things, because sometime people can express a thing better than another one… sometime. “

One case in point, ‘Wang Dang Doodle:’ “Oh yeah, Howlin’ Wolf recorded it long before Koko Taylor, but the Chess Brothers wouldn’t release it. In fact, I wrote a lot of things for people they never actually would accept and I’d have to give it to somebody else. And then ten to one after somebody else get it, then they’d like it. I used to always have trouble with Muddy and Wolf because one thought I was giving the other one the better song, you know? So I got to the place I just used a little backwards psychology on ’em. The one I be writing for Wolf, I tell Wolf, now here’s something I wrote for Muddy and that’s all I need to do. (Wolf would say) ‘Man, how come you got to give that to him, that’s better than mine.’ And vice a versa, that’s the way it worked.”

Another case in point, ‘My Babe:’ “I had a hard time in getting Little Walter to do ‘My Babe’. Two years I was trying to get him to do ‘My Babe’. He didn’t want to record it. He just didn’t like it. But after he recorded it and it started going over, it was his top running number.”

I Am the Blues

************************

“Learn to respect the wisdom of the blues, because the wisdom of the blues and the blues itself
is the greatest music on the face of the earth. The blues has proved to have more wisdom and
understanding than any other music. And once you learn the wisdom of the story
of the facts of life, it gives you a better chance in all of life.
And I think that’s a great thing for people to do all over the world.”

– Willie Dixon

 ************************

American Folk Blues Festival

As the self-appointed ambassador of the blues, Willie Dixon and a few special friends began spreading the word outside America’s borders. “Memphis Slim and I started the American Folk Blues Festival. We was just working as a duet, we went to Israel and other places trying to promote the blues there. None of these blues organizations was even thinking about them at the time, but everywhere we went we talked about the blues and promoted them. Some of the people got into it before we could complete our thing. I’m glad they did, because today we’ve got the blues thing going.”

During the early sixties the American Folk Blues Festival featured some of the most recognizable names in the genre; players like John Lee Hooker, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Victoria Spivey, Otis Spann, Muddy, T-Bone Walker, Big Mama Thornton, J.B. Lenoir, Lonnie Johnson, Big Joe Williams and the Wolf.

It wouldn’t be until years later that Dixon would discover the profound effect he and his friends had had on a very select group of young British musicians.

“Well when they was young, overseas, me and Memphis Slim was over there and they had their groups going, but that was before they was popular. The Stones, they was kids over there. I didn’t know one from the other because they didn’t have no name then, you know? When I was over in Europe and other places, I would give songs to everybody and a lot of kids tell you, ‘I’m gonna’ do this and I’m gonna’ do that’, and how would I know who’s who?

But when they come back years later they say, ‘You remember you gave us that song here and gave us a song there,’ well I don’t know them but they know me. Some of them gave me their picture when they was young, you know? And when they came to Chicago, a lot of them would come to my house or we’d meet in different clubs and things. How are you gonna’ remember a bunch of kids, man? As many countries as I went into and meet ’em from all over everywhere, I worked with so many different people in so many different places, I can’t remember them all no way.”

A Man with a Mission

Active for most of his life, Willie thought about retirement when he moved to Southern California, but it wasn’t to be. If anything, demands on his time increased.

“Ever since I’ve been out here, it’s been one thing right after another. I try to back off from ’em, but with the Blues Heaven Foundation I have retired away from working for myself, and by being able to reap some of the benefits of some of my own royalties that I should have got years ago. And this is why I started the Blues Heaven Foundation so I could help other people that wasn’t as lucky as me.

Not only does it try to get some of the capital that’s been owed to artists, people who been beat and cheated out of their thing, but we also help ’em to learn how to protect their songs and copyrights. We do this with donated capital and the Blues Heaven Foundation takes not a penny from nobody. I do all of my work for Blues Heaven for nothing. All the people that has passed on and their families didn’t get anything, all they had to do is prove that they are involved or in the family and they can reap the benefits of their forbearers.

You know when you feel like you’re underprivileged, and know you’re underprivileged and not getting your rights, you always want to know why? Believe it or not, (prior to the civil rights movements in the 50’s and 60’s) people didn’t know they had a black law book and a white law book at that time but today most of them know about it. It wasn’t until after the Martin Luther King era and the government ratified the 14th and 15th Amendment, that everybody had to hear us out and give us just dues just like everybody else. My chance for justice as well as anybody else’s is good today.”

Blues Heaven

“That’s the reason I’m trying to expose the Blues Heaven Foundation because you don’t have to die to enjoy the great things of life. You don’t have to get to the place where you have to have this religion or that religion, fighting over ten dollars and then tell me you’re going to a place where the streets are paved in gold. Don’t you know I don’t want to go there if you’ve been raising as much hell over a dollar here? So I figure if we can enjoy the luxuries of life here as we should, everything is here you need. They say if you went to heaven you’d get milk and honey. We got milk and honey here.

It’s just a matter of time because you see, everything have to change, everything changes. People get more experience and understand each other better, but when you haven’t been taught any of the right things, naturally you can go wrong because you’re only thinking about yourself and not others.”

With a chance to reflect on his life and given the option to change the outcome, Willie just smiled. “Frankly with the experiences I’ve had since I’ve been involved in these blues, I wouldn’t take billions for it, but I wouldn’t want to do it all over again for trillions’.”

