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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Bluesman Brings Crowd Its Feet
Sue White
Saginaw News
May1,2006
The crowd parted Saturday at Frankenmuth's Black Forest Brew Haus and Grill, making way for a legend to pass.
Johnny Winter was in the house, a whisper of a man, led to a chair on stage and handed his signature guitar. His manager said the growl was back, that Winter was playing some of the best music of his career -- and considering what came before, that was promising a lot.
Could this frail Texas bluesman deliver?
You had to hear it to believe it.
True, it was drummer Wayne June who did most of the growling Saturday. But when it came to the guitar, well, Winter had the standing-room-only audience held speechless.
His hands deftly coaxed out the blues, his guitar lacing the classic sound with electric rock. He turned his vocals loose on a cover of Ray Charles' "Blackjack" and paid tribute to others who inspired him with a style that explains why Muddy Waters once called him "my adopted son."
With Scott Spray on bass, Winter offered new works, "Let's Start Over Again" and "Lone Wolf," that proved he does more than sit on past successes these days.
Most of all, through "Hoochie Coochie Man," through "Hideaway," through "She Likes To Boogie Real Low," came the promise of a talent that sent him, at 15, searching out the black musicians in his Texas hometown, and the realization that he's still enthralled with the music, keeping it alive.
His brother Edgar might hold more of a mainstream presence, but Winter stands tall, giving back the musical lifeblood that obviously still races through his veins.
Winter drew an interesting mix of musicians, bikers and people looking for an excuse to party. And Black Forest is a promising venue, with dinner offered downstairs for those who want to make an evening of the show and wait staff keeping the drinks flowing upstairs.
The room is massive, the acoustics amazingly solid. If there is one drawback, it is the number of visual obstructions, support poles and a huge, boxed-in brewery.
While there is not much the club could or should do to eliminate those, since it does function as a restaurant and banquet hall most days, how about hanging the speakers, for example, so the towers don't block still another sight line?
It looked, too, as if a stage in the center, with artists performing in the round, might offer a wider expanse of prime seating than the current corner stage.
In any case, when Bobby "Blue" Bland comes Saturday, June 10, you'll want to arrive early, as soon as the doors open, to secure a good spot. Tickets are general admission, and Bland is sure to draw a standing-room-only crowd as well.
Saturday night opened with Frank Bang's Secret Stash, who brought a blend of hard rock and blues to the stage. The trio would roll through a long, lazy phrase before hitting back with jackhammer intensity, a style that had the rockers in the crowd keeping pace with fists punching the air.
But when it came to drawing fans to their feet, dancing, shouting their approval, the night belonged to a giant among musicians: Johnny Winter.v
Sue White covers entertainment for The Saginaw News. You may contact her at (989) 776-9601
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
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| gimmekeef |
Truly one of my all time faves.Saw some fab shows in Toronto mid 70's when JWintz as we called him had Floyd Radford on rythm guitar.Those guys could smoke an arena like nobody's business. |
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| Nellcote |
GK...
The Captured Live period.
Great show, he was electric.
Saw him in a small theatre in Bahston, Foghat opened.
He had a whipsaw of a set, as well a trio no less!
WICKED PISSA! |
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| lotsajizz |
Last time I saw him I thought he was translucent...as well as transcendant.... |
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| Factory Girl |
Johnny Winter is a beautiful guitar player, one of my all time faves. |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
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| blackandblue |
Is that skeleton still walking around? |
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| Saint Sway |
quote:
blackandblue wrote:
Is that skeleton still walking around?
According to the Sydney Morning Herald:
May 2, 2006 - 7:11PM
Keith Richards Slips Out of New Zealand
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, recovering from a head injury he reportedly suffered falling out of a palm tree in Fiji, slipped out of New Zealand on Tuesday, according to a news report.
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| mrhipfl |
I will be seeing Johnny Winters this friday at the Tampa Bay Blues festival. Super excited! |
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| Turd OnThe Run |
Poor Johnny..he certainly ain't what he used to be.
Saw him 3 years ago and was shocked at his sad state.
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| VoodooChileInWOnderl |
I saw Johnny giving the shortest gig he has ever given; it was a two-songs show ended by an absurd riot. However I enjoyed that show to the extreme in all senses. |
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| Nellcote |
John Dawson Winter III
Singuarly responsible for the rebirth of
Mckinley Morganfield in the late 70's.
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| Martha |
Thanks for the post TTM. No one sounds like Johnny...he's a force to be reckoned with. I can go straight into a trance when I hear his guitar. Shock waves.
:-) |
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| gimmekeef |
quote:
Nellcote wrote:
John Dawson Winter III
Singuarly responsible for the rebirth of
Mckinley Morganfield in the late 70's.
