Sleepless Nights will be appearing on Saturday, March 26th at Parigot, a cozy French restaurant on the edge of SoHo and Chinatown in NYC. We go on at 8:30pm and will play two sets. I’ve eaten at Parigot a number of times and it’s a delicious and comfy place to catch up with some authentic French cooking that won’t break the bank. “Parigot” is slang for ‘Parisian’ but I’m not really sure how that relates to the mood of the restaurant. It’s a very friendly place.
To get you in the mood, we are including here another sneak peek at our new, almost finished demo. It’s a cover of the song, “Sweetest Waste of Time” a duet by Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson. We hope you enjoy it and we’d love to see you at Parigot on March 26th! Parigot is located at 155 Grand Street in Manhattan and the phone number is 212-274-8859. Reservations are not required but are suggested.
The title of Mary Lou Sullivan’s 2010 portrait of guitar slinger Johnny Winter is a bit of a misnomer. Readers who pick up Raisin’ Cain – The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter, might expect a more lurid story of partying, groupies, and burned bridges. But what they’ll get instead is a sensitive, well-researched and respectful biography that gives equal time to Johnny’s important childhood experiences, his brief stay in the mainstream limelight and the long years that followed, with countless tours, a beautiful second act as Muddy Waters’ producer and advocate, and struggles with bad management, the fickle nature of popularity, and human foibles.
Blues scholars say that there’s a blues boom every ten or twenty years, however you count it. There was one in the eighties, when Stevie Ray, Robert Cray and ZZ Top were going strong. Johnny Winter found success at the tail end of the long sixties blues renaissance, but he was always under pressure to play more rock. As a young fan – my first concert was Johnny Winter at the Felt Forum during his tour supporting Captured Live – I was never aware of this dichotomy. But Raisin’ Cain makes it clear that Johnny Winter lived this conundrum day in and day out. There were always plenty of fans to fill the seats on his endless tours, but they didn’t buy all that many of his records.
Johnny and The Jammers?: With BB King at The Scene Club
Enter the most clueless management to ever take up so much space in the bio of an important artist. Any fan of Jimi Hendrix will know about Steve Paul’s Scene Club, but I didn’t know that he was Johnny Winter’s manager and that he got him his groundbreaking deal with Columbia Records. I’m not really sure how badly Paul did for Johnny. He got him the big advance, and Blue Sky Records seemed to serve Winter’s interests pretty well, even putting out all of the Muddy records. But his biggest selling album was And Live, a no brainer that must have cost hardly anything to produce.
Enter Teddy Slatus, who took over for Paul when Johnny’s contract with Columbia ran out in the eighties. Suffice it to say that Slatus pretty much wrecked Johnny’s career through inept and unprofessional management practices, including keeping him over-medicated on prescription drugs and out on the road until Johnny was more or less a wreck in his fifties, far too young to be physically and mentally debilitated.
Johnny around the time the book was released
More enjoyable to read are the sections about Johnny’s childhood and his quest to form his identity as a musician from an early age. JW grew up in an upper middle class household but apparently that didn’t keep the kids in Texas from mercilessly teasing him due to his albinism. He was left with psychological scars, not unlike his friend and sometime paramour, Janis Joplin, that made it hard for him to relax and at times understand crucial relationships. But his parents were really there for him, and they nurtured his and his brother Edgar’s talent for music right from the beginning.
There is much to recommend in this book, including details of Johnny’s working relationships with Muddy Waters and Rick Derringer, and the early years with Tommy Shannon. The biography was published in 2010, before Johnny died in July 2014. Judging by the foreword, he was very happy with the way it turned out.
Sleepless Nights is in the midst of completing their first demo and we thought we would share this tune with everyone. It’s the Stones’ “No Expectations,” (The link is below – just click on it) a song that I’ve been playing forever. At a rehearsal not that long ago, we tried a kind of ‘he said – she said’ approach, and folks seemed to like it.
We have a gig this Sunday at the HiFi Bar. Unfortunately, Ellen Croteau, our wonderful singer and guitarist, is going to South By Southwest and won’t be able to make it. Damn! Have fun, Ellen!
That leaves Ron Raymond (left above) on pedal steel and vocals and Chris Botta aka myself on guitar and vocals to help open the show for Daisy Anabelle at the Sunday Sessions, brought to you by Ann T. Maim and her band Poorcolin (also appearing). Sleepless Nights goes on at 7:45pm. As you know, Gram Parsons will be turning 70 this year so come out and let's help make this a big year for Gram!
The HiFi Bar is located at 169 Avenue A and entry is free. They have really nice drinks on hand and the vibe is very friendly. As they say in Copenhagen, it's cosy! Thanks to Edie Nadelhaft for the photo.
After years of gear deprivation due to a constellation of complex financial and psychological factors, I’m finally making some welcome additions to my toolbox. I started out playing on a 70s hardtail Strat through a silver face, master volume twin, so you can imagine – I always figured you get the tone out of your hands. If you couple this with my upbringing – my parents were born in the Great Depression – as much as I want to have lots of cool gear, I’m pretty acquisition challenged.
But recently, I’ve begun to turn things around a little. I installed a Weber Ceramic 1225 “Greenback” in my Fender 65 Deluxe Reissue, while also replacing the power tubes with Tung Sols. The effect was immediate – warmer and with a lower breakup threshold and more attractive overall texture.
I started to get excited about the sound I’m getting out of my Les Paul Classic (top) again. With a Boss OD-3 set quite low, the aftermarket 57 Classic in the bridge of the LPC really started to sound sweet. I am working on “The Things I Used to Do,” by Guitar Slim, and all of these elements contribute to a decent approximation of that sweet 50s Les Paul sound.
In the process though, a sad fact was reconfirmed. The Deluxe Reissue just doesn’t take distortion pedals well. I finally broke down and bought an OCD, even though I have both the 69 and 70 Fulltone Fuzz pedals. I knew they didn’t work with the Deluxe, but even though the OCD sounded great in the store through a Deluxe with a Celestion in it, the dreaded fizzy-ness of the Distortion-Deluxe combo was evident when I got it home. The softness of the OD-3 is what makes it work with this amp. On the other hand, the MXR Carbon Copy that I bought sounds great, with a liquid sound on the Deluxe. No surprise there.
But the grand gesture of all this is my purchase this week of a 2014 Gibson SG Standard 61. I love SGs, but I only ever owned one – a second hand ‘61 reissue back in the ‘90s. Even though the neck went south and I had to sell it after six years, I didn’t lose any money. You would wonder why I don’t continually buy and sell gear like everybody else. This time, I was really looking for a Standard or a real 1960s SG. But I happened upon this axe at Guitar Center, a place I rarely frequent, and I got a great deal. It has two 57 Classics and is really loud and bright. I was originally put off by the color but I love it now. The guitar is beautifully resonant and balanced. It’s a joy to play.
An ongoing project that I have is a Squier 51 that I’m switching out the pickups on. I’m putting a Duncan Quarter Pounder in the neck and a Gibson 500T Humbucker (out of the Classic) in the bridge. I’m awed by all these folks who mod their guitars, and I’m hoping to join their ranks at least on some small level. Keep on pickin'...