Through his Blues Heaven Foundation, lovingly minded by his widow, Marie and grandson, Alex, Willie continues to touch the lives of disadvantaged youth and the surviving family members of early blues greats. Whether it’s assisting students through scholarship programs, donating musical instruments, or recouping lost royalties, Blues Heaven continues to educate, perpetuate, and carry out Willie’s most heart-felt wishes.

Willie Dixon lived, worked and breathed the blues. His music conveyed the depth and drive of that battered old upright bass. To use boxing vernacular, it was his combinations. He could double you over with thumping bass lines and drop you to your knees with devastating lyrics. The name Willie Dixon will always be synonymous with the blues, but to paraphrase the late Dr. King, it’s the ‘content of his character’ that we’ll all miss the most.

The post Willie Dixon: “The Pen is Mightier………….” appeared first on Traveling Archive.

The title track, ‘I May Crawl’ is a driving and rhythmic, up-tempo shout out about keepin’ your head above water. You don’t have to be the winner, just be persistent, keep paddling and do it at your own pace. ‘Better Left Unsaid’ is all about the ebb and flow of the guitar. The sliding treble and countering bass notes…throw in some harp and who needs words?

In the liner notes, Nathan reflects on his mentor and band mate for almost a quarter of a century, James Harman. Life lessons in real time and the experiences of traveling the world with the legendary bluesman can be heard throughout this recording. ‘Before the Curtain Closes’ and ‘Life Changing Blues’ certainly have that familial feel. The track ‘Price To Pay’ lays it out in no uncertain terms, everything comes at a cost.

‘Moth To A Flame’ is a good old-fashioned love song. Whatever it is that you’ve got, I need. ‘I’ll Never Listen To You’ is also about love, but mostly the failure to communicate. The menacing guitar work just intensifies the pain of loss. ‘Does It Matter Where You Stand’ is a look inside. And if you aren’t aware, the world is pretty messed up place right now.

‘Draggin’ Me Down’ is the natural reaction to the previous comment and as the song says, ‘get some rest.’ ‘Nate on the Mountain’ is a wonderfully upbeat look at a new homestead on the hill. What’s not to love about a place with a view? Think of it as ridgeline Americana. The CD concludes with ‘Tryin’ To Breath.’ A semi-sweet ballad about all your senses and that special someone ‘who opened my eyes to see.’

The musical tempo of this recording and the songwriting go hand-in-hand. Nathan James is at his best here, and his musical craftsmanship is first-rate. I know that Nathan is in Europe as I write this and his international audience is getting a first listen to ‘I May Crawl.’ But you can check out www.NATHANDJAMES.com for upcoming shows right here in Southern California. You never know when you’ll experience some of those Life Changing Blues.

The post Nathan James – I May Crawl appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Growing up in Illinois, Morvan learned early if you want to succeed, you have to put in the work. Using education as her toolbox, Laurie became an Electrical Engineer. She had dreams of being an astronaut so she learned to fly; acquiring her private, instrument, multi-engine and commercial pilot’s ratings. She got a job in Aerospace in Los Angeles but left it to play full time in a Top 40 band. It wasn’t enough so she went back to school for a Master’s in Applied Mathematics to teach at the college level. Today, Morvan fronts her own band, has six albums to her credit and as the dust settles on the Pandemic era, she is already back on the road with an extended tour schedule.

There’s a lot to unpack with Laurie Morvan; first and foremost is her unrelenting admiration of song-writing and making the music she loves. After a sweaty, three-set blitz at the Old Town Blues Club in Southern California, Laurie took time to talk about her road, her fans and her specific shade of blue. “A long time ago I made a decision not to limit myself and my songwriting” she says. “So I kinda’ let the song be the boss. Wherever the song leads me; it’s like the music that speaks to me the most, just as a consumer of music as I was growing up was that high-energy, rockin’ blues. It’s what grabbed a hold of my heart and shook me to my core! And that lead me down the path of the more traditional blues which is beautiful and rich and awesome, but it’s not the thing that just grabbed me by the throat and said, ‘you’re gonna’ be a musician.’ So I love the high-energy, rockin’ blues side of things and I’m always going to be a purveyor of that style of blues. We’ll play some traditional blues because I think it’s beautiful and a particular song will speak to me and we’ll do it, but I think to truly be an artist you have to speak the truth of your own heart and be who you are. If you try to be somebody else you’re just going to be a carbon copy kind of band, and that just never interested me. There are people that play traditional blues and its wonderful and I respect them and I’m happy for them and they find joy in it and I say, ‘go for it!’ And then there are folks like me that play the high-energy, rockin’ side of blues because that’s what fuels my soul. My number one goal is to help people feel uplifted, it doesn’t mean people come in feeling bad, but if they come in feeling good, I want them to leave the show feeling even better. If they came in feeling sad, I want them to feel like their soul got fed a little bit by some love and healing through the music and that’s what I’m always trying to give. I love music so much I’m just trying to get it out of my body, out through my guitar and out to people and let it heal them.”

Out of the hundreds of interviews I’ve done over the years, your road is unlike any I’ve ever seen.

