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Written by Kurt Brighton
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Friday, 21 December 2007 |
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Woe unto the musician who tries to play his own style of music based on a traditional form. Despite critics’ never-ending cries of “unoriginal” and “derivative” whenever a new band comes out, they still have a tendency to get their panties in a bunch when a band takes an old genre and tries to do something new with it.
Welcome to the world of the “jazz snob.” For these people, anything that’s jazzy — but which isn’t a carbon copy of what Miles Davis was doing in 1950 — is something to be frowned upon. Jason Ricci has uncovered another creature of this ilk, when it comes to the blues-based music he plays.
“First there was the Jazz Snob,” he said prior to a sound check in Seattle. “Now it’s the ‘Blues Nazi.’”
Granted, playing a style of music that leans heavily on Ricci’s outstanding blues harp but also touches on jam-band sensibilities along with rock, funk, Eastern music and — gulp — jazz is certain to raise some eyebrows among those who have an affection for traditional blues.
But it’s not 1950 anymore, is it?
“That’s a hyper-sensitive issue in the blues world and when we play blues clubs,” Ricci said. “And that’s an issue with the writers. They more or less like only the retro stuff. They use the retro equipment, they talk in the lingo — they’re basically trying to recreate a world that doesn’t exist anymore.”
For Jason Ricci and New Blood — made up of Ricci, guitarist Shawn Starski, bassist Todd Edmunds, and new addition Ron Sutton on drums — playing music is about speaking honestly from the heart while still honoring those who have come before. And you can’t do that if you take the lively, organic music that the original blues musicians carved out of their sweat and blood, music which came screaming out of their souls unbidden, and keep it in a hermetically-sealed plastic box.
“We are not a retro band,” Ricci added. “We love that music so much that we have too much respect for it to turn it into a costume party.”
There may not be costumes, but when New Blood plays, it’s definitely a party. There’s a cathartic feel to the music, a cleansing by fire that comes directly from Ricci’s roots in punk music. Strangely enough, it was his time spent as a punk singer that first led Ricci to learn blues harmonica.
“I was in a punk band and I wasn’t a very good singer — even by punk standards,” Ricci confided. “The guitar player was starting to sing a little more, and a little more, and so I wasn’t doing anything on stage. So they told me to get a harmonica. I think they told me that because I couldn’t ruin the songs with a harmonica.”
In learning how to play harp, Ricci discovered the blues, threw out all his punk records, and immersed himself in the genre. He eventually came out the other side of his self-imposed tutelage with a new respect for the blues — and with his own voice.
“Music is just a bunch of notes and beats and chords,” he said. “In language, you have different dialects all over the country that come from different influences. We have a musical dialect from not being indigenous to only one style of music. Maybe we’ve created our own dialect that’s natural to ourselves.”
That language was exciting enough to grab the attention of legendary producer John Porter, owner of a roomful of Grammys from having produced the likes of Ryan Adams, B.B. King, The Smiths and Los Lonely Boys. After a mere three and a half days in the House of Blues studio in Los Angeles, the band emerged with its best effort yet, “Rocket Number 9.”
“We had played these tunes every night for three years before we recorded them, so it wasn’t hard to do it right,” he said. “These guys were all over this stuff long before we set foot in L.A. And having (Porter) producing was like having a telepathic fifth band member.”
That New Blood tells a truthful story with their music — no matter how they may have come to speak in that particular dialect — is all that mattered to Porter. And it’s all that matters to Ricci and the band.
“That’s all that should be present: honesty,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if its blues or rap or whatever. If the performer means what they’re playing, that’s a show I want to see.”
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