Posts Tagged ‘Guitar’
Jim Suhler and Monkey Beat
DALLAS, TX -
Along with Suhler on guitar and lead vocals, the band includes bassist Calrton Powell, keyboardist Shawn Phares and drummer Jimmy Morgan. Together, they’ve ben terrorizing clubs, theaters and festivals alike with their flamethrower brand of blues/rock. with a major side order of the Texas border mythology added to keep it spicy.
The same take-no-prisoners attitude has prevailed in Jim Suhler’s playing as a guitarist with George Thorogood and the Destroyers, with whom he’s recorded, toured and written songs for over nine years. Suhler has often been included in many of the “Top Ten Guitarists” lists featured in several music publications.
Blasting out Texas blues/rock for over seventeen years, Jim Suhler & Monkey Beat announce the February 17, 2009, release of the band’s new cd, ‘TIJUANA BIBLE’, which will be released in the U.S. on Underworld Records, distributed nationally by Burnside Distribution. Produced by Jim Suhler and Tom Hambridge, ‘TIJUANA BIBLE’ is powered by thirteen original songs, plus unique takes on Elvin Biahop’s “Drunken Hearted Boy” (with Bishop as a special guest on slide guitar), Rory Gallagher’s “I Could’ve Had Religion” and AC/DC’s “Up To My Neck in You”. Additional special guests include Joe Bonamassa on lead guitar (”Deep Water Lullaby”) and Jimmy Hall (Wet Willie) on backing vocals (Po‘ Lightnin’).
“TIJUANA BIBLE’ was recorded at Ocean Way Studios and 1808 Studios in Nasville, as well as Audio Dallas inGarland , Texas. The album takes it’s title from the notorious “Tijuana Bible”, an old time pornographic comic book, typically “starring” famous politicians, film stars and sports heroes of the day. “No one is really sure where they originated, but Tijuana, with it’s creative approach to all things entertaining, is certainly a good place to guess”, says Jim Suhler.
Several of the songs on “TIJUANA BIBLE” are also featured on the 2008 DVD release “REAL TIME: LIVE IN TEXAS”, recorded at Dallas’ Granada Theater, which also includes bonus tracks filmed at the Kwadendamme Blues Festival in the Netherlands and in the historic Deep Ellum section of Dallas.
Walter Trout
Walter Trout
July 22nd, 2010
About Walter Trout -
“People ask me if they should call my music blues or rock, I tell them they can call it ‘Fred’ if they must have a label.”
That remark, along with the exclamation that “the blues shouldn’t be a museum… the music ought to constantly expand and be alive,” have been expressed again and again by Walter Trout during his 35+ year career. With the release of FULL CIRCLE, the statements hold true as Trout and his musical friends demonstrate their appreciation of all shades of the blues genre. The album reflects Walter Trout’s remarkable story, from his humble beginnings as a sideman in many a blues legends’ band through his rising solo star, arriving as one of blues music’s beloved interpreters. Read the rest of this entry »
Johnny A
Johnny A
Saturday April 17th, 9 pm
For Johnny A., the guitar has held a lifelong fascination, her six strings exerting a powerful influence and addictive beauty since the first time he held them. The pursuit of this musical lady with the perfect shape has driven his years - shaping the course of his life – taking him places he never could have imagined. Through inspiring moments of ecstatic improvisation, deep contemplation and inevitable gaps of frustration it has been a stormy affair with a tempestuous hollow-body lover, but the marriage has been nothing less than remarkable.
Johnny A. is widely regarded as one of America’s finest contemporary guitarists. Gibson thinks so – their Custom Shop designed a Signature Edition guitar per his specific requests which, when it was marketed in 2003, placed him in an exclusive club that included legends like BB King, Wes Montgomery, Chet Atkins, Joe Perry, Pat Martino and Les Paul himself. The public thinks so too - Johnny A.’s latest works have sold many thousands of copies as well as being his personal best. The most recent CD’s - 2004’s Get Inside and 1999’s Sometime Tuesday Morning, are the critically acclaimed solo culmination of a lifetime of learning, sharing and bonding in a long parade of bands and players.
As a bright-eyed six-year old in Malden, Massachusetts, Johnny became fascinated with the drums, a habit his father encouraged by buying him a kit. There were lessons and the Jr. High School marching band, but as fun as the skins were, he realized that their melodic capability was quite limited. Rhythm had taken a backseat to melody and since the most melodic instrument in any 60’s beat group was guitar, those six-strings now began their inexorable pull on Johnny A’s life. Once the four “mop-tops” from Liverpool dropped like a bomb from Ed Sullivan’s studio into his living room in 1964, his course was set.
