Had a chance to talk to Coco a little bit afterwards. The conversation went from his amazing band and how they came together, his work with Keb Mo and his views on the popularity--or lack thereof-of blues music. Check it out.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Coco Montoya Interview
Thanks to the D.C. Blues Society, I had a chance to hear Coco Montoya on Sunday, when he played the Hamilton in downtown Washington, D.C. And it was an amazing show: both he and his band were in top form.
Had a chance to talk to Coco a little bit afterwards. The conversation went from his amazing band and how they came together, his work with Keb Mo and his views on the popularity--or lack thereof-of blues music. Check it out.
Had a chance to talk to Coco a little bit afterwards. The conversation went from his amazing band and how they came together, his work with Keb Mo and his views on the popularity--or lack thereof-of blues music. Check it out.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Last Hurrah: the 2012 D.C. Blues Festival September, 2012
The annual D.C. Blues Festival is one of my last hurrahs of the year when it
comes to blues. After that, it starts getting too cold for festivals. You can
catch individual acts at clubs, but it’s just not the same as the musical smorgasbord
available at a festival. I’m sure you
can relate.
Anyway, this year’s festival at Carter Barron Amphitheatre in northwest D.C. provided enough good music to
hold me for a while. The headliner was
Sugar Ray & the Bluestones, a New England-based band that has backed
Roosevelt Sykes, Big Walter Horton and J.B. Hutto. Also playing was Sista
Monica Parker, who has shared the stage with luminaries such as the Neville
Brothers, Ray Charles, Little Milton, Etta James and Koko Taylor and Lionel
Young, who fronts his award-winning band with an uncommon lead instrument, the
violin. Two D.C. area favorites, Clarence “the Bluesman” Turner and the D.C.
Blues Society Band with singer Ayaba Bey, were also on the bill.
The Bluetones pretty much highlighted the blues festival
with a performance of “Evening,” the title song of their 2011 album, a project
that secured four nominations in the 2012 Blues Music Awards, including Album
of the Year:
A former Marine, Sista Monica is known as “The Lioness of
Blues” in Europe. She cut her teeth singing in the choir of the church she
attended in her native Gary, Indiana. I
can definitely hear that influence here:
Lionel Young is a classically-trained violinist who has
played with the Pittsburgh Opera-Ballet Orchestra, as well as other orchestras.
He is the first and only person to win both the solo/duo and the band
competition at the International Blues Challenge, winning the former in 2008
and the latter in 2011. He also played
the 2012 D.C. Blues Festival’s after-party, where this performance with singer Nadine Rae was shot:
We didn’t shoot video of Clarence “the Bluesman” Turner or
the D.C. Blues Society Band at this year’s festival. But we have plenty of them
from past years.
Here’s Clarence at the College Park Blues Festival last
November:
And here’s the D.C. Blues Society Band featuring Ayaba Bey
at the same event:
Hey, I don't have to tell you it was a fun festival with good performers. Let us know what's going on in your area. Contact us at beldonsbluespoint@yahoo.com
Friday, September 14, 2012
Off to See the Wizard: Steve Vai On Tour
At age 18, while a
student at Boston’s Berklee School of Music, Steve Vai started transcribing
guitar compositions by Frank Zappa. At 20, he sent the Zappa a copy of “The
Black Page,” an instrumental the music legend had written for drums. He also
sent Zappa a recording of himself playing the guitar.
Vai caught Zappa’s attention. And when the two finally met, they started a
relationship that would eventually lead to Vai playing in Zappa’s band.
Since then, Vai has built a reputation as one of the world’s
most highly-regarded and influential guitarists. Now 52 years old, he has worked with some of
the leading names in music: singer David Lee Roth, bassist Billy Sheehan, steel
pedal guitarist Robert Randolph, Ozzy Osbourne and the group Whitesnake, among
others.
And he has released a number of highly acclaimed solo
projects, the latest of which is The Story of Light, his eighth studio album
and the second in a planned trilogy that started in 2005 with Real
Illusions: Reflections. Vai is promoting
the album on a tour that is taking him to several cities in North America and Europe,
including D.C.’s Howard Theatre, where the videos you see in this post were
recorded.
A rocker at his core, Vai crosses
the line into the jazz-rock territory explored by Zappa, Jeff Beck as well as Joe
Satriani, who gave him guitar lessons while both attended the same Long Island
high school. Some might describe Vai as
flashy, both in his playing and in his stage presentation (at one point during
his performance at the Howard, he came out in what looked like a space suit!)
But with someone of Vai’s abilities, flash is only on the
surface. To me, it appeared that he was experimenting to see what sounds he
could coax from his guitar; the audience just happened to be in the room with
him.
Thinking about it again, I wasn’t sure which one was in
control, Vai or his guitar. They seemed to have the same kind of relationship that
a good ventriloquist has with his mannequin: after a while you’re not sure
which one is actually doing the talking.
Vai started learning guitar at 13. A year later, he was
taking lessons from Satriani, four years his senior.
His professional career took off in 1979 after Zappa hired
him to transcribe his guitar solos. The transcriptions were eventually
published in 1982 in a volume called The Frank Zappa Guitar Book. Vai then went on to overdub many of the
guitar parts for Zappa’s album, You Are What Is, and in 1980 started
touring with Zappa.
During the tour, Vai would sometimes ask audience members to
bring musical scores which he would sight-read during the shows.
After leaving Zappa in 1982, Vai recorded Flex-Able, his
first album. In 1985, he became the lead guitarist in the group Alcatrazz,
replacing Yngwie Malmsteen.
Later in 1985, following the advice of his friend, bassist
Billy Sheehan, Vai joined a new group formed by
David Lee Roth, former singer for Van Halen.
As a debut album, the
group, which also included Sheehan, released Eat ‘em and Smile. The album,
which sold over two million copies, eventually reached #4 on Billboard’s 200
album chart. Vai personally drew kudos from Rolling Stone magazine, which
compared him favorably to Van Halen guitarist Eddie Van Halen.
