venerdì 11 settembre 2009

Tinsley Ellis - Speak No Evil






Over the course of 11 albums and literally thousands of live performances, Ellis has become one of today’s most electrifying guitarists and vocalists. He attacks his music with rock power and blues feeling, in the same tradition as his Deep South musical heroes Duane Allman and Freddie King and his old friends Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes. Rolling Stone says he plays “feral blues guitar...non-stop gigging has sharpened his six-string to a razor’s edge...his eloquence dazzles...he achieves pyrotechnics that rival early Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.”

SPEAK NO EVIL is the most guitar-driven album of Ellis’ storied career. It features his fiercest, most brutally honest and hardest-hitting original songs to date. The soulfulness and expressiveness of his guitar playing are ferocious, but when the mood calls for it, can be gentle and melodic. Ellis pours his soul into each and every performance with unguarded, raw emotion. With rip-roaring songs that are both poignant and humorous, SPEAK NO EVIL is as wide-ranging and inspired a recording as Ellis has ever made, and one of the most satisfying Southern blues-rock albums in ages.

Tinsley Ellis wears his Southern roots proudly. Born in Atlanta in 1957, he grew up in southern Florida and first played guitar at age eight. He found the blues through the back door of British Invasion bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals, Cream, and The Rolling Stones. He especially loved the Kings — Freddie, B.B. and Albert — and spent hours immersing himself in their music. His love for the blues solidified when he was 14. At a B.B. King performance, Tinsley sat mesmerized in the front row. When B.B. broke a string on Lucille, he changed it without missing a beat, and handed the broken string to Ellis. After the show, B.B. came out and talked with fans, further impressing Tinsley with his warmth and down-to-earth attitude. By now Tinsley’s fate was sealed; he had to become a blues guitarist. And yes, he still has that string.

Already an accomplished teenaged musician, Ellis left Florida and returned to Atlanta in 1975. He soon joined the Alley Cats, a gritty blues band that included Preston Hubbard (of Fabulous Thunderbirds fame). In 1981, along with veteran blues singer and harpist Chicago Bob Nelson, Tinsley formed The Heartfixers, a group that would become Atlanta’s top-drawing blues band. Upon hearing Live At The Moonshadow (Landslide), the band’s second release, The Washington Post declared, “Tinsley Ellis is a legitimate guitar hero.” After cutting two more Heartfixers albums for Landslide, Cool On It (featuring Tinsley’s vocal debut) and Tore Up (with vocals by blues shouter Nappy Brown), Ellis was ready to head out on his own.

GEORGIA BLUE, Tinsley’s first Alligator release, hit an unprepared public by surprise in 1988. Critics and fans quickly agreed that a new and original guitar hero had emerged. “It’s hard to overstate the raw power of his music,” raved The Chicago Sun-Times. Before long, Alligator arranged to reissue COOL ON IT and TORE UP, thus exposing Tinsley’s blistering earlier music to a growing fan base.

Tinsley’s subsequent releases — 1989’s FANNING THE FLAMES, 1992’s TROUBLE TIME, 1994’s STORM WARNING, and 1997’s FIRE IT UP — further expanded the guitarist’s hero status. By now his talents as a songwriter equaled his guitar prowess, and critics, writers, radio programmers and fans around the country were taking notice. Features and reviews ran in Rolling Stone, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and in many other national and regional publications. His largest audience by far came when NBC Sports ran a feature on Atlanta’s best blues guitarist during their 1996 Summer Olympic coverage, viewed by millions of people all over the world.

After one album for Capricorn and two for Telarc, Ellis returned to Alligator in 2005 with the searing guitar-fueled LIVE-HIGHWAYMAN. It was the live recording his fans had been demanding for years. Recorded at a packed club just outside Chicago, the CD took Ellis’ extended soloing and heartfelt vocals to staggering heights. His return to the studio in 2007 produced MOMENT OF TRUTH, an album The Chicago Tribune called “incendiary and inspired.”

Averaging over 150 live shows a year, Ellis has played in all 50 states, as well as Canada, Europe, Australia and South America. He has shared stages with almost every major blues star, including Stevie Ray Vaughan, Otis Rush, Willie Dixon, Son Seals, Koko Taylor, Albert Collins and many others. Whether he’s out with his own band or sharing stages with major artists like Buddy Guy, The Allman Brothers, Gov’t Mule or Widespread Panic, he always digs deep and plays, as Guitar Player says, “…as if his life depended on it.” With SPEAK NO EVIL and continued non-stop touring, Ellis will bring his monumental guitar work and intensely powerful vocals to rock and blues fans all over the world, letting his songs and his guitar do the talking.

martedì 8 settembre 2009

Jack Bruce & Robin Trower - Seven Moons Live




Jack Bruce and Robin Trower for the first time performing live! The news spread like wildfire, the sensation was perfect.
The legendary Cream bassist and singer, all his life striking new paths in blues and jazzrock, and the immense talented guitarist of Procol Harum fame who left the chains of 5-minute-pop behind him very early and who never followed any mainstream cliches: Both musicians have written history in rock for more than 40 years.
It was at the beginning of the 80s when they first worked together in a studio with two remarkable records resulting (B.L.T. 1981 and Truce 1982), but the fans had to wait for another meeting of the titans 27 long years: It was not until last year when "Seven Moons" came out.