“I will say it’s been an unusual path to the blues.” She nods. Let’s make a list…teacher, pilot, mathematician…”an electrical engineer.” Laurie grins. “Doesn’t every blues guitarist go down that road?” (laughing) “You know that path was actually formed by my childhood, really. My biological father walked out on my mom and me when I was five and I saw her struggle. I don’t remember exactly the age I was, maybe seven or eight, but I remember having an epiphany and saying to myself in my little girl voice, ‘I’m going to be always able to take care of myself and in a way that is comfortable and I won’t have to struggle so hard.’ So, I set out to use every skill and or talent that my hard work could muster and I would always be able to pay the bills, put a roof over my head and food on the table and pursue my music. I went off to college because I saw education as a tool. That’s really how I saw it…if I go get this degree in electrical engineering; I’m going to be able to land a job that makes good money and I’ll learn how to play this guitar better and better.”

To be so driven and motivated at that age, is pretty remarkable.

“Yeah, I always wanted to land on my feet and not count on anyone else. That doesn’t mean I want to isolate myself, I just wanted to be in charge of my own destiny. “

“I see creative beauty within math. A well-written proof is so pretty I want to frame it and put it on a wall. It’s just so pretty! The logic of it is very pleasing to me. That makes my brain happy.” —Laurie Morvan

What was your attraction to Aerospace and Engineering?

“When I was in High School I remember my senior counselor, just before I was going off to college told me ‘you know, you’re really good at math and science why don’t you go be an engineer? They make a good living.’ And I was like, ‘Ok!'” (laughing) “It wasn’t like I had a dream, but actually when I was a little girl; I wanted to be an astronaut. Hence, the reason I went toward aerospace engineering and why I got a pilot’s license. I was interested in space travel, I read all kinds of science fiction as a little girl…everybody. I loved that world and the idea of going out and experiencing new things.”

What kind of aircraft do you fly?

“I learned how to fly in a Beechcraft Sport which is a low-wing, single engine plane. I also learned how to fly a twin-engine, so I got my private, instrument, multi-engine and commercial pilot’s ratings. For a brief time I thought of becoming a pilot and pursuing that but once I landed my gig as an electrical engineer and it got me to Southern California and then started playing in bands…then I was just like, this is what I have to go do.”

Would you say that playing in bands while working your Aerospace day job was kind of like your garage band period?

“Yes, right. I was just learning how to play guitar, I barely knew what to do with a guitar at that time other than strum some chords. I had to learn how to play rhythm guitar, then I started to fall in love with lead guitar and there came a point where I went into my boss at TRW Aerospace and just said, ‘I’m leaving engineering to go play music full time’ and he about fell on the floor. It was time, I had learned enough to get out on the road and play and I was working with a Top 40 band. In those days you’d set up in the club on Tuesday and you’d play Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, then you’d tear down and go to the next town. The road gigs we were playing from 9 to 1:30AM in the bar and then everyday in my hotel room I’d play another three or four hours because you’re out on the road and there’s nothing else to do. I just wanted to get good; I was in love with all things guitar.”

I think I’ve only seen you perform with a solid body guitar. Do you ever play an acoustic?

“I started on an acoustic. My very first guitar was acoustic and after I learned three chords I wrote my first song. It’s like the most natural thing in the world to me…is to write a song. It’s like what I’m supposed to do. In fact, during the Pandemic I played an acoustic guitar exclusively for about six months and wrote a whole bunch of songs on there. I’ve considered putting out an acoustic album and that may happen. Since that time I’ve also been writing on my electric. At the end of this year, we have so much touring so it can’t happen until the end of the year but I’m hoping to record my next album which will probably be a full-on, full-throated, electric guitar album. Then maybe the next year put out an acoustic album.”

Let’s talk about your discography.

“I have six albums that I’ve put out including the very first one from a long time ago (1997) with Back Road Shack ‘Out of the Woods.’ ‘Find My Way Home’ (2004) “I had been playing…and recording was really expensive and my drummer at the time was going to move to the mid-West, so we better get in the studio right now! That’s my only album that has cover songs on it because we had originally just recorded those cover songs to help get club work, but they turned out pretty cool so let’s put them out on a record.” ‘Cures what Ails Ya’ (2007) “You know, ‘Cures What Ails Ya’ came from the song, ‘One Little Thing’ and I can remember vividly we were at band rehearsal, I was going through a hard time, we played music and I remember stepping out into the night air, it was a cool evening and there was some fog and I walked out and felt so much better having played music and I just said, ‘Thank Heavens I have that one little thing that cures what ails me.’ I stopped in my tracks and went ‘Okay, I have my next song.’ When I went home I wrote ‘One Little Thing.'”

You’re so prolific when it comes to writing. Did you write more during the Pandemic?

“I did! For every song you hear on an album, I’ve probably written three or four or five more and I have to pare it down for the record and what’s right at the time and what I feel is complete enough. There’ll be something that maybe has a strong part here but not enough here, and this other one is great and we go with that.”

In 2009 you released ‘Fire It Up.’

“So on that album, we went to Northern California and worked with a wonderful producer, Steve Savage (Elvin Bishop) who co-produced with me. Steve has a really good heart and made me feel really comfortable in the studio. That album won a Blues Foundation Award and it was something I was really proud of at the time.”

Two years later ‘Breathe Deep.’

