BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
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David Mac (DM): Where are we at in the blues business here in 2012?
Charlie Lange (CL): The blues business per se is pretty much where it was back in the 70s. There’s a bunch of independents who work it as a labor of love. I know that most of the labels that do blues are not making any money at all. They are all struggling to get by.
The blues itself has suffered the same problems that so many other music genres suffer which is that there are a lot of people who don’t have the money and they’re just stealing the music. They’re downloading, copying and trading the music. With the blossoming of the internet, the ability to support a retail infrastructure in blues is not that great.
I think we’re finally at that period that we’ve talked about before where none of the money players in the business have any delusions that they’re going to find the next Stevie Ray Vaughan and they’re not going to latch on to something that’s going to make them wealthy. I think it’s been long enough now that “that” is gone. It was a magical period in the 80s but it had as much to do with the economy and the changes in the music industry than about the music itself.
DM: Can you be more specific?
CL: For starters the change over from vinyl to CD. You also had the Stevie Ray Vaughan and ZZ Hill factor.
DM: Let’s talk about the SRV and ZZH factor.
CL: Those are the two guys I look at as revitalizing interest in this music and creating that dream that, “Wow I can be popular and get rich off this too”.
DM: Those two names you mentioned really do symbolize the two parallel streams in the two blues market. Can you elaborate on the differences in these two markets?
CL: Basically the difference is in the black blues market the lyrics are everything, it’s all about songs. In the white blues market they listen to the instruments and they’re much more important than the lyrics in a lot of bands. The singing in many cases is just an afterthought.
DM: I think most of our readers have a pretty good grasp of the concept of the white blues-rock, neo virtuoso worship that applies to guitar players almost exclusively. Let’s talk about the black blues market. Is it still thought of as primarily dance music?
CL: It’s still that way in the south but there’s this lascivious kind of nasty r&b stuff that is popular in the south with black audiences now. Some examples would be songs like, “Pay Before You Pump” by Denise LaSalle, “Nibble Nibble Man” by Lee Shot Williams. All of this stuff is based on this slightly naughty kind of dirty joke style material.
DM: There has been a dramatic shift in the live blues music scene as well. I think you can see that reflected in the blues festivals.
CL: Oh yeah, the fans don’t have the same point of reference they once had.
DM: What do you mean?
CL: Well the blues festival lineups have changed dramatically as a lot of original, second and third generation artists have passed away. So it draws a different kind of crowd.
Here is a classic example of what I’m talking about. I’m working a festival and Buddy Guy is onstage. He’s got his polka dot guitar and he’s doing that tired shtick where he plays a little bit of Albert King and then he changes before the song is over and does a little bit of Stevie Ray Vaughan and then plays a riff or two from Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love and so on. After he’s done this for 40 minutes, someone comes back to me and says, “Wasn’t that great?”
Well here’s the deal. It has to do with that fan’s point of reference. That guy who said that to me was comparing Buddy’s act to Robin Trower or some crap like that. So of course to him what Buddy was doing was great. That may be this dude’s only point of reference or one of his few points of reference. I saw Buddy Guy and Junior Wells at the Ashgrove wearing shark skins suits in ‘67. That was great. That is my point of reference.
Point of reference makes all the difference to the audience. A lot of these people don’t have the vocabulary to talk about the music or be inquisitive about it. They have never heard real blues music.
DM: They have to want to go to it.
CL: Exactly! They have to want to find it. It’s like the old saying, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.”
DM: Don’t you think guys like ourselves, who have been around this music a very long time, have a responsibility to have an educational component to what we do?
CL: If someone is interested I can certainly give them the path. I can illuminate that path in a thousand different ways. I’m the guy who has a Grand Canyon wide understanding about this particular subject. I know a lot. I know how it intersects and I know the artists. I know the songs and I know the CDs and I know the albums. I know it! So if someone wants to know this information, I’m all for it. There is no way you can bring people to this if they don’t want to go. They have to engage me. They have to engage the music. They have to listen to the music. When they ask the right questions, the doors open up.
