“Though by no means the most popular music, blues and jazz has continued to stand the tests of time and evolve in amazing ways, I believe it will continue to do so. For my own part, my hope is that my music touches people and gives them something that moves them and is lasting in their minds. I hope they listen to it not in passing but with depth, to take in all the passion, nuance and tones of what is played."

Brandon Teskey: Blues Rock Mission

Arizona blues-rockers Teskey released their debut full-length album “White Wolf” (May 2025). In the spirit of the late 60’s/early 70’s British blues rock records, White Wolf fuses elements of traditional blues, psychedelic rock, jazz fusion, delta blues and alternative rock. Recorded at Mind’s Eye Studio, in Phoenix, the hard-hitting performances capture the raw energy and power of a live show and the refined sound quality of a modern record. Teskey formed when blues guitarist Brandon Teskey (formally of Until the Sun) and drummer Brandon Gaddy joined forces in 2024 shortly before bassist Matt Baldwin and keyboardist, Peter Murphy joined. The band spent the better part of a year writing and rehearsing before going into the studio to record White Wolf. The songs on the album encompass a wide range of topics, including past heartbreak, depression, love, redemption, the duplicity of human nature and Brandon’s wife’s year-long battle and recovery from cancer.                    (Brandon Taskey / Photo by Mathias Lau)

Teskey, a rocking blues band, was formed in 2024. Their music includes and often fuses elements of Blues, Alt Rock, Pink-Floyd-esque Psychedelia, and Jazz. Teskey quickly began playing national shows and opening for famous blues and rock artists, while performing at world- renowned venues. The band includes Brandon Teskey on guitar and vocals, Matt Baldwin on Bass, Peter Murphy on Keyboard, and Brandon Gaddy on drums. In 2024 they released two singles, ‘Under the Sun’ and ‘Upside Down World’.

Interview by Michael Limnios                                Special Thanks: Doug Deutsch 

How has the Blues, Jazz and Rock music influenced your views of the world and the journeys you’ve taken?

Blues is really the cornerstone of my musical foundation and the style that shaped who I am as a player. Harmonically, blues a simple style at its core, but a style that allows you do a lot within the confines of a simple foundation. Blues is the truest American style of music, and it gave birth to almost all other American styles of music like Jazz and Rock. It is a style filled with passion and honesty. Rock is an expansion of blues, and for me, taking what’s best about the blues and expanding that into a wider spectrum and a more modern feel. Jazz takes blues to a more complex and harmonically rich world that requires playing over changes in most cases. Jazz definitely expanded my world, and I tried to take a lot of the musical theory and harmonic sophistication of jazz players and incorporate that in the foundation of blues rock.

How did the idea of new project/band “Teskey” come about? Do you have any interesting stories about the making of the new album White Wolf?

So “Teskey” came about at a very turbulent time when life was falling apart at the seams. My former band, Until the Sun, had broken up and my wife got diagnosed with cancer. A lot of the songs on our album, White Wolf, came out of that place of desperation and introspective and extrospective examination of human nature. I knew our drummer, Brandon Gaddy, from shows his previous band and mine had done in the past, and knew he was a great drummer and a fan of the music I wrote. I contacted him and we started jamming and it immediately clicked. Shortly after, Matt Baldwin and Peter Murphy joined, both fantastic musicians, and things took off from there. For White Wolf, I wanted to do a raw album, essentially live in the studio, the way they used to make records in the 60s and before and that’s what we did.

“I think that comes from listening to and transcribing different styles of music. I think in those early blues rock groups from the mid-60s to early-70s, like Zepplin, the Jeff Beck Group, Cream, Hendrix, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, there was a level of improvisation in their live performances where they incorporated new ideas and creativity.“ (Teskey are Brandon Teskey on guitar and vocals, Matt Baldwin on Bass, Peter Murphy on Keyboard, and Brandon Gaddy on drums / Photo by Cori Teskey)

How do you think that you have grown as an artist since you first started making music? What has remained the same about your music-making process?

I started playing guitar when I was 11-years old, so for most of my life I have been making music. The big strides I’ve made as a player were when I learned to integrate some jazz theory into my blues playing and learning to sing. For past projects like, Until the Sun and other bands, I was the guitarist, and in most cases the song writer, but learning to sing really opened up a lot of doors as a musician and gave me the ability to drive the vision of a song to completion. As far as what has stayed the same, I would say, the constant growth and improvement in playing and soloing and my drive to write songs. I want each musician in the band to write their own parts, but not six months after I started playing guitar, I also started penning lyrics, and that is something to me that has always been a creative outlet.

What are you doing to keep your music relevant today, to develop it and present it to the new generation?

We are doing our best to share it with the world. We created a record that is old at heart but modern in feel, with crossover from delta blues to alt blues rock. We have an excellent PR agent, Doug Deutsch, who is helping us reach as many people as possible.

Your work is known for creatively reimagining Rock/Blues tradition. How do you balance respect for the roots with experimentation?

I think that comes from listening to and transcribing different styles of music. I think in those early blues rock groups from the mid-60s to early-70s, like Zepplin, the Jeff Beck Group, Cream, Hendrix, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, there was a level of improvisation in their live performances where they incorporated new ideas and creativity. Allowing yourself to step outside of the confinement of a genera when it’s appropriate and tasteful is something important, otherwise you are just doing what has already been done.

”I’ve had many life changing moments, from getting to talk with B.B. King, who took over half an hour to speak with me, to taking lessons with some very prominent jazz and blues musicians who opened up my musical vocabulary.” (Teskey, Arizona-based blues rock band / Photo by Mathias Lau)

How do you describe your sound, music philosophy and songbook? Where does your creative drive come from?

