Archive Review: Craig Chaquico’s Fire Red Moon (2012)

Guitarist Craig Chaquico was a mere teenager when he first climbed aboard the Jefferson Starship as a passenger during the mid-1970s, but by the dawn of the 1980s he was sitting on the helm, helping guide the pop-rock phenomena to the upper reaches of the charts. Chaquico had musical tastes much loftier than his day job required, however, and his solo records evince a love of (and skill at playing) jazz and blues styles that were seldom utilized on songs like “Sara” or “We Built This City,” regardless of their overwhelming commercial success.

Chaquico has been a somewhat prolific solo artist these past few years, plying a jazz-inflected instrumental sound that typically falls on the Adult Contemporary side of the fence, his most recent album, 2009’s Follow the Sun, kind of a “smooth jazz” breakthrough yielding a minor hit with the Kenny G composition “Songbird.” Considering his background, the guitarist would seem an ill fit with the blues ‘n’ roots mainstay Blind Pig Records, but here he is with Fire Red Moon, Chaquico’s debut for the label and a decent enough effort to start with.

Craig Chaquico’s Fire Red Moon

First, the bad news – Rolf Hartley, who sings the bulk of the non-instrumental tracks here, may be a longtime friend of the guitarist, but he’s just not that great a voice. For example, on Chaquico’s “Devil’s Daughter,” a bluesy tune that cries out for a dirty, gritty vocal instead offers up Hartley’s lightweight, Don Henley-styled croon, making the song sound like an outtake from the Eagles’ Hotel California. He has little presence on any of the songs that he appears on, and his vocals on Robert Johnson’s masterpiece “Crossroads” are lackluster and overwrought to the point of almost overshadowing some of the excellent fretwork that Chaquico is laying down in the background. The best part of the performance here definitely belongs to Chaquico, who takes Eric Clapton’s original blueprint for the song and pumps it full of life and vigor in spite of Hartley’s duff vocals.

Much better is the effort of singer Noah Hunt – Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s longtime frontman – who guests on Chaquico’s original “Lie To Me” and brings a bluesy, emotional gravitas to the performance that Hartley sorely lacks. Next time around, Chaquico should rope Hunt into the studio for a few more tunes. Another guest vocalist, Eric E. Golbach, makes what appears to be his big-league debut on “Bad Woman” and it isn’t half-bad, Golbach and his gravelly vocals displaying a real sense of heartbreak on the lyrics, the performance bolstered by Chaquico’s melancholy guitarplay dancing in the background.

As for the good news about Fire Red Moon, the album offers several fine showcases for the guitarist’s underrated skills, an instrumental take on Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ and Tumblin’“ perfectly capturing the song’s freewheeling locomotive vibe, while the album’s title track mixes blues and jazz together like B.B. King, displaying great tone and texture in equal and entertaining measures. The hauntingly beautiful “Blue On Blue” is a gentler, more ethereal sort of “Little Wing,” i.e. Jimi Hendrix channeled through Stevie Ray Vaughan and filtered through Ronnie Montrose before emerging from the fingertips of Craig Chaquico with his own unique flourishes.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

While Fire Red Moon isn’t as bluesy (or even blues-rock) as many of us may like, Chaquico is an exceptional musician who, should he decide to walk further down this path (maybe with Hunt in tow), could have a bright future with this thing we call the blues. Grade: B- (Blind Pig Records, released October 16, 2012)

Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin, R.I.P.

Jefferson Airplane

Rolling Stone magazine and other music media are reporting on the death of Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship vocalist Marty Balin. A Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Balin passed away of unknown causes on Thursday, September 27th, 2018 at the age of 76 years.

Jefferson Airplane’s founding member and initially the band’s lead vocalist and songwriter, Balin “launched” the Airplane in 1965 from The Matrix club in San Francisco, a former pizza parlor that he partially-owned and managed. The Airplane would become the club’s house band, their electrifying live performances bringing them to the attention of legendary local music critic and columnist Ralph J. Gleason, an early advocate for the group.

