Dear Friends,
I’m writing from Nashville, where I’m attending a meeting of representatives of The International Bluegrass Music Association, The Folk Alliance, The Americana Music Association, and The Blues Music Association (of which I’m proudly serving as president for the second year). We’re strategizing about working together to bring our different genres of roots music to a larger audience. It’s obvious that a lot of people are excited about hearing more emotional, unpretentious and deeply rooted music, as witnessed by the huge success of the soundtrack of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” which has sold over four million copies and just won a Grammy as Album of the Year. Does this mean that there are millions of people out there who could fall for emotional, unpretentious and deeply rooted blues? Would audiences go to a concert or festival featuring all four of these types of music? I would. Can blues hop on the “O Brother” bandwagon (if it is a bandwagon)? Perhaps presenting blues with other forms of roots music could be one way to break our music out of the box it’s in. One thing I feel certain about is that the audience for blues won’t grow if the fans and artists make it into a formula music full of overdone songs and endless, overwrought guitar solos. If you take the importance of the words out of the blues, or use the solos to show off rather than tell a story, blues could end up being as formulaic as Dixieland jazz.
Speaking of unpretentious, honest music, we’re just getting ready to release the first Alligator album by Austin’s Godfather of Blues, W.C. Clark. It’s called From
Austin With Soul and it’s a jolt of blues, R&B and sweet Southern soul. For the blues fan, there are steaming, intense shuffles with plenty of great guitar. But the heart of this album is W.C.’s very personal take on what I guess you could call ‘traditional soul.’ His soaring, rich voice with all its gospel-tinged inflections can take a driving Memphis-style groover or a heartbreaking ballad and make it totally his own. To hear his voice flying over the big horn section, crack rhythm players and his own guitar is a soul-stirring thrill. I’m proud to have W.C. on Alligator.
And before I wax historic, I just wanted to tell you Ed-heads that Lil’ Ed And The Blues Imperials have just finished cutting 25 new songs. We’ll be choosing the best performances and mixing them for an album to be released in July, right after Coco Montoya’s new one, Can’t Look Back, which will be out in early June.
Last time I was reminiscing about mixing Lonnie Mack’s Strike Like Lightning album. We finished the final vocals and mixes at the little Austin home studio that Stevie’s engineer had picked. But when I came back to Chicago, I found I had yet another problem to deal with. It turned out that the studio monitors in Austin hadn’t been giving up a very true picture of the sounds; most of the mixes just didn’t sound right. I decided to remix most of the album with Justin Niebank, the young engineer I had been working with since my first Johnny Winter project. And since we had already announced the release date, we were remixing under the gun. Of course I wanted Lonnie’s approval on all the remixes, so I had to Fed Ex cassettes down to him at his little cabin outside of Austin, where they didn’t always arrive absolutely, positively overnight (as Fed Ex promises). Lonnie would listen on his home boom box (the only thing he trusted) and phone in his critiques. With this grueling process, we finally completed an album with days to spare. We all knew we had something special–a mix of blues, roots rock and a taste of country soul that was honest and non-plastic but could also reach a wide audience. And with Stevie Ray’s star on the rise, we knew that his popularity would help point the spotlight at his mentor, Lonnie. But Strike Like Lightning succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. With Lonnie finally back on the road delivering some of the most exciting performances by any Alligator artist, and Stevie leading a whole new audience to the blues, the album sold and sold, as it still does. It became one of the classics of our catalog. I just wish that Lonnie would get back out on the road so more of you could discover what a terrific guitarist and totally soulful singer he is.
More next time,
Bruce Iglauer