In 1988, the group released its sophomore album, Skyscraper, which Vai and Roth produced.
Vai joined the group Whitesnake in 1989. He played all the guitar parts on the group’s
album Slip of the Tongue after guitarist Adrian Vandenberg injured his
wrist. He also played on Alice Cooper’s
Hey Stoopid, joining forces with his old guitar teacher Joe Satriani on the
song “Feed My Frankenstein.”
The year 1990 saw Vai release a solo album, Passion and
Warfare. A reader’s poll in Guitar
World magazine picked a single from the album, “For the Love of God,” as number
29 on a list of the 100 greatest guitar solos of all time.
Vai began recording and writing with Osbourne in 1994. Although a cut from these sessions, “My
Lilttle Man,” was included in Osbourne’s Ozzmosis album, Vai did not play
on it. Instead, guitarist Zakk Wylde
played his parts.
In the late 90’s, Vai joined Satriani for the so-called G3
tour. A live album was released from the tour.
Vai, Sheehan, pianist Tony MacAlpine, guitarist Dave Weiner
and drummer Virgil Donati held a concert at London’s Astoria, releasing a DVD
of the event in December, 2001.
The guitarist traveled to Tokyo in July, 2002 to join the
Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra for the world premier of composer Ichiro
Nodaira’s Fire Strings, a concerto written for a 100-piece orchestra and
electric guitar.
Vai premiered The Blossom Suite, his piece for electric
and classical guitar, in 2005 at Paris’ Châtelet Theatre. The following year,
he joined the “Zappa Plays Zappa” tour led by Frank Zappa’s son, Dweezil.
In 2010, Vai joined the North Netherlands Orchestra to play
several compositions mixing rock and orchestral music. That same year, he appeared on The Tonight
Show and American Idol to perform with artists such as Mary J. Blige, Orianthi,
Travis Barker, Ron Fair and Randy Jackson.
Outside of his work as a performer and recording artist, Vai
is a supporter of Little Kids Rock, a non-profit organization providing free
musical instruments and instruction to public school children. He also is the
founder of the Make A Noise Foundation, an organization which provides money
for music education to people of limited means.
He also has developed a line of guitars with the Ibanez
company. Among them is a seven-string
guitar that, because of its capability for low tunings, eventually attracted
the attention of the metal groups Korn and Limp Bizkit.
After the concert at the Howard ended, we were able to ask
Vai a couple of questions. First, we
asked him about Frank Zappa:
We then asked him who his favorite guitar players were
overall:
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
We are Family- Prince's The Family Returns as fDeluxe
Any of you eighties aficionados
remember “The Family?” It was an
off-shoot group formed post-Purple Rain by Prince with members of two bands in his revue: Morris Day
and the Time and the Revolution.
Last year, four of The Family's five original members decided to reform the group. Now calling itself fDeluxe,
the group last September released Gaslight, its first CD in over 25 years.
And last week the group reached another plateau, performing its
latest single, “You Got What You Wanted,” before an audience at Washington,
D.C.’s Howard Theatre only a day after the song's official release. The performance took place while fDeluxe was opening for yet another star in the Prince universe:
Sheila E.
The core members of fDeluxe (the old name was off-limits for
reasons we’ll discuss later) are drummer/guitarist Jellybean
Johnson, a one-time member of the Time who in recent years has traded
licks with blues musicians Ronnie Baker Brooks and Bernard Allison;
singer Susannah Melvoin, twin sister of Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin and one-time
fiancé of Prince; saxophonist Eric Leeds, previously a member of Madhouse, a
Prince project that focused on jazz/rock fusion and singer/bassist St. Paul
Peterson, who started playing with the Time while still in high school and
who comes from a family of jazz musicians.
Prince formed the original group, which then also included Jerome
Benton of the Time, in 1985 with Peterson as the lead singer.
“When we were filming Purple Rain, our dressing rooms were
right next to Prince’s and Morris and I used to have these little sing-offs,”
Peterson told SoulTrain.com last year.
“I’m guessing this is where Prince heard me sing. When the
Time disbanded (with the departure in 1985 of Day, guitarist Jesse Johnson,
keyboardist Mark Cardenas and bassist Jerry Hubbard), Prince gathered everyone
who was left and we talked and he said, ‘I want to do a new band and I want you
to be the lead singer.’ And he pointed at me. So that was how that baby
began—the dissolution of the Time and him having a creative outlet for some
other songs.”
Internal pressures soon led to The Family’s dissolution, but
not before it had released The Family, an album that includes the 1985 hit
“Screams of Passions.” Another song, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” was covered by
Sinead O’Conner.
The members moved on with their lives, with Peterson
releasing songs as a solo artist; Melvoin first joining the Revolution, then
taking up songwriting and Johnson and Benton rejoining a re-formed Time.
Leeds, meanwhile, played with Sheila E’s E Train group and also garnered accolades from critics
with a series of solo albums, but reportedly left music for a while to become a
railroad engineer.
But in 2003, Sheila E invited the group to do a charity
benefit in San Francisco. According to
the Minneapolis Star Tribune, it took only one hour of rehearsal for the
old juices to start flowing again. When the session was over, Melvoin and Peterson
agreed to “finish what we started” and the family--most of it anyway--was reborn.
Still, things did not really get underway until 2007, when
the Roots invited the group to play at its annual pre-Grammy party. There, they were told by Roots drummer Ahmir “?uestlove”
Thompson that The Family was one of his ten favorite records.
The name change to fDeluxe came after Prince reportedly turned down requests from Melvoin and Peterson to use the old name.
Group members spent personal funds to finance Gaslight, which
derives its name from a 1940’s film starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman.
They describe their sound as “adult pop music.” “We don’t
have any illusions about this music appealing to younger kids,” Leeds told
SoulTrain.com. “The goal and the
challenge are to get this music in front of people who will enjoy it.”
