Welcome to the BLUES JUNCTION Productions first ever membership drive. I know what you’re thinking. Am I a member? If not how do I become a member?

We’ll get to all that, but first I wanted to update you on some of the characters that have helped to make BLUES JUNCTION what it is. These are some the subjects of the BLUES JUNCTION Interviews.  

Let’s start with the interview that appeared a few years ago with Big Jay McNeely. Big Jay remains on this side of the ground, but has cut back on performing a great deal. However, he did appear at the Long Beach Bayou Festival in June. This interview is a favorite for many reasons not the least of which is the sheer serendipitous nature of how the interview came about.

I attended a show which Big Jay headlined. The opening band, who also backed up Jay, was The Hollywood Combo. This talented ensemble included guitarist Tommy Harkenrider and, sax giant in his own right, Ron Dziubla. The band was fronted by Mark Tortorici.

As I walked into the back of the nightclub Mark was on stage setting up his bandstand. He jumped off the stage and walked up to me, extended a hand and introduced himself. He told me he enjoyed reading BLUES JUNCTION. We hit it off immediately. He asked me if wanted to do an interview with Jay. Before I could answer, Torch, the perennial master of ceremonies, introduced me to one of my heroes and said to Jay “Dave here wants to do an interview with you.” Jay said “Sure thing.”, and before I knew it one of the hostesses sat us down in a V.I.P. room off to one side of the concert venue. The accomplished photographer Alex Gardner happened to be in the house and he joined Jay, Tracy Morgan and me. Tracy, who happens to know short hand, transcribed her notes from our conversation and out came an interview with the legendary Big Jay McNeely.

Needless to say I owe a great debt here to Mark Tortorici for facilitating this interview. I had no intention of conducting an interview when I ventured out that evening and had to suddenly put my Big Jay McNeely thinking cap on but it turned out ok.

Unfortunately, just three years later Mark Tortorici died when, by all accounts, fell asleep at the wheel of his car in the early morning hours of October 31, 2014. He was coming home to Thousand Oaks from a gig in Los Angeles. In “Torch” I met a fellow traveler that night and I remain forever grateful for his initiative, hospitality, spirit and friendship.  

My favorite way to conduct an interview is by telephone. The subject can place the call from their own home and, for all I know, can be seated in their underwear with a leg thrown over their favorite chair while sipping on a cup of coffee.

One of my favorites in this category would be the interview that originally appeared in the June 2014 edition of our ezine. What happened was a potential interview subject bailed out at the last moment leaving me with a deadline and no monthly artist spotlight. I’m kicking around different ideas with Tracy and she said, “How about Jimmie Vaughan?”

My feelings were that he has been interviewed to death and secondly I was and, I guess to some extent, remain a little intimidated by Jimmie. I really don’t know why, as he has always been very personable to me and we get along just fine. I figured ‘What the hell, I’ll make an inquiry, he could say, “no” and I’ll move on.’

So at 9:00 pm I reached out to his people. At 9:15pm his long time manager contacted me and said Jimmie could call me at 9:30am the next day. I said sure and spent the rest of the next 12 hours trying to figure out a way to talk about his career without covering the same old stuff.  

As the hour approached I was downright nervous. Again, I’m not sure why, but I was. At 9:15am the phone rang and Jimmie happened to get tenor sax giant Gene Ammons as his ring back tone and we were off to the races. Tracy walked through the room in which I was working and laughed as she heard the two of us go at it. We shot the breeze all morning while obliterating any distinction between jazz, blues, r&b, country and soul music. From our conversation came what remains one of the most popular pieces to appear here in our ezine.

One of Vaughan’s contemporaries is the prolific guitarist and singer Duke Robillard. A year earlier in the spring of 2013, and in advance of his latest album (at the time), Independently Blue on Stony Plain Records, I sat down with Duke and we discussed his journey through American music. Since 2013, Duke has released two new albums on Stony Plain. Both releases were reviewed here in BLUES JUNCTION and can be found in the Archives section of this site.

