Tampa Calling

My men’s league basketball game ran into overtime, so I arrived at the Palladium’s Side Door club just in time for boogie-woogie piano master Bob Seeley to go on break. I was surprised, and pleased, to see a sell-out audience of 150 lingering around the tables, the crowd made up mostly of retirees.

Seeley, based in Detroit, is 80, but doesn’t look it — and he certainly doesn’t play like you might expect an 80-year-old to play. He’s a firebrand with remarkable technique. After doing brisk CD sales at the merch table, and a set by locals Liz Pennock & Dr. Blues, Seeley took to the baby grand and wowed the joint.

Whereas most jazz piano features the player’s right hand, with the left hand laying out chordal accents, boogie-woogie highlights the left hand, which pounds out a steady stream of eighth notes.

Not to say that Seeley’s other paw was sub-bar; he used it to execute some marvelous runs.

Boogie-woogie, played on solo piano like last night, is one of the most exuberant, joyous sounds to emanate from the annals of American music. Seeley sure proved that.

His show-stopper piece was “Mama Don’t Allow,” an old-time number that Seeley used to strut his skills in boogie, ragtime, stride, Charleston, Ellingtonia (”Take the A Train”), Gershwin (”I Got Rhythm”) and more. He blasted through the piece with supreme confidence and good humor.

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I’ll be totally honest with y’all. The moment I opened the envelope this album came in and saw the cover and read the band name and CD title, I wanted to like it. Add to that the fact that it was coming off the freshly reborn Ardent Music label and I needed to like it. So strong was my want to like this album that I was afraid to listen to it, so I gave it to my wife first. I figured that way, if it sucks, hearing about it from her would be less disappointing than finding out for myself.

A week later, the report was in: “Awesome! Really sounds like Mofro.”

Immediately I confiscated the cd from her car (she’s still bitching) and tossed it in my CD player.

Jump Back Jake is Jake Rabinbach (vocals/guitar), Jake Vest (guitar/vocals), Brandon Robertson (bass) and Greg Faison (drums), who are joined by the part-time horn playing of Paul Morelli (sax) and Nashon Benford (trumpet). Jump Back Jake’s embryo started while Rabinbach was on a trip from New York to Memphis that was doubling as a “do I wanna move here?” visit. Rabinbach was playing solo and opening for a band at 4 a.m. at a bottle club when Faison decided to join him on stage and improv the drums. Months passed, Jake decided to follow the sirens of the South, he called Faison up to join him, and two weeks later, Jump Back Jake V.1.0 was born. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days before Damon Fowler’s new, nationally released CD, Sugar Shack, came out on Jan. 27, I sat with him in the CL studio for a lengthy conversation. The 29-year-old Tampa native was enthusiastic, but realistic, about the CD, released on the San Francisco blues label Blind Pig. He also knows he has some stereotypes to overcome. Here’s a portion of the feature story that will run in next week’s issue and be up online soon:

Damon Fowler knows what you’re thinking, some of you at least:

Here comes another fresh-faced, guitar-slingin’ white boy with a new album out on a national blues label, further populating the already crowded ranks of guitar-slingin’ white boys who play real fast and real long and can’t sing worth a damn but think of themselves as real bluesmen.

Damon Fowler doesn’t blame you for thinking this, but he wants you to know: It’s not true.

“It is a trap — a white boy with a guitar,” Fowler says. “It’s terrible for me. I mean, I like some of those blues hotshot guys like Stevie Ray Vaughan, but there was only one Stevie Ray Vaughan, and now you got all these guys in ponchos boot-scootin’ and playing [Stratoscasters] and it’s all so contrived. It’s what’s wrong with the blues — that and harmonica players in purple suits who try to sing like something they’re not.”

No, really, Damon, don’t hold back.

“A lot of times that shit’s just an excuse for playing guitar. Put together a little song like “I’m lonely for my baby, I’m lonely for my baby, oh yeah. She don’t come to see me” — and then you wail [on guitar] for 10 minutes.”

“It’s not a blues record.”
That’s how Fowler, 29, succinctly describes Sugar Shack.

Click here for the full story, along with video and audio.

Damon Fowler’s CD Release show is tonight at Skipper’s Smokehouse, 8 p.m., presented by WMNF. $10 advance, $15 at the door.

Check out audio and video of Damon talking and performing on CL Sessions.

One of those bands that really caught my attention at the 2008 Deep Blues Festival was The Pack A.D. I was already a fan prior to the fest but after seeing their set, I was gung-ho.

