“New Orleans is ALWAYS an inspiration: the culture, Black culture, the history, the people, the music, the food, the architecture, the animals, and the average of 167 live shows A DAY here. The way musicians feel time here is different—more relaxed and advanced than anywhere else I've ever been.”

Jason Ricci: 13 Hours Blues Odyssey 

Jason Ricci, hailed as one of the greatest harmonica players ever, opens the curtains of his turbulent rise and fall from fame and rebirth as a living legend of Blues Harmonica. On new recording “13 Hours”, Jason Ricci strips his music down to the nerve. Released on May 29, 2026 via Gulf Coast Records, the album captures exhaustion, defiance, and survival with brutal honesty. Backed by The Bad Kind and featuring vocalist Kaitlin Dibble, Jason Ricci delivers 13 Hours, a high-voltage blues album forged in intensity and truth. Fearless vocals and blistering musicianship collide in songs that feel lived-in, restless, and urgent. It's modern blues without compromise-channeling pain, grit, survival, and redemption into a record that doesn't blink, doesn't soften the edges, and doesn't let go once it grabs you. 13 Hours is not an album that tries to impress. Instead, it confronts. A 10-tracks record that feels more like an unfiltered confession than a polished artistic statement. Ricci places the listener in the uneasy space between exhaustion and defiance. Frustration with the world, the music business, relationships, and oneself collide throughout the album. There is no search for comfort here—only an honest documentation of what it means to stay present when optimism wears thin and survival itself becomes an act of resistance.

(Jason Ricci / Photo by Pearls)

At its core, 13 Hours is about endurance—emotional, physical, and spiritual. The songs move between fury and fatigue, between dark humor and brutal self-reflection. Sharp social commentary sits comfortably alongside deeply personal moments, capturing the pressure of modern life without softening the edges. The album confronts burnout, addiction, grief, and the absurdity of the systems that shape our daily lives. Rather than offering solutions, Ricci chooses truth over resolution and tension over release. Ricci has appeared as a guest harmonica player on albums and toured with Johnny Winter, Joe Louis Walker, Cedric Burnside, Walter Trout, Mike Zito, JP Soars, Nick Moss, Nick Curran, Pappa Mali, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Anders Osborne, Walter Trout and many many more. Jason Ricci is one of the most influential, recorded, celebrated, and famous harmonica players working in the world today.

Interview by Michael Limnios                         Archive: Jason Ricci, 2023 interview

Currently, you have one release with The Bad Kind and Kaitlin Dibble. Do you have any interesting stories about the making of the new album “13 Hours”?

Well, our drummer—and really the rock of our band, the most stable and uplifting cat we had for years—passed away very unexpectedly on the road. So the album itself is dedicated to him, John Perkins, and his widow, Melissa Perkins. We recorded the whole record in one room with no isolation. There are only a handful of overdubs on the record, just a couple of extra guitar parts (either rhythm or lead) and a couple of harmonica solos. We really wanted a live sound. Recording that way gives you that for sure, but it doesn't allow for fixing any mistakes, so most of the record was made the same way we'd do a show.

The title of the record (“13 Hours”) and the song written by Kaitlin Dibble and the band are shout-outs to the late John Perkins. Anytime on long drives that anyone asked "How long until we get there?", John would always reply "13 hours". It was actually a John Lisi line, but John Perkins would always say: "13 Hours – John Perkins," no matter who asked.

How do you prepare for your recordings and performances to help you maintain both spiritual and musical stamina?

Fun question! The same way I prepare for every day. When I first wake up, I ask for God's help out loud, then I quote my friend Lee Mack and say: "Today is gonna be another great day." Then I stretch for a bit, go outside to see the sunshine, drink something caffeinated, and pray.

I thank God and my Savior Jesus Christ and ask Him to help me do His Will always; to receive the Grace, Love, and Forgiveness that has already been so freely given to me at the highest cost to Jesus. I pray for my family and friends, and for my defects of character to be removed so that victory over them may bear witness to those I may help. I try to practice every day in addition to playing every day, but for recordings and gigs, I'll of course go over all the material and try to make sure my harmonicas are working well enough.

