"I hope that my songs have both humor and passion, and that they are a true expression of my outlook about real life as I have lived it. Many of the songs are personal and are based on feelings and situations that I have felt and experienced. Musically, the songs are influenced by my love of blues and especially of classic soul music, both the southern and northern varieties."

Billy Price: The Voice of Soul & Blues

2016 Blues Music Award (BMA) Winner and frequent BMA nominee Billy Price first attracted national attention during his three-year association with guitarist Roy Buchanan. Price is the vocalist on two of Buchanan's LPs, That's What I'm Here For and Live Stock. Since then, with the Keystone Rhythm Band, the Billy Price Band, and solo projects, Billy Price has recorded and released a total of 20 albums, CDs, and DVDs. Price’s album This Time for Real, with the late Chicago soul singer Otis Clay, received a 2016 Blues Music Award in the category of Best Soul Blues Album of 2015. His 2018 album Reckoning, produced by Kid Andersen at Greaseland Studios for Vizztone, was nominated for a 2019 Blues Music Award in the category of Best Soul Blues Album of 2018. His 2019 album Dog Eat Dog, also produced by Andersen, was nominated for a 2020 BMA for Best Soul Blues Album of 2019. He also received BMA nominations for Best Male Soul Blues Artist in 2020 and 2022. In 2022, he released a 3-CD compilation retrospective of his career on GetHip Recordings titled 50+ Years of Soul.

(Billy Price on stage, Hambone Art & Music 2023, Mississippi / Photo © by Joseph Rosen)

The Billy Price Band, based in Billy’s hometown of Pittsburgh, Pa., consists of Dave Dodd (drums), Tom Valentine (bass), Lenny Smith (guitar), Jim Britton (keyboards), Eric Spaulding (sax), and Joe Herndon (trumpet). They won the Pittsburgh City Paper Reader’s Poll in 2021 and 2022 as the top blues band in the city. Veteran soul-blues vocalist Billy Price is working with Grammy award-winning producer and drummer Tony Braunagel on Price’s first new recordings in four years. Braunagel will produce the studio tracks in Los Angeles, California, beginning in October, with a release planned early in 2024.

Interview by Michael Limnios                         Archive: Billy Price, 2022 interview

On the new year you’ll have one release with Tony Braunagel. How did that relationship come about?

Tony and I had first talked about working together back in around 2017, at the Big Blues Bender, but we never got around to making the album that we had talked about. This past May, I was performing with Anthony Geraci and the Boston Blues All-Stars at a fundraiser benefit in Clarksdale, Mississippi, right after the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, and Anthony asked Tony to play drums with us because Anthony’s drummer wasn’t available for the Clarksdale show. It was great to sing with Tony on the drums, and we also had a chance to hang out together and have some laughs after our performance.

The next day I was at the airport about to fly home to Pittsburgh when I saw Tony at an airport bar, and I went over to say goodbye to him and wish him well. He said, “You know, I would STILL like to make that album with you that we talked about a while back.” So, after I got home, I thought about what Tony had said, and eventually I got in touch with him and we started talking seriously about doing an album together.

Do you have any interesting stories about the making of the new album songs?

We are still working on deciding which songs to include on the album. We want to write a few more before we begin recording. I write all the time with Jim Britton, the keyboard player in my band, the Billy Price Band. I also write with a French guitarist with whom I have recorded and toured, Fred Chapellier, and I started writing again with Jon Tiven, a fine songwriter, producer, and guitar player, and his wife Sally Tiven, who live in Nashville, Tennessee. Jon, Sally, and I wrote some songs years ago for my album East End Avenue. So even before I started talking with Tony about this album, I already had a lot of good songs written. We are also thinking about including one or more cover songs by other artists.

"Although it’s true that there is a certain quality of life experience that an older singer or musician can draw from that a younger artist can’t, in general, I don’t think the differences are that significant. Some of my favorite recordings were made by singers who were young when they made them. If you have it you have it, and that can be evident at a young age. Magic Sam died of a heart attack when he was 32, so he was never old during his entire lifetime. I don’t think anyone can say that he lacked feeling in his singing and playing even though he never lived to be old." (Billy Price Band / Photo © by David Aschkenas)

What do you hope people continue to take away from your songs? What is the driving force behind your continuous support for your music?

I hope that my songs have both humor and passion, and that they are a true expression of my outlook about real life as I have lived it. Many of the songs are personal and are based on feelings and situations that I have felt and experienced. Musically, the songs are influenced by my love of blues and especially of classic soul music, both the southern and northern varieties.