A $49 Lafayette Electronics guitar became Johnny A.’s first girlfriend. A humble beginning for sure, but his mom was no fool and wanted to be safe if this ‘guitar thing’ just turned out to be another passing teenage phase. It wasn’t. Johnny saw the Beatles at Suffolk Downs outside of Boston in 1966 and their magical presence sent the impressionable lad into a blur of activity – sweeping up hair and doing odd jobs at his aunt’s salon to save up the 88 bucks needed to buy a Vox Clubman guitar. Then, of course, he had to have a Gretsch too. No, this was no passing phase.
Fate leaned in and dealt a tough one when the active 13-year old developed a curvature in his spine and suffered massive and painful muscle spasms as a result. Doctors put Johnny in a full body cast for 14 months and eventual body brace for two years to immobilize his back and neck during treatment. As much as this terrible handicap limited the schoolboy in his activities, it didn’t stop him from playing. In fact, the condition actually forced Johnny to improve his skills since he could no longer look down at his fingers while forming chords and picking.
In high school he was freed from the cast, graduated and then went on to a semester and a half at Boston’s Berklee School of Music. Ironically, Johnny had no interest in attending even one of his guitar lessons at the prestigious school - they taught textbook Bebop, while he had moved onto the latest sounds: Progressive Rock and Jazz/Rock Fusion. The instructors preached Lester Young, but Johnny grooved on Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin, King Crimson and Return to Forever featuring Bill Connors and Chick Corea. He bid adieu to Berklee and schooled himself, both at home and in Boston’s hippie-era club scene at places like the Ark and Boston Tea Party.
In amongst going to see Ten Years After, Steppenwolf, Edger Winter’s White Trash, Rhinoceros, Spirit and dozens more, Johnny put together his own group called Squanty Roo. They might not have blazed a trail to Budokan, but they did play the Fusion sounds that the guitarist was digging on. After that it was a short pilgrimage to San Francisco to absorb some counterculture and do a brief stint with percussionist Mingo Lewis.
By 1975 Johnny A. had worked out of his progressive phase and hungered to put together a basic rock outfit with the energy of Aerosmith and the melodic fascinations of the Beatles. It was the pre-punk period and Boston was about to become a hotbed of local talent and a leading city to support the brand new wave of bands and attitude. Johnny formed the group The Streets, a leather-clad unit on the ground floor of hard rock that embraced the sounds of 60’s British Invasion pop. When Boston’s punk scene finally climbed out of a handful of dingy rock and roll basements with its first wave of rock recruits for the brand new era, The Streets were there, scoring a major local radio hit with the song “What Gives.”
Eventually, personnel changes killed The Streets, but the guitarist formed other bands – Johnny A.’s Hidden Secret and Hearts on Fire, a unit featuring his wife Beth on vocals. With a sound that drew from country-western twang but rocked solid, Hearts on Fire preceded Maria McKee’s Lone Justice and pioneered a distinctive place within Boston’s thriving mid-80’s local scene. Competing in the 1986 edition of WBCN-FM’s annual Rock and Roll Rumble spotlighting two dozen of the year’s best up and coming bands, Hearts on Fire blazed a trail all the way into the finals, becoming recognized truly as one of New England’s finest and brightest hopes.
But Johnny broke up the group instead after realizing that their direction had become “calculated” and “not honest.” Disillusioned after reaching so far within the band format, he began playing with other artists like former Derek and the Dominos keyboardist Bobby Whitlock before hooking up with legendary J. Geils Band front man Peter Wolf. Johnny stayed with Wolf for seven years, playing on his albums and co-producing one of them – 1996’s Long Line, as well as supporting the charismatic singer onstage around the world. During this period, in 1994, the Gibson Guitar Company first recognized Johnny’s talents, announcing that the company was officially endorsing his fruitful career.
But once again Johnny A. felt he had taken a direction and pursuit as far as he could. The idea began to take hold that he should return to a solo direction – this time creating an album of melodies and music that swirled about in his head. Even though it didn’t seem as if there was any commercial potential in the move, that wasn’t the point – Johnny needed to bring this project to life and it wouldn’t resemble anything he’d been involved in the past. Peter Wolf and Johnny A. parted ways and the guitarist began recording tracks for his new experiment – an album of music made merely to satisfy his own muse with no commercial constraints whatsoever.