At the Howard, the audience was eager to hear "You Got What You Wanted":
The group also played “Sanctified:”
And my personal favorite of the evening was this one:
Of course, we can’t let you go without sharing a little bit
of what the extraordinary Sheila E gave the Howard that night:
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Meeting Musical Needs Everywhere: Part II of Our Interview with Mikey Junior
BBP: How many times have you been to the IBC (International Blues Challenge)?
Mikey: Four. I was there in 2005; I was there in 2007; I was
there in 2011 and 2012. I’ve been there competing four times; however I’ve
attended six times. Because ever since 2005 I’ve been going every year except
one year. It was the year I was buying my house that I told you about. Because
it was a fixer-upper house, it was a construction site. I basically bought a
house that needed to have a new roof, new siding, new windows, the whole
shebang, so because of my construction background I was the one who was being
the contractor on it. So I had to be here for it and that was the one year I
missed going to the IBC.
BBP: This year I
think you were in the quarter-finals?
Mikey: We were in the finals. We made the finals this year.
BBP: Right! Yeah! Have you ever won?
Mikey: No, I never won and I never made the finals. This was
the very first year that I even made the finals.
BBP: What does that say that you’ve been there five years
and you’ve finally made the finals? Do you feel like your getting closer to…
Mikey: No. It’s great, but I don’t look at it like—first of
all, and please put this in there, music is a cooperation, never a
competition. To me. And the reason I
take part in the IBC is I like what it is as a place to promote your music to a
mass amount of blues fans, promoters, agents. I don’t look at it as “Let’s go
win a competition.” The competition is
always secondary to me. What is most important about going to the IBC is to get
people who have never heard the Mikey Jr. band, Mikey Jr. and the Stone Cold
Blues, to hear us and say “Hey, we’d like to have them at our place. We’d like
to have them come play for us at our festival.” We’ve already gotten three
festivals from playing the IBC this year. And I’m sure we’re going to get some
festivals next year off of it as well. It’s basically a promotion thing for me;
I really like to promote myself at the IBC.
BBP: I see. One thing I noticed—getting back to playing the
harmonica—I was listening to a couple of your album: did you listen to a lot of jazz growing up?
Mikey: Not a whole lot, but it might be because I listen to
a lot of William Clark a little bit and maybe he’s like a lot of the jazz horn
players. That could be where it comes in at, a little third hand, third party.
But yeah, I’m really into jazz. I’m getting more into it. But I like the really
slow kind of boring… you might say, jazz…for lack of a better word. I like the slow, down-and-out, really bluesy
jazz.
BBP: You know the reason I asked that, because, if you don’t
mind me saying, it seems like you sort of approach a solo like a jazz person
would do. Like a jazz saxophonist or trumpeter. I mean I was listening to some
of your albums and I was kind of thinking that.
Mikey: Well thank you. I just try to take my time in the
studio because less is always more, and sometimes I try to not play….I try to
play with space.
BBP: Okay, I see what you’re saying. Another thing I noticed
was that—when I saw you at the IBC—you had a four piece band—a guitar player,
yourself (on harmonica), Jimmy Pritchard on bass and the drummer. And I noticed
that on some of your albums you use other instruments, like keyboards and
stuff. What’s the ideal band for you?
Mikey: Well I’m looking for—of course I would love—a horn
section, a piano player, upright bass—but right now, I think—I just added a
guitar player to my band by the name of Dean Shot—so now we’re a five piece
band. I would just love to have, first and foremost, a piano player that plays
Otis Spann type piano, in my band. I’m looking for someone who knows and loves
and wants to play like Otis Spann on piano in my band. To tell you the truth, I
love the band the way it is right now. I’m very happy. Musically we’ve all got
it together as far as being on the same page with each other, which is very
important, and we all have a lot of fun when we play. So basically my ideal
band is the band I have now with some sort of piano player. Like we love Bill Heid but Bill Heid lives a
little further away so he can’t be on a lot of our stuff. Bill’s the guy who
was on the last two albums of ours out of D.C.
BBP: Mikey, I wanted to ask you. You have talked about Sonny
Boy Williamson. Would that be Sonny Boy Williamson the first or the second?
Mikey: Two. Aleck
Miller.
BBP: Is he the harmonica player that you like the most? The one who has most influenced your playing?
Mikey: Yeah.
BBP: Okay. Tell me what you took from him listening to his
records and why he stands out from the others.
Mikey: It was just his whole character. His demeanor. The
way he just had…. It was his presence too. Just his presence and I just liked
the way he performed. And, seeing his old videos, I was a big fan of him and
his music, but being able to see all of the stuff on YouTube now, I had all of
the DVD’s especially of the American Folk Blues Festival. But being able to see
a lot of this stuff on YouTube that’s coming out, and being able to see even
more his demeanor, he just was very personable, he was a born entertainer and
he was just musically just really good.
BBP: Is there somebody who comes a close second? Another
harmonica player?
Mikey: Well, you know
I never really put nobody first. But what I’m saying is, he’s probably my most
influential. I could never put nobody first because that’s how people develop
their styles, by taking a bunch of different styles from a bunch of different
artists. But I definitely, without them being in any order, for me it’s Sonny
Boy, William Clarke, Little Walter, George “Harmonica” Smith, Gary Primich, Big
Walter, Snooky Pryor, I mean I can go on and on. Steve Guyger—those are right
off the top of my head, they’re probably the ones that influenced me the most.
There’s a lot of harmonica players out there…but those are the ones I mostly
liked. If they were all playing up the street from me, I would definitely
probably have to go see Sonny Boy Williamson. And I’m pretty sure that all of
the other harp players, I would go. And Junior Wells is one that I forgot to
mention, but he was very influential, I would say the most influential
to my playing when I first started
playing the harmonica.
