0 Juke Joint Festival 2010

Y’all……….Y’all………….Y’all.  This festival couldn’t have gone better for us if Lawrence Welk himself had pushed the button on the bubble machine, kicked the orchestra into a fast tempo number, looked over his shoulder at us and said, “And now friends, it’s time for some Foot Stompin Magic Boogie Shit!”

It’s all thanks to beer, and that’s the truth. We went looking for a beer around 12 or 1 and found a couple places that had $8 beer and $18 hamburgers, and were full to brimming with tourists, wanna be bikers, and other folks who could afford a $26 lunch minus tip. Well, we were playing the festival for less money than we spent on gas, so we went to the other side of the tracks where the BBQ grills were lining the street and there wasn’t but one live music tent out front of the New Roxy.

Well, we found the coldest beer in The Fine State of Mississippi, right next to one of the best hamburgers and catfish sandwiches we’d ever eaten, cooked by some of the nicest folks it’s been my pleasure to meet in a long assed while. We’d found Club 2000 on Issaquena Ave. Since we were the only people in the whole place, we spent an hour or so talking and come to find out T Model Ford was playing that night at 9. One thing leads to another and as we head for the door I ask if we could have a shot opening for T Model.  ”Why not?” They says.

Well we’re energized now! I immediately start pimping CW Ayon (who traveled with us to Clarksdale in hopes of finding a gig) and they say, bring him. So I go fetch him, get him introduced around and he starts playing out front while we go get ready to play our “official” Juke Joint Festival gig at the Train Depot. A couple hours later, we get back to Club 2000 and CW has the place JUMPING! Even the little kids are getting down!

Once he gets finished, we set up and start playing. In 3-4 songs we have cleared the place out…everybody trickled out and was GONE! I was thinking, “OK, when we get out of here…I’m going by that pawn shop and selling my gear” Later Joe told me the same thing. THEN a MIRACLE happened. We were playing “River’s Up”…folks started trickling back in…a couple guys started doing that slow motion juke joint dancing strut. Next thing you know a guy walks in and asks “Uh….hey…uh…I play some harp, can I sit in with y’all”

“Hell yeah man, there’s the mic”

That was Pat “Rockadaddy” Murphy. Later we heard that he hadn’t done anything like that in 20 years. He told me he’d been sitting in the vacant lot across the street watching his grandkids, heard our music and had to check us out. Well, we improvised tunes for him for the next 3 hours or so…the place was jam packed with locals GETTING DOWN. We had folks dancing, trying to steal our tip money, laughing, grabbin for my spare guitar, smoking, dancing, pointing their voodoo stink fingers at us…I don’t even know what all was happening, except folks were enjoying themselves.

Then somebody must have told the city because the next thing we know everybody is getting run out of that place for not having the $10 wristbands…so we quit playing and start using our tip money to buy wristbands for them. Don’t remember how many we bought but we got some of those folks back in, including Pat. So we get back to playing and the next thing you see is a line of tourists in wristbands coming in. So we filled Club 2000 TWICE…first time with locals, second time with tourists. Pat finally has had enough, we get him a beer and he goes outside to enjoy some well deserved cool unsweaty air. CW Ayon sits in with us and sings two RL Burnside tunes with us that KILLED!

At that point DJ Undertaker…the guy who booked us to play that night walks up and says, “mlkjasdhaiuwieufjef….plays harp” It was so loud in there I couldn’t hear what he’d said so i just said, “He wants to play with us?”

“Yeah.”

“Hell yeah, there’s the mic”

That guy was Watermelon Slim. He came up, was getting settled with the mic and chair, while I kicked off a slow eerie jam. Joe came in, then Slim and we got everyone but folks walking in to be SILENT. It was the coolest tune I’ve ever been a part of. About 2/3 through the song T Model Ford walks in, so it was our last tune of the night. We had the place FULL, but when T Model started playing (through my amps, sitting in my chair, singing through CW’s mic and PA…with Stud playing Joe’s drums) he got enough folks in there that there was NO place for us to stand except the sound booth…or out on the street.

After an hour and half or so Stud (T Model’s 13 year old grandson) got tired and Joe played drums for him the rest of the night. Later on Joe started getting tired so he figured he’d play louder and faster to wear T Model out…well…didn’t have any effect other than it woke him up! We didn’t get out of there until after 2:30. We are invited back for next year and CAN’T WAIT!!!!

