Year: 1996
Time: 54:37
Size: 126,0 MB
Label: Speakeasy
Styles: Blues/Electric Blues
Art: Front+ Back
Tracks Listing:
1. Cat Nap Later - 3:25
2. Why Get Up - 4:09
3. Someday, Someway - 4:13
4. Thank You - 5:30
5. I Thank The Fool - 3:39
6. All Your Love - 4:21
7. Bad Attitude - 4:40
8. Bad News - 3:15
9. Low Rider - 5:42
10. I Can Hear You Calling - 3:06
11. Too Tired - 3:33
12. Don't Lose Your Cool - 3:33
13. Superstition - 5:27
The Old Chicago Blues Band's Third Anniversary CD could improve your love life. Sax player Chris Murphy tells the story of a male patron he knew who hadn't had a date in three years. Standing at the bar on a Thursday night holding a copy of the CD, a woman approached the man and said she'd love to hear it but didn't have a CD player. "So the guy is thinking fast, and invites her back to his place, makes her a cup of coffe and plays the CD for here," relays Murphy. "Saturday night he comes back to the bar, girl on his arm, first date in three years, a little spring in his step. That made me feel good." For three years the band - Murphy, drummer John Knapp, bassist Colin Stewart, and guitarist Doug Varty - has been bluesing up the Old Chicago Speakeasy and Grill on Carling Street in downtown London , backing dozens of guest artists, many featured on the new disc. Six months after their inception, talk of a CD surfaced, but personnel changes, financial and scheduling constraints delayed the project until February of this year when they descended on Paul Venesoen's Studio 107 here in town for five Sunday sessions. The fourteen tracks are a sort of greatest hits of the band's live gigs, and the nie lead singers got to choose their favourite songs. "A lot of artists picked their own songs," says Murphy. "We really wanted to do Mustang Sally and Sweet Home Chicago, because they're very popular and they sort of define what the band is about." He feels Mustang Sally has been a big selling point, because everyone knows the song, but few fans they talked to actually had it in their record collection. "We do it faster and funkier. The original was half the speed." Mike West's Dark End of the Street was the first songs Murphy had ever heard him sing, so it seemed a natural choice. On Broadway always opens Ben Shane's show, so he does it on the CD. The Old Chicago staff picked I Ain't Drunk for Murphy to front since it was one of their favourites. He was also scheduled to sing Older Woman, but that plan changed. "Originally I sang it, and I did such a great job that we brought Chicago Pete in to sing it (laughs). The ringer, the experienced pro. And he changed the whole direction of the song." Other leads include Richard Knight on Downhome Blues, and Let's Straighten It Out, Doug Varty with Let Me Love You Baby and I Gotcha. Tim Woodcock on Boom Bapa Boom, Colin Stewart singing Mercury Blues, Andi Hardy on You'll Lose a Good Thing, Chicago Pete on Sweet Home Chicago, and Murphy and his father Phil jamming saxes on Instrumental Blues. "The jam with me and my Dad just sort of happened in the studio," he says. "That was fun. They all went pretty quickly. We recorded as much as we could live, and then we went back and did things. There are some songs where I played keys and two saxes." Despite having played these songs countless times on stage, the band imported Jim Neil, sound man at the Grand Theatre, to produce the album. Murphy says his touch was a tremendous help and calls him a "secret little treasure in London. Really a world class talent." "One reason we needed a producer was just to make sure that because we've been playng the songs so long we needed someone from outside the band to say 'yeah, they're good'. Some of the things he actually changed in the studio. Becasue we work togethter all the time, we nneded someone from outside the band to defray any kind of differences of opinion, so that we could still get along when we went to work. It just helped to have a person that was objective. We needed to have someone who cuold take all the different artists, and make sure that when it came out on the album it had a little bit of cohesiveness.....
Fourth Anniversary
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