DM: When I first heard this music being performed live in a nightclub, I was in my mid- twenties. I wasn’t the youngest guy in the room. The band was the original T-Birds with Kim Wilson and Jimmie Vaughan. Those guys were just a few years older than me and probably near the average age of the audience. The demographic has changed to the point I am still the average age of the audience and I am 55 years old. What happened?
CL: Here’s the thing Dave. The main record buying audience is between 13 and 30. The people now who are in that age bracket grew up with music that has been extremely popular and very resilient. It’s called hip-hop. It has no connection to blues music.
Now when we were growing up with rock and roll, folk, country and soul, all those styles had a blues base to them. Their roots were in blues. The Stones, Cream and Hendrix all had a connection to blues.
Young people now don’t have a connection to this music at all and that’s the problem. Blues music was accessible for us because it was reflected in the music we had heard when we were younger.
DM: So now we are left with a bunch of people who are roughly our age whose only point of reference is their nostalgia for British blues or old hippie blues from the 1960’s and they have taken over the blues industry.
CL: Pretty much. They keep trying to foist Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Johnny Lang and Walter Trout down everyone’s throat because that is all they know. Now it’s Joe Bonamassa. I can’t stand to hear one note of that shit. You know what I mean?
DM: I do.
CL: It’s a whole other culture. You know the writer Ron Weinstock. He wrote for Living Blues Magazine for years. He has a really good blog. You would enjoy it. He posted something recently on his blog. It read, “Don’t put a sticker on your CD when you’re in a blues-rock band and say ‘you’re keeping the blues alive’, it doesn’t need your help.”
DM:That is one of the biggest problems right now the people who are in charge of this business at the moment are the ones who have the least understanding of the music, don’t listen to the music and I suspect don’t even really care for it that much. Why do they resent people like us who do love and care for this music?
CL: They’re intimidated by people who are knowledgeable. They aren’t very bright and so they like stupid shit. They remind me of Republicans.
DM: How so?
CL: They have a “don’t confuse me with the facts” mentality.
If the bigger culture doesn’t hear it, doesn’t get it, doesn’t listen to it and doesn’t care about it, there is nothing we can do for them.
DM: These people grew up on Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. They try and turn blues into that kind of music.
CL: I can’t make people hear it. Neither can you. You either get it or you don’t. You either hear it or you don’t. That’s why it’s gratifying to meet people who are on the same page. That’s why you and I have a connection. There’s a commonality here. In my business there’s a lot of hit or miss. I’m dealing with people on a lot of different levels. I’ve learned how to use my skills in psychology to kind of keep the ground neutral.
DM: Getting back to what I think is the most important component of this conversation and that is the youth market and the blues.
CL: There’s something about youth that imbibes music with excitement and if there aren’t young bands doing blues then the excitement level falls off a great deal.
As the older guys have aged, their performances became more mediocre and their songs became more predictable. I mean there is nothing more boring than what Pinetop Perkins was doing the last ten years of his life. It was always the same songs, always done the same way. I don’t see young people coming to this music for “that” or any of the recordings coming out from the bigger labels like Alligator and Blind Pig because the music is just not appealing.
The other thing is that stagecraft has devolved into this histrionic laden bullshit. It’s made good performers bad performers by the crowd reacting to them doing things that are stupid on stage. You know what I mean.
DM: I do
CL: There is no reason to do that shit. If you get up there and play good music, eventually people are going to stop and listen or stop and shop.
DM: Who are some of the young bands who are exciting? Who do know what they are doing?
CL: The Igor Prado Band out of Brazil is one of the best things to happen to this music in a long time.
DM: I did an interview with Igor a few months ago. He knows his stuff that’s for sure. Do you think he will catch on?
CL: A lot of writers back east are starting to buy his new CD. That could help.
DM: What are your thoughts about JD McPherson? He is attracting a younger crowd.
CL: JD is such an exceptional songwriter. His album which was re-issued recently, “Signs and Signifiers” was produced by the bassist Jimmy Sutton who pulled what he has been doing for years, out of JD. That’s the direction I personally would like to see JD take. He is a really bright light. He’s very direct, and there’s something innocently beautiful about his stuff.