BBP: And Sonny Boy is at the top of the list? And Junior
Wells, you’re not that much influenced by him anymore?
Mikey: No, I’m very
much influenced by all of them, all of the time. When I first started learning, I learned a
lot about Junior Wells and a lot about Sonny Boy, and then when I started
getting into chromatic of course, I started getting into George Smith and
William Clarke and you know, I wanted to start getting into third position or
what have you, then Gary Primich, and of course William Clarke again.
BBP: So you’re talking about different harmonica techniques…
Mikey: Yeah, I love them all. See, I don’t think I could put any one
harmonica at the top, any one player and go, “this is my favorite,” because
they’re so many techniques out there.
For instance, guys like Kim Wilson and guys like Rick Estrin are my
favorites living these days because they can play like those people. And if you
say hey, play me this song, play it like this, play this song, play me a Sonny
Boy song, or play me a Big Walter song or play me chromatic William Clarke, or
play me Junior Wells—they can play it, you know. And they can do it just like
that.
BBP: Tell me a little bit about the songwriting that you do.
I know that songwriting’s a very integral part of what you do as well. How does
that kind of figure into things? And when you write a song, where does it
start, the process you have for writing a song?
Mikey: We usually
start with some sort of saying or some sort of—I don’t know it’s like a gift
that kind of comes to you. And basically all I can say about songwriting is you
better have the paper and pen, because
it only comes to you then, and if you go “I’ll remember it,” and “I’ll get back
to it later” you never do. And so many
of my songs are probably lost in the wind like that, because you know, I’m busy
throughout my day. I’m like:”Oh, I’ll get back to that later…” I have a lot of
unfinished songs, because you know it’s just sometimes you get that vibe; you
know sometimes you’ll do a song and you’ll write a song, for instance, you take
a song, and you’ll be pouring your heart out into it and you say exactly what
you feel. But then in the middle of the song, you might feel it’s a little too
personal, so you might write it for the song next. You might have been writing
the beginning of the song for you, because it’s really how you feel, but
sometimes you say “ah, it’s getting a little too personal. I’m going to
start making this song fictional.” So you never know, with me and my writing,
you never know where the fiction stops and the truth begins….All of my songs
basically have a lot of truth and a lot of fiction in them. And some of them
are just written fictionally. But I think it’s hardest to write stuff that’s really
really really real. I put a lot of fiction in my songs, because I’m not very
open like that, you know?
BBP: Tell me in your albums, what percentage of your songs
are covers and what percentage are originals?
You know, typically.
Mikey: The record labels
want to hear originals. But when I go out to see a blues band, I’d love to hear
Little Walter just like Little Walter. But just like him now, I don’t want to
hear Little Walter play where I can tell where the guy is really like, doing it
the right way. I want to hear just like it or very—I want to hear it with the
feeling. That’s just me, and it’s very
opinionated. Back to the IBC, that’s another reason why you can’t look at it as
some concerts, because it’s opinionated. People like what they like and don’t
like what they don’t like. And they like a certain thing. And it’s just like
me; it’s my opinion that I want to do covers, but the radio people or anybody
making money trying to make a living promoting blues music or whatever, they
want the originals. Because you get royalties, you want original music. They
want something new and original.
BBP: Right.
Mikey: I do want that too, but I like being able to do
covers. But do I believe you should do just the same old covers? I don’t know.
I did “Can’t be Satisfied” on one of my last records, and yeah, maybe it
should be left alone. Muddy did it the way he wanted, but I wasn’t doing it
because I thought I could do it better than Muddy or whatever. I was just doing
it because it’s a song I like to perform. When I perform it, if anybody ever
asks me, “Hey, do you have that song on your record?” the next time I go to the studio, maybe I can
record that song. Because if people like it when I play it live, the whole
point is that I want to try and sell the CD so they come see me again and I get
my name out there. And now I’m in their household. So basically that’s also how I
choose to record what I record on a CD is, if someone asks me, “Hey is
that song on your CD?” and it’s not, sometimes the next time in the studio,
I’ll record that song.
BBP: Sort of like you do at the nursing home…
Mikey: Yeah! Exactly!
I try to make people happy, and if people come out to see my show,
they’re getting in their car and they’re driving out to come see me perform
somewhere, and if they ask me to do something, I want to try and do it for
them. And especially if they’re asking
me, “oh is that on your CD?” The way I look at it is, if it was on my CD, I
could have sold a CD right there. Maybe next week they have my CD and they go
“oh, we’ll listen to Mikey while we’re cleaning up our dishes here. Where’s he
playing at this weekend? We’ll go on his website, you know.” I want to get CD’s
into people’s hands.
BBP: So it’s a matter of giving people what they want to
hear…
Mikey: Yeah.
BBP: Gotcha. Tell me, I was looking at your itinerary and
you got a gig coming up with Bnois King
and Smokin’ Joe Kubek. That sounds like it’s a definite step in the right
direction. How’d that come about?
Mikey: Well, we’ve been working up at Stanhope House, and
we’ve been trying to beef up our attendance there because quite frankly not a
lot of people know who Mikey and the Stone Cold Blues band are. So we try to go
places and try to say “Hey, can we open up for one of your acts” where we can
try and get people to see if they like us and want to come back. So that’s what
we’ve been doing over at the Stanhope House; we’ve been trying to develop sort
of a following. We’ve got a few shows over there, and we’ve gotten more and
more people to attend every show. So now they’ve got us opening for Smokin Joe
and Bnois King, so hopefully we can get some more people to attend our show
after we open up for these guys.
BBP: Okay…
Mikey: And we also opened up for Smokin’ Joe and Bnois King for the Diamond State Blues Society in 2005.
BBP: So they know you. They’re familiar with you.
Mikey: I’m not sure. I’m sure that they’ve been on the
road. They’re musicians their whole
lives so I don’t know if they remember being on my show, because I’m pretty sure
they came in after I was done. But it’s nice to be on the bill with them.