The result was Sometime Tuesday Morning, a solo instrumental guitar album that Johnny A. released on his own label for his own enjoyment plus that of a few intrigued friends and family members. But the warmth of its guitar tones and allure of melody made Sometime Tuesday Morning much more – it made the album a surprise hit. After gigs Johnny began selling dozens, then hundreds, and eventually thousands of copies out of his car trunk. The attention led to a re-release and distribution deal with Steve Vai’s Favored Nations label and an ever-widening circle of high-prestige gigs with the likes of B.B. King, Robert Cray, and Jeff Beck plus an appearance at Eric Clapton’s “Crossroads Guitar Festival” in 2004. That success gave Johnny A. the confidence to assemble his second instrumental tour de force called Get Inside, another critically acclaimed album that traveled even deeper into the richness of guitar texture and melody. The release once again garnered national radio airplay and inspired another round of touring commitments and personal appearances. An instructional guitar DVD has followed plus plans for his newest project – a live CD/DVD featuring special guests and new material. It has been a long way from that first $49 guitar to Gibson’s Johnny A. Signature Edition (Metallica’s Kirke Hammett recently bought one), but it’s been a fruitful journey. Johnny A. is still doing what he loves to do the most - play guitar and create music, and he’s still getting better at it all the time.
Joe Bonamassa
Joe Bonamassa on Stage
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Erin Podbereski at 626-585-9575 or erin@jensencom.com
Blues Rock Star Joe Bonamassa to Headline Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma On March 26th In Support Of His Upcoming Studio Album Black Rock, To Be Released In Early 2010.
Los Angeles, CA, December 2009: Award-winning blues rock star, guitar hero and singer-songwriter Joe Bonamassa and his ace touring band will perform in concert at the Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on March 26th. The one-night-only show is in support of his upcoming album Black Rock, to be released on Bonamassa’s J&R Adventures label in early 2010. The tenth full-length solo release and eighth studio album of his career, the disc will mark Bonamassa’s sixth collaboration with Kevin Shirley (Led Zeppelin, Black Crowes, Aerosmith) as producer.
2009 marked a year of milestones for Bonamassa. He kicked it off in February with the release of his ninth solo album, The Ballad of John Henry, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Blues Charts. Nicky Horne from the UK’s Planet Rock Radio called it “a quantum leap from his previous albums, and they were damn good – if he keeps this up, he is destined to walk alongside the truly greats.”
In May 2009, he played a sold out show at London’s Royal Albert Hall, arguably the most prestigious concert venue in the world and had the added honor of being joined on stage by the legendary Eric Clapton. The Times of London cited Joe’s “searing excellence and showmanship,” and Planet Rock said, “The sight of two of the world’s best guitarists trading solos was more than a little thrilling.” Released Oct. 6, 2009 and debuting at #6 on Billboard’s DVD Chart was Joe Bonamassa – Live From The Royal Albert Hall, a 2-disc live DVD capturing the intensity and excitement of that show which Bonamassa calls “a day 20 years in the making.”
This past year also saw Bonamassa’s twentieth year as a professional musician, an extraordinary timeline for a young artist just into his ‘30s. He was named “Best Blues Guitarist” in Guitar Player’s readers’ choice poll for the third consecutive year and graced their April 2009 cover. The magazine said, “He’s an old soul, and that comes through in his bends, vibrato, singing voice, and note choices, which – with each passing year – gets more restrained and refined.”
In November ‘09, he headlined Guitar Center’s annual King of the Blues contest in Los Angeles and was awarded the Breakthrough Artist of the Year Award at the U.K.’s prestigious Classic Rock Roll of Honour Awards.
Bonamassa averages 200 shows every year, almost always playing to sold-out and ever-larger houses, and with each gig, he comes more into his own as a virtuoso and a vocalist. The Washington Post’s Mike Joyce cites his, “wicked guitar thrills” and British journalist Pete Feenstra wrote of a BBC Live performance, that, “he is both as eloquent and learned about the music he plays as he is technically brilliant.” Guitar icon Ted Nugent has said, “This kid deserves to be in the same class with Stevie Ray F*&cking Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck.”
A child prodigy, Bonamassa opened shows at age 12 for blues legend B.B. King, who said after first seeing him play, “This kid’s potential is unbelievable…He’s one of a kind.” Bonamassa’s recording career began in the early ’90s with Bloodlines, a rock-blues group also featuring Robby Krieger’s son Waylon and Miles Davis’ son Erin. His solo debut was in 2000 with the Tom Dowd-produced A New Day Yesterday, named for the Jethro Tull hit that Bonamassa delivers with what allmusic.com calls, “a jaw-dropping performance.”