The band has just made a video and shipped it off to MTV and everything. So, hopefully it’ll get a chance to be one of the three vids MTV plays one day. Since the odds of that are about as good as Arizona’s chances of winning the Super Bowl this week I figured I’d post it here: Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: Contributor Autopsy IV, of ninebullets.net fame, and I are totally in agreement about blues bad ass T-Model Ford, who performs Dec. 12, Dave’s Aqua Lounge, St. Petersburg. Here’s Autopsy’s write-up; check out his kick-ass site for free MP3s. My Ford preview will be in the Creative Loafing that streets today — and will appear here day of show.

It’s not often that you get a chance to see a real deal bluesman, you know, like the ones romanticized in countless books, tv shows and movies. Well, Friday night we get one of those chances when T-Model Ford brings his version of the Mississippi hill-country blues sound to Dave’s Aqua Lounge. Backing T-Model on this tour is a pretty god damned talented blues ensemble in their own right, Gravelroad. I venture to say we could see Dave’s turned into the St. Pete equivalent of a deep South juke-joint until the local authorities tell T-Model and Co. it’s time to pack it up. So come out, get drunk, get high…hell, smoke a cigarette, get in a fight and go to jail. That’s what this night is all about. You could say it’s gonna be good times, but I’ll just quote T-Model and say “it’s Jack Daniel time”.

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New World Brewery on a Saturday night boasts a healthy built in-crowd of conversationalists and music lovers.  Even with the threatening cold snap on the horizon and very little local media coverage, quite a few people made it out to support the local post-punk rock band Dumbwaiters and show promoter New Granada Presents.

With the audience drinking cold beer while huddling, humping or gyrating near conveniently located space heaters on the New World patio, I wondered how many people got drawn away from this local show to see the moldy blues rock of Johnny “I played at Woodstock” Winter at Jannus Landing or Guns N’ Roses’ heroes Nazareth crust rocking at the Largo Cultural Center.  Probably none, but our continued cultural emphasis on these old bohemoths roaming the lands and garnering top dollar for performances of contrived, dated music marketed for the sake of nostalgia gets under my skin…

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“She’s from Texas — they grow ‘em big down there.”

So said bluesman Bobby Rush from the stage during his closing set at Saturday’s Sarasota Blues Festival, where all political correctness was cast to the wind. He was talking about one of his three ample-figured dancers, who made intermittent appearances on stage, and took booty shaking to Richter-scale proportions.

The nearly 68-year-old Rush is a product of the Southern rhythm & blues circuit — once know as the chitlin circuit — where you had better entertain folks in nightclubs and armories (and if it’s a little blue, so be it) or they’ll run you off stage.

The Blues Fest’s overwhelmingly white audience reacted with slightly embarrassed glee as Rush showcased the dancers during the first song, each turning around to strut their, uh, cheeky talents.

The hi-jinx overshadowed the music, which came off as rather pedestrian. Rush seemed more interested in delivering a ribald spectacle than knuckling down for some well-performed, inspired music. We left before Rush and company finished.

The seasoned bluesman’s show was preceded by a performance of an entirely different stripe. JJ Grey & Mofro took the stage around 6:20 and, after getting their sea legs, delivered a soulful set of funky Southern soul for nearly 90 minutes.

The band performed quite a few tunes from their estimable current album, Orange Blossom, which is on Alligator, a blues label. Their once ultra-laidback stage vibe has become more animated, with Grey taking center stage. He has developed into a first-rate blue-eyed soul singer, whose deep Southernness has a real authentic quality.

So when he sang the bouncy “Ybor City” from the current album, and pronounced it “Ee-bo Cit-ae,” it didn’t sound like an affectation.

In all, Mofro’s set was funky and danceable, with a few choice ballads tossed in, and plenty of gospel flavor.

Directly after the set, I approached Grey, whose something of a neo-hippie cult figure, backstage. When I asked if we could do a quick video interview, he said, “Sure, whatever you need; let’s do it now.” With that, he began high-tailing it to the tour bus. We walked straight to his back-of-the-bus enclave and did a quick Q&A.

This sort of thing rarely happens. Post-concert interviews are almost always done after the artist has toweled off or showered or chilled out for awhile, then met with a few fans by the bus. And then sometimes the interview doesn’t happen at all. Grey huddled with me before he did anything else, which saved me plenty of waiting around with my thumb up my ass.

That video interview, which includes a discussion about the song “Ybor City,” will be up soon.