Absolutely. I don’t know if they know me, but …
BBP: But you’ve
opened for other people that have national prominence…
Mikey: Oh we’re going
to be opening up for Johnny Winter again, for the second time since July. We’ve
opened for like Michael Burks…probably the list goes on and on. I’ve never had
a list of who I’ve opened up for, but I’ve opened up for a lot of people. It’s great;
we’ve opened up for Nappy Brown before he passed away. Bob Margolin. So it’s
been really good.
BBP: Yeah. And I also noticed that you tend to kind of favor
the East Coast, the Eastern Seaboard, I guess.
I notice that you’re doing a show in Florida, a festival—I forget which
one it is—
Mikey: Daytona Blues
Festival…
BBP: And that’s
coming up in…
Mikey: October.
October 6th.
BBP: That’s definitely sort of a step-out as well. How’d that come about?
Mikey: That was a gentleman who had seen us at the IBC.
BBP: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Mikey: Yeah, I’d like
to tell all of the blues fans out there, to work hard and try to get some new
blood out. Bring your friend out to a
blues show, become a member of any kind of local blues society, go to a blues
club, and it’s an American art form and we have it and we need to nurture it so
that it can grow. And I just encourage everybody to be members of blues
societies. I’m a current and up-to-date member to almost ten blues
societies. Which means I pay between $20 and $60 a year to maintain my
membership. It’s because I believe in
the societies and what they do. Even though I’m an artist, I’m also a blues
fan. Before I was an artist, I was a
blues fan. And it’s very important that
we support your societies. If you send them that $25 a year, that really helps
them to bring talent from all over the world, and all over the country to your
local neighborhood. You know, be a part of something to preserve something that
needs to be preserved, it needs to grow.
And everybody should try to—buy a CD, buy a blues CD, give it to
someone, buy a book about blues and give it to someone. There’s a lot of young people who are
intrigued about the folklore of Robert Johnson., because they heard this guy
sold his soul to the Devil to be able to play great guitar. That intrigues
young people, and then they’ll say “I like Robert Johnson.” And the next thing you know you have a new
blues band. You’ve got to be able to
educate people and tell stories so that we’ll be able to keep these guys alive.
That’s what I’d like to close with.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Meeting Musicial Needs Everywhere: Mikey Junior and His Stone Cold Blues Part 1
As a teen-ager, while waiting tables in a Bucks County,
Pennsylvania restaurant, Mikey Jr.’s primary aim was to take care of his
customers.
“I worked every single Friday and Saturday night from the
time I was 12 to the time I was basically 22. And worked at Italian
restaurants,” recalled Mikey. “And by the time I was 15, I was a waiter …I had
nothing but requests from Friday and Saturday night because I was really good
at anticipating people’s needs and taking care of people.”
These days, he is still anticipating needs—but as a
harmonica player of rising reputation in the blues world. As leader of Mikey
Jr. and the Stone Cold Blues, Mikey tries to give blues fans the music they
want.
Mikey tries to please his fans through albums, through a heavy
touring schedule that these days is taking him more and more frequently outside
of the Pennsylvania-to Baltimore corridor he has--up until now--been best known
in; and through his role as house musician and booking agent at the Twisted
Tail, Philadelphia’s newest blues venue.
Mikey is always busy—he frequently had to put me on hold
during our hour and a half phone conversation to handle business. But that's what comes with having such a love of music
that you decide to pursue making a living at it full time.
“You’ve got to be able to work, and you’ve got to be able to
get the stuff done,” he said. “You know I do all of the booking, I do all of
the promotion, right down to my web design, and designing flyers and posters.”
Born Andrew Michael Hudak in Trenton, N.J., Mikey was
heavily exposed to music as a youth through his father, a full-time harmonica
player and pianist.
“My dad took me to see James Brown in 1984 when I was four
years old at the Trenton War Memorial Building--that was my first concert—and
it was great,” he recalled. “I just always loved rhythm and blues, but it
wasn’t until I was older that I found blues. I found what I liked so much and a
lot of the influences of music that I was listening to, whether it be rap music
or even Pink Floyd for that matter. I just fell in love with the blues and
Sonny Boy Williamson and B.B. King and Buddy Guy and then, later on, Little
Walter and George Smith. And then all of the way down to people like Gary
Primich, of course, William Clarke, you know, people like that. “
Mikey lived in Trenton until 1989, when his mother, in
search of a better school system, moved him to Bucks County. He moved back to Trenton at
age 20, into a house left to him by an aunt. He has since moved back to Bucks
County, into a condo he purchased.
Growing up, he frequently went on gigs with his father,
liking best the fifties-themed parties the band hosted at campgrounds
throughout the area.
Industrious from a young age, Mikey joined the staff of
Salvatore’s restaurant in Morrisville, Pennsylvania as a busboy at age 12. “And then......(near Morrisville) also was this place called CafĂ© Antonio’s,” he recalled. “And a
waiter from Salvatore’s went to work there and he liked the way I took care of
him so much because I used to really take care of my waiters when I was a
busboy. ..(he) liked me so much that when he got a job at this new restaurant
that was opening, he called me up and said ‘hey, I can get you a busboy job at
this restaurant.’ Well, I only bussed there for a couple of weeks, until they
said ‘Hey, if you want to wait tables, you can wait tables.’ And they let me
start waiting tables.”
At 19, he added another
trade—real estate—to his repertoire by earning his real estate license. Then, his
work days consisted of a nine-to-five job as a real estate assistant, followed
by evenings waiting tables.
But the music continued to call to him, and eventually he
dropped the waiter’s gig. The real estate job soon followed, and in 2002 Mikey
Junior went to music full-time. He starting performing shows; the instinct for customer
service that had served him so well as a waiter compelling him to play songs
he sensed his audience really wanted to hear instead of dryly spitting out a set list.
