Ahhhh....Jono, you're digging up the oldies! Actually that one is only nine years old, I have interviews going back thirty years. I'll see what I can find and post a few.
BACK TO THE ROOTS (Belgium blues magazine) - November 2001
1) Can you tell us some more about yourself, discovering blues music during your youth?
When did that happen? Who were your first heroes? What attracted you to the blues?
I was born in 1956 in South East England. My earliest musical memories are from when I was two or three years old, listening to Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and the Ballad of Davy Crocket on my parents’ wind-up gramophone. I was brought up in Kent and now live in Buckinghamshire. My family are a pretty musical and creative bunch. My Mother plays the piano and was the person who brought the guitar into my life. In 1965 she bought a guitar and started having lessons. She never did learn to play but my brother, David, and I both did. David is now the promoter at Dingwalls music venue in London. My other brother, Alan, plays drums, he now lives and works as a music photographer/designer in Nashville TN. He has over a thousand album packages to his credit, including Stevie Ray Vaughan’s album “In Step”, the one with Stevie holding the National guitar on the front cover. We used to have a band together in the early seventies, playing Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Deep Purple, Mountain, Ten Years After, all that kind of stuff…we loved heavy guitar riffs! We also were very into playing Rock'n'Roll: Elvis, Jerry Lee, Little Richard. I played bass guitar at that time but for the Rock'n'Roll I used to borrow an upright acoustic double bass.
I have always been interested in music, from a very young age I was listening to Rock'n'Roll. I started buying records in the early sixties, The Rolling Stones ‘Not Fade Away’ was probably my first record, the B side was ‘Little By Little’. There were a lot of blues in that early Stones repertoire: The Spider & the Fly, I Can’t Be Satisfied, Little Red Rooster and so on. When I was eight, nine, ten years old I used to go with my family to see all the pop shows at our local venue, The Winter Gardens. In 1965 I saw John Hammond on one of these shows, I didn’t know about blues but I did love his music, still do. Then in my teens I used to go to every Rory Gallagher show in the London area, he was always talking about these old blues guys, Blind Boy Fuller, Muddy Waters and Leadbelly. In my late teens I got to know some people who were around ten or twelve years older than me, they used to play blues records all the time and hearing their record collection was a revelation for me. They used to play Elmore James, Robert Johnson, Slim Harpo, Bo Diddley, Blind Willie McTell, Son House, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, Bukka White etc. They also had a copy of Paul Oliver’s wonderful book, The Story of the Blues. That was where I started to see National steel guitars and associating them with pre-war blues. I was also listening a lot to Rod Stewart, JJ Cale, Bob Marley and Creedence Clearwater Revival, all these artist were drawing on influences from older blues, country, gospel and swing music. Rod Stewart’s early albums played a big part in my getting interested in slide guitar, Dobro, mandolin and banjo. JJ Cale was so great at making records, I think he really is one of the giants and such a major influence, not just as a writer/performer, but as a producer. John Fogerty is also a very under-rated artist, just go back and listen to some of those Creedence Clearwater Revival albums...Bad Moon Rising, Born on The Bayou...blues songs. During the seventies I got into just about every kind of music that was around both past and present. I was as heavily into Bootsy Collins and Ian Dury, as I was Elmore James, Muddy Waters & Johnny Winter. Seeing the Elvis Presley come-back concert on the TV in the late sixties was a defining moment in my life. I guess I was and still am attracted by the simplicity and power of blues music.
2) When did you start to play the guitar? Why did you choose the National Steel?
It was in my early teens that I became serious about playing guitar, then a few years later the slide guitar interest started. At first I only played electric slide and then sometime at the end of the seventies I bought my first steel guitar, it was a silver National steel with palm trees sand-blasted on the back. I was attracted to the National steel because I had seen pictures in books of the early players with these instruments...Bukka White, Blind Boy Fuller, Son House, Peetie Wheatstraw...etc.
From then on there was no stopping me! I went to see just about every blues player that came to these shores and bought every blues record and just about every National guitar that I could find. (my National guitar mania is a whole other story). Playing slide guitar and studying the blues totally took over my life for a long time, this was more than an interest or a hobby, this was and still is an obsession and a vocation. Blues records were hard to find back then, I used to go to a collectors shop called Discovery Records, it was in the back of a greengrocers store. He sold vintage blues records and 'jazz mags’, ( I only ever bought blues records there!) I also used to frequent Dobell’s in London, that was an amazing shop, nothing but blues and jazz records. I bought a lot of Arhoolie, Folk lyric, Yazoo, Chess and Stax records there.
3) You are English and sometimes we hear people say "to play the acoustic delta slide guitar, you have to be rooted in that tradition, there must be a link between the musician and the Mississippi Delta". What do you think about this, Michael? Do you agree with that statement? What's your link?
I think that if I were to sing about "my home in the delta" or any other subject personal to African Americans in the USA would be wrong and in bad taste as I am from the south of England. What I do is to use a style of writing to create music which talks about my own relationship with the blues, this is both creative and true to the tradition. As far as playing Miss'ippi delta slide guitar....well I have been listening to and playing that style for 25 years. I am not academic about it and play from my heart, it is important for me to keep it that way. I have been complimented many times that my playing style is very close to the 'real' early delta and Chicago blues players. I am very proud of those compliments and do not try to search too deep for the answer! The more you search, the more you turn this into an academic study and then lose the feel and soul of the music. I don't believe that the colour of your skin or your birthplace are what gives you the ability to play the blues......you either can or you can't. At a very early stage in my playing I realized that I had a natural feel for this kind of music. It is not a contrived thing, it is just the way that I play.
4) How important is it to you to bring own material? You are not a "copycat" and that's very positive. But isn't it hard to come up with fresh and new things in the blues?
