Dragons and Windmills (feat. Sonny Singh)

#85 in The Need To Know Badass Blues Instrumentals Series, Dragons and Windmills, features the spiritually rich Trumpet playing of Sonny Singh. The son of Sikh immigrants, Sonny grew up in South Carolina and now calls Brooklyn NY his home. In 2003, Sonny co-founded the political rock band Outernational and recorded an album produced by Rage Against The Machine's Tom Morello. in 2008 Sonny co-founded Red Baraat a merging of North Indian bhangra with elements of hip-hop, jazz, and raw punk energy. Sonny's most recent effort is his first solo album, Chardi Kala, produced by Ozomatli's Wil-Dog Abers. Sonny has also worked with a number of labor and community-based organizations in New York City as an organizer and educator and regularly facilitates workshops and classes on social justice issues, community organizing, anti-oppression, and more. His writings on racial justice, Sikhism and social change, and Islamophobia have appeared in the Huffington Post, Colorlines, Asian American Literary Review, Jadaliyya, and Open City Magazine. 

The backing band on this track is Rich Kirch (John Lee Hooker 1984-2001) on guitar, Alvino Bennett (Dave Mason, Stevie Wonder) on drums, and myself on bass. The track was recorded at Skunkworks in Capitola CA and was mixed and mastered by the super bad, F. Reid Shippen.

Detroit Jambalaya (feat. David Gerald)

#84 in The Need To Know Badass Blues Instrumentals Series, Detroit Jambalaya, features the phat and furious tone of Detroit native son, David Gerald, on guitar. The son of Rural Mississippi born and raised parents, David marinated in the sounds of the Blues and R&B music. He's the youngest of eleven children, six of whom were born and partly raised in Mississippi. Because of segregation and racial discrimination, David's dad moved the family north to Detroit so they might have a better chance at the "American Dream." First picking up a guitar at fourteen, David's earliest influences as a guitarist were Prince and the '80's Rock shredders - and it wasn't until he was in his mid-twenties that he went back to the sounds that he had grown up with: Albert King, ZZ Hill, and B.B. King. Successfully touring and recording as the David Gerald Band, David took a page from the Prince playbook and played all the instruments on his last album, N2U. From the first note that David played on this session I knew it was gonna be alright and by the time he left the session he had cooked up a full-on Jamabalaya! Bon appetite!

The backing band on this track is Rich Kirch (John Lee Hooker 1984-2001) on rhythm guitar, Alvino Bennett (Dave Mason, Stevie Wonder) on drums, and myself on bass. The track was recorded at Skunkworks in Capitola CA with additional tracking at NTA, San Bruno CA. Mixing duties were executed by a very welcomed new addition to the family, Mr. Malcolm Catto (Heliocentrics, Idris Ackamoor) at his Quatermass Sound Lab, London UK. Mastering by F-Bomb.