Mikey also began to release a series of CD’s, all under a label he created, 8th Train Records. In 2003 he released The 420 Sessions, an
album recorded at a studio in Tarpon Springs Florida and produced by Danny
DeGennaro, a Philadelphia area guitarist known for his work in Kingfish, a
group that also included Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir. Other notable musicians DeGennaro had worked for over the years included the late Clarence Clemons and Parliament Funkadelic
guitarist Michael Hampton.
DeGennaro, who died last December after he was found
in his Levittown, Pennsylvania home with a bullet wound to his chest, also
played on Mikey's album along with bassist Gary “Bubba” Balduzzi, drummer Kenny Suarez and
keyboardist Pete Kane.
DeGennaro also produced and played on Mikey’s second album
The New York City Sessions, released in 2005. The CD also featured Balduzzi on bass but included a different keyboardist,
Glen McClelland, and alternated between two different drummers, Adam Stranburg
and Dave Mohn.
Mikey’s present band began to take shape with 2007’s
Look Inside My Pocket, including Stranburg, now his current drummer; and Matt Daniels, a guitarist from New Jersey
who had shared the stage at various times with Sonny Rhodes, Walter Trout and Rod Piazza and who
had been lauded by a critic from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper as a guitarist
whose instrument “crackles especially hard.”
Mikey also brought on bassist Jimmy Pritchard, known
for his work with Rhodes and with Randy Lippincott, a Philadelphia-area
guitarist who had once played bass for Johnny Copeland. (If you want to
know more about Pritchard, check out the post: Jimmy Pritchard )
For his next album, 2009’s Mikey Likes it, Mikey brought in
Upright Bass Player Mike Lampe, Piano player Bill Heid and guitarist Dave Gross
to round out his core band of Daniels, Pritchard and Stranburg.
Mikey and Daniels then decided to branch off into a solo
project. The result was 2010’s Pocket Full of Money, an acoustic album that
showcased Mikey’s take on more traditional styles.
The Stone Cold’s latest venture is It Ain’t Ours to
Tell, released in 2011. A song from that album, “The Cheapskate,” was part of a three-way tie that won Big City Rhythm and Blues Magazine’s “Coolest Blues
Song of the Year” award in 2011.
The band also was a finalist in the 2012 International Blues
Challenge, held in Memphis in February. It was Mikey’s first time to the finals
in four visits over seven years. He
had previously attended the IBC in 2005,
2007 and 2011.
Mikey said he will soon release a collection of “original
Mikey Junior” material. In addition, he and Daniels will travel to France next
year to perform.
We began our interview by asking him about the very first
time he picked up a harmonica:
BBP: I know you grew
up in Trenton. Tell me how you got into music. You know, the first time you
ever picked up an instrument, and especially the first time you ever picked up
a harmonica.
Mikey: Well, I always
loved music….I mean you know my dad was a musician, that’s why they call me
Mikey Jr. He still is a full-time musician in the Trenton area. He lives in
Browns Mills, New Jersey and he taught me how to play piano at first—he always
played harmonica and piano. I’d always try to pick up the harmonica as a kid,
but never really took it seriously until I was 17. I started being able to make
sense on it and then I started to study it, and that’s how I got into the
harmonica.
BBP: So you play the
piano in addition to the harmonica?
Mikey: Yeah I play
the piano but very much not professionally (laughs). But I do dabble. I know
some songs on both the piano and the guitar and I love music and I play a
little bit of piano and guitar as well.
BBP: What style of
music does your dad play?
Mikey: Well he does everything now because he specializes in
doing nursing homes these days. He does two or three a day. And I also do them
during the day as well too. That’s what
pays my bills for day work. I do between three or four a week; he does between
two or three a day. I just got into it a couple of years ago. He’s been doing
it for the past ten years. So he works a lot steadier than I do doing that, but
I also try to go out on the road and do touring. So I try to work at them sporadically.
But anyway, my dad—when I was younger—had a seven-piece, fifties rock n’ roll
band where they did “Runaround Sue” and
“Secret Agent Man” and “the Wanderer,”
which is pretty cool because I had a chance to be on a Blues Cruise with Dion
this year and talk to him and get my picture taken with him. My dad was real
proud of me. My dad used to do all kinds of stuff. He was quite the showman. He
used to do “Leader of the Pack” and drive around the bar on a tricycle—a little
kid’s tricycle—and my dad’s like six-three. He had a routine where he used to
do “Secret Agent Man” and come out in this trenchcoat with a suit on and
basically do “Secret Agent Man.” He’d be hamming it up. In his later years he
slowed down a bit. He just does a duo show with my stepmom—who I introduced him
to—and they travel all throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania doing nursing
homes. And they work a little bit of the clubs at night as well, but they
mostly do nursing homes during the day.
BBP: Okay. Now when
you were young, did your father take you with him when he did his shows?
Mikey: Oh absolutely!
Absolutely. I remember when my father—I remember distinctively, there’s
a picture of me and my dad outside of one of the places he used to work at—that
I work at now—in Tuckerton, New Jersey. My friend bought a bar in Tuckerton
called Doyle’s Pour House.
(Mikey has to put me on hold to take a phone call, and we
resume a short time later)
BBP: So your father
used to take you out and do shows with him…
Mikey: For instance, I got a picture of me at this place
Doyle’s Pour House in Tuckerton, New Jersey—it used to be called Cock’s Tail
and it was a strip club where my dad and I had our picture taken out in front
of there with one of the strippers, of course fully-clothed when I was really young—but
yeah, I used to go to his stuff. He used
to do campground gigs where the whole band would go to the campground for the
weekend and they’d have a fifties revue party where everybody would dress up in
old fifties clothes and stuff and of course it was great because everybody knew
that I was the son of the lead singer, you know. So I was a little bit of a
superstar in my own right. And I used to sing, and, like you know, my dad would
bring me up. I was real into Guns N’ Roses at that time—I think it was like
1989, I was probably nine years old—and he got me to sing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s
Door” with the band and stuff like that. So yeah, my favorite times was
probably going to the campgrounds to see his band perform and being able to
camp out all night. Because needless to say, my dad and his band would be
partyin’, so I’d pretty much be unsupervised to do whatever I wanted, so it was
pretty fun.
