Windy City Blues (feat. Lurrie Bell)

This being the final release of 2022 and #134 in the Need To Know Badass Blues Instrumental Series, we're going to pull the tether back in to feature one of the Sons of the Blues, guitarist Lurrie Bell, reminding us how it's done on the Windy City Blues. The son of legendary Chicago harp player and frontman Carey Bell, Lurrie started out in the 1970s playing with Eddy Clearwater, Big Walter Horton, Eddie Taylor, and Koko Taylor's Blues Machine. In the late 70s, Lurrie formed The Sons Of The Blues with Billy Branch (NTK#81) and Freddie Dixon leading to a deal with Alligator Records. Lurrie also began recording with his Dad, releasing 10 albums over 20 years before his Dad's passing in 2007. A highly accomplished artist in his own right, Lurrie is an international ambassador of the Blues, he's released twelve solo albums, and has won several Blues Music Awards and a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album. It was an absolute blast and a thrill to have Lurrie sitting two feet away from me playing the hell out of this track back in 2017. Enjoy!

The backing band on this track is Rich Kirch (John Lee Hooker 1984-2001) on rhythm guitar, Deszon Claiborne (Robben Ford) on drums and myself on bass. The track was recorded at Skunkworks in Capitola CA. Mixed by the Grammy winning Godfather of Grunge, Jack Endino (Nirvana, Nando Reis), and is often the case, masterfully mastered by Alex McCollough at True East Mastering.

Times Square 42nd Street Station (feat. Dave Liebman)

#133 in The Need To Know Badass Blues Instrumentals Series, Times Square 42nd Street Station features one of the most unapologetically daring saxophonists ever, Dave Liebman. What more do you need to know, other than Liebman played in both the Elvin Jones and Miles Davis Groups in the early 70's, including on Miles', groundbreaking On The Corner. That is definitely enough for me but, there's another half-century of composing and teaching and recording and touring to add to the legacy of "Lieb" as he is often called. Dave is an NEA and a Canadian Arts Council scholar, a teacher at the Manhattan School of Music and the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he has consistently been rated in the top three soprano saxophonists in Down Beat Magazines reader's poll since 1973, he has recorded more than 500 albums including 200 as a band leader, and his list of collaborators is a who's who of jazz. Dave is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki, Finland); the Order of Arts and Letters (France); and the NEA Jazz Master award which is the highest accolade granted by the U.S. government in the jazz field. A little story I will share with you about this track; we invited Dave to guest on this track and he generously accepted. My only instructions were for him to "do his thing" so when I got his tracks back it was 4 complete passes of well, this. My immediate reaction was uh oh, this is pretty out stuff and is our audience going to dig it? So I called Dave and explained that although I thought it was awesome I thought it might be too challenging for the average listener and could he just start with something a little more simple and then build from there, to which Dave with his most classic and wonderful native Brooklyn attitude replied..."Frank, you wanted Liebman, you got Liebman". He went on to say that I probably had hundreds of guest soloists playing pentatonic blues and if I wanted more of that I wouldn't have contacted him and he was absolutely right! I shared Dave's tracks with some of my more sophisticated musician friends to confirm that Dave was actually not punking me and the general consensus was that Dave Liebman is a genius and as I stated earlier, unapologetically daring. So here's what I came up with, I used all four of Dave's tracks at once because to me it actually makes more sense this way. Ultimately, whether it makes sense or not, I hope you enjoy the result.

The backing band on this track is Rich Kirch (John Lee Hooker 1984-2001) on rhythm guitar, Andrew "the kid" Guterman (Rick Estrin) on drums, and myself on bass. The track was recorded at Skunkworks in Capitola CA and Laura De Rover's place in NYC. Mixing and Mastering duties were handled by the infamous F-Bomb. And a special shout out to Liebman's manager, Dave Love for facilitating.