About ten years ago a musician hit my radar by the name of Chris “Kid” Andersen. At that time the young Norwegian recently moved to Northern California and seemed to make an immediate impact on that area’s blues scene. He has emerged as a world class blues talent and is a ubiquitous presence on the blues scene.

David Mac (DM): When you were a child did you want to be a Viking?

Kid Andersen (KA): No those thoughts came later in life.

DM: Then we will talk about that later. Let’s talk about your upbringing. Where in Norway are you from?

KA: I am from a very small town that even most Norwegians haven’t heard of, Herre.

DM: When did you grace the planet with your presence?

KA I was born in 1980. I am thirty three.

DM Thanks for doing the math for me on that one Kid. When and under what circumstances did you first start playing music?

KA: I had an older cousin who lived right down the street who was a local guitar hero. He told me if I got a guitar he would teach me how to play. I did and he did. I was eleven.

DM: Do you remember the first time you heard blues music?

KA: I do. There are a couple of memories that stand out. The Notodden Blues Festival is only about an hour and a half from where I grew up. I was at my grandma’s house and we were watching T.V. They had a local news feature on the festival. They showed about a twenty second clip of Robert Cray with Richard Cousins playing bass next to him. He was doing a slow blues. I thought ‘What the fuck is that?’ It just got etched in my brain.

Around the same time I started playing in bands. I was about twelve years old. There was an older bass player in the band and he gave me a cassette of some Stevie Ray Vaughan stuff. I was blown away by that. I progressed rather quickly on the guitar. It came pretty naturally to me. I attended a youth music seminar and there was this blues guitar teacher, Morten Omlid. He recognized that I was pretty talented so he worked with me. I asked him if he could teach me to play like Stevie Ray Vaughan. He said, “Stevie is cool and everything but you should check out these other guys.” He had this huge record collection divided into two different sections, black guys on one side and white guys on another. I noticed that the section of black guys was a whole lot bigger, so I went there. He told me to start taking those records home.  

The first load I took home was BB. King, Live at the Regal, Buddy Guy, Hold that Plane, Otis Rush The Essential Cobra Recordings and Right Place Wrong Time, Albert King, Born Under a Bad Sign, Freddy King, All His Hits and a compilation of some early T-Bone Walker stuff. There was that double record Howlin’ Wolf box set that came out back then and a Little Walter record. I asked the teacher about that one because it doesn’t have any guitar solos per se. He told me, “You have to learn how to play behind a harmonica. You will probably meet guys who will want you to play this stuff.” Boy was he right.

DM: Those records are a pretty good jumping off point.

KA: I have had three or four real growth spurts musically that got me getting deeper and deeper into the blues, but that was the first big one. That really set the stage for me. Without that guy, I mean I could have been a big rock guitar player or worse case scenario a rock guitar player who thinks he can play blues.   

DM: I think we have enough of those types Kid. What he did do, is send you down the path of poverty.

KA: You are right on both counts.

DM: You said you had three or four real growth spurts in your career. Let’s talk about the next one of those.

KA: That came when I moved to the big city.

DM: Oslo?

KA: That’s the one. This marked the beginning of my second growth spurt. There were a lot of established blues players in Oslo like Knut Reiersrud and Johnny Augland. Even guys like Sven Zetterberg from Sweden would play up here. He had that Otis Rush, Tyrone Davis stuff down.

DM: The first Norwegian I had ever heard of was Vidar Busk.

KA: What about Leif Erickson?

DM: Isn’t he more of a pre-war, acoustic cat?

KA: He was pre all wars, I think.

DM: I always thought Leif Erickson got screwed with Christopher Columbus getting all the credit.

KA: Chris had a better P.R. and better management team.

DM: Actually I meant Vidar was the first Norwegian blues musician of which I became aware.

KA: Oh, I got you now. When I moved to Oslo he had already made blues real popular. He had a real west coast blues inspired sound. He was totally into Hollywood Fats and Junior Watson. He spawned a million dudes with pompadours and bowling shirts running around Norway.

DM: What kind of work were you getting in Oslo?

KA: I was in the house band at a place called the Muddy Waters Blues Club. We backed up American blues artists when they came to Oslo. We backed up Homesick James for a couple of weeks. I mean we got to back up Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Jimmy Dawkins, Nappy Brown and others. It was a great, real life education.  One of the guys we backed up was Terry Hanck and he offered me a gig. I was always looking for a way to get to America. I didn’t want to come to America to go sightseeing. I wanted to live here. I wanted to be part of the scene. All the newer guys that I liked were all coming out of California and Terry was living in California. I thought that would be perfect. He called me up on New Year’s Day 2002. He said, “I really do need a guitar player. Were you serious about moving to America?” I said, “Fuck yea.” He found me an affordable room at the time right down the street from him in Santa Cruz.