Joe’s appearance at the Civic Center Music Hall on March 26th is the culmination of efforts by local business man turned promoter Jim Moody. Moody and Bonamassa have forged a relationship that began in 2002 in Tulsa Oklahoma. Jim Moody Route 66 Blues Project/79th Street Sound Stage happened to witness this performance and was so moved he began promoting Joe in Oklahoma. In late 2003 Joe’s first Oklahoma City show was at the Will Rogers Theatre. Since then his popularity steadily increased with an appearance in 2008 at Rose State Theatre for the Performing Arts. Jim Moody was quoted saying “I have just witnessed the next guitar legend. I haven’t experienced anything similar to this since I saw Jimmy Page in 1970 and later Stevie Ray Vaughan. Joe Bonamassa is going to influence the next generation of guitar players and change the direction modern popular music is headed. Not just a return to its blues roots but how you experience the live performance. Joe will be the high water mark that other acts will emulate and seek to replicate his ability to connect with his audience, through his emotional expression both instrumentally and vocally. ”
Tickets are $45.00 and available at the Civic Center Box Office 201 N Walker Ave. 405-297-2264 and all outlets. Also online at www.myticketoffice.com or by calling 1-800-364-7111
For more information and updated tour schedule, visit www.jbonamassa.com
Monte Montgomery
Monte Montgomery
Monte Montgomery February, 27th 8 pm
Special Guest: TBA
Named as one of “Guitar Player” magazine’s “Top 50 All-Time Greatest Guitarists” and the only artist to win the “Best Acoustic Guitar Player” at the Austin Music Awards seven years straight, Monte Montgomery is world-renowned for his dizzying fretboard wizardry. Guitar hero status aside, Montgomery is also a multi-dimensional songwriter and storyteller as well as a talented arranger and remarkably soulful vocalist. He is one of the very few living guitar gods able to synergize technical shredding with deep soul connection in his songs and performances. Austin City Limits producer Terry Lickona describes the musician perfectly, “Monte Montgomery blows people away. There is no other way to describe it.”
Ana Popovic - June 20, 2009
Ana Popovic
Ana Popovic
Appearing live at Oklahoma City Limits Saturday night June 20, 2009
Ever since her debut album was nominated for a BMA for best new artist in 2003 American’s have embraced this Belgrade Serbia native, who now resides in Amsterdam, Ana Popovic will be making her first Oklahoma appearance Saturday June 20th at Oklahoma City Limits 4801 South Eastern.
Ana is yet another European heavily influenced by American blues artists but melds with her own Jazzy style developed listening to her fathers record collection filled with western popular music. Although she played professionally in Eastern European festival at an early age she came in to her own after moving to Amsterdam to continue her studies in graphic design. There she formed a Dutch band and became a fixture on the local music scene. She was signed to Ruf records and from there her career took an international course.
She is now touring in support of her newest release Still Making History on American label Delta Groove records. She has been lauded by such publications as Guitar Player Magazine “Ana is a superb singer and songwriter who can flatpick fluid jazzlines, and deep string bends with SRV-style and emotion.” She stands poised to shake your foundations.” Guitar One magazine.
For the second time Ana and her European band are invited to play at the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise. On high sea Ana jams with Susan Tedeschi, Larry McCray, Bob Margolin and many more. Ana is part of Robert Radler’s guitar documentary ‘Turn it up’ aka TONE, about the worlds best guitars and guitar players.
The Road To The Royal Albert Hall Part 5
I remeber his first trip to Europe and how well he did. The Rockpalast appearance latter released on DVD. The feeling that he was really going to break there first. Something about American Blues Based artists being better received much better there than here. I don’t know all the pieces of the puzzle that came together to make not only the date possible but to sell it out in 6 days. I only know that it was a much deserved that Joe made every lucky break he recieved. My friend Mike Williams has a saying about the harder I work the luckier I get. Well that my friends is Joe.
The Road To The Royal Albert Hall Part 4
Aubry Harris contacted me because he knew I was a fan in OKC 90 mile to the north of Ardmore. He had booked Joe to play an after party at the Tivoli Theatre in downtown Ardmore. He was selling VIP tables and I was more than happy to buy one. During our conversation he said while talking to Joe’s manager my name had come up and he encouraged me to pursue booking Joe in OKC again. Something he probably later regretted but that is a whole other story.
The Road To The Royal Albert Hall Part 3
The few shows I attended during this time I would arrive early and have a chance to talk to Kenny Joe’s drummer at the time and Roscoe his tourmanager. I never really wanted to bother Joe who was alway cordial but I would say warry of this new fixture at their shows. He was a little perplexed that someone would travel distances to see him and possibly wondered at the state of my sanity. I gave him his space because I wasn’t in to guitars which is a common language he speaks I just dug the band.