In March of 2012, I got an email from a guy named Joe Arnold. He read my appreciation of two musicians who were born just days apart in Memphis and passed away just weeks apart. They were tenor sax man Andrew Love and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn. Both recorded extensively together, most famously as a members of Stax Records famous house band. I referenced several of these two men’s colleagues in that famous band including Issac Hayes, Wayne Jackson, Steve Cropper and Booker T. Jones. I however never mentioned the name Joe Arnold. I was aware that there was man named Joe Arnold who played tenor sax on many of the famous recordings by the likes of Otis Redding, Albert King, Sam and Dave, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett and so many others, as I read the back of record jackets just like everybody else.

However, I knew nothing about the man who even some of the most self proclaimed Stax-O-Files assumed had passed away. He is very much alive. After weeks of emails and phone calls back and forth a story emerged and Joe Arnold: Out of the Shadows became one of the most talked about pieces in BLUES JUNCTION history. This piece was republished (with my permission) on the official Stax website in Memphis, as well as the very comprehensive unofficial Stax site in France. I can’t go too many places where somebody doesn’t ask me about Joe.

He made an appearance at the 28^th Annual Porretta Soul Festival in the summer of 2015. You can read about that odyssey in a feature entitled, Joe Arnold: Coming Home.

Additionally, Joe just got back from California where he recorded an album with Kid Andersen and his crew at Greaseland Studios in San Jose. Joe and I remain in contact and hopefully I’ll have some info on the new record very soon. As of this moment I’ve heard the recording and am very excited about the project. I’m waiting for word on the manufacture and distribution.  I’ll keep you posted.

As far as my interview with Jewel Brown is concerned, I just happen to like Jewel  Brown and her music. We hit it off immediately and by the time we got to the day of the interview, I had won over her confidence and was a trusted friend. Hers is an interesting career and I just love her honesty and heart. She is, as they say, “good people.”

This brings us to one of my favorite and yet now bittersweet memories, my interview with Lynwood Slim. By the spring and summer of 2012, Slim was convalescing from a series of health maladies that just months earlier had him hospitalized and near death. He was confined to his home and bursting to get back out there. We would often place telephone calls to one another and would have a blast just shooting the breeze. One of these was an actual interview which was in advance of his first full concert  which took place at the Tiki Bar in Costa Mesa.

This interview was a breeze. Slim was on point, on target and as honest as the day is long. Just a little over two years later Slim gave me my toughest assignment.  He suffered a massive stroke and passed away on August 4, 2014. I felt it was incumbent upon me to write an appreciation of Slim.  You can find in the ‘In Memoriam’ section of our archives my thoughts on the legacy of Lynwood Slim. He was one of the most important figures in the modern blues world and warrants more attention than the single paragraph afforded to him in Living Blues Magazine.

We also have a couple of editorials  which you may find of interest as well as a review of a recording that speaks to the spirit of BLUES JUNCTION. This is an album called Rocket Girl by Jai Malano.

We hope you enjoy these and other features in this month’s BLUES JUNCTION.

Back to the question of membership...of course you are a member. You are a member by virtue of reading BLUES JUNCTION. I often feel we are more than part of the same club, we are family.

We are asking our readers to help us maintain the quality publication you have grown to appreciate. Over the past six years we have provided what we hope has been an entertaining and informative reading experience of the like not found anywhere else in the blues world.

Each and every month we have published interviews, editorials, reviews, recommended listening and other features which celebrate the quintessential American music that is the blues, strictly for your enjoyment. We have championed and will continue to champion those dedicated musicians who spend their lives making our lives worth living.

We also believed by taking the road less traveled we would meet others on this journey who share our vision. We have been and continue to be flattered by all the kind words of encouragement. We have found a fan base of readers who also live in this alternative blues universe. Like me, you hear things in this music that others do not. You appreciate this art form for what it is and are not interested in those who are trying to turn it into something that it is not. We have consistently refused advertising from the interlopers and those who have made generous, outlandish offers to be included in the pages of BLUES JUNCTION who do not rise to the standard of the artists we have featured within our pages. 

With all of that in mind, each and every one of you are encouraged to click the PayPal button (there is one on the bottom of each page) and make a contribution, that is comfortable for you, to the cause. Any amount is appreciated. Think of it as having a cup of coffee with David Mac or a steak dinner. For those a little more ambitious we will mail you a BLUES JUNCTION T-shirt for donations of 25.00 and up. Please include your size and address in the PayPal comments section.

Thanks in advance for your support. It means everything to me and I hope our publication means something to you. Be well and be in touch.

-David Mac



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