The sound on my previous album, Screaming Into The Void, was definitely a mixture of the three main styles that influenced me most, Blues, Rock and Jazz. It is a departure of how I play in my Blues Rock band, Until The Sun. I would say the blues foundation still comes through the strongest in all I do, but there is a great deal of fusion and jazz in some of the instrumental songs on this album. Others are just straight blues or rock songs, like the Freddie King cover ‘Side Tracked’. In many of the lyrical songs, what inspires me, could be things going on in my life, or in my past, or the lives of other’s. I might be telling a story, or describe an emotional feeling. For example, the acoustic rock song on this album, ‘To Not Go Blind’, I wrote the day my daughter was born about not just my instant love for her, but the fear of not being able to retain that level of joy indefinitely without things unraveling into tragedy. For many of the instrumental and jazz or fusion based songs on this album, I was trying to come up with songs that were musically pleasing and pushed me as a musician out of my comfort zone and beyond my ability and forced me to rise to the occasion.

What moment changed your music life the most? What´s been the highlights in your life and career so far?

I’ve had many life changing moments, from getting to talk with B.B. King, who took over half an hour to speak with me, to taking lessons with some very prominent jazz and blues musicians who opened up my musical vocabulary. I’ve had the opportunity to open for some amazing musicians and heroes in the past, I’ve played blues festivals, but honestly, I think White Wolf is the greatest thing musically I’ve done and it’s a body of art that is the truest album I’ve been a part of. It always keeps one foot in the blues but is also musically eclectic. It is at its heart, a rough 60’s style record but at the same time engineered and produced wonderfully. It was written out of a dark and desperate place in my life but generated something beautiful. It challenged me to grow as a player, a writer, and shattered my limitations as a singer, to do what I believed before to be impossible.

You’ve worked in many different settings, from clubs and studios to open air festivals. How do you navigate between these different worlds?

Whether we’re playing in front of fifty people at a club or a thousand people at a festival, everyone in our group gives it their all. Each can have a different feel and each can present a different problem, but in every scenario, we try to give everything we can to the audience and there is almost no better feeling than doing that when you can feel the audience respond and know they feel the music.    

"It would be to make what is most popular not so dumbed down musically and lyrically. It seems like 19th century lullabies and children’s songs had greater musical depth than a lot of what I hear in the most popular music. This isn’t always the case, and there’s a lot of new and popular stuff out there that is very musically and emotionally rich, but it doesn’t seem as common." (Brandon Teskey fuses elements of traditional blues, psychedelic rock, jazz fusion, delta blues and alternative rock / Photo by Mathias Lau)

What are some of the most important lessons you have learned from your experience in the music paths?

To never stop growing. Be honest as an artist and continue to improve every day in some way. To surround yourself with players who are excellent, who push you to be better.

Are there any memories from gigs, jams, open acts and studio sessions which you’d like to share with us?

An interesting memory I had was a show with my Blues Rock band, Until The Sun, at the Whisky a Go Go, where I broke the headstock off on my vintage 1969 Les Paul Custom. Luckily, I also had my Stratocaster and was able to play the show, though somewhat catatonic from the shock of my favorite guitar being broken.

What do you miss most nowadays from the music of the past? What are your hopes and fears for the future of?

What concerns me the most is the disposable outlook our culture has on anything new, and this is especially true with music. Since most people just have a Spotify or Apple music subscription or listen to music on You Tube, everyone has every song ever released at their fingertips. This is absolutely awesome in a way because everything is accessible, but the other side of that is we’ve inundated people, and they don’t psychologically invest in an album the way they did when you had to go out and buy the CD or buy the record and plug it in. Before when you bought an album, you owned that album. Playing it meant you usually listened to more than one song on the album, and in most cases, the first time you played it you would listen to most, if not all of it, or at least part of every song in order and enjoy it as a completed piece of art which pushed musicians to create extraordinary albums. Now there’s little investment, and it seems like this makes for a more superficial listening experience. Much of this has also demonetized new musicians. It’s difficult to imagine albums like Dark Side of the Moon, Kind of Blue or Electric Ladyland come to fruition with what seems to be the current prevailing mindset.

"Blues is really the cornerstone of my musical foundation and the style that shaped who I am as a player. Harmonically, blues a simple style at its core, but a style that allows you do a lot within the confines of a simple foundation. Blues is the truest American style of music, and it gave birth to almost all other American styles of music like Jazz and Rock." (Brandon Teskey / Photo by Mathias Lau)

If you could change one thing in the musical world and it would become a reality, what would that be?

It would be to make what is most popular not so dumbed down musically and lyrically. It seems like 19th century lullabies and children’s songs had greater musical depth than a lot of what I hear in the most popular music. This isn’t always the case, and there’s a lot of new and popular stuff out there that is very musically and emotionally rich, but it doesn’t seem as common.

What is the impact of Blues & Jazz on the socio-cultural implications? How do you want the music to affect people?

Though by no means the most popular music, blues and jazz has continued to stand the tests of time and evolve in amazing ways, I believe it will continue to do so. For my own part, my hope is that my music touches people and gives them something that moves them and is lasting in their minds. I hope they listen to it not in passing but with depth, to take in all the passion, nuance and tones of what is played.

Let’s take a trip with a time machine, so where and why would you really want to go for a whole day?

1968. I’d want to catch a Jimi Hendrix show and bury a bunch of vintage guitars and amps so I can dig them up in the future. Haha...

Teskey Band - Home

(Photo: Teskey includes Brandon Teskey on guitar and vocals, Matt Baldwin on Bass, Peter Murphy on Keyboard, and Brandon Gaddy on drums.