“We recorded that album here with a great engineer, Erik Zobler. We had worked with him before, Erik also recorded the ‘Cures What Ails Ya’ CD. Eric was George Duke’s engineer and he hooked me up. I had written this song, it’s not a blues tune but more of a singer/songwriter piano and acoustic guitar ballad and Eric said, ‘Laurie, you need a great piano player on this song, have you considered asking George to play on it? I won’t promise anything but let me play it for him. He’s really picky, he doesn’t play on many things, so don’t get your hopes up.’ So he played the song for George and George said, ‘Yeah, good song. I’ll play on it.’ So Lisa and I got to go to George Duke’s home studio in the Hollywood Hills and record that song. When I wrote that song, ‘Family Line’ I wrote it only for me, I never intended for it to ever be played for anyone and then it turned into this beautiful vehicle and the next thing I know, I’m in the Hollywood Hills at George Duke’s house recording.”

‘Breathe Deep’ was co-produced by Lisa Morvan, the harmony of the band.

“Yes! Lisa has unbelievably good ears and she played violin as a kid. You have to have a good ear for that. And she also plays bass and her harmonies…she harmonizes so well with me and she’s super good at matching what I do. We’ve been singing together for what now, 21 years? We know each other; we flow together and bounce ideas off each other.”

‘Gravity’ was released in 2018. You worked with Tony Braunagel, Mike Finnigan and Barry Goldberg.

“Oh Yeah! And I wrote a song on that album called ‘Too Dumb to Quit.'” (laughing) I love some of your original titles, ‘Beat Up from the Feet Up’ and my favorite, ‘No Working During Drinking Hours.’ Your blues and your writing themes seem to highlight everyday and relatable issues. “I try to find the humor or the healing in it and sometimes those two are intertwined. But, I’m not afraid to get down in the hard stuff and deal with it. I always want to find a way to sing about a hard thing in an uplifting way and isn’t just about poor, little me.”

The band is getting back out on the road…

“Starting in July through the end of the year we’re super busy. We go to Northern California for 10 days in July then we come home for about a week, then we head up North. We go into Canada for 10 days and we do our first tour of British Columbia that culminates in the Calgary Blues Fest. We’ll play the West Coast of Canada first, the greater Vancouver area, then we’ll start moving East to Kamloops, to the Kootenay’s and then to Calgary. We’re just super excited.”

After Canada?

“We drop down and play the Magic City Blues Festival in Billings, Montana then we go to Bismarck and into the mid-West. We’ve got dates in Madison, Wisconsin, Holland, Michigan and we headline the Joliet Blues Fest in Joliet, Illinois.”

Joliet is pretty close to home for you?

“It is! I’m so excited. I didn’t even know there was a Joliet Blues Fest. When I found out about it, I was like a laser beam. These guys don’t know it yet, but they are booking me!” (laughing) “Then we come back to the West Coast for a month with shows up and down the coast…then we head south. We’re playing in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama and then we head to Florida. We do our first tour in Florida and then head back to Biloxi, Mississippi to play the new Ground Zero!

Festivals are back.

“We’re doing the Bogalusa Blues Festival in Bogalusa, Louisiana and the King Biscuit Festival in Helena, Arkansas. When we get back we’ll head down to Baja, Mexico to headline the San Felipe Blues Festival. So we’ll be in Canada, U.S. and Mexico and we’re super excited about that.”

Just describing all that…I’m exhausted. (laughing)

“When you’re touring, you gotta’ go. You don’t get to play the same town every night. I try to stay in shape, I do all my own booking and I’m the record company president. I have a lot of energy and I’m willing to work hard. I don’t know if there’s a person on planet Earth that can out work me. I believe in hard work and it got me here.”

Who’s touring with the Laurie Morvan band?

“Tommy Salyers on keyboards, he’s from Pittsburgh. Drummer, Robert Gates is our newest member and Pat Morvan on bass. Pat and I have been playing music together my entire adult life. I met him when I was 23 or 24 and we’ve been in and out of bands together and always had some kind of band going and we’ve been playing forever, together. Of course, Lisa Morvan on backing vocals and percussion and she’s been playing with me for 24 years. We’ve been together a long time.”

I would ask if your family was musical, but most of them are on stage with you. Are there any earlier family music connections?

“My Grandma played the organ in church and my Grandpa sang. My mom was not a musician but I gravitated to it really naturally. I remember being a little girl and there would be songs that were like my best friends and I’d run home from school and play that song over and over again. So music has always been a really important part of my life.”

I‘m fascinated with your right brain/left brain abilities. Usually people are either/or…but you seem to draw from both sides; the analytical and the creative.

“I see creative beauty within math. Writing a well-written proof is so pretty I want to frame it and put it on a wall. It’s just so pretty! The logic of it is very pleasing to me. That makes my brain happy. I think… I never told myself no. If something interested me then I just believed I could go learn how to do it. Now, there’s got to be certain limitations, obviously I’m 5’10” I’m never going to be a ballerina so thankfully that wasn’t my dream. But I found things, at 5’10” I played volleyball, that kind of stuff. My story is really just one of making up my mind to do a thing, then being willing to do the hard work to make the thing happen.”

Your blues always gets people on their feet.

“I just give myself over to music whether I’m listening to it or I’m playing it. Music’s never really in the background for me, it always takes my attention. Sometimes I’ll be somewhere and I’m supposed to be listening to somebody and then I’m analyzing the song I’m hearing on the radio…Oh, I really like that groove and I like the syncopation at the end, too! Oh Stop! Pay attention to the person who’s talking!” (laughing)

The world being in its current state, where does Laurie Morvan see herself in 10 or 15 years?

