Archive Review: Nick Gravenites’ Bluestar (2009)

His name might not be familiar to the average blues fan, but you really can’t challenge Nick Gravenites’ credentials. He was part of a circle of blues-loving white musicians in Chicago during the early 1960s that included Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield. He was schooled by some of the biggest names and talents in the city, including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Otis Rush. His songs have been recorded by folks like the Wolf and James Cotton, and his classic “Born In Chicago,” performed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, earned him his ticket into the Blues Hall of Fame.

One of the reasons that Gravenites is not the best-known of Chicago’s young blues turks is because he recorded so infrequently on his own. Gravenites released his solo debut, My Labors, in 1969 between touring and recording with Big Brother & the Holding Company. He didn’t get around to releasing his sophomore album, Bluestar, until 1980. Working with a band that included some of the San Francisco Bay area’s best talents, including bassist Pete Sears (Jefferson Starship), harmonica player Huey Lewis, and his Gravenites-Cipollina Band collaborator John Cipollina (Quicksilver Messenger Service), Gravenites delivered a stellar set of rockin’ blues tunes.   

Nick Gravenites’ Bluestar

Gravenites’ “Junkyard In Malibu” is a good measure of the artist’s songwriting skills, a sly song that posits a junkyard in the high-priced enclave of Malibu, California that serves as an analogy for a love gone bad. Gravenites’ gravel-throated vocals are complimented by a funky, swaggering rhythm while he and guitarist Cipollina swap Southern-fried licks back and forth. The mid-tempo “I’m A Bluesman” draws the Mississippi Delta roots out of the Chicago blues to deliver a down-and-dirty declaration that is supported by some fiery fretwork and Huey Lewis’s surprisingly supple harp playing.

The smoldering “Blues Back Off” is a slow dance across the history of the blues, Gravenites’ soulful vocals bolstered by Sears’ subtle keyboard flourishes, drummer Joey Covington’s steady beats, and a blistering guitar solo slightly more than two minutes in that channels decades of R&B soul into six strings and several measures of gorgeous tone. By comparison, “Who’s Out There” is a good old-fashioned Chicago blues styled romp, with the rhythm section kicking out a rapid, foot-stomping pace and Lewis blasting out a wild harp riff. The guitar solo here – I’m guessing that it’s Gravenites – sounds like Buddy Guy in his prime, full of energy and passion.

Remembering The Southside

The wild boogie-rocker “My Party” takes its cue from John Lee Hooker with a mesmerizing rhythm, walking bass line, and swamp-blues flavored vocals while the semi-autobiographical “Southside” is Gravenites’ account of those raucous early ‘60s nights in Chicago’s blues clubs. With a deliberate beat and staggering rhythm guitar, the song is as entertaining as it is boastful.

Of the three bonus tracks included on this first-time CD release of Bluestar, the slippery “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” is the best, its somber vocals and serpentine slide-guitar matched by a dark-hued ambiance and driving rhythm. What the live “Rattlecan Man” lacks in sound quality it more than makes up for with pure reckless energy, the mid-tempo traditional blues number benefiting from a swinging rhythm and shocks of sharp-edged guitar.  

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Because he’s working in a traditional blues medium that has changed little in 50+ years, there’s a lot on Nick Gravenites’ Bluestar that will sound familiar to the experienced blues fan. On the other hand, it’s exactly for this reason that much of Bluestar sounds as fresh and contemporary today as it did in 1980. Gravenites’ guitarwork is solid and, at times, downright scary good, while his songwriting is never anything less than entertaining. This is timeless blues and blues-rock music, and if you’ve never heard of Nick Gravenites, or you’ve heard of him and always been curious, you’ll find Bluestar to be a pleasant surprise. (Renaissance Records/It’s About Music, 2009)

High Moon Records to release long-lost Terry Dolan LP

Singer/songwriter Terry Dolan is one of those obscure footnotes in rock ‘n’ roll history, a talented artist that garnered tons of respect from his peers but nevertheless never managed to find an audience beyond his loyal San Francisco Bay area fans. Dolan is best-known as the frontman for the long-running band of friends known as Terry and the Pirates. Formed by Dolan in 1973 with the equally-talented guitarists John Cipollina (Quicksilver Messenger Service) and Greg Douglass (Country Weather), Terry and the Pirates had a great run in the bay area, performing and recording until Cipollina’s death in 1989, after which the band temporarily broke up. Dolan reformed the Pirates in 1994 and carried the banner for the band’s unique blend of folk and rock music until his death in 2012.