The Airplane would soon become known as the avatars of the “San Francisco sound,” with songs featuring vocals from three singers – Balin, Grace Slick, and guitarist Paul Kantner – as well as a solid rhythm section in bassist Jack Casady and drummer Spencer Dryden (who replaced original band drummer Skip Spence, who would later form Moby Grape). Talented lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen would round out the band’s pioneering psychedelic rock sound. This is the band line-up that would headline several major U.S. rock festivals of the ‘60s, including Monterey in 1967, and Woodstock and Altamont in 1969 as well as the first Isle of Wight Festival in 1968 in the U.K.

The band released five studio albums with Balin on the microphone, including bona fide classics like 1967’s Surrealistic Pillow and 1969’s Volunteers, and several Balin-penned songs like “Plastic Fantastic Lover,” “It’s No Secret,” and “Volunteers” would become staples of the band’s live set. By 1970, however, Kantner and Slick had become the dominant creative voices in the band, and Balin left to pursue other opportunities, managing and producing an album for the Bay area band Grootna before joining the hard rock band Bodacious DF as their lead vocalist. The Airplane released two albums without Balin before breaking up, splintering into two separate outfits – Jefferson Starship with Kantner and Slick and Hot Tuna with Kaukonen and Casady.

Jefferson Starship 1976

Asked by Kantner to write a song for the re-christened Jefferson Starship, Balin appeared as a guest vocalist on the band’s 1974 debut Dragon Fly. He would subsequently become a full-time member of the commercially-successful and more pop-oriented Starship, once again singing alongside Slick and Kantner on four studio albums including 1975’s double-Platinum™ Red Octopus, which yielded a monster hit with Balin’s song “Miracles,” and 1976’s Platinum™-selling Spitfire. Tensions among band members grew along with the band’s success, however, and Balin quit Starship after the release of their 1978 album Earth, following Grace Slick out the door.

Balin launched his career as a solo artist with the release of the 1981 album Balin, enjoying a Top Ten hit with the single “Hearts.” Balin reunited with Kantner and Casady to form the KBC Band, which released a single album in 1985. Jefferson Airplane reunited in 1989 for an album and tour, and Balin also toured with a reunited Starship in the 1990s and early ‘00s. The singer would also release a dozen solo records through the years, his last being 2016’s The Greatest Love. An accomplished and acclaimed painter, Balin painted portraits of many of his contemporary musicians and his permanent signature collection gallery is located in Saint Augustine, Florida.

An underrated rock ‘n’ roll vocalist in spite of his many accolades and honors, Marty Balin was far too often overshadowed by the larger-than-life personalities of bandmates Grace Slick and Paul Kantner. His incredibly warm voice and songwriting chops lent a certain gravitas that grounded the free-flying inclinations of his bandmates, however, and it’s safe to say that both Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship would not have reached the heights they did without Balin.

For more on the life of Marty Balin, check out writer Jeff Tamarkin’s obituary on the Best Classic Bands website; Jeff literally wrote the book on the Airplane (2003’s Got a Revolution!) and has forgotten more about the band than many of us will ever know.  The Rock and Roll Globe website’s Ron Hart also penned a wonderful obit on the legendary singer.

Fossils: Jefferson Starship's Spitfire (1976)

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Jefferson Starship – Spitfire

What a difference a few years makes – discarding Jefferson Airplane frontman Paul Kanter’s solo debut Blows Against The Empire, which was credited to Kanter and “Jefferson Starship,” and was more of a hard rock hippie fever dream than a pop album – by 1974, the Airplane had been grounded. The band added new guitarist Craig Chaquico and bassist Pete Sears (to replace founding members Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, who went full-time with their Hot Tuna side project) and took flight anew as Jefferson Starship. The 1974 release of Starship’s Dragon Fly hit #11 on the charts, but the following year’s Red Octopus rose to the top spot on the strength of the hit single “Miracles.”

Starship’s third album as a full band, 1976’s Spitfire, couldn’t boast of material of the strength of “Miracles,” but it rode high on the charts nonetheless, sitting at #3 for three weeks and eventually selling better than a million copies. The album’s colorful cover artwork was certainly striking, the brilliant graphics making for a memorable ad that featured an enigmatic female figure astride an Asian styled dragon and, at the bottom, the album’s name. Although the label stepped up its game for the album artwork, the ad itself is pretty lazy, saying nothing about the band or music and relying instead on the LP imagery itself to sell the product.