For some of us Nellcote..Muddy never left..... |
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| Nellcote |
GK, fair point, however, the notoriety Muddy got after that point doubled , as he was being heard by a larger rock crowd than at any point in his past. And the bling increased as well. You could say the same for what the Wilburys did for Roy Orbison, however, he never got to relish in it. |
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| gimmekeef |
quote:
Nellcote wrote:
GK, fair point, however, the notoriety Muddy got after that point doubled , as he was being heard by a larger rock crowd than at any point in his past. And the bling increased as well. You could say the same for what the Wilburys did for Roy Orbison, however, he never got to relish in it.
Yes very true...shit last night I put on Electric Mud...just to hear the man again....still love his version of LSTNT....Winters version of Silver Train is good too! |
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| FPM C10 |
quote:
Nellcote wrote:
GK, fair point, however, the notoriety Muddy got after that point doubled , as he was being heard by a larger rock crowd than at any point in his past. And the bling increased as well.
Well, I know _I_ got hooked for life due to the first Muddy album Johnny produced, Hard Again. Of course I knew who he was, but the Chess stuff was not getting good distribution at that point, and that was the first album of his I saw in stores after the Stones covered "Mannish Boy" on LYL.
Conversely, Johnny's career wasn't doing that well. He'd blown his initial surge of stardom by succumbing to a well-publicized heroin addiction, and when he came back he wasn't nearly as big a star as he had been. Returning to the blues seemed like his only option. Luckily for everyone involved, the albums he did with Muddy are brilliant. I remember skipping class at college to watch them do "The Blues Had A Baby" on the Dinah Shore Show in 1977.
They weren't only Muddy's last hurrah, they were Johnny's too - what's he done since then?
I saw him at MSG at the Dylan tribute in '92. He seemed to not quite know where he was, and GE Smith had to nudge him a bit to get him started. He was smiling, blinking in the lights, and seemed disoriented - maybe he wasn't used to playing to a crowd that size, or maybe he wanted the moment to last. But when he fired up his incendiary version of Highway 61, it was jaw-dropping. NOBODY plays like that.
I've been concerned about Johnny's health - he's been rumored to be on his last legs longer than the Iraqi insurgency. I'm really glad to read that he can still blow the doors off a juke joint. It's what he was born to do.
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| Chuck |
Cool pic! That's Steady Rollin' Bob Margolin on the left. |
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| FPM C10 |
It sure is! I saw him a few years back in a PA roadhouse, with just a drummer and a kid who switched between harp and bass. AWE-SOME. I was literally inches away from him. He knew that WE knew who the hell he was, unlike the losers yelling "Play Mustang Sally!" , so he played to us all night. It was a wonderful night.
My buddy Dave kept saying "He was in the friggin' LAST WALTZ!!!" and I would say "I KNOW! I was with you when we saw it!!!"
After the show I got him to sign my copy of Hard Again. |
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| Barney Fife |
I got my ticket for Kansas City.
I'm still trying to get a ticket for Columbia, MO, but The Martini Bar never answers their damn phone! Do any of you live close to Columbia, MO? If so, please PM me!
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| ChrisEditor |
I saw Johnny Winter open for George Thorogood at the Aragon Brawlroom in Chicago on Halloween night in 1981.
Remains one of the greatest shows I've ever seen. |
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| jb |
Great Stones fan......................... |
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| Saint Sway |
does a nice cover of Silver Train (great song, great album) |
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| FPM C10 |
quote:
Saint Sway wrote:
does a nice cover of Silver Train (great song, great album)
It was written specifically for Johnny. How cool is THAT? |
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| jb |
quote:
Saint Sway wrote:
does a nice cover of Silver Train (great song, great album)
100 correct...Mick T incredible as usual. |
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| glencar |
SKOWHEGAN -- A North New Portland woman accused of helping her daughter make cookies laced with the laxative Ex-Lax appeared before a judge Monday and pleaded innocent to a single charge of misdemeanor assault.
Julie E. Hunt, 43, wore blue prison garb and handcuffs as she pleaded not guilty before Judge Charles C. LaVerdiere in Skowhegan District Court on Monday morning.
Hunt was arrested Friday afternoon after a police investigation into an attempted prank at Carrabec Community School that caused four children in seventh or eighth grade to become ill.
Hunt is accused of baking the cookies with three girls, two aged 13 and one 14. The cookies were never eaten by the target of the prank, a teacher who had reportedly given one of the girls a low grade.
The cookies were left on the desk of the teacher on April 10, along with a note saying "We made these cookies just for you, hope you enjoy them."
The teacher shared them with students instead.
Attorney Janet Mills, who defended Hunt, said her client denied any involvement.