“It’s scary and you can go down into the abyss, but I choose to not go down the abyss. I don’t have any delusions of grandeur, I do my little part and I can try and help make things better! I’m going to keep playing music and writing songs; I have to write songs, it’s just in me.

At the show today at the OTBC in Southern California you stopped sets to pay homage to B.B. King, Koko Taylor, John Lee Hooker as well as John Prine and the Meters. That’s about as versatile as a band can be.

“Yeah, we try to just surprise people. I don’t want to be pigeon-holed. For me as the leader of the band and as the lead singer, a song has to speak to me because I have to be able to sell that song, so-to-speak. Or why would I bother doing it? I don’t do songs unless they grab a hold of me and go…PLAY me! And we usually do ’em up and put our own little twist on them while still respecting the artists and where they came from. Again, I never want to just copy someone, I want to honor them.”

Your live shows have become a rocket ride. What is it about that connection with your fans?

“That’s a wonderful feeling, that beautiful symbiosis that happens when the audience plugs into the musicians and there’s a circular flow of beauty and healing and love…it’s wonderful.”

Laurie Morvan Band – Upcoming 2022 Tour Dates

• Sun 5/29 – Big Blue Music & Brew Festival, South Lake Tahoe CA
• Sat 6/11 – Casuelas Café, Palm Desert CA Sun 6/19 – Old Town Blues Club, Temecula CA
• Fri 7/1 – Sly McFlys, Monterey CA
• Sat 7/2 – Murphys Irish Pub, Murphys CA
• Tue 7/5 – Bluesday at Palisades Tahoe, Olympic Valley, CA
• Wed 7/6 – Peacetown Concert Series, Sebastopol CA
• Thu 7/7 – Fairytale Town, Sacramento CA
• Fri 7/8 – Twin Pine, Middletown CA
• Sat 7/9 – Twin Pine, Middletown CA
• Sun 7/10 – Powerhouse, Folsom CA
• Sat 7/16 – Casuelas Café, Palm Desert CA
• Wed 7/20 – Club Fox, Redwood City CA
• Fri 7/22 – Blue Frog Studios, White Rock BC Canada
• Sat 7/23 – Jazz & Arts Festival, Fort Langley, BC Canada
• Sun 7/24 – Summer Sundays, Port Moody, BC Canada
• Tue 7/26 – Music in the Park, Kamloops, BC Canada
• Thu 7/28 – Balfour Beach Inn, Balfour BC Canada
• Fri 7/29 – Finley’s Bar & Grill, Nelson, BC Canada
• Sun 7/31 – Calgary Blues Festival, Calgary AB Canada
• Fri 8/5 – Magic City Blues Fest, Billings MT
• Sat 8/6 – Laughing Sun Brewing Co, Bismarck ND
• Thu 8/11 – Red Rooster, Madison WI
• Fri 8/12 – Park Theatre, Holland MI
• Sat 8/13 – Joliet Blues Festival, Joliet IL
• Sun 8/14 – Pop’s Place, Decatur IL
• Mon 8/15 – The Alamo, Springfield IL
• Thu 8/18 – Blues Society of Omaha, Stocks n Bonds, Omaha NE
• Sun 8/21 – Sizzlin’ Summer Concerts, Grover Beach CA
• Sun 8/28 – Yaamava Casino Blues Brunch, Highland CA
• Wed 8/31 – Desert Blues Revival, Agua Caliente, Palm Springs CA
• Fri 9/2 – Tooth & Nail Winery, Paso Robles CA
• Sat 9/3 – 105 Noshery, Roseville CA
• Sun 9/4 – The Saloon, San Francisco CA
• Sat 9/10 – Lawndale Blues Festival, Lawndale CA
• Sat 9/17 – Old Town Blues Club, Temecula CA
• Sun 9/18 – Rhythm Room, Phoenix AZ
• Wed 9/21 – Green Oaks Tavern, Humble TX
• Thu 9/22 – Beauvoir Park, Baton Rouge LA
• Sat 9/24 – Bogalusa Blues Festival, Bogalusa LA
• Sun 9/25 – Capitol Oyster Bar, Montgomery AL
• Wed 9/28 – Quaker Steak & Lube, Clearwater FL
• Thu 9/29 – Crazy Uncle Mike’s, Boca Raton FL
• Fri 9/30 – Cottonmouth Southern Soul Kitchen, Bradenton FL
• Sat 10/1 – Buckingham Blues Bar, Fort Myers FL
• Sun 10/2 – TT’s Tiki Bar, Punta Gorda FL
• Tue 10/4 – Paradise Bar & Grill, Pensacola FL
• Wed 10/5 – Ground Zero Blues Club, Biloxi MS
• Fri 10/7 – King Biscuit Blues Festival, Helena AR
• Fri 10/14 – San Felipe Blues & Arts Fiesta, Baja, Mexico
• Sat 10/15 – San Felipe Blues & Arts Fiesta, Baja, Mexico
• Sun 10/30 – Old Town Blues Club, Temecula CA
• Fri 11/11 – Almost Famous Wine Co, Livermore CA
• Sat 11/12 – Murphys Irish Pub, Murphys CA
• Sun 11/13 – Powerhouse, Folsom CA
• Fri 11/18 – Jeremy’s Juke Joint, Lake Havasu City AZ
• Sat 11/19 – Jeremy’s Juke Joint, Lake Havasu City AZ
• Sun 12/4 – Old Town Blues Club, Temecula CA
• Fri 12/9 – Twin Pine Casino, Middletown CA
• Sat 12/10 – Twin Pine Casino, Middletown CA

The post Laurie Morvan – This is Your Brain on Music appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Before I left for my trip, I asked a random sampling – three friends – what comes to mind when they think of the Big Easy: Party town, they said, Mardi Gras, of course. Cajun food, oyster shooters. Music, jazz. So I sought out three personalities who perpetuate this image of New Orleans to get their take on the town they lovingly call home.

