Blind Lemon Phillips: Blues & funk with a sizzling beat
Sparkling CD shows off blues ensemble's power & soul
Phillips has a gritty down-home guitar sound influenced by icons like Albert Collins and Keith Richards, but his style is his own. It should be, as he's been honing it in juke joints and blues bars for 25 years, everywhere from his hometown of Buffalo, NY, where he first got the guitar bug, to San Francisco, where he has been a fixture on the blues and funk scene since hitting town in 1996.
Over his decade-plus in the Bay Area, Phillips has slowly gathered together a band that could do him justice, blues-fun veterans who, collectively, have recorded and toured with stars from contemporary stars like Boz Scaggs and Bonnie Raitt, funksters like Fred Wesley and Sly Stone, and blues masters like Lowell Fulson, Buddy Guy and Pinetop Perkins. In other words, the players in Phillips' band have been around, and they know how to bring the funk.
Phillips and band bring searing heat and a sense of fun to terrific new CD
In 2009 Phillips finally brought that band into the studio to create the CD, Live @ Hyde Street Studios, a high-test calling card designed to help spread word of this excellent blues ensemble to blues and funk lovers everywhere.The CD's title is significant, as this is one of those rarest of albums, a studio recording that actually comes close to delivering the energy and power of Phillips and his cohorts' live shows. Throughout, Phillips and his crew show they're equally adept at bringing a new take to familiar crowd pleasers and giving lesser known tunes the hit treatment.
“I'll tell you what's special about this record,” Phillips says. “We played it live. This wasn't some studio pick-up band. These are people who have all played together a lot. I gave everybody an idea of what I wanted on each song, and then we played it live, and everybody played their butts off.”
The CD blasts off with a rave up version of the dance hit, “Funkytown,” driven by horns and organ and highlighted by Phillips' live-wire guitar solo. The funk engine is pushed into overdrive with “Come On, Come Over,” a particular triumph for the rhythm section of bassist Tim Wager and drummer Robin Roth. And Phillips' growling vocals take over another old-favorite, “I Thank You.”
Phillips' guitar work blazes throughout these tracks, providing the album's rock-solid core. The attack is hard-charging and spirited, but the playing is tasteful and clean. And Phillips' gruff-edged singing is countered wonderfully by the soulful vocals of the sizzling Mz. Dee, whose resume includes a tenure as the lead singer for Johnny Otis. Phillips and Dee split the lead singing duties on the album, creating a perfect compliment of power and poise. All the while, the smoking keyboard work of Tony Lufrano and the fiery horn section help keep the energy turned to “high” from first note to last.
A blues man's journey
Charley “Blind Lemon” Phillips left Buffalo in the late 70s at the age of 16, guitar in hand. He spent some time at William and Mary College, but by 1985, a 25-year-old Phillips found himself in Lexington, Virginia, playing guitar in earnest in a classic rock band, playing the licks of guitarists like Clapton, Beck and Page, people he had idolized his whole life. But he had also already discovered the blues.“Albert Collins came to my attention in 1978,” Phillips says, “and that made a huge impact. If I had to pick one favorite blues guy, it would be him. Then I found out Albert Collins listened to T-Bone Walker. That's become a lifelong passion of mine. Find out who your musical inspirations listened to, and then go and study them.”
During his time in Lexington, Phillips realized it was time to take his musical craft seriously, and he began studying with local legend guitarist Steve Hoke (who contributes pedal steel, mandolin and fiddle tracks on Live @ Hyde Street Studios final cut, “Terry Filly“).
“I thought, 'Damn, I'm going to take lessons and really get good at this,'” Phillips recalls. “What I learned from Steve became a roadmap to the guitar and gave me the tools to get to exactly the music I wanted to play. I wanted to be a guitar player, and Steve was a real player who loved the music just like it was his first day. He was a great inspiration.”
The West Coast calls
In 1996, Phillips made the move to San Francisco, intent on plugging into the City's vibrant live blues scene. He knew no one, but bravely plunged in, showing up at jam sessions, clubs and audition calls to meet as many musicians as he could. After some tough sledding, Phillips hooked up with a band called Mojo Madness. And he started simply calling the people that he wanted to play with.“Once I started meeting people, things took off,” Phillips says. “I would get gigs, and then try to get as many of the same players on each gig as I could. I started to get into horns and made a point to meet all the horn players.”
It was that constant gigging and music scene networking that brought Phillips both the musical chops and the local reputation to assemble a working band of the quality of his current outfit. And Phillips knew soon that horns would have to be part of the mix.
“It's the groove factor,” he says, “the way the horn section can propel the energy and the solos. The music is just that much more exciting with those horns.”
When a small venue size calls for a 4-piece band, Phillips can show up with just his guitar, his rhythm section and his keyboardist and turn out a night of fantastic, wailing blues. But when the Lemon Squeezer Horns and the Lemon Drop backup singers get to crank it up and do their thing, they fill up any performance venue or festival stage all the more with Charley Phillips' stinging blues guitar and vocals, those walloping horns and a driving rhythm that doesn't let up. Big blues, big funk, big fun.
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