When I first got off the plane coming to America I landed in San Francisco and Terry picked me up at the airport and drove us to Santa Cruz. When we got there, I told him we need to stop at the music store because I need to pick up an amp. We stopped at this place where I started to try out this Fender Super Twin Reverb. This black dude walked up to me and said “You’re pretty good. You sound just like T-Bone Walker.” It was Robert Lowery. Well that pretty much sealed my fate. I took that as a good omen.

DM: We first met in the summer of 2003.

KA: That’s right. It was at the Orange County Fair when I was playing with Terry. I played with him from 2002 through the summer of 2004. That was right before I started playing with Charlie (Musselwhite). Terry got hooked up with the county fair circuit all over California. It was a great steady gig all summer long. We could stay in one place for three weeks. It was a real fun gig. You could settle in for a while meet some people like yourself, J.R. and Jeff Fleenor. Of all the fairs we played, that was the best. I am not just saying that because I know you are from there but we had nice crowds and they gave us free beer.

DM: I remember buying the CD, Rock Awhile from you off the bandstand. That was your first album. Let’s talk about how that project came about.

KA: It never occurred to me to make my own record but this guy, Paul Durkett encouraged me and helped me with songwriting. Once I put the record out, I got a lot of attention in Norway. I was just a kid and just this guitar player in that house band. I was not in the upper echelon of guitar players in Norway when I left. It was very cool because I got to record with Junior (Watson) and Mark Hummel. Terry is also on the record. Having those guys on the record made me feel legit at least in my own eyes and to the people in Norway. It was amazing just how accessible these guys were to me. I think of Watson as some sort of deity. He blows me away every time I see him, and I mean every time.

DM: Rock Awhile came out at the same time you were playing with Musselwhite. Let’s talk about that experience.

KA: Well Charlie is the big time. I first met him when I was thirteen. I went to the Notodden Blues Festival when I had this pick guard signed by B.B. King, Steve Cropper, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, somebody else, I forget and Charlie Musselwhite. Now I am in his band. I am shocked that he didn’t remember me. (laughs) Whatever...

DM: With Charlie, more so than with Terry, you are now for the first time doing some hard core touring.

KA: Exactly! We went all over the country and all over the world. Europe, New Zealand...

I really dig Charlie. He has kind of an unusual style. He has that indefinable blues quality. You know when he sits down with a guitar and a rack harmonica you just know he is the real deal. It goes to show you this music is not a genetic, racial thing, but it is a cultural thing.

DM Let’s talk about the project called Guitarmageddon. How did that come about?  

KA: After Rock Awhile came out, Blue Mood Records in Norway kept asking me why I didn’t let them release the record. They had Vidar Busk on their label. I thought ‘Why not put a record out on that label with the both of us on the thing?’ Getting Watson on it was a no brainer as Vidar is a huge fan. We also put on a guy who is a couple of years younger than me, Amund Maarud. He replaced me in the Muddy Waters house band in Oslo when I left to go to America. So I put that all together.

Jeff (Fleenor) booked us at Doheny. He kind of freaked me out when I first met him. He knew every player in Norway. He said ‘Do you know this guy or this guy?’ and I am thinking to myself, ‘Am I on a hidden camera or something?’ Not in a million years did I think there was someone in America that would know all these guys from Norway. Anyway we did a series of shows in Southern California including playing the big Doheny Blues Festival.

DM: That mini tour was a lot of fun.

KA: We had a blast...I think. People asked me if we did a lot of partying. I say, “I don’t know but we sure did a hell of a lot of drinking.” That was kind of the apex of that for Vidar and me.

DM: There was a song that you guys did in your sets that week that caught a lot of people by surprise. It was all four of you guitar players doing a tune that was, correct me if I am wrong, a 60’s era surf medley combined with a traditional Norwegian folk song.

KA: You are right, we mixed a bunch of old surf tunes with a piece written by Edvard Grieg in the 1800’s.

DM: The guy that wrote In The Hall of the Mountain King. You have done surf style instrumentals since then. There was a song on Twisted you did with the Nightcats called Lil’ Earthquake and of course there is The Legend of Taco Cobbler, which has elements of surf music in it as well.

KA: I would say there are not too many elements of any kind of music that aren’t in Taco Cobbler. I mean there is a little ska in there and even some metal for about a split second.

DM: Let’s talk about this eclecticism which you seem to throw into the mix now and again.

KA: I throw that stuff in there just to confuse the jack asses who call me a blues Nazi. I mean this starts getting into that big philosophical debate. Blues is the language I grew up learning. Blues is like my native tongue. Most people start with rock music and go back from there and discover blues. For me, it was the other way around. So I can get away with a Taco Cobbler once in a while. It grinds my gears when I hear rock people who are fucking hacks, who have no foundation in blues, have no relationship to the music, then try and play it and take a dump all over this music. You know what I’m talking about, Dave?