BBP: Wow. Did your father actually take you aside and show you
how to play the harmonica?
Mikey: Oh absolutely. My dad taught me a lot about the music
business, both musically and businesswise. And yeah, he taught me how to play
the harmonica; he bought me my very first Sonny Boy Williamson CD. He bought me
my B.B. King CD. And yeah, absolutely taught me how to play the harmonica and
the guitar. Other teachers of mine are a guy named Dick Davy in Bristol,
Pennsylvania; Big Daddy Lambertson; and I listen to a lot of Steve Guyger.
Steve Guyger is one of my heavy influences, as well as some of the people I
mentioned earlier, you know. Little Walter. Sonny Boy II probably goes down as
one of my favorites as far as the whole package of singing, songwriting. But
yes, my dad did have an influence on my music and my career. Another person who
was like a musical father to me was a guy named Danny DeGennaro. He just passed
away December 28. He was actually murdered in his house from a home invasion,
unfortunately. I performed a couple of his songs—one of his songs—in Memphis,
Tennessee. I co-wrote a couple of songs with him—he was on my first two albums
playing guitar, producing my first two albums, and he taught me a lot about the
music business. He was on a record with Jerry Garcia because he was in a band
called Kingfish, which was a take-off of the Grateful Dead’s band, with Bob
Weir. He also toured with Billy Squire, James Montgomery, I think backed up
James Cotton at one point in time. And he also recorded with the late Clarence
Clemons—who just passed away—from Bruce Springsteen’s band. He had Clarence on
a saxophone on one of his recordings and he was another one who taught me about
the music business and stuff like that too. And then I just try to pick up as
much as I can, because people a lot of times forget how hard it is to make it
playing music full-time and not have another job to support yourself. Which is
what I’m doing and I just have to learn everywhere I can from everybody and
take what I can learn from each and every person in this business so that I can
try to do it to the best of my ability. Because at the end of the day, it’s
make or break on the bills, and you’ve got to be able to work, and you’ve got
to be able to get stuff done. You know I do all of the booking, I do all of the
promotion, right down to my web design, and designing flyers and posters, I do
it all. So it’s kind of weird, because people forget that it is a music
business and there’s a business side to it that must be tended to or else it’s
going to hurt your music career.
BBP: Getting back to that, did you ever talk to your father
about wanting to be a full-time musician like he was?
Mikey: Actually, yeah.
He told me to quit waiting tables and play music full time.
BBP: Your father encouraged you to play music full time?
Mikey: Yeah.
BBP: That’s kind of unusual..
Mikey:…He told me to quit waiting tables and play music full
time. He said you might not have a bunch of money but you’ll be happy. I’m very
similar to him and very much like to be my own boss and very much like to do
things myself so that they’re done right as well. And to want to be your own
boss means that you’re also good at taking orders and following orders and
pleasing the boss. Because how can you be your own boss when you can’t please
someone else that’s your boss? So I like to think that I’m pretty good at working,
because in the music business you have many microbosses; from festival
promoters to club owners, they’re all your bosses, so you have to be able to
please all of them and get along with all them and put on a good show. Because
that’s what we’re here for, we’re here for the music. The music is the most
important thing….the music part involves a lot of work and a lot of business.
I’m on my computer and I’m on my phone for hours, every day, to promote and for
book and for work on tours or whatever I have to do.
BBP: What your father
said, that sounds kind of unusual—I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong about this—you
would think that most parents would try to talk their children away from a
competitive career like music.
Mikey: He also told
me that I have to be smart and work really hard at it. It takes one to know one
and my dad has a house that’s paid off from playing music, so it can be done.
But what he also said was, I’d be working just as hard, if not harder, but I’ll
be doing something that I love. So even
though I won’t have a lot of money, I’ll still be happy because I’ll be doing
something that I love. However, it can be done and you can make a decent living
out of it. However it’s a lot of hard work. But if you love what you do and you
love communicating with people and you love doing that kind of stuff, then it’s
not going to be a problem for you. And it’s been great: this is my ten year
anniversary, I quit being a waiter in 2002 to be a full-time musician. So it’s
now 2012. In 2002, I was living in Trenton, New Jersey. I bought a house across
the river in Pennsylvania—I bought a condo in Pennsylvania—and I now have
another house that I live in that I bought at a sheriff’s sale because I have a
real estate license. Because when I was 19, before I got into music, I was
supposed to be the first in my family to go to college. I wasn’t into going to
college. So instead of going to college, I went and got my real estate license
at the age of 19, started doing real estate nine-to-five being an assistant for
a real estate firm, and then go to do a waiter job from five o’clock at night.
And then what I did was quit the waiter job, started playing music full-time
while I kept my assistant job at the real estate firm nine-to-five. And then I
was making enough money to the point where I was working enough where I was
coming into the office very tired. So I had a real good relationship with the
firm that I was working with and they believed in me because they would come to
see a lot of my shows, and they said “go ahead and make a go at it” because I
told the man “I’m probably going to leave the office, starting to do this music
thing full-time.” And I’ve been doing it full-time ever since 2002. I think I
stayed at the real estate office until 2003. I dabble in real estate as a hobby
of mine. My friends, they want to buy a house. I’m not a real estate agent to
the point where I take people out that I don’t know to see houses. A few of my
friends, if they want to go look at a house or one of them tries to buy a
sheriff’s sale property or an investment property or something like that, I’m
into that kind of thing. I put down real estate and waiting tables to do music
full-time.
