THE BLUES SCALE

Usually I don’t have to make New Year’s resolutions: my wife makes them for me. But this past January, I decided to challenge myself to shed a few pounds—20 pounds to be exact. Well, I did better than that, losing a total of 24.2 pounds in a little less than 5 months, which brought me back to my marriage weight just in time for our 25th wedding anniversary. That was in May. Since then I’ve backslid a bit: nine days in Dublin in June didn’t help; nor have all of the caloric temptations of the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. So last weekend I resolved to get back on the exercise wagon—well, back into the gym—with renewed commitment . . . which also required adding some new music to my iPod shuffle.

For much of my run for the roses during the winter and spring, I listened either to my 137-song “Rock Party” playlist or to my 50-song “Blues You Can Use” playlist. But at a couple of crucial points I tuned in exclusively to a couple of albums that I had been tempted by but had never gotten around to adding to my music library. The first was Piety Street by John Scofield. I wrote a lengthy blog post about Scofield and his band after I saw them perform at the Regattabar in Cambridge a year-and-a-half ago. Worrying that their recording would not come close to their terrific live act, I resisted the temptation of picking up the CD . . . but finally I succumbed—and I am happy to admit that my worrying was completely unwarranted. Ostensibly an album of gospel music, Piety Street is really a blues album of the first order, with Scofield’s guitar front and center—and it was just what I needed to keep me on the straight and narrow of the treadmill during the dark days of February.

But it wasn’t all that I needed: after years of having guitar hero Rick Derringer’s album Blues Deluxe in my shopping cart, I also finally added it to my listening mix. And what a great addition it proved to be: every single tune on the album—mostly blues standards—is a keeper . . . and the whole package certainly kept me go-go-going during March.

But now it’s August—the dog days, no less—and once again I am looking to the blues to tip the scale in my favor. So I currently have cued up on my iPod shuffle a pair of albums, by local blues bands, that I’ve been deferring the pleasure of listening to for a while . . . until now. One is Low Expectations by Ernie and the Automatics, a blues/rhythm-n-blues/rock unit that has been making some noise around here for the past couple of years. Part of their claim to fame is that a couple of the band members—guitarist Barry Goudreau and drummer Sib Hashian—are alums of the legendary “corporate rock” band Boston. Another part of their claim to fame is that the “Ernie” who lends the band half its moniker (he also plays rhythm guitar) is Ernie Boch, Jr., who sports a household name thanks to his late father, who owned several major car dealerships in the Boston area. Come on down! But the band is truly greater than the sum of its parts—which also include Brian Maes on keyboards and vocals, Mike “Tunes” Antunes on tenor sax, and Tim Archibald on bass. Low Expectations features tunes with super-tight arrangements, catchy hooks and fine guitar, piano, and sax work. I should get some pretty good mileage out of it. (I might also mention that Ernie and the Automatics are well worth catching live and in-person: I saw them at Firefly’s in Quincy back in January—they were barbeque hot!)

The other album that I added last weekend is Living in the Light by Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters, a band that I wrote about at length on this blog a year or so ago. This album came out not long after I saw them in concert in Arlington, and coincidentally, I was in the guitar repair shop in Winchester run by bass player Jim Mouradian and his son Jon on the morning that Jim received his copy of the CD—it was just sitting on the counter unopened and unlistened to: so it has been on my radar screen for quite a while. Well, it was worth waiting for . . . though the blues stylings are really quite different from those generated by Ernie and the Automatics. First of all, they are much more gospel-oriented, fueled considerably by Hammond B3 organ player Dave Limina and also by pianist Dave Maxwell on a couple of numbers. Also, some of the vocal numbers, delivered by Kim Wilson and Dave Keller, are a bit earnest (no pun intended on Boch, Jr.) lyrically: “What Can I Do For You” might be too overtly religious for some listeners’ tastes, “Child of a Survivor” has the Holocaust as its subject (an unlikely subject for a blues tune), and “Donna Lee” is a very personal tribute to Ronnie Earl’s wife. But, almost needless to say, the quality of the music—with Earl’s guitar the main event—is first-rate. With Jim Mouradian on bass and Lorne Entress on drums, Earl and Limina deliver the goods. No less than Ernie and the Automatics, Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters should help to keep me on track for my daily workout.

JOHN SCOFIELD AND THE PIETY STREET BAND . . . LIVE AT THE REGATTABAR

For me, the first surprise related to last night’s show at the Regattabar in Cambridge was that I was there. John Scofield and the Piety Street Band sold out all four of their Friday-Saturday weekend performances. Not the biggest fan of Scofield (I have only one of his albums on my iPod, and it’s not among my favorites), I had taken a pass on the first call from a friend organizing fellow guitarists for an outing to the gig. But when an extra ticket became available at almost the last minute, I decided there could be worse ways to spend an hour or so on a Saturday evening, so . . .

So . . . the third surprise was how much I enjoyed the second surprise, which was the type of music that Scofield and his band performed: a rousing 75-minute set of Gospel tunes. A legendary jazz guitarist, Scofield has obviously returned close to his bluesy roots, and he and his fellow Piety Street-ers (Jon Cleary on vocals and keyboards, George Porter, Jr. on bass and Ricky Fataar on drums) gave the packed house a truly engaging show. Apparently the band’s name derives from the name of the street where their recording studio is located in New Orleans . . . which is good to know because there was no pie-in-the-sky piousness to their playing: this was “roots” music, pure and simple—bluesy, funky, and rockin’. While there was no air of irreverence about the band’s performance of traditional Gospel songs (sung mostly by Cleary, whose terrific voice is matched by his awesome piano chops), the choice of music seemed mostly an excuse—a really good excuse—for Scofield and company to stretch out and play multiple variations on the blues.

The dominant musical inflection of the night, then, was unabashedly pentatonic . . . but just when Scofield appeared to have locked himself into that boxy groove, he would bedazzle the there-to-be-bedazzled audience—mostly middle-aged male guitar players by the cut of them (. . . or us!)—with a “How-did-he-do-that?” Houdini-like escape clause (or phrase) pulled from his well-stocked gig bag of jazz tricks. Given that Scofield and company could play such “roots” music in their sleep, the fourth surprise of the night was that there was nothing perfunctory about their performance: they were clearly “feeling it” . . . and so was the audience.

If I were a guessing man, I’d guess that seeing John Scofield and the Piety Street Band “live and in person” could be more “vital” than listening to their recently-released CD, Piety Street, with its cookie-cutter 5-minute versions of the songs that they gave extended treatment to last night. Still, I might just add that album to my iPod: that sort of music doesn’t get old . . .


Postscript (9:30 a.m.):
I just found on YouTube a really interesting documentary video about the making of the Piety Street album: check it out!