Omaha Reader Full Interview
July 2005
Credit: B.J. Huchtemann
The Omaha READER, Omaha, NE, copyright 2005

I heard New Orleans Jazz at an early age from both my parents who were fans and had an Uncle who lived here in the seventies and brought back suitcases of 45s that he would play me, pointing out all the subtle nuances and particulars that made each cut special. Rhythm and Blues and other genres of black American music were the main musical course at all our family parties and the soundtrack to my early years so my brain was hard wired from the get-go to think in terms of the soul and the funk. After moving to New Orleans I got to hear and see the stuff first hand and that was another thing altogether.

I was lucky to get my second education in music at the hands of Walter Washington, Jonny Adams, Snooks Eaglin and Earl King amongst others and learned a great deal about arranging, presenting a show, a lot of do's and don't's of how to be a good bandleader on and off the stage, a sort of musical multi-vitamin boost that's lasted for years

Working as a sideman with the likes of Taj Mahal, Bonnie Raitt, and B.B. King makes you look at the same picture from a different angle and makes you more three dimensional as a musician. To play on either side of the Band leader/sideman divide widens your vocabulary as far as the overall sound of the band is concerned and keeps all your musical muscles in shape. On top of this it has presented me with the opportunity to grow outside of the geographical limits of New Orleans and move in circles of musicians based in New York, Nashville and Los Angeles who are out there touring internationally, though I must say I still get my greatest pleasure playing for the home crowd in the clubs of New Orleans

I'm in the enviable position of playing regularly with two great rhythm sections, mine and Bonnie’s and I divide the time between the two. Bonnie has a new album out soon to which I contributed and I'll be touring in the fall and the new year with her. In the meantime I'm maintaining a fairly robust tour schedule with my band and will continue to do so in the breaks between Bonnie engagements.

I played guitar with a fervor and passion as soon as I was old enough to get my hands around the frets of my Dads Hagstrom acoustic and would bash it out until my fingers bled. It was an all consuming passion. My Dad had a couple of grooves he'd play on the old grand piano that had belonged to my Grandmother and had been the centerpiece of all their cockney parties in the postwar years in London. That old piano could tell a few stories. I started fooling with it ,transposing guitar shapes and trying to get my fingers round a boogie-woogie or two but it wasn't until I arrived in New Orleans and started buying up Huey Smith 45's that I started taking it seriously and putting some time in. There was a cat called James Booker that played and hung out in my local bar that was pretty phenomenal. No big deal at the time but I copped a lot of licks from just being around when he was idling away the hours with a cocktail trying out new tunes.

I've always loved a groove, I've always dug clever and natural harmonic structures in songs and arrangements and I was always around people that came at music with a lot of energy and passion and I like to see musicians dig in and bust a sweat, even if, or should I say especially if it's a slow, sensitive song. Intensity in a performance pushes all my buttons and that's probably why I dug all the punk bands in the UK in the seventies when I was a teenager. They couldn't play at all, they were all pretty uniformly dreadful in fact but they certainly got up there and worked it, generated a lot of electricity, let you know they meant it-whatever it was. I listen to a lot of Latin music for pleasure, a lot of reggae and always a healthy dollop of Johnny Guitar Watson, that guy covered all the bases.

If I have any talent at all it's a talent for recognizing talent! And in new Orleans there are a lot of great rhythm players and early on I was lucky enough to work with most of them. It was a joy hiring different combinations of the top players and just getting up on stage without any preparation and watching the sparks fly as we improvised our way through a set. It being New Orleans I could always call hip fairly obscure tunes from the local repetoire and everyone would always know just what to do. When I started wanting to play my own tunes however I needed a regular team that could learn all the new stuff and more importantly be there on every gig. That's when I decided to put the monster Gents together. In a nutshell they were soulful, talented and eager to get there stuff out there and it was an idea that suited all of us. The chemistry was undeniable and from the get go the combination of youthful enthusiasm, a high level of musical ability and the heartfelt passion of their gospel roots and my family’s musical background, combined with new material that leaned heavily on the funk and vocal harmonies seemed to be a winner. People seemed to dig it.
Over the years the lineup has changed inevitably now and again but the band has essentially been out here doing it for around ten years now, feels more like ten weeks. It's still very fresh and exciting for me.

When we were trawling around for a good name for the band I went out to see Johnny Watson and he introduced one of his band members as an Absolute Monster Gentleman. Right then I knew that was it. The musicians in the band are, as they say, 'Absolute Monsters', and every one of them a Gentlemen, it was just the idea of having the words Monster and Gentlemen in the same name that appealed to my sense of humor.

There are all sorts of new tools available for recording and editing music these days and I'm all for discovering ways of using them in most aesthetically pleasing way. All manners of crimes against taste have been committed by those who rely on the machines to do the thinking but I firmly believe they are nothing more than tools to be carefully used. The most recent album is a combination of various studio and live techniques and like all recordings is something of an experiment. I'm still searching for the perfect blend of the two and feel that I get closer with each opportunity to get in the studio. Of course by the time you've finished laboring over all the attendant details of recording an album it becomes impossible to listen to it with objective ears and I'm sure that most artists would agree with me that you have to set the bar high and the price you pay is always falling short of your aspirations. Fortunately that doesn't put me off climbing back on the saddle and having another go. People I speak to seem to be very enthusiastic about what we're doing and I find that very encouraging John Porter, my producer for the last couple of albums, and I have similar backgrounds and similar tastes and points of view about music. We share musical frames of reference and can articulate fairly abstract musical concepts with relative ease. This is important in the process of making a record and makes for expediency and precision. The creative process for me tends to be very chaotic and disorganized and John’s ability to collate and arrange the disparate elements into a cohesive form allows me free reign to come up with random ideas and flex my artistic muscles without restraint. It has proved to be a functional combination. More importantly though, he has a great sense of humor, likes a pint of Guinness and digs Johnny Guitar Watson.

The primary objective of a performance of my band, and indeed pretty much all the bands out of New Orleans, is that everyone has a rollicking good time. It has to be fun. The second punch is that I always have great musicians in my band. It seems obvious to say but a high level of technical prowess on the part of the musicians counts for a hell of a lot more when it's presented in a way that sets your booty shaking, your heart pumping, puts a big smile on your face and makes you want jump in the air. Anyone that's been out to see live music in New Orleans will attest to that.

We always get a lot of musicians in the audience coming to check us out, to try and figure out how the New Orleans cats can be so funky! But the main thing, at the climax of the show, is that everyone is up dancing, with big smiles on their faces, screaming and hollering, heading vigorously towards the merchandise stand waving vast wads of cash to buy the album and a Tee shirt for all their friends and distant family members, vowing to come and see us again next time we're in town and bring ten coach-loads of people with them!

Stats: Born in London 1962, currently living in New Orleans, about to leave shortly on a long national and international tour with Bonnie Raitt to promote her forthcoming album.

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