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Ronnie Baker Brooks
Beer Geeks
Highland, IN
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Ronnie Baker Brooks
Sunday, March 5th. 2 Performances; 5pm & 8pm

In Ronnie Baker Brooks powerhouse hands, blues-rock never sounded so outrageous. Soul never sounded so delicious. And the blues never sounded so profound one of todays top live performers Art Tipaldi, Blues Revue

On the first day recording Times Have Changed  the eleven-track album from Chicago bluesman Ronnie Baker Brooks that brings a sound so big it could topple a Louisiana juke joint  industry-revered album producer and drummer Steve Jordan told Brooks to put his pedal board back in the van. For the first time in his professional life, Brooks, the son of Texas and Chicago blues legend Lonnie Guitar Jr. Brooks, would plug a Gibson into TKTK amp and rip it straight from there.

Back to the basics. The pedals get in the way of your tone  your natural tone. Any distortion I had came straight out of the amp, Brooks remembers from the Times sessions. It was almost like going to college, or grad school. It was definitely an education.

Brooks, 49, likes to treat each album he makes as a platform for him to grow, but the reality is that hes been climbing the blues worlds latter all his life. He was born in Chicago, and started playing guitar around age six. At 19, he joined his father, who by then had influenced some of the most well-known bluesman of our history: Jimmy Reed, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Johnny Winter, and Junior Wells. For 12 years the two would tour together, putting Ronnie out front with Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Koko Taylor. In 1998, when he was 32, his father told him to go solo.

Baker already had a band by then, one hed been touring on the side with since 1992. But by 1998 hed started a label; that year he made his first album, Golddigger, 16 songs tracked out in two weeks. My dad always said to keep writing, even if you dont think the song sounds great or you cant finish it, says Baker. Write. Continue to write. The more you write, the better you get. Take Me Witcha came three years later; his second album on Watchdog Records. Brooks broke out as his own champion on 2006s The Torch. The Boston Herald called it ferocious and unrelenting  the years best blues album.

In the ten years since The Torch, Brooks has started a family, toured North America and Europe, and taken feature spots on the records of other bluesmen. He produced Eddy Clearwaters West Side Strut and contributed guitar work to albums from Elvin Bishop, the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Review, Billy Branch, and Big Head Todd.

Times Have Changed, Brooks first album in ten years, carries with it the weight of grown perspective and time spent perfecting old material. Brooks worked it with Steve Jordan, whose work runs from Keith Richard to Stevie Wonder, John Mayer and Eric Clapton. With that comes a lesson in rhythm and blues history. Brooks refers to the director as a walking encyclopedia of music detail and equipment, a professor through which Brooks could take that next developmental step. Once we got the ball rolling, my confidence went higher and higher, he says. Im a better musician for this experience.

The experience Brooks is talking about is that which came together over the course of a few weeks at Royal Studios in Memphis, the home of Al Green, Syl Johnson, Bobby Blue Bland, and O.V. Wright, whose 1974 hit Blind, Crippled, and Crazy gets a facelift on Times Have Changed. Jordan and Brooks brought in a mint press of Memphis music royalty: Stax Records staple Steve Cropper (Booker T. & the M.G.s, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave), Archie Turner (Al Green, Syl Johnson, O.V. Wright), jazz saxophonist Lannie McMillan, and R&B icon Angie Stone.

We used the same mics that Al Green used on his record, says Brooks. Matter of fact, we were using much of the same band! It kind of took that vibe. The first track recorded was a cover of Curtis Mayfields Superfly hit Give Me Your Love. The second, Twine Time, the instrumental jam from Alvin Cash.

To be honest with you, when Steve said Man, we need an instrumental, the first person I thought of was Freddie King. Steve wanted something more appealing to all people, not just guitar players. He said What about Twine Time? I said, Is he serious? Yeah, Twine Time. But that song was a key to this album.Man, that just lit the fire for this record. It became one of the funnest tracks we did.

Times also comes laden with original hits. Five of the eleven tracks were penned by Brooks. Raised on others music, hes always considered the songwriting process to be as sacred. Its like having a baby, he says. You see it come to live. Once you play it live, it grows even more. That was the most fun part of it, for me: the creative side. Coming up with a song people can relate to, and you relate to, it just snowballs. Its almost like therapy for me. Like the song Times Have Changed: I wrote that song years ago. I sent Steve my songs and he picked that one. Its kind of timeless. Every day somethings changing. Now, when I play it live, you can see the effect of it. Initially, it was just an idea: just a riff. Now, this song has influence on people. We were just in Europe this year, after the bombing in Brussels. And were playing Brussels. I played that song; people were in tears. It helped them heal.

Its on that title track that Brooks brandishes what may be his finest songwriting talent: the ability to humanize social issues and unite different voices into one cohesive thought. Thats no more evident than in the latter stages of the song, in which Brooks deploys his longtime friend, Memphis Al Kapone, to drop 32 bars on what the future holds for our people.

My whole intention, when I started with Golddigger and up through this one, was to be authentic enough for the older generation but have something that the younger generation could latch onto, says Brooks. I try to be that bridge. With Take Me Witcha, Ive got a rapper on that. On The Torch we went with Al. Hes a bridge. Hes a bridge from blues to hip-hop. With music, it all comes from the heart. It comes from the heart and from the soul. It blues, it doesnt matter what youre talking about, it definitely relates.

That was my intention on this record: to build that bridge."

Location

Beer Geeks (View)
3030 45th
Highland, IN 46322
United States
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Categories

Arts > Performance
Music > Blues

Minimum Age: 21
Kid Friendly: No
Dog Friendly: No
Non-Smoking: Yes!
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes!

Contact

Owner: beer geeks
On BPT Since: Jan 23, 2017
 
Beer Geeks
beergeekspub.com/events/ro...


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