Dear John, Mike Lewis is one of the baddest assest pickers anywhere. I was looking for something to feature this week and saw this interview I did with him a few years bac. Made me miss BN&GM. I wish they were still gigging. Loved the band and all the fellas. I wish all the acts on my list were gigging as well. Looks like the festival will sit idle for another year. We weren't able to have any fundraisers this year, for obvious reasons. I get my first vaccine shot tomorrow. I''m excited. Pleasetake yours when your number comes up. We need you. Be safe and no huggee, no kissee. It's far from over. Sincerely, Jim Crawford - PBS |
Mr. Lewis by Jim Crawford Okay, so you've played guitar with Chuck Berry and toured briefly with the Rolling Stones. You've played a set at Madison Square Garden in New York City and played a show at Carnegie Hall. These should be highlights to anyone's career and they are to Mike Lewis, co-founder and lead guitar player for Big Nick & The Gila Monsters but..."To me those are pretty big deals but," Mike says over a plate of huevos rancheros at TeePee Mexican Restaurant recently, "the thing I keep thinking back to (as the biggest highlight) is being inducted into the (AZ Blues) Hall of Fame. It's kind of like being an astronaut, you know? There aren't very many of them."Mike is a true native born Gila Monster having attended schools in Phoenix and spending part of his high school years at Camelback High before relocating to Virginia in the '60s with his mom. He started playing guitar when he was 8 years old and along with his drummer brother, Steve, gradually became hard-core Bluesmen."I played in bands in the '60s in the days of The Spiders that later became Alice Cooper," Mike recalls. "We shared the bill with them. There was a club called The VIP and it was on 16th St & Osborn. It was the old Phoenix Jaycees building and the guy there was a Jaycee. His name was Jack Curtis who on the weekends had a teen club. The Spiders played in there. There was a band called Your Friends. Another band of the day was Red, White and Blues Band. A couple of those guys went off and formed a band called The Tubes. For me the first thing was seeing Chet Atkins on TV. I was just enamored by the sound and look of the guitar and what he was doing on it. Then came The Ventures and then, of course, The Beatles. It was The Beatles that really put it all together for me. I saw what they were doing and said 'That's it!' I really didn't have any direction until I saw The Beatles. Total focus."Mike and his friends started out the way most American kids started. They played rock 'n' roll and Beatles tunes because that's just what was going on."In the early days, we did a lot of covers," Mike said. "Little Richard, Chuck Berry and stuff. We didn't know, but were being introduced to our own musical heritage through the British Invasion. And a few years later we started getting interested in the Blues. The Yardbirds played some Bluesy kind of stuff and of course Eric Clapton was in The Yardbirds. Somehow one of the guys in my brother's band got turned on to the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. We started listening to that and that's when I first heard Mike Bloomfield . The older brother always brings home the cool music, right? So he would bring home stuff. He brought home John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers. That was my first real exposure to Clapton and Jeff Beck with The Yardbirds. And right around that time is when I met Muddy Mason, James "Muddy" Mason 'cause we went to the same high school together. He was a senior and I was a freshman but we hit it off right away. He was from Chicago and he was the real deal. His name was Muddy then. I remember going to him and saying "Listen to this man. Check this out. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. This is really cool." He goes "Yeah, it's all right but you need to listen to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf." He knew all about it from the very beginning. He was the real thing. "Like many of his contemporaries, Mike heard Clapton and worked his way back to the roots of the music. "I remember reading an interview back then when Clapton was in Cream and somebody asked him "Who's your inspiration?" and he goes "BB King." I'm like "Who's BB King?" and we go out and seek out BB King. And BB became well known in the white community shortly after that. All of the guys owe some thanks to the Rolling Stones, Clapton, The Beatles for introducing us to our own musical heritage. I'll never forget that. From then on it was just the journey."After finishing high school in Virginia Mike went right to New York and did studio work, Off-Broadway pit bands and doing what was needed to survive in the Big Apple during the '70s. After 23 years away, Mike finally made his way back to the Valley of the Sun."I ended up coming back and I went to Char's," Mike says. "I saw in the paper a band called The Retreads was hosting a jam. I think they were on maybe Monday night but I knew that James Mason was in that band. I thought "I'm gonna go see my friend." I hadn't seen him in years. I walked in and he was standing with his back to the audience tuning his bass. I walked up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He turns, looks at me, pauses for a second and says "You lookin' for a job?" I said"Yeah, I just got back to town." He said, "Great, our guitar player just quit." So, I sat and watched their show and then started playing with those guys, The Retreads. And, Bobby Whiteshoes was the drummer. It was Bobby Whiteshoes on drums, Muddy Mason on bass, another guitar player named Lars Gamble. He played slide, and harp and sang. So, two guitars, bass and drums. We did a lot of original stuff and standards like Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and stuff like that. We played at Char's and all around at the places of the day. During that year Lars left and we got another guitar player. I played lead and Lars handled the slide. He primarily played rhythm and slide and harp. He was a really good slide player. He ended up moving somewhere and we got hooked up with Roscoe Taylor, a singer. We were just moving right along. One person would leave and we'd get another, a different singer, whatever. Roscoe was with us for a while and we played at Char's a lot."Right around that time John Samora came to town and he would come to the jams and sit in. That's how we met him and got to know him. At one point I was talking to James Mason on the phone and I said he, Bobby and I should quit this band and start another one with John Samora and call it Big Nick & The Gila Monsters. John was great. He had everything. Great repertoire , great personality, great stage presence. We had another guy, Brad Townsend on keyboards. We went to play our first gig at Chubby's Finish Line over there by Turf Paradise. We went to the gig and John had a list of the songs that he did and he's just call 'em out and call the key and we just went into it. James recorded that night. He had an old Revox reel to reel he'd bring to the gigs. I think I've still got that tape somewhere." That's how we started and after a couple of years Brad left. We're sitting at the Brass Rail for a gig that night wondering what we were gonna do. Brad played a Hammond organ and it was very prominent on our first CD. We were all a little tense about it and I just said let's just do what we do. We'll play as a quartet and if somebody appears we'll see what happens. Let's not wrap ourselves around the axle trying to find somebody to replace the keyboards. So we played the gig that night and it was great. It was different and of course, we missed the Hammond but we never looked back. We just went forward and that was the nucleus of the band for a number of years. Maybe 10 or 12 years. And then Bobby decided he was going to retire and move back home to California. We spent a couple of years looking for a drummer. It was kind of ironic that one of the years we didn't have an actual drummer, when we were having guys fill in, is the first year we won Best Blues Band in Phoenix. We finally found Ricky (J Lockhart). He's a super man and a great drummer. He's been with us ever since. It's been about eight years now. "The Gila Monsters were devastated when Muddy Mason passed. He was a huge part of the Valley Blues scene having been a vivid presence since the '60s. "Losing James was huge," Mike said. "He was total pure, the real thing. For me personally, he was my childhood friend. We used to have sleepovers and listen to Blues and have fantasies about moving to Chicago."Life goes on and the band persevered although they still miss Muddy and feel his presence during gigs."When I was in bands with Muddy in the '60s he always played harp and sang," Mike said. "He was a front man. When I came back he was playing bass and he was a great player. Paul Thomas came to us at a time when Muddy had some surgery on his hands and couldn't play. Paul sat in for like three or four months and it was going to be Paul (after Muddy died). It wasn't final but it was pretty close. It was gonna be Paul and then he passes away. Ricky came and said he had the guy. It was his friend Rocky (Heyer). At that point with the passing of James, and then Paul, we said bring him on. Rocky was so professional. He listened to all of our records and some tapes of stuff not on record and he woodshedded for a couple of weeks. We got together for one of our rare rehearsals and started calling off the songs. It was like pressing the play button on the CD. He played the exact part just like James had recorded with a whole lot of reverence and respect. Now after a few years he's working his own thing in but at first it was get the foundation and I really respected that. We didn't ask him to do it. We didn't even talk to him before we played. He just did it."With our band, we all had jobs and we were never real anal about it all. I've been in a lot of bands in my life and you rehearse the thing to death and check and double check everything. With this band, we've been together 20 plus years and I think we've only rehearsed about 12 times. Like where we actually got together to work our new material. We do have a horn section that plays with us periodically and we always get together for them. Usually those rehearsals are not to learn new material. It's just to freshen them up. It's all come together from just playing. For me it's a way to never get in a rut and also to never peak out. I take that approach with my guitar playing. I never, ever practice. I only play when it's time to play. That way I don't get in a rut. It's always fresh. You start off playing the simplest things that sound good and after you get warmed up more comes. When I was a lot younger I used to be obsessive about it and I practiced all the time. It was making me crazy. I was always in a rut. I actually read an article in Guitar Player Magazine with Jeff Beck. Somebody said "You're so great, you must practice all the time?" He said he never practices. I'm like "What?" I was at the peak of my frustration. That was in the '70s. From that moment on I just put it down. I just realized I didn't have to be that "guy," just be who I am. I was just trying too hard. Studying, listening to records, trying to copy licks and turn them into my own, trying to plot out a solo, it was just driving me nuts. I just stopped all that. I stopped playing until it's time to go to the gig."The best part about playing in this band is we all get along so well and there's absolutely no drama."I don't think the Blues is dead. It might be in a lull but people who love the Blues will always love the Blues. Hard core will always be hard core. Everybody else comes and goes." As it should be Mike |
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| Out & About Tuesday, January 26 Waiting out the virus: Cold Shott & The Hurricane Horns www.coldshott.com The Sugar Thieves www.sugarthieves.com Gary Zak & The Outbacks www.outbackbluesband.com 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 ÂÂÂwww.rhythmroom.com ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ Nina Curri www.ninacurri.com Paris James www.parisjames.com Mother Road Trio www.motherroadtrio.com Blues Review Band Reverbnationbluesmanmike Mike Eldred www.mikeeldredtrio.com Big Daddy D & The Dynamites Facebook Cadillac Assembly Line Facebook Innocent Joe and the Hostile Witnesses Facebook Chuck Hall Facebook Pop Top Facebook Acme Blues Band Facebook Wednesday, January 27 Thursday, January 28 Hans Olson, 6 p.m., Handlebar, Apache Junction Mike Eldred Trio, 8 p.m., Kazimerz, Scottsdale Friday, January 29 Innocent Joe & The Hostile Witnesses, 7 p.m. West Alley BBQ, Chandler Carvin Jones,7 p.m., Da' Bayou Creole Kitchen, Gilbert Saturday, January 30 Hoodoo Casters, 5 p.m., Mountain View Pub, Cave Creek BluZone Duo, 6 p.m., Founding Fathers Kitchen, Tempe Carvin Jones, 6 p.m., 12 West Brewing Co., Mesa Sunday, January 31 Blues Review Band, 1 p.m., Sunflower RV Resort, Surprise Monday, February 1 |
Jams Sunday MONDAY Hooter's Blues Jam, 7 p.m., Starlite Lounge, Phoenix TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY Friday Saturday |
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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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 |
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