How English Keyboard Star Jon Cleary takes his skills around the globe.
Keys To The Highway
Blues Matters! (The UK's MOST READ and MOST RESPECTED Blues magazine)
Feb-Mar 2005
To purchase: www.bluesmatters.com

I Guess its fair to say that a music star and reknowned live performer of Blues and Roots music of the calibre of Bonnie Raitt could pretty much take her pick of players to tour and record with. I guess its also fair to say that for an unassuming and friendly English muso to land the roll of keyboard player in the BR band is quite an acheivement, but Jon Cleary has and clearly relishes that very position.

So here I am at the Albert Hall in London on the initial promise of a joint interview with Bonnie and Jon, courtesy of their respective labels and management/PR folk. However Ms Raitt has had to fit in three 'big radio' spots on this very day, so in journalistic terms Pete walks the plank. The lady has to grab a quick respite before heading onstage to follow a deliciously clear and warm opening spot from my amigos Eric Bibb and Dave Bronze; having agreed to 'wait till next time' with the Tour Manager I adhere to this, despite at one point backstage being but one yard from the flame-haired slide queen. This IS The Blues!

To make up for this, Jon could not be more accommodating and here's what we discussed:

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BM: Welcome back to Britain, Jon
JC: Thank you! It's very good to be back over

BM: We don't see enough of you and for younger readers and the curious, you are originally from England…
JC: Oh yes - from London and then I spent most of my early life down in the countryside in Kent

BM: Were your family musical?
JC: My grandmother was singer, her husband was a professional singer and tapdancer - stage name Frank Neville, the Little Fella With The Educated Feet (Well you'll have to stop using that one then, Gary Boner! - PS). Apparently he was pretty good Back In The Day!

BM: Did you have piano in the house?
JC: Yes! My grandmother's - she lost her arm in an industrial accident and spent the compensation money on the piano…

BM: A somewhat bizarre choice??
JC: (Laughs) Yes - and that was the very piano I grew up playing!

BM: Did you, like me, tap out the James Bond Theme and go from there?
JC: Ah no - the first thing for me was a Bill Withers tune 'Lean On Me '

BM: Wow - I tried Use Me, one of my favourite songs still! Did you play in a band?
JC: Yes I used to play in a band, with a guitar player called Roger Hubbard

BM: The Grease Band chap?
JC: It was called Delta Wing when I was with them; we were maybe 14 or 15. Playing in the Sussex/Kent area while I was still at school

BM: How did you get hold of your records? I used to go to Soho and find 45s
JC: Yes - all the street market places, Honest John's…but I was 17 when I left to go to the States…

BM: 17??
JC: Yes - I went by myself, it wasn't a family move…I thought I was going to be going for few weeks but I ended up staying

BM: And which part was this?
JC: New Orleans

BM: When I first heard you, in my ignorance I assumed you were from NO - this was on 'Live At Tipitina's' on a Various Artists album, yellow cover
JC: Good heavens! that was the first record I was on…used to play there every Monday night

BM: I only had the record, I have never been there
JC: Well they just celebrated their 25th Anniversary; it was hippie club back in the day, in a building by the Mississippi River. They used to rent out the back room for live music and parties - you'd get Professor Longhair, James Booker or Irma Thomas to come and play. There was a circuit back in those days and R&B acts would play white fraternity gigs and be well-received

BM: Because they were open to the music?
JC: They all loved the music, Pete. It was the soundtrack for growing up

BM: So you found yourself playing whatever piano was in the room?
JC: Yeah - there weren't all that many clubs that even had pianos. I moved to NO and spent two years just listening, absorbing the sounds. Then I came back to England and put together a band to play on the pub circuit around London for about two years - the Savage Mooses, used to play the Dublin Castle, along with Juice On The Loose, Diz and the Doormen. But I missed NO and went back over there, around 1985

BM: Did you find yourself on bills with people you had grown up listening to?
JC: Yes - Cousin Joe was at Tipitina's the first night I played there, Walter Washington…

BM: The Wolfman fella?
JC: Yeah - I was in his band for while, great experience. Also on Johnny Adams gigs

BM: 'Room With A View'
JC: Correct, fine singer

BM: Lou Rawls-y
JC: (Warmly) Very much so…then Earl King and Snooks Eaglin

BM: I like the Radiators...plenty of space in the sound, like Little Feat
JC: Absolutely - they are very popular and they've been there since the earliest days, started at the Maple Leaf but now of course they tour much larger places as they have big following

BM: Now I know you manly as a piano player, but you also play guitar?
JC: I started playing music when I was very young and I was a guitar player really until I moved to New Orleans, I always fooled with the piano then it kind of flipped around

BM: Nils Lofgren…he ended up playing piano with Neil Young on 'After The Goldrush'…so much in music is right time, right place - you are somewhere, something's needed that you happen to play that instrument and you do it
JC: I think you're right, it's often circumstance

BM: How did you meet Bonnie?
JC: I was in a recording studio doing a record with Taj Mahal (Good answer! - PS)