I asked Sophie Lee, a jazz vocalist and part owner of the Three Muses Restaurant and jazz club, what folks should know about the New Orleans music scene. “When people think of New Orleans and jazz, they’re just skimming the surface. Jazz goes beyond the traditional sounds most people associate with the name; there’s also the brass band variety and blues and zydeco, Dixieland and bluegrass, gospel and improvisational. There’s even bounce — a newer higher-energy form of hip-hop that not everyone knows about — and you can hear every variant somewhere in the city.”

Most people coming to New Orleans are drawn to Bourbon Street but really that’s more honky tonk than music immersion. According to Lee, Frenchmen Street is where the really good bands hang out. There are close to a dozen clubs within a two-block radius and you’re as likely to be mingling with locals as you are tourists. After all, says Lee, “New Orleans is a music town even if no one is visiting.”

And, of course, it’s also a food town. Michael Broadway, also known as Hollywood for reasons that became more and more obvious as the interview progressed, has been a Master Oyster Shucker and resident showman at Acme’s Oyster Bar, a restaurant that itself opened over 102 years ago, for 34 years.

The oysters are the same wherever you go in the city; it’s the shucker that makes the difference. As Hollywood explains it, “The difference between an oyster opener and a shucker is the whole presentation; shucking oysters as performance art.” Claiming that he can talk about anything with anybody – that shucking and jivin’ is how he rolls – he makes it a point to know what’s going on in New Orleans and the world. “I know what’s happening in town and out of town, where to go for the best music, the best desserts, the best anything in the city – and outside it.”

And he’s traveled far outside it as a representative of the Oyster Promotion Board, teaching a Safety Awareness Course he started 10 years ago to all the shuckers in the French Quarter as well as in other cities around the country. He even has his own DVD called “Hollywood’s Shucking 101: The Making of a Master Shucker.”

Lessons on life in New Orleans – and life in general — are part of what Hollywood serves up along with his oysters: “New Orleans is all about the food, the culture and the people. It’s our job to make you want to come back. There’s so much going on here and we want to make sure you enjoy it all. New Orleans may be the party capital of the world but I always suggest people get out of the French Quarter, ride the trolley, see the old houses, visit historical neighborhoods, sit by the river with a good book and a picnic lunch – there are a lot of ways to party in this town without all the craziness.” Or with it. Clearly, Hollywood loves what he does. By his own admission, “If I won the lottery today, I’d be here tomorrow.”

But as much as New Orleans is known for its food and music, it’s Mardi Gras that defines it – at least once a year. And what defines Mardi Gras are its masks. If Hollywood is one of the city’s Master Shuckers, then Dalili can be called a Master Mask Maker – and he counts only three of them in the city worthy of that title. Most of the other masks, he claims, are either mass-produced or Chinese knock-offs.

Stepping into his shop/studio, Mask Gallery, is like entering a masquerade marketplace. The vast variety of masks range from fanciful to substantive, a whole court full of jester masks to a veterinary shop of cats, cows and owls; some full of feathers or glitter, others representing nature, abstract designs or multiple two-faced versions of the comedy/tragedy theme. There are as many different kinds of masks as there are types of jazz.

And that’s equally true of what they’re made out of. Different artists have different specialties: some work with leather as a base, others a variety of fabrics, and still others use paper mache. Dalili relies on skins from alligators, pythons, sting rays and lizards for his decorations. His contemporaries use feathers, Swarovski crystals, bells, wires and macramé. Once again, a familiar refrain repeats itself: anything goes — that’s the beauty of New Orleans!

Queried as to his own favorite masks, Dalili replied, “The ones that are sold, or those that I haven’t made yet. Some people bring in their own designs for me to construct and I tell them that it will look nothing like they imagine — but they are usually happy with the finished product nonetheless. If not, no problem. I make what I like and I know I can sell it, even if not to them.”

And masks are very personal, according to Dalili. “They take on their own spirit once they’re put on, and the wearer takes on the identity of the mask. Masks bring out the true personalities of the person donning them because people think they’re invisible.” Mardi Gras is full of invisible people.

Dalili’s masks range from $75 to $500 depending upon size, intricacy of design and materials, and can take from 5 hours to 25 or more to create As many people buy masks as decoration for their homes as they do to hide behind. When Halloween comes around they may take them down from the wall to double as wearable art, and then put them back to visually entertain others the rest of the year.

Although wearing Halloween masks, eating oysters at a raw bar or going to a hometown music club are always fun, doing any or all of them in New Orleans takes on a whole new dimension of experience that just can’t be duplicated elsewhere. New Orleans, no surprise, is a unique city and while you’re there, don’t forget — ANYTHING goes. For more information about visiting New Orleans, visit neworleanscvb.com; about Sophie Lee, visit sophieleemusic.com; about Michael Broadway, visit acmeoyster.com; about Dalili, neworleansmask.com.