The Veterans had formed a power trio; together with the a few years younger drummer Gary Husband (Level 42, Gary Moore, John McLaughlin), they recorded exclusively own material. Trower had come up with some basic ideas and Bruce and he worked them out: Fine bluesrock painted in psychedelic colours und wonderful sounds - a record transporting the living spirit of the creative seventies in to the third millennium. "Seven Moons" is the third joint venture of two aged musicians - and it is their masterpiece.

A few months later a fansite announced: "Bruce, Trower & Husband to take ´Seven Moons´ into orbit! For a few nights only, Robin and Jack will get to play live together for the first time ever in late February 2009."

As a matter of fact: After only two gigs - Karlsruhe and Cologne - the trio was ready to play the dutch town Nijmegen, where the concert would be filmed by a big camera crew. Fans from France, England, Germany and elsewhere arrived in order to enjoy the event together with the dutch devotees of the band.
Somebody placed a notice in the fanblog: With cameras filming the event it might be guaranteed that Bruce, Trower and Husband would play a good concert. Well, this night had something really special, but not because of the camera crew and their equipment. It was only the third joint venture show of the trio, but these guys had found out something meanwhile: They belonged together. They formed a unity. Moments like these bring joy, joy of playing (musicians and footballers know that for sure). You don´t need cameras then.Let´s take a look into the concert.

It´s 8:45 pm. The historic night at the mighty and majestic Concertgebouw De Vereeniging begins on the tick. Jack Bruce, 65 meantime, greets the audience with a short "Good evening" and the band jumps off with the title track of "Seven Moons". Four minutes later the first solo from Robin´s axe, who ist just a little younger than Jack. Both have become lined with age, but it seems as if they will never make old bones. Bruce´s delight about the fascinating little solo is written in his face; Trower notices that he´s doing more than a good job and is all smiles. Solo finished, rhythm change and the trio sets off for the next song, the bluesy "Lives Of Clay". Some time later Bruce makes a little comment with understatement: "Now we are beginning to get somewhere."
They are going to play nearly the whole "Seven Moons" album, they will present a wonderful and easy going version of "Carmen", a song from ways back, off the "B.L.T." album, not as glassy as in 1981 but soulful, very deep. And you bet, there are the signature tunes from Bruce´s famous catalogue. "Sunshine Of Your Love", the song with the legendary bass riff. Here Trower stays true to his own way of playing, no way a Clapton copy but a confident collector of melodies working on his WahWAh without any gimmickry at all. And this version of "White Room" with the "white Hendrix", as they call Robin in the U.S.A., hasn´t ist been remade into something secial here? The bonus "Politician" shows his full artistry during a great solo.
It´s not only striking in what a laid-back way the trio work the themes of this evening, considering that Nijmegen is only the third live show they have staged together so far. To share the joy the musicians show while performing makes this DVD a document of classic, everlasting rock music. Having Jack Bruce on stage again after some heavy blows of fate is particularly heart warming, the more so as he is laughing away at things. What does the scot tell who´s ever so economical in his choice of words? "It is fantastic to be here. For me personally ist is fantastic to be anywhere, actually..." It feels good to have musicians of that kind among us.

giovedì 3 settembre 2009

Watermelon Slim - Escape From The Chicken Coop




Bill "Watermelon Slim" Homans has built a remarkable reputation with his raw, impassioned intensity. HARP Magazine wrote "From sizzling slide guitar...to nitty-gritty harp blowing...to a gruff, resonating Okie twang, Slim delivers acutely personal workingman blues with both hands on the wheel of life, a bottle of hooch in his pocket, and the Bible on the passenger seat." Paste Magazine writes "He's one hell of a bottleneck guitarist, and he's got that cry in his voice that only the greatest singers in the genre have had before him."

The industry agrees on all fronts. Watermelon Slim & The Workers have garnered 17 Blues Music Award nominations in four years including a record-tying six in both 2007 & 2008. Only the likes of B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Robert Cray have landed six in a year and Slim is the only blues artist in history with twelve in two consecutive years. In Spring 2009 he was the cover story of Blues Revue magazine. Now, Watermelon Slim is making more waves with Escape From the Chicken Coop, his first-person account of the days he spent driving a truck. It is just one of many instances of a life spent changing gears.

