Posts Tagged ‘Music’
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
Indigenous
Inigenous
October 4th 9:00 PM Oklahoma City Limts
Mato Nanji’s always provided the heartbeat of the band Indigenous — along with the warm dusty voice and the soaring, spirited guitar fireworks that have earned the group from South Dakota’s Nakota Nation a place among roots rock’s elite. But with the emotionally charged and musically visceral Broken Lands, the band’s second album on Vanguard Records, Nanji makes a transformation from sparkplug to visionary.
“I’ve wanted to make an album like this for years,” Nanji explains, “but to a certain extent my hands were tied. Now I feel like I’ve achieved so many things I’ve wanted this band to be. The songs I’m singing are more personal. The sound of the band has broadened, and we were able to explore all the influences that are woven into that sound – blues, soul, R&B, and even country — more than ever. And the guitar playing is more controlled, to really let the songs speak for themselves. On top of all that, I’ve grown as a singer. After being frustrated for a while, all of this makes me very happy. “What it amounts to,” Nanji announces, “is that Indigenous is a brand new band.”
He means that literally. From the group’s beginning in his parents’ basement through the release of 2006’s Vanguard debut Chasing the Sun, Indigenous was a family band. But after that disc was recorded Mato’s bassist brother Pte, his drummer sister Wanbdi, and his percussionist cousin Horse left to pursue other musical paths. “Everybody decided to go their own way, leaving me to carry on Indigenous,” Nanji says. “Playing with my family for 10 years was a lot of fun, but it was time to grow.”
So Nanji recruited guitarist Kris Lager, keyboardist Jeremiah Weir, bassist Aaron Wright, and drummer John Fairchild to tour behind Chasing the Sun. They also appear on Broken Lands, joined by drummer Kirk Stallings, percussionist Chico Perez, and Mato’s wife Leah Nanji on backing vocals. Producer Jamie Candiloro (Ryan Adams, R.E.M., Willie Nelson, the Eagles) completed the studio team.
“Jamie shined on bringing out the energy and honest sound we had going on,” Nanji says. “He had us set up and play live in the studio as if we were on stage. Some of the songs, like the acoustic-guitar shuffle ‘All Night Long,’ went down with even the vocals recorded live while the band played. Others, like ‘Should I Stay,’ are more textured, but benefit from the energy that comes with playing the basic tracks live.”
Nanji’s big-toned guitar on Broken Lands’ dozen songs about romance and destiny continues to demand comparison to his idols Stevie Ray Vaughan, Los Lobos, Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana. His burnished style — full of ringing sustained notes and artfully bent strings — elevates the emotional appeal of numbers like the romantic soul-searcher ‘Should I Stay’ and the brooding blues-rock masterpiece ‘Waiting.’ Nonetheless, Nanji kept his gear for the sessions trim: a couple amps, including the distinctive organ-like whir of a Leslie speaker, and his trademark Stratocasters augmented by a Guild acoustic.
“I wanted to get more slide guitar into the album, too,” he says, “which gave me and Kris, who’s an exceptional slide player, new ways to have interplay.” So Lager added bottleneck to ‘All Night Long,’ the sweet ballad ‘Eyes of a Child’ and other numbers. “I’ve loved slide ever since I found Elmore James in my father’s collection of old blues albums when I was a teenager,” Nanji says. The other sonic addition is Leah Nanji’s harmonies on much of Broken Lands, “I’ve always been a big fan of women singing backing vocals,” Nanji says. “Leah was able to do some of that on Chasing the Sun, but to me her voice is an essential part of Broken Lands.”
Leah was also essential as a songwriter, co-authoring all of the songs with Mato except his self-penned ‘Just Can’t Hide.’ “This is the first time I’ve had a hand in writing every song for an Indigenous album,” Nanji says. “It’s very liberating, because I feel like I’ve truly invested myself. Leah and I have been writing songs together for years, and we had written about 20 for this album and narrowed it down to the best dozen.”
One of the most compelling is ‘Place I Know,’ a riff-rocker that decries the poverty and isolation of Reservation life and gives the album it’s title in the line, “all is lost in these broken lands.” “I love the way all of these songs came out, but ‘Place I Know’ is one of the closest to me,” Nanji says. “It’s important to bear witness about the things that inspire love in your life and about the things that make you sad. “But working on these songs at home with Leah in Sioux Falls was really fun,” says Nanji. “I got to just sit and play them again and again on acoustic guitar without pressure, and that helped me develop my vocal melodies and grow as a singer. Because of that, Broken Lands has my best vocal performances.
“Broken Lands makes me feel like I did when Indigenous was just starting out,” Nanji says. “We were excited about making music and making records, and maybe getting to tour all over the United States, which we did.
“Now Indigenous is a new band again and I feel that same excitement,” he continues. “But this time — when we start touring in August — I want to take these new songs and this great sounding band all over the world.”
I got the Promotion Blues
Promoting the blues is a difficult task that has sometimes paid dividends and sometimes only disappoints. I’m a blues fan by default. The music I really like just happens to be rooted in the blues. Because of this I have a taste for blues but it must be seasoned with a bit of rock to really grab me.
As a promoter I have tried to brand the type of show I do so that I could build a relationship with my customers. I have with a few exception booked acts that I want to see. An act that I feel will impress people whether they have heard of them or not. Hopefully they trust my judgment and will attend because they have discovered artists by virtue of attending one of my shows. I began this venture under the title of Route 66 Blues Project. I later changed the name to 79th Street Sound Stage so as to not limit myself to promoting the blues exclusively.
I recently booked Ana Popovic who is a blues based female guitar player from Europe. I had heard of her through blues societies and through the Blues Foundation when she was nominated for a Blues Music Award I had only heard some of her albums and explored her website. I liked the fact she had many influences both Jazz and Rock but it was bluesy.
I had a decent turnout targeting the blues community for the show. The problem is a decent turnout is under 100 people. If the show had sold 100 or over I would have been ecstatic. The blues I have found has a limited audience. I think I made a mistake promoting her as a blues artist. I was asked believe it or not to refund the ticket price to someone who thought Ana wasn’t the blues. The rational was when asked why she wasn’t the blues the best they could come up with was because she used a wah wah peddle. Sacrilege I suppose.
Now I don’t pretend to be the authority on what is and isn’t blues. I don’t promote blues acts exclusively. In fact my most well attended shows have not been considered blues acts at all. I think the problem with trying to define the blues hurts the genre by limiting its appeal and dividing the fans that already exist. Instead of being able to depend on a supportive fan base of a genre you have hope to appeal to a certain segment of the genre’.
How do you overcome the pitfalls that come with promoting the blues? I guess the answer is distancing yourself from the genre’. I promote music. You call it what you want. I hope you call it good. You can call it blues if you want but all you’ll get from me is that it is bluesy.
Ana Popovic
Music Marketing Philosophy
Published originally at Jolt Music Network
My social networking theories date back nearly 30 years although I never realized exactly what I was doing at the time. The marketing techniques I used my entire life building a successful career can be translated to building a business today in the music industry.
I built a business entirely by word of mouth with the goal of building a loyal customer base that would support my career choice for a lifetime. I was a horrible self promoter who still believes to this day that if you have to tell some one how good you are you probably aren’t worth a shit. If you are any good others will do that for you. I took care of producing a quality product and let my customers take care of spreading the word about my service. Read the rest of this entry »
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.