Long before Terry and the Pirates, however, Dolan was just another singer/songwriter who had immigrated to the bay area from the east coast prior to the “summer of love.” Dolan recorded a demo for his song “Inlaws & Outlaws” with SF band Country Weather and with the help of legendary bay area FM radio DJ “Big Daddy” Tom Donahue, Dolan was signed to Warner Brothers Records in 1972. Dolan recorded his debut album with a host of talented friends, including guitarists Cipollina, Douglass, and Neal Schon (Journey); pianists Nicky Hopkins (Rolling Stones) and Pete Sears (Rod Stewart’s band); and drummers Prairie Prince (The Tubes) and Spencer Dryden (Jefferson Airplane) as well as backing singers Kathi McDonald and the Pointer Sisters.

With recording completed, the cover designed, and the album even assigned a catalog number, Warner Brothers inexplicably cancelled the album two months before its release, shelving the record for decades and dropping the artist from their roster. The good people at High Moon Records have resurrected this long-lost gem of ‘70s-era San Francisco rock with plans to finally release Terry Dolan’s self-titled debut album on November 25th, 2016 in both CD and vinyl formats.

The album has been re-mastered from the original analog tapes by multiple Grammy™ Award nominee Dan Hersch, and features cover and artwork by legendary rock photographer Herb Greene. The vinyl version offers eight songs recorded by Dolan for the original album release while the CD includes six bonus tracks from the original sessions. Both versions include a booklet crammed with rare photos, an essay on the album’s history, and recollections about Dolan from friends and the musicians that helped record the LP.

High Moon has a good track record with this sort of thing, the label previously rescuing albums by Love and Gene Clark of the Byrds from the dustbins of history and releasing them as premium, high quality reissues. Check out the Terry Dolan video below and then get on over to High Moon’s website for more information!

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Terry Dolan's Terry Dolan

CD Preview: Quicksilver Messenger Service Live At The Old Mill Tavern 1970

There must be a ready market for these Quicksilver Messenger Service pseudo-bootlegs with dodgy provenance (and often questionable sound), because a bunch of fly-by-night labels have cranked out better than a half-dozen such releases in the last four years or so. Live At The Old Mill Tavern, documenting a March 1970 QMS show from Mill Valley, California was released digitally and as a CD-R in 2012 and now gets the full digipak CD treatment from the good folks at Cleopatra Records, which at least ensures a decent package with the best sound possible.

Of all the live QMS recordings floating around, this one is notable in that it features a newly-reunited band line-up that included singer Dino Valenti along with guitarists Gary Duncan and John Cipollina, bassist David Freiberg, keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, and drummer Greg Elmore working out on tunes like Valenti's "Mojo" and Bo Diddley's "Mona." This particular set includes two lengthy blues jams with Chicago blues legend James Cotton (extending out 21+ minutes) and the sort of blues-infused psychedelic pop that only Quicksilver could deliver.

My old buddy Dave Thompson wrote the liner notes for Live At The Old Mill Tavern, and the label's press releases quotes from them, telling us more about the story behind the album. “The six-piece band – Dino Valenti, Gary Duncan, John Cippolina, David Freiberg, and Greg Elmore – had only been playing together a few months, since New Year at the Fillmore rang in this new decade, and they are blazing tonight, ” writes Thompson. “Fiery and more fiery still...waiting in the wings for encore time was harmonica legend Jimmy Cotton, whose eponymous Blues Band was kicking the crap out of more or less every band it came up against in concert...there's a lot of live Quicksilver material out there, and that is how it should be. The records are great but, as all the members have said, it was live that the Messenger Service really smoked, and the live tapes that truly mark the life and times that they lived so well. This recording punches all of those buttons, and a whole bunch more besides!”