Two of Slim's records were ranked #1 in MOJO Magazine's annual Top Blues CD rankings. Industry awards include The Independent Music Award for Blues Album of the Year, The Blues Critic Award and Canada's Maple Blues Award for International Artist of the Year among others. Slim has hit #1 on the Living Blues Charts, top five on the Roots Music Report and debuted in the top ten in Billboard. One of Slim's most impressive industry accolades may be the liner notes of The Wheel Man eagerly written by the late legendary Jerry Wexler who called him a "one-of-a-kind pickin' n singing Okie dynamo." Slim has been embraced for his music, performances, backstory and persona. He has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered, The BBC's World Service and has been featured in publications like Harp, Relix, Paste, MOJO, Oklahoma Magazine and Truckers News as well as newspapers like The London Times, Toronto Star, Chicago Sun-Times, The Village Voice, Kansas City Star, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Michelle Shocked's JAMS Magazine.

The Memphis Flyer led its terrific CD review with the question "Does anyone in modern pop music have a more intriguing biography than Bill "Watermelon Slim" Homans?"

Slim was born in Boston, his father was a progressive attorney and freedom rider and his brother is a classical musician. He was raised in North Carolina listening to the housekeeper sing John Lee Hooker songs. Slim attended Middlebury on a fencing scholarship but left early to enlist for Vietnam. While laid up in a Vietnam hospital bed he taught himself upside-down left-handed slide guitar on a $5 balsawood model using a triangle pick cut from a rusty coffee can top and his Army issued Zippo lighter as the slide.

Slim first appeared on the music scene with the release of the only known protest record by a veteran during the Vietnam War. The project was Merry Airbrakes, a 1973 protest tinged LP with tracks Country Joe McDonald later covered. In the following 30 plus years Slim has been a truck driver, forklift operator, sawmiller (where he lost a partial finger), firewood salesman, collection agent, funeral officiator and at times a small time criminal. Due to aforementioned criminality, Slim was forced to flee Boston where he had played peace rallies, sit-ins and rabbleroused musically with the likes of Bonnie Raitt. Recently Raitt singled out Slim to her audience as a living blues legend during a summer 2009 performance.

From Boston Slim landed in his current home state of Oklahoma farming watermelons - hence his stage name. Somewhere in those decades since Vietnam Slim completed two undergrad and a master's degree, started a family, painted art and joined Mensa, the social networking group reserved for members with certified genius IQs. When he's not on tour Slim loves to fish and at the age of 60 bowls a steady 240 in his local league.

The big turning point was 2002 when Slim suffered a near fatal heart attack. His brush with death gave him a new perspective on mortality, direction and life ambitions and thus his second emergence as a performing musician. Five albums later he says, "Everything I do now has a sharper pleasure to it. I've lived a fuller life than most people could in two. If I go now, I've got a good education, I've lived on three continents, and I've played music with a bunch of immortal blues players. I've fought in a war and against a war. I've seen an awful lot and I've done an awful lot. If my plane went down tomorrow, I'd go out on top." And when you watch him perform, you know every word is true.

Throughout his storied past, it has always been truck driving that Slim returned to. While trucking and hauling industrial waste for thankless bosses at hourly wages to support himself and his family, his id yearned for release of the musician inside. In fact, many of Slim's current songs began a cappella in his rig keeping him awake and entertained. Escape from the Chicken Coup captures those long hours of now and then, finally and cathartically acquiescing to his id.

Watermelon Slim - Vocals, harmonica, bass harmonica, slide guitar, dobro.
Jenny Littleton - Vocals.
Verlon Thompson - Vocals.
Miles Wilkinson - Vocals.
Suzi Ragsdale - Vocals.
Gary Nicholson - Electric, resonator & acoustic guitars.
Steven Mackey - Electric bass guitar.
Kenny Greenberg - Electric guitars.
Stuart Duncan - Fiddle, twin fiddles.
Paul Franklin - Steel guitar.
Darrell Scott - Acoustic guitar, mandolin.
Rob McNeily - Electric guitar.
Rob Neiley - Electric guitar.
Charlie Chadwick - Upright bass.
Kevin McKendree – Grand piano, Wurlitzer, Hammond B-3 organ and keyboards.
Lynn Williams - Drums.
Kevin Malone - Drums.
Producer, Miles Wilkinson
Mixed, Miles Wilkinson
Mastered, Miles Wilkinson
Original recording, Fall 2008 at The Sound Emporium, Studio 2, Nashville, TN
Additional recording at Boulton Farms Studio, Nashville, TN