DM: I do.

KA: They get into the blues scene because that is the only place where they can rise to the top of the heap. I hate it when people say we have to mix rock with blues to keep it current. That is a bunch of fucking bullshit as far as I’m concerned. We aren’t physicists here who need to create something new. I would rather hear something that sounds cool than something that sounds new, especially if it was created just for the sake of being new. Besides that, what is so fucking new about someone playing blues like Pat Travers?

DM: Here’s the thing Kid, there is nothing new about blues-rock anyway. It is 45 years old. Guys like you and me who embrace all kinds of music are called blues Nazi’s because we don’t happen to like this one particular kind of musical form called blues-rock. I mean who is being the fascist in this equation? The insecurity of these people is rather astonishing when you think about it.

KA: The people who try and rock up blues and say they are trying to save the blues are doing more to kill it than help it. Blues is not going to die because the music is so strong. It’s like heroin. They haven’t changed it since it came out. It’s still hugely popular.  

DM: (laughing) I never heard that analogy before. Let me shift gears for a minute. How did you hook up with Rick Estrin and become a Nightcat?

KA: I first saw Rick with the Nightcats at the club I was playing at in Norway when I was eighteen. When I moved to California I got to know him from going to his shows and he would come to our shows. You know the business is pretty incestuous; all the serious cats all hang out together. I used to live in Sacramento for a time and there wasn’t much going on up there so Rick and I would hang out. Charlie (Baty) had been talking about retiring for some time and Rick was already thinking about a backup plan.

Before I got with Rick though I quit Musselwhite and started a band with a guy who is a friend of mine.

DM: Who?

KA: John Nemeth...I thought it would be fun to hook up with a young guy and be drunk and stupid. That didn’t last too long because I was let go.

DM: Why?

KA: For being too drunk and stupid. It was for a good reason. I have no hard feelings. It was all my own fault, there was nobody to blame but myself. My drinking was just getting me into too much trouble out there. I was drinking a whole hell of a lot. I was pretty fucked up.

I quit one good gig and got booted out of another. So I had to face facts that I had a pretty big problem. I always figured that if I quit drinking I wouldn’t have any more fun. So I called Rick. I had been observing Rick around people and he was someone I aspired to be like.

DM: I don’t keep up much with people’s personal habits, so I am assuming you are saying Rick has been sober for some time.

KA: Yes he has. He doesn’t talk about it publicly, but I don’t think he would mind if we talked about it publicly. I really admire him for that. He is a role model for me.

I needed help with drinking more than I needed to figure out what I was going to do musically. I picked up the phone one day and we talked about this kind of thing. Right towards the end of the conversation he told me that Charlie announced his retirement the day before and wanted to know if would like to join him in the Nightcats. I always wanted to play with Rick, but he is not going to break up Little Charlie and the Nightcats. That is for Charlie to decide.

DM: I remember hearing about you and Rick and I thought ‘What a perfect fit’, even though Charlie had been there forever.

KA: It is a natural fit. I mean you can’t beat Charlie on guitar. He is a human encyclopedia of blues guitar, but I knew I could be a fit in the band and be a good fit for Rick.

DM: Let’s talk about Rick Estrin the musician.

KA: Rick is so inside the style of Little Walter and Sonny Boy. He has adopted the language to the point it is not just convincing, it is actually real. He is not copying either. It is blues to the core. He is incapable of playing music that isn’t blues to the core. 

DM: I am glad you said that about his harmonica playing as I think that some audiences tend to overlook that aspect of his music. He is on the very short list of best harmonica players of his generation.

KA: I think you are right. He is such an amazing songwriter that his harp playing gets overlooked to a degree. He writes with such originality and is one of the very few people out there who writes memorable songs. He writes music that you can listen to many, many times and still discover something new. He is just great and he is also fun to be around in real life.

DM: Let’s talk about something that keeps you very busy these days.

KA: Greaseland Studios...

DM: Bingo! Why did you decide to start your own recording studio?

KA: When I first started recording when I was nineteen I took an immediate interest in the recording aspect of music because that is the shit that lasts. When you go to a show it is there and gone, but a record is here to stay.

I was working with a lot of engineers. I was kind of a middle man between the artists and the engineers. I got real tired of trying to tell some other mother fucker what to do to get the sounds I wanted. I also realized pretty early on that the longer it takes to make a record, the more money someone else makes. I knew that I had to figure this shit out for myself. I knew a guy who was a janitor at a radio station and they were throwing out a tape machine, a board and all kinds of recording equipment. So I snatched that stuff up. I had a roommate who is a super talented guy by the name of Bob Welsh. We started working together. We did a record with R.J. Mischo, The King of a Mighty Good Time and it just snowballed from there. I then did a record with Terry Hanck and a record with Dennis Gruenling called, I Just Keep Loving Him: A Tribute to Little Walter that had not only Dennis playing on it but Rick, Kim Wilson and Steve Guyger all playing harp on the thing. 