Jimmy Sutton’s been around for quite a few years and he works with a group of musicians who value vintage music and vintage culture in general. They are somewhat aligned with the rockabilly subculture. They have been making records for years. Jimmy’s band The Four Charms made two fabulous records that came out 10 – 12 years ago and no one’s ever heard them.
There are others as well.
DM: Such as...
CL: Kirk Fletcher is great. Nathan James is really good. Then there is a group of younger people who are approaching it in a slightly different way but still retaining the integrity of blues. Guys like Nick Curran, Matt Hill and Matt Walsh for instance.
Then you have guys who have been at this for a while who approach the music in different ways who continue to make great music like Floyd Jones, Curtis Salgado, Dennis Gruenling and Steve Guyger.
DM: None of these great artists you mentioned have ever found a particularly large audience. Yet they are all very compelling figures in my view. What is it going to take to get that old guy off his recliner or that young person away from his video game and come out and listen to these great live performers?
CL: A stage full of naked statuesque blondes.
DM: (laughing) You are a genius Charlie. Goodnight everybody. Drive carefully.
CL: But seriously, if you want people to come and hear this music then it has to be fun. You have to leave the performance feeling different than when you arrived. That’s the whole thing. If the music is going to appeal to a wider audience, it’s got to be fun. It’s got to be enjoyable it’s got to do something to people.
There are so many memorable performances that I can think of over the last thirty years that made me want to go back and see those bands over and over again. That is how you expand the audience. I don’t think there’s going to be any other way.
DM: Who were (are) some of those bands?
CL: Early Fabulous, Thunderbirds, Roomful of Blues. The Roomful/Thunderbirds tour of 1981 was spectacular. Big Sandy and the Fly Right Boys, Deke Dickerson, Knockout Greg and Blue Weather come to mind. The James Harman Band with Hollywood Fats and Kid Ramos on guitar were great.
DM: Why is it that when this music, on those rare occasions, gets exposed to mass culture it gets covered up? I am referring to debacles like the recent Blues at the White House broadcast on PBS.
CL: There are all those other considerations besides the music, pure and simple. There’s “Who is involved? Who are the sponsors?” They did this when Scorsese did the blues series on PBS. They’re just media spectacles that are ginned up in the popular press to sell shit.
Here’s a good example, that friend of mine I told you about, I did the Antone’s tour with, Kevin. He worked at the Belly Up in Solana Beach. He went on to be the first guy to do bookings for the House of Blues in Hollywood.
DM: You mean back in the day when the House of Blues booked blues acts.
CL: Right, he was hired at the time to run it and he got me on board. I did a bunch of work for the House of Blues when they first started. I did their early compilation albums. I did all the writing that you see on their website and the busts that hang in the clubs. That’s all me.
Kevin has climbed up the corporate ladder in that structure and he calls the shots now. He makes decisions not based on musical worth. There’s a whole other level of decision making that goes on and it has to do with who’s being hyped. What agent is pushing this? What kind of promo can we get? What kind of corporate tie-ins are there? Decision making of that level has nothing to do with music.
DM: Does this same type of thinking or lack of take place within the blues community?
CL: Sure it does. Take the Blues Music Awards which are a level below the Grammy’s. The pettiness seems to get bigger and the effect seems to get smaller. Who cares? The International Blues Competition, who cares? The only people who care are the poor little bands who are trying to live their dream and think of these “contests” as a stepping stone. It’s a world unto itself and it doesn’t really affect people who really care for this music. I mean if Otis Spann were alive today do you think he would give a damn about The Blues Foundation, a blues society, the IBC’s, the BMA’s or any of the other bullshit that has such a negative effect on this music?
DM: No...
CL: What I’m trying to say is this, there’s this really special music and it’s called blues. There are certain people who can hear it and there’s other people who cannot. It’s like a special little club. When you hear it and you’re with the friends who hear it, it’s an extraordinary experience. When you hear a great performance, you share something together. You have something to talk about for the rest of your life.
DM: That is something special.
CL: You’re damn right it is.
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BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
info