She also asked Judge LaVerdiere to relax Hunt's bail conditions so she could attend a disciplinary hearing for one of the girls.
Under her bail conditions, Hunt is not allowed to have contact with the teacher who was the target of the prank or with Mary Adley, the principal of Carrabec Community School.
LaVerdiere did allow Hunt to attend disciplinary hearings at the school.
According to an affidavit filed in Skowhegan District Court and signed by Maine State Trooper Hugh I. Landry, Hunt told the girls how to crush the laxative pills and add them to the cookie batter. They used an entire box of pills, according to the affidavit.
Adley found out about the incident when another student overheard two of the girls talking about it. Adley called police April 24.
Trooper Jonathan Wilson, who investigated the incident with Landry, arrested Hunt on Friday afternoon.
State police Lt. Dale Lancaster said Monday that the girls had not been charged for their part in the crime. According to the affidavit, all three girls were suspended by school officials.
In the eyes of the law, Hunt's involvement was not something that could be taken lightly, Lancaster said.
"If you assist children with perpetrating these kinds of crimes, you will be charged," Lancaster said.
Regina Campbell, superintendent of School Administrative District 74, said she could not comment because of concern for the students' confidentiality rights.
Monday afternoon, Hunt was in the Cumberland County Correctional Facility. She was being held on $100 bail related to the assault charge and for violating the terms of her probation related to a prior charge of driving as a habitual offender. |
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| Kilroy |
Did anybody see the show recently with borther Edgar and Rock n Roll Hoochie Coo Rick derringer. |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
MAY 10, 2006
Johnny Winter
BY GRANT BRITT
Independent Weekly
Johnny Winter's music has been known to move listeners to tears. But when he talks, it affects people to the opposite end.
"I wet my pants," says Paul Nelson, Winter's guitar player and manager, in response to Winter's casual comment a couple of days ago that he wanted to record Jimi Hendrix's "Red House" for an upcoming album. Nelson wasn't the only one affected. "The producer--his jaw dropped. The publicist had a heart attack."
Winter is picking material for a new album, Roots. He's on a comeback, with a new manager and a renewed energy. His former manager, Teddy Slatus, died last year. Guitar Player magazinereported in a recent article that Slatus took advantage of Winter for years, exploiting his substance abuse and mismanaging his career. Although Nelson has been playing with Winter for the past six years, he's only been managing about a year.
"I don't even like to put that I'm his manager," Nelson says, "because I'm more of his friend and a guitarist guiding him, guiding his career."
Winter's output had been spotty over the last decade. After putting out a trio of outstanding albums for Alligator in three years--1984's Guitar Slinger, 1985's Serious Business and 1986's Third Degree--he didn't do much until Live in NYC '97. This year, he put out the Grammy-nominated I'm a Bluesman, which shows him in top form, bouncing back after an operation for carpal tunnel syndrome and playing, Nelson says, "ten times better than he has in years."
Roots promises to be his most ambitious and exciting project since his Grammy-winning days playing with and producing Muddy Waters in the 1970s with Hard Again, I'm Ready and Mississippi Muddy Waters Live. "It'll be alot of the old stuff that I've learned from," Winter said last week from his Connecticut home.
Winter has said that he felt guilty about forsaking his blues career for rock, and now refuses to play any of the songs in his catalogue he considers rockers. As partial payback, he hopes this project will help expose people to the artists who influenced him. But not all of Winter's influences will be onboard. "I don't think I'd do any Son House stuff," Winter says. "His stuff is so great on its own. I don't know whether I could do a good job on it." Muddy will definitely be part of it. Nelson thinks they may record his "Sugar Sweet."
Other artists Winter plans to interpret stretch from John Lee Hooker and Lightnin' Hopkins to Clarence Garlow and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. Robert Johnson, who Winter has been credited as being his best living interpreter, is also in the mix with Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Walter, Guitar Slim and, as a bonus track, Hendrix.
"One from each artist, and when we weed out which ones are his favorites, we'll probably be left with 12 or 13," Nelson says. "And what'll make the traditional artists more contemporary are the artists who'll perform on it."
Promising to hire "as many as he can afford," an early, partial list of players includes his brother Edgar, who Johnny has been playing with alongside Rick Derringer. Z.Z. Top's Billy Gibbons has said yes, along with Late Show with David Letterman bassist Will Lee.
But no matter who he's channeling or playing with, he still blisters it raw with his ripping, rhythmic licks. Johnny Winter is a man of few words, but he still has plenty to say with his guitar.
Johnny Winter plays the ArtsCenter Saturday, May 13 at 8 p.m. Doors open at 7:30. Tickets are $36 and can be purchased at www.artscenterlive.org.
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| Factory Girl |
Winter already covered Red House. And yes, its beyond AMAZING. |
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