DM: It seems like every time I pick up a record I like recently, it was made up at your place.

KA: I don’t solicit business, it just comes to me. Most of the artists I work with I know personally and admire their music. I have made records with John Nemeth, Elvin Bishop, The Nightcats of course, Frank Bey and The Anthony Paule Band, Little Jonny and the Giants, Eddie B’s Greasy Blues Bash and Andy Santana who is actually pulling up in my driveway right now.

DM: What is the secret of your success?

KA: Well it’s no secret. I am better, faster and cheaper than any studio that I have ever worked in. I also have the most understanding wife in the world as she has let me turn our entire home into a recording studio.

DM: There is one album you did that I want to talk about. It is Snap Your Fingers with Finis Tasby. It is one of the great contempory soul-blues albums to come down the pike in a long time. You really nailed the feel of those late 60’s, early 70s sound of B.B. King, Bobby Bland, Little Milton and cats like that.

KA: Thanks Dave, but that is Finis. I remember I was doing a record with Elvin Bishop and it had Nemeth on it as well as Finis. I remember every time Finis got up and sang I thought, ‘Now we are playing blues. We aren’t just pretending anymore.’ I told him that I would really like him to come to my studio and record something. I never thought anything would come from it, but a couple of weeks later he called me and I said, “Come on up.” So I put together a band. I mean we had no money, no label, no nothing. We got a whole bunch of musicians to play on it because they just wanted to play with Finis. Even Elvin came by and did a song. So when Finis got in that booth and you hear that voice coming through the headphones you think, ‘Oh my God this is the real thing.’ Even with songs that have been done before, when Finis sings it you think, ‘This is historical.’ I mean he was in top form. He couldn’t have sounded better.

DM: When I first got the album in my hand, I looked at the track listing and thought 'I don’t need to hear these tunes again.' I listened and my first thought was, ‘WRONG, I DO need to hear these songs again!’

KA: It doesn’t have to be ground breaking, new and innovative to be great. This simply is not the nature of this music. I don’t think that is the nature of any music for that matter.

DM: How right you are. How did the song selection come about?

KA Mostly they were songs that Finis said he wanted to do. Elvin suggested, People Sure Act Funny and Ghetto Woman. I came up with the idea for Rockin’ in the Same Old Boat.

DM: The record has such poignancy since Finis had his stroke last December.

KA: Everyone who heard it was blown away. So I shopped it around to the record labels. I don’t want you to publish the name of the company, but a certain record label asked me if these were all original songs.

DM: (laughs) you’re kidding. Please tell me you are kidding.

KA: No, I am serious.  I mean it shows you how clueless these people are who are in a position of power and influence in the blues business. It really took the wind out of my sails. I mean, ‘Yea buddy I wrote Rainy Night in Georgia. Do you like that tune? Pretty good huh. How about Ghetto Woman?...not bad huh...’ So finally I went to Charlie (Lange) of Bluebeat Music. I knew he isn’t going to ask me a question like that. He put it out on his own label. The proceeds are going to Finis to help offset some of the medical expenses he is incurring due to his extensive convalescence and inability to work. We sold some of these CDs at the benefit concert we did for Finis up here last week.

DM: We have touched on an important topic off and on throughout our conversation today and that is your battles with alcohol. Would you like to share with our readers about your recovery?   

KA: Well I stopped drinking a few years ago, as we talked about, but I wasn’t sober. I just switched to drugs. That was a little easier to hide, but eventually that got out of control as well.

DM: You have been completely sober for two years now.

KA: Yes, I went cold turkey in Turkey. I’m not kidding. Drugs are very impractical on the road anyway. We had a six week tour of Turkey and I had no connections over there, so I thought it would be a good time to quit. I figured it would be hard to kick at home since everything is just a phone call away.

DM: ...and you do not want to end up in a Turkish prison.

KA: No you DEFINETLY DO NOT WANT TO END UP IN A TURKISH PRISON. At least that’s what I’ve been told anyway. So I had enough drugs to get me through the flight and then went cold turkey. I got real sick, but I got through it. I had to play. I mean the show must go on. So by the time I got back home I was strong enough to stay clean. I stay in touch with all my sober friends in the music business, and there are a lot of us, so that helps a lot.

DM: Congratulations Kid for that and all your success.  

KA: Thanks very much Dave. That means a lot. Stay in touch.