The post New Orleans: Where Anything Goes While the Good Times Roll! appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Sullivan is not really new to the music scene; he’s been carrying around a guitar since he was four. When his father took him to see Buddy Guy at a local theater, Guy invited the then eight year old Quinn on stage to play. As a teenager he would find himself touring the world, playing and hanging out with other guitarists, including Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Jeff Beck and Carlos Santana. You know… just normal teenager stuff.

His discography now includes a fourth album, ‘Wide Awake’ that he released in the summer of 2021. Having accomplished so much at such a young age, you might think in our world of selfies, lifestyle and bling that Sullivan would be enticed by the ‘rock star’ image. But you’d be wrong. “I still live in New Bedford” he says. The more we talked the more I realized Quinn Sullivan is well-grounded. He knows what he wants in his music and he’s laser-focused on making it happen. Our conversation began with those early days

You’ve got to tell me a little about the Toe Jam Band.
“That was the first band that I used to go see as a kid. They used to play at a zoo close to my house. Every Monday my dad and I would go see these guys play; it was a kid’s band. We got to know a couple of kids in the band and at the same time I was learning how to play guitar. I probably was about four. They saw me with my guitar, I was just hanging out playing it, strumming along with them and one day the lead singer said, ‘Hey, how about we have Quinn come on stage with us and play along?’ So, I came up with my acoustic guitar, unplugged just strumming away with the band … thought that would be so awesome and so much fun to do. So every week I would go and hang out and play. It was such a great thing to do as a kid, especially loving music.”

What is it about Massachusetts and guitar players?
“I don’t know, nobody really thinks of Massachusetts as being a music place unless you do your research and look at history. I don’t know man, like I said I grew up in New Bedford and there are a bunch of great musicians around this area that play all over the downtown area. We call this area the South Coast and it’s just a bunch of cool musicians, bands and artists playing. I was lucky enough to grow up in a place where that was going on a lot as a kid. I was just surrounded all the time; I’d go to open-mike jams and various events going on in the area. I was always around music growing up.”

You’ve been mostly considered a blues player but your collaboration with Oliver Leiber on your latest project, ‘Wide Awake’ gives fans some fresh perspective on the music of Quinn Sullivan.
“What a fun process it was. Yeah, it’s funny you said the blues thing. It has been my title for a long time. This album allowed me to see what I could do, the avenues I could go down, musically. As Carlos Santana put it, ‘expand your Rolodex!’ “(laughing)” The record was really fun to make. I made it in Oliver’s home studio in Los Angeles and it was such a fun process. We wrote the album in about five or six months and I enjoyed the writing process so much. We got together the first time probably in mid-2018 and the first writing session off the bat was just great. We wrote a song called, ‘She’s Gone’ which is actually one of my favorite songs off the album. We wrote it in about two hours. I spent about a week writing with him and it was the first time I ever met him, never met him before, never really knew much about him. It was a mutual friend who hooked us up together and we immediately had this great friendship that just sparked an immediate chemistry…and we did the whole album in a year and a half span. We wrote fourteen or fifteen songs and I came back to L.A. at the end of 2019 to record. And all of these incredible musicians he put together for this album; Abraham Laboriel, Jr. “(Paul McCartney’s drummer)” Aaron Sterling “(John Mayer, Taylor Swift)” just phenomenal musicians, Paul Peterson’s playing bass and keyboards, you know a Minneapolis hero. Oliver got a bunch of these people together and that in itself was incredible because I never thought I’d ever be in a room with all these people.” (laughing)”I am such a huge fan of music and a huge fan of looking at the liner notes on albums, seeing all the people that played on the songs on great albums. I’m just a huge music lover in that sense and to have these people’s names on one of my albums is just out of this world. I couldn’t have had anybody better on this record.”

The track ‘All Around the World’ really hits home right now. I think it gives us all a little inspiration, some light at the end of the tunnel.
“Absolutely, that was one of the reasons we chose that to be the first single. Funny enough, we wrote the song before any of this even happened. We wrote it in 2019 about how the world was at the time, which was not great. Obviously, things began to get a lot worse, but we had no idea. It just resonated with me and my whole record company and my manager. We just decided it would be a good song to put out as the first thing that people hear of mine, because I hadn’t released any music for a good three to four years, so it’d been awhile. I thought the first piece of music I put out, I wanted it to be something positive, with energy and good vibes, really.”

Sounds like you’ve been pretty productive during the pandemic?
“Well, I have. It’s been a drag for us all, but the album was done before the pandemic started. I was very fortunate to not have a half done album and then have to cram to finish it. If anything it gave us more time to work on it, refine things, more time for mixing. So I had a lot of time to think about it, reflect on it and add things I thought needed to be added. Oliver would do things to it and that added a good six months to it. We pushed it all back a year. It was suppose to come out in 2020 and have it done by the summer. Obviously, it didn’t make sense to put it out in 2020, so we waited a year and the start of 2021 let’s have a new single out and let’s just push this thing out there, so that’s what we did.”