0 Next Generation of Blues/Recipe

It’s weird man, but it seems like every 20-30 year old blues player I’ve seen for the last way too many years is doing one of two things, either they’re doing the whole Stevie Ray Vaughn/Kenny Wayne Shepherd/John Mayer guitar hero thing, or they’re doing the greasy haired hipster lounge blues soul patch thing. Can’t tell you what a relief it has been to watch Cedric Burnside and Lightnin Malcolm, Richard Johnston, C.W. Ayon, and Mississippi Gabe Carter play their music. It reaffirms my belief in the boogie.

A good while back I came up with a formula that seemed likely to spell success for any band playing the bar scene, the clubs, frat mixers, or house parties and BBQs. Here it goes:

1. If they ain’t moving, they ain’t sweating

2. If they ain’t sweating, they ain’t drinking

3. If they ain’t drinking, we ain’t getting invited back!

So all that to say, the next generation of blues seems to be committed to helping folks GET ON UP WITH THE GETTIN ON DOWN! That magic boogie shit gets folks movin and groovin and thinking impure thoughts and damn we’re proud as hell to be a part of that!

0 Amps

There is probably a gear nut or two sniffing around so thought I’d tell y’all a little about the amps.

The Fender Twin Reverb

This is THE amp man…this is the one they’ll have to pry from my cold dead hands. Found this awful looking amp at a pawn shop near downtown Houston back at the end of the 80’s or early 90’s. Paid $175-$200 for it and the guy told me that it used to belong to Johnny Copeland. That was more than likely your average custom made bullshit, but makes for a neat story. It was made between 1973 and 1977 and doesn’t have an ounce of the black covering (tolex) anywhere on the cabinet. Not only that but to add come character my old cat Chama used to sharpen her claws on the fabric just under the power light. Things looks awful rough but man, there is no tone out there to compete with it in my opinion.

Gibson Falcon GA-19RVT

This mid 60’s 30 watt amp was discovered on the curb during heavy trash day here in Lockhart, TX so…had to pick it up! It’s up at Austin Amplifier getting a pretty good messin with. Looks like its been sitting in a ditch for 30 years so it’s uglier than the Twin, but everything appears to be there. Can’t wait to get it back from the shop and hear it. They’re reputed to have super badass deep reverb and some fair tremolo as well. Cool thing is the footswitch was tucked in the back of the amp! Can’t freakin wait to mess with it!

Vox AD30VT

Yeah I know it’s a modern Buck Rogers piece of crap…but I dig it. The amp modeling capability of it is pretty neat. I play this on a couple songs where I’m running it against the Twin. It provides an interesting stereo effect not only because there are two amps 15 feet apart, but also because the tones are so different. I either run the Vox on the AC 15 or the AC 30 setting depending on tone. If it’s boogie it’s AC 15, if it’s Albert Collins slow blues then it’s AC 30 to help get that higher end business. The amp is also ate up with effects, but I only use the reverb, tremelo and…uh…delay if we do a U2 cover. Buahahahahahahahaha

0 History

Thought maybe I’d tell you folks a little about how Old Gray Mule came about. It goes back to when I was 8 or 9, during Black History Month one of the teachers at my school showed us a PBS documentary called “The Land Where the Blues Began”. Somewhere in the first 5 minutes of it was a skinny R.L. Burnside playing “Poor Boy”. The Groove of that song knocked me flat…even as a 3rd or 4th grader I remember sitting there grinning and tapping my feet.

Right around that time Blues Brothers came out and of course I was too young and my folks wouldn’t let me see it in the theaters…but a couple years later I saw it on VHS and that same Groove knocked me flat again, except this time it was John Lee Hooker playing “Boom Boom” with Muddy Water’s band down on Maxwell Street in Chicago. I played that part of the video tape so many times it was covered in wavy lines and the sound was all warbly.

Fast forward past The Awkward Years, the heavy metal bands, the funk bands, the two men playing acoutic guitar in a stairwell hoping the girls would notice era, and all of a sudden I’m in my mid 20’s and I have never once touched that R.L./John Lee Groove. So I quit playing guitar entirely for 12 years. Finally picked it up again after my little girl was born and I saw footage of Magic Sam playing “Lookin Good” on the American Folk Blues Tour back in 69 or 70.  There was that damn Groove again!

So I dusted off the old Telecaster and tried to learn that song. Still don’t know how to play it, but “Lookin Good” “Boom Boom” and “Poor Boy” inspired me to play guitar again and write my own tunes in those styles. Damn if they didn’t start sounding GOOD to me too. Since the drums are as important as everything else in this style I needed a Cedric Burnside mixed with some Kinney Kimbrough and Spam to flesh out this Groovin, foot stompin music that’s been stuck in my head since the late 70’s! Several drummers have added The Beat to OGM songs including Kinney Kimbrough, CW Ayon, Matt Ehlers, and Joe Falco. Hope y’all enjoy this music as much as I do