Very important, really that’s what my music is about, taking the traditional forms and mixing them with contemporary styles and not being a copycat player. I have always been more interested in making original music than following generic styles and trends. As for it being difficult.....the answer is that it appears to come naturally to me, to take a traditional blues song or theme and turn it into something new that is mine. There is no point in being a copycat and trying to make records like the old ones, it has been done too many times. As far as copying the old players....well it depends how it is approached.
5) Am I right when I discover a certain development in your music. In the beginning it was more traditional and now I have the impression that you are searching for a new or a wider audience?
Yes you are right that I am now looking for a wider audience for my music. Catfish Records believe my music to be very accessible and appealing to more than just the hardcore blues and roots fans. As for the development...I have always experimented and tried new approaches, I think I have just got more confident with arrangements and studio techniques. When I cut my first album in 1987 it was all very new to me, since then I have made five of my own albums, produced other artists and done numerous sessions. Not to mention nearly fifteen years of bar gigs, concerts and festivals. All this experience makes one stronger and more able to put original ideas into practice. I have always been very passionate about great records, not just great musicians and material, but GREAT records.....well produced, well recorded classic cuts. There is more to a great record than just the band and the song. And going back to your earlier question about my heroes, well the producers and technicians are also up there: where would Chicago blues be without the Chess sound, those guys used metal drainpipes for reverb tubes! Where would the Beatles be without George Martin showing them the way. Sam Phillips at Sun Studios in Memphis, these people are as much to do with the creation of the music as the artists themselves.
6) When can we expect a new record and which is the way it goes?
You can expect to see the new Michael Messer album on Catfish Records sometime in the Spring of 2002. As for the musical content, well I am writing rehearsing at the moment. It will certainly be a blues album, but typical of my music it will have a twist of something different.
7) Which level do you want to reach in the future? What are your hopes and dreams?
I would like to see my music accepted across the world and be able to tour regularly. At which level that settles is beyond my control. I guess everyone finds their own level. I am also looking to get more involved in producing other artists, Catfish records and I are currently talking about a few projects in that area.
8) You made a very conscious choice for that National Steel guitar and its typical sound. But what do you think about all the young kids who mess their blues up with tons of rock, funk or even rap? Is this the future of the blues? And does the blues have a future anyway?
The blues definitely does have a future but I don't believe that as a pure form it can never reach and inspire young audiences the way it did back in the sixties, too much has changed in the world for that to happen. However I was pretty impressed to see the success that Moby had last year with a blues sound and feel to his hit album. I feel that’s the only way to reach out to a younger audience these days, it has to be woven into the modern way of making music. Actually that was the same in the sixties with the Rolling Stones & Canned Heat etc. They were playing blues but with a contemporary teenage feel. I don’t think at sixteen I would have turned on to Reverend Robert Wilkins or Henry Thomas, but Canned Heat doing it their way….Wow! I believe it is the same now.
When it comes to talking about what’s happening with the blues at this time, I guess a lot of my interests lie with guys like The North Mississippi Allstars, R L Burnside, John Hammond & Tom Waits. I really like some of the mixing blues with rap & hip hop sounds, Skip “Little Axe” McDonald, with his ground-breaking album, “The Wolf That House Built”, three or four years ago. With a slightly different feel and style I really like Cassandra Wilson’s slant on blues melodies, arrangements and lyrics. Back in ’96 I was very interested in what G Love & The Special Sauce were doing, their first single ‘Blues Music’ was a great blend of modern & traditional. Even the packaging of that was cool, it was designed like an old Okeh 78rpm record and presented to a predominantly young audience. I haven’t heard his music for a couple of years. Morcheeba have a bluesy vibe to their music, I don’t have their records but I like what I hear and I can see why so many young kids are into their sound. I don't really like too much heavy rock style blues, I think it drifts too far from the roots. However I do think it very important that young people turn on to this music and in turn make their own musical statements with blues at the core.
Another very important factor in my musical journey was discovering music from other cultures. In the early eighties I got very into African music, stuff like King Sunny Adé, Franco, and Ali Farka Towre. I started to realize how much American music had been influenced by African music. I could hear the melodies from Mali in John Lee Hooker’s music, and the Nigerian juju influence on Bo Diddley and the fife & drum music of the Deep South. So for a while I became pretty crazy about African music. I became friends with the great guitarist and singer, the late S.E.Rogie, from Sierra Leone, he was known as ‘The King of Palm Wine Guitar’. I produced some album tracks for him in 1989. Also in that year I became involved working with the legendary Ted Hawkins, the busker from Venice Beach. We made a record together which I produced called 'Nowhere To Run' which has just been released on Catfish Records in September of this year - 2001.
Back in the early eighties in my quest for finding slide guitar music I started to discover Hawaiian steel guitar music. This had been a massive influence on the music of mainland America, the blues musicians adopted this guitar style and that’s where bottleneck slide guitar, country pedal-steel and Dobro comes from. Casey Bill Weldon, Charley Patton, Tampa Red, Kokomo Arnold, Jimmie Rodgers, Chuck Berry, Hank Williams, they were all heavily influenced by Hawaiian steel guitar. Another musical discovery that happened quite by accident in the mid eighties was finding Indian slide guitar music, both in the classical form and the way it is used in film scores. In fact it was in my quest for finding the perfect curry on one of my many visits to Southall in London that I discovered the ABC music shop and started buying Indian slide guitar music. Brij Brushan Kabra is one of the leading names in this area. If you enjoy Ry Cooder’s soundtrack to the ‘Paris Texas’ movie, all that solo slide guitar stuff in open ‘D’ tuning, you should check out Brij Kabra’s music. Blues slide guitar players will really dig this guy.
Interview by Franky Bruneel, "BACK TO THE ROOTS" magazine, Belgium.
www.backtotheroots.be