BM: Which one?
JC: 'Phantom Blues'

BM: Yeah! Mike Campbell's on that…
JC: Bonnie came in to sing a duet on a tune, then I met her again when I was playing on a BB King show in the house band and there was John Lee Hooker and Rufus Thomas and Bonnie was on that. Shortly after she was putting together a new band…

BM: Do you mainly play piano with Bonnie
JC: Well it's more B-3 than other stuff

BM: I was here at Clapton's gig a few weeks back and he had Chris Stainton and Billy Preston, on that very stage! Do you have any heroes?
JC: Chuck Leavell…Dr John…James Booker

BM: What gear do you tour with?
JC: Hammond B-3, Roland Digital piano

BM: That gives you a Wurlitzer type sound too?
JC: Yes that's in it

At this point Jon scoots off for the soundcheck and as I am not thrown out I get to hear the band play and the preparation for guest spots (Beth Nielsen Chapman on 'Angel From Montgomery' and Bryan Adams in rocker mode, since you ask - PS). We then resume the chat when Jon returns to The Green Room

BM: I want to talk about your current album as I have it (Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen: "Pin Your Spin" - PS), there's a 'Monkey' song which I had heard on a Bonnie album - you wrote that?
JC: Some songs get written in five minutes and some take fifteen years to finish - that was a faster one 'Funky Monkey Biznis'

BM: It's on 'Silver Lining' I think
JC: Yes, we just put a demo up and worked on it for that

BM: Bonnie does look beyond the US for material, I know she likes Paul Brady…may I ask you about Mitchell Froom and Chad Blake? - they worked on Crowded House material and get a very colourful set of tones in the studio
JC: It was just that one album with them, that one session. The sounds come from Chad, using all manner of strange preamps and circuits, a lot of the guitar sounds though came from George the guitarist. He has his own guitar processors. They do seem to have a way of giving a unique colouring to the sounds

BM: As a band or layered up?
JC: Mostly recorded as a band, there are some overdubs sometimes

BM: It sounds as though they want certain parts to grab your ears, e.g. Leslie tones dropped in suddenly
JC: They get pretty artistic with the mixing process. You can either reproduce 'straight' what is played OR you can get creative and create differences in atmosphere track to track

BM: It's the use of reverbs, I think
JC: Reverb, compressors, delays, microphone placements - one time they put the organ through an old public address system!

BM: So - do you tour worldwide with Bonnie?
JC: Yes, all over

BM: Your own record, the new one - it has almost a 'Sophisticated Bar-Room' sound to it
JC: That's quite a nice way of putting it!

BM: Clearly it's not studio trickery that makes this ensemble sound good but at the same time it's hi-fi...how do you do that?
JC: Well…John Porter mixed it and he goes to great deal of trouble to make everything sound as good as it can be. A lot of it was just me recording at home in the first place

BM: Home being?
JC: New Orleans - I've got a little studio there. We did some tracks in a big studio and I took them away to work on them, but originally basing that from the 'sketches' done at home. The challenge is always to make the best sounding tunes but to hang on to the vibe and feel

BM: I have a deep personal dislike of the way keys are used on mainstream pop records - that synth wash thing, it kills a song's dynamic too often. Do producers lean on you to do that ever?
JC: (Modestly) I think if I get hired for sessions it's because people like the stuff that I do. I don't have to change what I do, luckily. I prefer more organic sounds. Keyboards you take on the road are much better these days to get those tones

BM: Singing!
JC: (Chuckles) Singing's a strange one, really. I can't speak for anyone else but I can pretty much play music any time I want, sit down and fall into a groove. But to sing I've go to be in the mood for it. Because it's expressing something personal and I have to feel that way at the time I do it. To have some inspiration

BM: Are you a Boz Scaggs fan?
JC: I know Boz better as a person than I do his music, actually. And I'm friends with some of his band members

BM: There's a little of Boz vocal phrasing in your work
JC: I imagine we listen to a lot of the same people…old school R&B music

Because Bonnie does not have a new album out, I wonder whether this tour and tonight's gig may lean towards the recent Greatest Hits set

JC: She's got what eighteen albums so she can pick stuff from any of those and she does know people want to hear certain selections so she takes that into account

BM: What was the last album you bought for yourself?
JC: (Ruefully) A Gregory Isaacs record that I went and left on the plane by mistake

BM: Anyone you would still like to work with, given the chance?
JC: Bobby Womack…Sly Stone…I like d'Angelo

BM: The 'Brown Sugar' guy?
JC: Yes!

BM: Except his second album had no tunes at all on it! What a letdown
JC: I disagree, I liked the first one but I did like the second one too

BM: When you're not in this country, what do you miss?
JC: Decent news and newspapers, steak and kidney pie!, decent cup of tea...nice pint of bitter

BM: How have you managed to live in the States for such a long time and not pick up a hint of an accent?
JC: Some people DO think I've picked up an accent! I can't hear it though…PS

Pete Sargeant
http://www.bluesmatters.com/