IHello John, I'm reading "Texas Flood", SRV's story, and Jimmie is in the middle of it from the get go. So I decided I'd look him up. I've had the pleasure of visiting with him a couple of times and he's a read-deal Texan. Great Austin Chronicle Article by Margaret Moser, a legend back in the day. Huge congratulations to my buddy Eric Ramsey and my other buddy CROS- Charles Mack for winning their respective categories in Sunday's AZ Blues Showdoen Finals. Eric is the solo/duo winner and Cros is the band winner. They will represent PBS and all y'all at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis in January. All of the entries were over-the top good. We were blown away by the level of talent this year. Anyone of you guy could have represented just fine. Thanks and we'll see you next year. "You gotta hug somebody" - Bob Dylan Have a week! Sincerely, Jim Crawford, Phoenix Blues Society | |
Blues To Use www.coldshott.com The Sugar Thieves www.sugarthieves.com The Outbacks Facebook Hans Olson www.hansolson.net Rocket 88s www.rocket88s.net JC& The Rockers www.thejukerockers.com Carvin Jones www.carvinjones.com Hoodoo Casters www.hoodoocasters.com Rhythm Room www.rhythmroom.com Nina Curri www.ninacurri.com Paris James www.parisjames.com Mother Road Trio www.motherroadtrio.com Blues Review Band Reverbnationbluesmanmike Big Daddy D & The Dynamites Facebook www.bigdadddyd.com Cadillac Assembly Line Facebook Innocent Joe and the Hostile Witnesses Facebook Chuck Hall Facebook Pop Top Facebook Tommy Grills Band Facebook Sweet Baby Ray SweetBabyRaysBlues.com Thermal Blues Express Thermal Blues Express.com Common Ground Blues Band Facebook Tuesday, September 28 Carvin Jones, 6 p.m., Living Room, Scottsdale Gypsy & Hooter’s Blues JAM, 6 p.m., Pho Cao, Scottsdale Wednesday, September 29 JC & The Rockers, 6:30 p.m., Fuego Bistro, Phoenix Rocket 88s JAM, 7 p.m., Dubliner Irish Pub, Phoenix Tool Shed JAM, 7 p.m, Blooze Bar, Phoenix Johnny Miller JAM, 7 p.m., Coop’s, Glendale Thursday, September 30 Carvin Jones, 7 p.m., The Burg, Phoenix Hans Olson, 6 p.m., Handlebar, Apache Junction Friday, October 1 Ally Venable Band, 8 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Hans Olson, 6 p.m., Gallagher’s, Phoenix Big Daddy D & The Dynamites w/Betty Jo, 6 p.m., AZ State Fair, Phoenix JC & The Rockers, 7 p.m., Bar Vinedo, Queen Creek BluZone Duo, 6 p.m., Voodoo Daddy’s, Tempe Carvin Jones, 8 p.m., Rosie McCaffery’s, Phoenix Saturday, October 2 Alastair Greene, 8 p.m., Rhythm room, Phoenix Bid Daddy D & The Dynamites, 8 p.m., Bird Cage, Prescott Blues Review Band, 6 p.m., Voovoo Daddy’s, Tempe Carvin Jones, 8 p.m., Lakeside Bar, Peoria Sunday, October 3 Cold Shott & The Hurricane Horns, 3 p.m., Arts in the Park, Litchfield Park Dr. Fish & Friends, 6 p.m., The Blaze, Glendale Carvin Jones, 4 p.m., Heart & Soul Café, Cave Creek Rocket 88s JAM, 4 p.m., Chopper John’s, Phoenix Monday, October 4 Hooter’s Monday Night Blues JAM, 7 p.m., Starlite, Glendale | | Bros by Margaret Moser The last time Jimmie Vaughan sat down with the Chronicle at Iron Works Barbecue, a violent thunderstorm erupted. No sooner had the food arrived than the thunder rolled out and boom, boom! Out went the lights. That downtown blackout was seven years ago, hot on the heels of the guitarist's first solo album, Strange Pleasure. Since that time, Vaughan has been through almost as many life changes as the previous five years, when he left the Fabulous Thunderbirds, got sober, and his brother Stevie was killed in a 1990 helicopter crash just before the debut of their one and only joint recording, Family Style. The lightning changes kept coming after Strange Pleasure. His marriage of more than 25 years ended in divorce and was followed up by a new girlfriend named Robin, who takes an active part overseeing his Web site and who is likely responsible for the misty romance of his new album, Do You Get the Blues? Meanwhile, Vaughan expresses renewed pride in his grown children, daughter Tina and especially son Tyrone, a local guitarist with whom he collaborates on Blues. It was an experience he agrees "could possibly" lead to a second-generation Family Style recording. Then there are the cars he loves to build and race, and guitars he loves collecting. The notion of a homebody family guy doesn't quite jibe with the image of a multi-platinum guitarist, but here is Jimmie Vaughan talking about his down time, when the guitar is out of his hands: "I go to car shows two or three times a year. Do stuff with the kids. You can't get up early enough to do all there is in life. Clean your house, wash the car, go to the cleaners." That said, the guitar is not out of his hands often or for very long. In fact, his may be the best job in the world. Winning awards, selling millions of albums, reaping critical adulation, and playing all-star sets with every possible living legend is The Dream Come True. After years of toiling the blues in Austin clubs, Vaughan rode the rocket to success in the mid-Eighties with the Fabulous Thunderbirds' monster hits "Tuff Enuff" and "Powerful Stuff." Family Style, his first album after leaving the T-Birds, won a Grammy. The critically successful Strange Pleasure was followed by 1998's Out There and his latest, Do You Get the Blues? That's a mighty success story for the son of an itinerant oil field worker who moved his family for the jobs until settling in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff. It was there, during a convalescence, that Jimmie discovered his natural affinity for guitar in his early teens. Soon after, he was playing Beatles