Browsing: Interviews

Sonny Charles talks 40 plus years with Backtrack Blues Band and the new album.

It’s one thing to interview a legacy artist over the phone. It’s another to sit knee to knee with him and watch his fingers sail across the fret board.

“I define myself as a singer-songwriter that’s not specifically tied to one genre. I think this generation is really about pushing past the old set barriers.”

We’re being told that live music may well be the last element of life as we’ve known to come back. But the blues is no stranger to hardship.

Skylar Gregg combines old soul, 60s & 70s country, blues and more, adding her very personal lyric imagery to create something new.

“I Got Loaded” is the latest in a collection of music by a band that combines the bluesy, R&B authenticity of Chess Records with punk and garage rock icons.

“Legacy was my first venture into my songs,” Zakiya told me. “People expect me to do hard core blues, but I’m not a hard core blues person.”

Charlie Sayles will be the first to tell you that he’s not a straight ahead Chicago blues player. He takes a more mongrelized approach.

In my 2004 interview with Pitney he shrugged off this seemingly uncanny ability to fit in with every kind of eccentric in the business.

“I couldn’t believe someone like Otis Spann who had such a huge impact on Blues didn’t have a marker.”