“Well, I'm pretty sure our role has been diminished to its lowest value ever from the corporate and public perspective. Streaming has killed us, touring is more expensive and harder every year, and live music outside of New Orleans is harder and harder to find.” (Jason Ricci & The Bad Kind with vocalist Kaitlin Dibble, a high-voltage blues collaboration / Photo by Pearls)

What keeps a musician passionate over the years? How does your hometown affect your music?

Definitely studying music. Really studying. Listening, too, of course, but really getting inside of chords, rhythms, arpeggios, scales, approach tones, and enclosures—and also just forgetting all that stuff and practicing what my wife calls "Learned Abandon."

New Orleans is ALWAYS an inspiration: the culture, Black culture, the history, the people, the music, the food, the architecture, the animals, and the average of 167 live shows A DAY here. The way musicians feel time here is different—more relaxed and advanced than anywhere else I've ever been. We moved here just to be around it, not for the city to give us gigs or love us. It has enough of its own people who are from here their whole lives that need celebrating first. To be recognized or loved by this city would just be "butter on a biscuit," because it already gives us so much—really more than we can even do or appreciate.

New Orleans is ahead of its time. Why is/was this city a Mecca for avant-garde people and musicians?

Never "WAS," always "IS." The music CONTINUES to grow, evolve, influence, and advance. Jon Batiste, the Batiste family, the Nevilles, the Marsalis family, Terence Blanchard, Galactic, Dumpstaphunk, Khris Royal, Donald Harrison, Anders Osborne, Monk Boudreaux, PJ Morton, and way more are always making new and currently relevant pop, blues, jazz, and classical music.

The kids here grow up in it, get scholarships to the top music schools in the world, leave, study, experience New York, Boston, LA, Nashville, Chicago, or North Texas, and then most of those kids COME BACK. They infuse the city with new ideas while bringing the learned foundations of music itself—the understanding of bebop, classical, and advanced spontaneous composition/improvisation—and weaving that back into New Orleans music and culture. We're NEVER stagnant, never stuck in the past. We love jazz, ragtime, Dixieland, and blues, and most of the players from here know that history, but they are also playing gigs with artists from all over the world, making NEW and exciting music.

What is the role of musicians in today’s society? What is the driving force behind your continuous support for your music?

Well, I'm pretty sure our role has been diminished to its lowest value ever from the corporate and public perspective. Streaming has killed us, touring is more expensive and harder every year, and live music outside of New Orleans is harder and harder to find.

The silver lining is that more people are making music for the SAKE of making music rather than profit or recognition, which is leading to some incredible work right now. I think most people's motivations are pretty pure right now. For those that are not, well, I wish them the best, but "not all that glitters is gold," even if you get it. There's just a very pure need to create—to express the inexpressible through music, melody, rhythm, and harmony. I'm not any different or all that special.

“Definitely just studying music and getting to play with people whom I admire, growing from that, and challenging myself. Doing work I don't always feel like doing and the elements of discipline that go with that—discipline I never thought I had in me, but apparently I do (and which could certainly improve).” (Jason Ricci & Kaitlin Dibble / Photo by Pearls)

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

Just trying to be sincere, grateful, and more and more honest. No goals other than that, I suppose.

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

I'm just trying not to place any special importance on anything or any goals. I try to just be natural and make the best music we can for the sake of it. We practice for the sake of practice—not even to get better, but because that's what we do. We're musicians; it's a way of life, a path, a study, and a microcosm for a process aimed at moving closer to God and understanding ourselves.

The immersion into that study would be the SAME for anything really examined, be it culinary arts, painting, athletics, construction, landscaping, acting, or medicine. It's all an examination of the microcosm representing the macrocosm: "as in Heaven, so on Earth; as above, so below." Positive, negative, major, minor—all of that.

With such an illustrious career, what has given you the most satisfaction musically?

Definitely just studying music and getting to play with people whom I admire, growing from that, and challenging myself. Doing work I don't always feel like doing and the elements of discipline that go with that—discipline I never thought I had in me, but apparently I do (and which could certainly improve).

There is not enough time in the day and my priorities are still skewed. I pray that I learn to TRUST God more and have more faith, so I can really let His winds guide this little sailboat over these infinite seas in ways unimaginable to me and more beautiful than I can predict—just as He has already, for just a little while longer. Thank You!!!

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(Jason Ricci / Photo by Pearls)