(Mikey then puts me on hold again, returning a short time
later)
BBP: Are the calls
that you’re answering, are these potential bookings for your band?
Mikey: Yeah, absolutely. And I book a club in Philadelphia.
My friend, who’s a theatre actor—one of my friends that used to come see me
play all of the time—bought a club in Philadelphia and turned it into a blues
club on Second and South Street called the Twisted Tail. The website is
thetwisted tail.com…
BBP: Yeah, I noticed that when you sent me a schedule of
your shows. I used to live in Allentown and I used to go to Philly all of the
time. And I didn’t remember that place so I figured it must be new.
Mikey: Yeah, it’s a new place. It’s right in South Philly.
It’s a great place; I’m the house band there. And I handle the bookings for all
of the other bands. I’m really trying to make it a national spot for national
acts. So that has my phone ringing as well. And it also helps me to talk with
these agents to let them know who I am and say: “Hey, if you can ever get me
something, if you have all of the people in your roster already working and
you’d like to get me something, you know
I’m available.”
BBP: Okay, so there’s a double benefit to that…
Mikey: Yeah!
BBP: Now I understand
you had an extensive record collection when you were coming along and that that
kind of influenced your tastes.
Mikey: Well that’s
another thing talking about me spending money—my dad has a very big record
collection that just got legacied to me because my dad had basically no room
for it and it was at his sister’s house and like I said, I bought this house at
a sheriff’s sale so I used to have a little condo, now I live in a full-sized
house. You know single family home or what-have-you. So I was able to get my
dad’s record collection, so yeah growing up I always had tapes and CD’s . I
bought all kinds of blues box sets and all of that stuff, and yeah, I still
have it, I still have my record, CD and tape collection. Now I have my dad’s.
So yeah it influenced me big time, you know, records that you know will—I call
them the “island records:” If you can only take ten records and they put you on an island. You
know they’d definitely be B.B. King, Sonny Boy, Muddy, Little Walter, (Howlin’)
Wolf, Steve Guyger and a couple of killer guitar players too. Buddy Guy, Junior
Wells. So these are guys that I heavily find myself—if I call out a cover song—because
I like to do my originals, but I love to do covers too. And if I call out a
cover song by some people that I just happen to want to play and want to
perform their music straight off the top of my head, those are the people who
have heavily influenced me, you know what I mean?
BBP: The harmonica. What made you gravitate towards that as
an instrument?
Mikey: Well one night I was jamming with my friends, my
friends were all jamming together and there was no piano. And I saw that there
was this harmonica on the table and I picked it up and started playing it. I
was 17, and it just seemed all of a sudden to make sense to me. And the next
day I went out and bought a whole set of harmonicas because, like I said, I
always worked and I like to spend money.
I told my dad it was a real harmonica. That day, he showed up at my
house with a B.B. King CD and a Stevie Ray Vaughn and a Sony Boy Williamson CD,
and he’s like “these are the three blues CD’s that I really like. Listen to
these and try to play along with them. “And that’s exactly what I did. I played
along with the CDs and he would show me some pointers. Mostly I taught myself
by listening to CD’s, playing along with CDs, but when I say people are my
harmonica teachers, they’re the people that “here. Let me show you this trick.
Let me show you how to do that better.” Because usually they build on something
that they see, which is how I teach harmonica now. Because that’s another thing
that I do, during the day on Tuesday and Thursday I give harmonica lessons.
BBP: Okay…
Mikey: So I have a student on Tuesday and a student on
Thursday. And of course I do nursing homes, I between three and four of them a
week.
BBP: You do those alone—by yourself—or with a band?
Mikey: I do them by myself with tracks. Like I’ll get
karaoke tracks with the vocals taken out of it and then I’ll go sing and play
harmonica. I mean I don’t want to cheapen it by saying karaoke tracks, but I
mean basically they’re the tracks without the vocals on them, and I go and I go
and I perform. And I do almost the same kind of material that I do—you know
it’s a blues show. I book it as “Mikey Jr.’s Blues Show” and I go in and I do some of the songs that
are blues songs and some oldies stuff too. And then, you know, if they request
it, what I’ll do is, I’ll go home and learn it. I had a guy request some Dean
Martin and some Frank Sinatra, so that’s what I did: I went home, I went on the
computer , I got the tracks to do the Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Because I
mean I know the songs because of growing up as a waiter in Italian
restaurants, I know the words to the songs. So, you know I’ll do them too. And
those are kind of the older, older ones, you know. Sometimes you do the nursing
homes that are not as old. But then sometimes you do the nursing homes that
specialize in like 80- or 90-year-old people. And they’re the ones like “Hey,
we want to hear this. You know Louis Armstrong, you know this, you know that?”
BBP: So you kind of have a fan base? You play the same
nursing homes and within those nursing homes you have people, they hear you
regularly and…
Mikey: Yeah. They live there and absolutely, yep. And I’m
part of their entertainment and they’ll hear me play and they’ll say “hey, next
time can you do some Dean Martin?” And I go “Yes sir!” And I’ll show up and have
that Dean Martin ready for that guy. There’s the one guy in this nursing home,
he loves Dean Martin.
BBP: Do you ever use the nursing home as sort of a sounding
board for new music that you might want to do with your band?
Mikey: Oh yeah!
There’ll be stuff that—yeah! That’s another thing: me and my band, we
work so much….I used to have this every single Wednesday night gig in
Lawrenceville at this place J.B.’s. For five years straight we played there
every single Wednesday night. And we don’t rehearse. We work together so much
that we very very seldom rehearse. Even for the IBC, there was no rehearsal. We
just do the songs that we do, and because we’ve been doing them together for
this many years, because we do them together every week or whatever, we very
seldom—I mean I can count on one hand whenever we had a rehearsal, and it’s
always before we go to record. It’s just because we don’t want to waste time in
the studio, we just want to get a quick rehearsal down, and we only rehearse
when we go to record really.
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