keep the blues alive
BlueToneBilly's Page
Profile Information
- Relation to Blues music:
- Amateur Musician, Other
- I play or do:
- Guitars, Keyboards, Harp, Sax, Other percussion, Vocals
- About Me:
- The year was 1986 where the film comedy Soul Man was on cinemas. I was just 7 and playing with my five octave keyboards, and I remember listening Sam Moore's voice and wanting to play along. I Started having the blues of not expressing them!. Joining the music school, I found out that the music school was not good. Firstly nobody said to a seven year old kid, what the blues were. Instead I was given Bach and Bethoven to read and play. I found it boring. Secondly while in that music school, I was not tought that the rhythm is the first and most important part of the music, rather than a section of that, in the theory day, within a paragraph of the theory book. I should have been given a tambourine or a small drum to learn basic rhythms and styles. To learn 2/4 3/4 4/4 and so on...
My musical influences of blues/rock brought me in 1996 to a musician's home who played to me a pentatonic minor scale on his keyboards. That 3 minutes were more soul-filling than the years in my music school. These scales was my music target of life now at the age of 16.
Left the music school and started a part time job giving advertising leaflets for three months to gather the money for buying a fender acoustic guitar to see what I could do as a self-taught guitarist instead of playing Bach keyboards. I cannot forget the happiness when I finally had it in my hands after looking ir every day at the guitar shop.
A year and a half later I started learning about the music industry and sound recording in College as a sound engineer.
I got a part time job while in College, as an apprentice DJ/sound engineer on a soundcraft analog console of a rock/blues radio station. There I found out the sound roots of my blues, Janis, Stevie Ray, Sam Lightning Hopkins, Albert Collins, and so many more since it had one of the biggest sound libraries in Europe.
That led me to the slide guitar, and searching for the roots of it in all kinds of styles, especially within the 12 bar blues. Having the blues is not an easy thing, especially where you are in love and want to express yourself more. So I bought a tenor sax and harp and joined many blues and rock groups playing lots of stuff.
Before finishing college, I met one of the best female blues singers in Greece (IMHO) ; Jenny Kapadaee. I was blessed by the gift of her voice in my own first song, made, and sound produced by me.
It was too early for me to sing back then. Some years after I ended my army duties In April 2002 I did my first attemt in a 65% country/western song named "Travelling a 1000 miles" which I copyrighted and recorded at Vangelis Yalamas's Fragile studio with me singing playing the harp and sliding the guitar. 2003 and I recorded a classic chicago style slow electric blues song of mine named "Thinking of you" , which I also copyrighted and made a good recording out of it when besides singing, I played the sax for the first time in a recording. 2004 and the country roots from my blues started jumping out when an old friend Adam was convinced to sing and one of the greatest guitarists in Greece Nick Taliadouros joined in a terrific solo of my uplifting song "Blue Horse Jim". After that I have made a lot of searching with my voice as I am not keen on studying music in the classic way of studying, rather going through the JAM route.
After trying a while to get a decent gig after a lot of studio rehersals and hours, all of the groups I joined kept breaking up due to differences of sound opinions, female keyboard player falling in love with the male drummer of another group, or solos being too long etc.
The last one I tried to stay out by not playing any instrument and just singing. It was all the other people finding out they could not stick to a solid playlist for the gig as everybody wanted other stuff to play with other influences.
Today you may find me jamming with other blues musicians, or just hanging out with blues friends around the world.
Until then.....keep slidin'
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