Artists and labels will have to adapt to the new changes. What are your predictions for the music industry? How do you think the music industry will adapt to it?

Even though it seems like there has been a lot of change in the music business over the past few years, I don’t think this is anything new. The music business has been changing perpetually over the years that I have been in it. I’ve always tried to adapt to these changes and to align my music career with the business as it really is rather than as I would like it to be.

The reality of the business today is that most people consume music by means of digital streaming, and when people buy physical media these days, they are more likely to buy vinyl recordings than CDs. I’ve done well selling CDs of my recordings during my career, but it is starting to look like those days are over. As disappointing as that may be, I don’t plan to spend any time complaining about it on Facebook. So I will probably be selling vinyl physical copies of this new album and doing my best to get a lot of digital streams on Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms to be sure that as many people as possible hear our work.

I’m not smart enough to predict the future of the music industry other than to say that disruptive change will probably continue to be perpetual, and I’m going to do my best to be flexible and stay current with the industry as long as I am part of it.

"Traditional soul-blues or “southern soul” as it’s often called is still popular, particularly in the south and in big cities like Washington, DC and Chicago among older African-Americans. But there are also a lot of singers and groups who are building on and extending the music that I grew up loving and listening to, and it’s clear from the concerts I go to that these groups are appealing to people a lot younger than I am." (Billy Price on stage, Blues Heaven Festival 2022, Denmark / Photo © by Karo Achten)

What's the balance in music between technique and soul? Why is it important to we preserve and spread the blues/soul music?

There are certainly a lot of singers who have better physical voices and better technique than I have. The voice is a physical thing, and everyone is limited by the physical capabilities they were born with to produce their voices. And my voice doesn’t easily do what it was able to do 40 or 50 years ago; that’s just the natural process of aging. I’ve just always tried to make the most of what my physical voice enables me to do, so developing and refining my singing technique is as important for me as it was for Aretha Franklin or Sam Cooke, even though I of course will never have a voice that comes close to theirs.

It’s not as easy to talk about soul. Soul is a hard thing to define, but you know it when you encounter it. There are singers who have limited technique but who are still able to create deep and moving performances in the way they use tone, phrasing, and other extra-musical qualities to express the feelings that they are feeling and are trying to convey to listeners. I think of a singer like Dorothy Love Coates of the Gospel Harmonettes who had nowhere near the voice of some of the other great female gospel singers of her day like Mahalia Jackson or Marion Williams. Dorothy Love Coates had a much more limited range and often sang with a voice that sounded hoarse or even tired, but her performances were every bit as moving, at least to me, as those of singers with much better voices. That quality that Dorothy Love Coates had was what I call “soul."

From the musical and feeling point of view is there any difference between an old and great Soul/Blues crooners/musicians and young?

Although it’s true that there is a certain quality of life experience that an older singer or musician can draw from that a younger artist can’t, in general, I don’t think the differences are that significant. Some of my favorite recordings were made by singers who were young when they made them. If you have it you have it, and that can be evident at a young age. Magic Sam died of a heart attack when he was 32, so he was never old during his entire lifetime. I don’t think anyone can say that he lacked feeling in his singing and playing even though he never lived to be old.

"I’m not smart enough to predict the future of the music industry other than to say that disruptive change will probably continue to be perpetual, and I’m going to do my best to be flexible and stay current with the industry as long as I am part of it."

(Billy Price / Photo © by Karo Achten)

Do you think there is an audience for Soul/Blues music in its current state? or at least a potential for young people to become future audiences and fans?

Traditional soul-blues or “southern soul” as it’s often called is still popular, particularly in the south and in big cities like Washington, DC and Chicago among older African-Americans. But there are also a lot of singers and groups who are building on and extending the music that I grew up loving and listening to, and it’s clear from the concerts I go to that these groups are appealing to people a lot younger than I am. These contemporary styles are sometimes referred to as “neo-soul” or “retro soul,” and there are a lot of great artists working in these genres. Among my favorites are the California Honeydrops, the Monophonics, Durand Jones and the Indications with Aaron Frazer, the Jack Moves, Say She She, Claire Davis, Thee Sacred Souls, Joey Quinones and Thee Sinseers, the Altons—I could go on and on, these are some of my favorite contemporary artists. So, I don’t see the kind of music I’ve loved all my life disappearing from the world anytime soon.

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