and the Rolling Stones songs with an area cover band called the Chessmen, using the money to buy B. B. King records. Vaughan even did a stint as "Freddie King Jr.," playing the Texas guitar hero's hits on the chitlin circuit for an audience surprised to see a white boy "playing like Freddie King but unable to sing any of the songs." In his later teens, he joined Texas Storm in Dallas, which became the Storm in Austin. When Storm split, Vaughan re-emerged in 1975 with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Antone's was born, and the promise of the blues was wild and free. "It was maybe the first time Muddy Waters came to Antone's, and the Thunderbirds were opening," he recalls. "We knew our way around Louisiana and Chicago, musically speaking, and we wanted to play good stuff, but we didn't want to play his stuff -- not in front of him. In the old Antone's, you could see upstairs to the dressing room overlooking the stage. We got to one song. I forget which it was, but I did the Earl Hooker slide thing." Vaughan demonstrates in air guitar, leaning back on the patio bench overlooking Waller Creek. "Dyeer nyeer nyeer nyeer" he sings. "I saw the dressing room curtain upstairs pull back and it was like, 'Gulp.' The next night Muddy came down and walked behind the stage and grabbed me around the neck. He liked it! Later that night he told me, 'When I'm not here, I want you to do that. Show people how I did that.'" That moment was a rite of passage for Vaughan. It wasn't his intention to get into music for that purpose -- meeting girls and playing blues were their own pleasures -- but he says, "I never thought I'd actually meet Muddy. I had his records, but meeting him was as far away as the moon. "It's still that way," he continues. "I get onstage with Eric [Clapton] or B. B. [King], and I am terrified. You couldn't drive a nail in my ass with a sledgehammer. Don't repeat that, it won't come off very good. But there's kind of a natural protection while doing it onstage, and later that night when you go home, it's like, 'Damn, I just played with B. B. King!'" Yes, Jimmie Vaughan plays the blues. He doesn't noodle around with pop or rock & roll or feel the need to add a country song to prove his versatility. He just sticks with finger-poppin', hip-swayin' blues rhythms purveyed by his fat, iron-fisted playing. There's no post-teen angst or lingering adolescent trauma to his music, no political statements or philosophical underpinnings. It's music about love and women and men and life being tough sometimes. Ask him what his music is all about and he'll tell you it's All-American. Do you get the blues? The best job in the world comes with one of the worst responsibilities imaginable: Vaughan is executor of his brother's estate, a job he didn't want and "didn't ask for." Jimmie Vaughan's identity is, to much of the non-Texas world, based on being Stevie Ray Vaughan's brother. As an insider confided, "No matter where Jimmie steps off the stage, someone's there saying, 'Hey man, I loved your brother!'" Jimmie loved his brother too, but it's more reflected light that Stevie casts over Jimmie rather than a shadow. Stevie's memory is a golden glow colored by legend and time; Jimmie shines with a blue-white clarity. A query about those legal duties elicits a growl. "I'm just kind of a watchdog, to make sure they didn't do like Hendrix and Hank Williams -- put out a bunch of crap just because it was the time of year to put out another Stevie record," he says. "It's been a battle, but I think it's been all right." This past June, in the Vaughan brothers' hometown, the weekly Dallas Observer acidly commented on the new Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985, writing that the only unreleased material left "is a double-disc collection of his entire funeral -- with a limited edition third disc featuring the sound of the grave diggers pitching dirt atop his casket... Vaughan always wanted to be Jimi Hendrix (the king of posthumous releases), and in death, he's finally found a way." Vaughan bristles at such assessments. "I haven't read what the Dallas Observer said, but all these records that Stevie recorded have been bootlegged 50 times," he notes. "There's hundreds of bootlegged CDs of his stacked to the ceiling. Why should I feel badly when people who want this stuff put out two live albums that have never been released officially? Why should I feel bad because some stupid rag in Dallas doesn't like it? What do they know about me or Stevie? People don't like it if ya do something, people don't like it if ya don't do something." He continues: "I did the first two or three Stevie records that first came out because I felt that was [right]. I went through everything and that was stuff that had never been put out legitimately. So I tried to help with that, but I haven't had much to do with it since then. Except like I said, all that stuff is bootlegged, five, six times. And there's truckloads of that stuff." cont'd next week | |
Moved? Changed email addresses? Please let us know of any changes in your address, email, or phone number so we can keep you informed about the Blues community in Arizona. Email us at: info@phoenixblues.org or write to: Phoenix Blues Society P.O. Box 36874 Phoenix, Arizona 85067 | | GOT BLUES? If you are a Blues musician, a group, or a club that features Blues music, and would like to be listed, please send your info to info@phoenixblues.org and we'll be happy to list your event in our weekly Out & About section of the newsletter | | |
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