Blues it seems, more than any other genre of music is handed down from teacher to student. That truly was the case for you when you met Buddy Guy, wasn’t it?
“Well when you look at all these people in the blues world, even the rock and British blues world, like Jeff Beck, Clapton, Carlos Santana, I kind of put them all together in a group. You grow up listening to these people, seeing them on TV, posters on your wall, but you never think ever in your life you’ll be in the same room with them. Through Buddy Guy I’ve gotten to meet some of my heroes. It’s a full circle moment for me. The Buddy Guy thing happened when I was about eight years old; I got to see Buddy play at a theater called the Zeiterion, which I actually just got to headline a show there a few months ago…another full circle moment for me. We went to the theater in 2007 and I went with my dad and we knew some people at the theater and hoped maybe we could finagle our way backstage. So, we did and met Buddy’s guitar tech. I think we knew that Buddy was notorious for bringing kids on stage and giving them some time if they could play, because Buddy’s just so generous like that. We walked into his dressing room and I had my little Squier Fender Stratocaster with me and I was definitely a shy little kid at that time so I probably wasn’t talking much. I remember him being so gracious and so nice to me. I think he was just geeked out because I had a guitar (laughing) I was a little kid with a guitar and he was like can he play this thing? So I played a little bit for him and apparently that was good enough for him to call me on stage that night because that’s what ended up happening. He called me up and I played the last half hour of the show and it was like the greatest night of my life. I mean for an eight year old kid to get an opportunity like that you don’t really realize how cool that is at the moment. I’ve just begun to realize it now, how incredibly amazing that is for a little kid to do. And also having no idea how it would change my life course; I always knew I wanted to be a musician and it would be something I would want to do, but I never thought it would come so quickly. Through Buddy Guy, it’s jump-started the career I have today, so I owe Buddy so much and obviously thank him so much for all he’s done.”

Did I see you playing a Sitar at an event, one time? A Sitar?
“Yeah, that’s just from my connection to the Beatles and George Harrison and the love that I have for that music. I love Indian music; I love all different kinds of stuff. I did that in India, I got to play a festival in Mumbai a few years ago in 2017.

Let’s talk about your writing, do you have a process…do you write with your guitar?
“My process is always changing for me. Normally it does start with the guitar, or an idea or concept for a song. Lately, I’ve been trying to teach myself how to play the piano a little bit so I’ve been messing around with that. Writing on a piano you get different chordal ideas versus playing guitar, it’s just a different weapon of choice to use to write. But yeah, most of the time it’s on the guitar and it usually starts with a vocal line, a chord progression or any sort of melodic thing I hear in my head, I just have to put down. And once you start you really can’t stop!” (laughing) “You have to just get it done…I mean, I have like a thousand, if I showed you my phone I have a thousand voice memos and ideas that sometimes are just insane, but you have to put them down.”

As the world comes out of hibernation, talk a little about the tour you’ve got coming up with Beth Hart.
“It starts in San Diego on February 3rd at the Balboa Theater, I believe and we’re going to go all across the country and we end in Boston, which is really cool because that’s home for me. It’s going to be so fun and Beth is an extremely gifted singer/songwriter and so cool. I’m so excited to do some shows with her, she’s so amazing. This is really my first major tour in quite some time. It’s been a few years since I’ve gone on this big of a tour. I’ve just finished rehearsals for it and I’m looking forward to playing the new music for people and meeting new people, obviously as safely as we can do it. It just feels really good to be out again and playing live. It’s really the bread and butter of what I do and why I love playing music, playing live for people.”

You’re playing some outstanding venues, too?
“Yeah, we’re playing the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, two nights at the Wilbur in Boston, the Foxwoods in Connecticut, just all over the place.”

Check out Quinn Sullivan live during his current national tour with Beth Hart. It’s going to be a party!

Quinn Sullivan Tour Dates 2022

• Tue, FEB 1
  Luther Burbank Center for the Arts
  Santa Rosa, CA
  
• Thu, FEB 3
  Balboa Theatre
  San Diego, CA
  
• Sat, FEB 5
  Saban Theatre
  Beverly Hills, CA
  
• Mon, FEB 7
  Mission Ballroom
  Denver, CO
  
• Thu, FEB 10
  Uptown Theater
  Kansas City, MO
  
• Sat, FEB 12
  The Pageant
  St Louis, MO
  
• Mon, FEB 14
  Center Stage Theater
  Atlanta, GA
  
• Wed, FEB 16
  Ryman Auditorium
  Nashville, TN
  
• Fri, FEB 18
  Old National Centre
  Indianapolis, IN
  
• Sat, FEB 19
  Taft Theatre
  Cincinnati, OH
  
• Tue, FEB 22
  The Palace Theatre
  Greensburg, PA
  
• Thu, FEB 24
  Warner Theatre
  Washington, DC
  
• Sat, FEB 26
  Keswick Theatre
  Glenside, PA
  
• Sun, FEB 27
  Hackensack Meridian Health Theatre at the Count Basie Center for the Arts
  Red Bank, NJ
  
• Wed, MAR 2
  The Town Hall
  New York, NY
  
• Fri, MAR 4
  Turning Stone Resort Casino
  Verona, NY
  
• Sat, MAR 5
  Foxwoods Resort Casino
  Mashantucket, CT
  
• Wed, MAR 9
  The Wilbur
  Boston, MA
  
• Thu, MAR 10
  The Wilbur
  Boston, MA

The post Quinn Sullivan: Music for a New Age appeared first on Traveling Archive.