Ronnie Earl

The blues guitar virtuoso talking about his life, music and the Colour of Love.

You started your career rather late in life, your early twenties, how was that?

I grew up in New York City. I bought my first real guitar in 1973 which was first a Martin acoustic, then the next day I went back and traded it in on a Fender Stratocaster. Basically, living in New York City, I was going to see a lot of people with my father, people like Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Mingus and Dizzy Gillespie. Also, by chance, I went to the Fillimore East and I saw Albert King and B. B. King. Maybe a couple of months later I went up to Boston on a vacation and I saw Muddy Waters. He was playing for a week at this place called the Jazz Workshop, a very small club. That was it, I was completely turned on to the blues.

The only advantage, and I’ve had many years to reflect on this, of starting late, is that I was very, very focussed. I never played Rock “N” Roll, I never played Rock, Chuck Berry music, I didn’t play The Ventures. It was blues right off the bat! I took a trip to Chicago, Koko Taylor is a dear friend, and she took me around to all the clubs in Chicago. I got my education.

I have a degree in Special Education, I worked with retarded children and adults, so I was starting to play at night and teach early in the morning. It became very difficult to do both, and so I finally went on the road, for about seven months, with this band John Nicholas and the Rhythm Rockers. It took me to Texas, which took me to being with Jimmy Vaughan, who I stayed with for maybe six weeks.

It doesn’t feel to me like I started late, it feels to me I’ve been doing it the whole of my life. I think the music was in me from when I came out of the womb.

Fairly soon you replaced Duke Robillard in The Roomful Of Blues, which was a pretty significant outfit and you did a lot of touring with that, didn’t you?

I was with them for eight years, it was a difficult eight years. You can never really replace anyone. He’s Duke and I’m Ronnie and it’s still that way to this day. We don’t sound like one another, he has his own voice and I have mine. I have a lot of respect for him. It was a difficult time for me also because I was really into drugs and alcohol at that time.

Is that what caused you to leave Roomful of Blues, did it come to a crisis?

It was one of the reasons. I just couldn’t keep up with life. We were constantly touring for economics, there were ten or nine people in the band. We were burning up. It was also time for me to leave because I’m a composer. I write most of my own material and that part of me wasn’t being used. I was making my own solo albums even when I was in that band.

You don’t sing at all. Have you ever sung or been pushed to sing?

I’ve been pushed to sing. On a rare, rare occasion, I might, on a radio show or something, but my voice is on the guitar. The last five or six albums have been without vocals, except The Colour of Love, which has a vocal by Greg Allman.

Looking back over your albums, it looks like you felt you needed a “front” man, vocalist early on and later in your career you had the confidence to step out and say “I can do it without that”. Is that how it was?

It was, to be honest, it was very scary and courageous, looking back on it. Especially for someone who’s a blues oriented player, like myself. I just decided one day that I couldn’t express myself enough around a vocalist. I also realised that it put me in a certain bag because most of these vocalists played harmonica. I also realised my songs were actual songs and that most of my favourite musicians, in keeping with what I listened to before, were jazz musicians, like Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Pharaoh Sanders and Wes Montgomery. They didn’t have singers. It made perfect sense to me but I don’t know if it made perfect sense to the rest of the world. They had to come around. I tell my manager, who’s Pat Metheny’s manager, another guitarist who doesn’t sing, that a lot of people didn’t want to get me to the stage. They’d say “well we love Ronnie’s playing but I don’t know if this’ll work”. As soon as I did get to the stage there was never any doubt that this worked. And it’s been working for six years.

I’m interested, looking at your new album, it’s quite jazzy in many ways. It sounds like you’re returning to your roots rather than making a progression from blues to jazz. Is that how it feels to you?

In a way it does. It’s really all the same music. When I play I’m closing my eyes and I’m exposing my soul and whether it’s a ballad or a heavy slow blues or a stomp, it feels all the same. When I play “Around Midnight”, that’s a blues to me. It’s just music. The labels kinda fall by the wayside after a while.

Many would agree with you. You’re now with a bigger label than you’ve been with before, Verve, and you’ve new producer is Tom Dowd, who’s got an incredible track record, from Ornette Coleman through to Eric Clapton and The Cream. Was that your choice of producer or did Verve come up with that?

He was my choice of producer.

Did it make a difference to your work?

I think it did. He understands the guitar. He understands this kind of roots type music because he did Aretha and he did King Curtis, and Booker T and the Allman Brothers and Eric Clapton. I’m very traditional. I don’t use a whole lot of effects – I don’t use any effects, actually.

On your last album there’s an interesting mixture of dedications. Are you trying to be stylistic when you’re making these dedications or is it just a homage to someone you admire?

It is a homage. There’s a whole lot of homages to be made. Every album I try to pay homage to some of the people who set the plate for everybody to eat at.

You’ve got an odd mixture, you’ve got Albert Collins, Peter Green, Jimmy Vaughan. They seem more on the Rock end of blues. There’s no old time people in there, are there?

Other albums, going back to my second album, was dedicated to Muddy waters, my third album was dedicated to Big Walter Horton and Earl Hooker. Peter Green, was really an incredible, and still can be, a Chicago style blues guitarist, who later got into Rock. I’m mostly in love with the period where he recorded with Otis Spann and the early Fleetwood Mac albums, where he played the living daylights out of blues guitar. I have some live recordings of him in 1967 when it was not even called Fleetwood Mac. I feel a sort of affinity towards him because we’re both Jewish, His real name is Greenbaum. Jimmy Vaughan is another one of the greatest blues guitarists of all time. I used to see him back in 1976, way back before even the records were being made.

I agree with you, particularly about Peter Green. Have you heard his new album? He’s now playing again in England.

Yes, I have

It’s not like the old stuff, is it…

No. But I think it’s just a beautiful miracle from God that he came out of the depths and is playing and is happy. I’ve never seen him play but I’ve talked to him on the phone and I had a nice conversation with him. He told me that he was feeling really good. It’s hard for him to sound like he used to. It’s hard for me to sound like I used to.

Buddy Guy has the same problem, People want him to sound like he did when he did those Chess recordings but he’s somewhere else now.

I know what you’re saying. I can actually go back and sound like I sounded, My tone is not that different from my first album.

I also wanted to tell you that when I talked about having a hard time with drugs and alcohol with Roomful of Blues, it was just the other day I celebrated nine years of being clean and sober. I’ve had this band for ten years. It did happen relatively soon after I left Roomful of Blues. Of course, they weren’t the reason. I just got into the eighties. It seems like there was cocaine and alcohol everywhere. I’m just so happy to be free of all that now. You don’t have to live the blues to have a full rich life. You can play good music without drugs and alcohol.

An excellent message Ronnie. Unfortunately it was all too common in those days. Some people succumbed to it and some people, like Clapton got out of it. There have been quite a few deaths.

Yes, a lot of deaths and it’s still going on today. In the United States it’s very prevalent. By the Grace of God I was able to get pulled out of the fire. That’s why I’m able to got to Australia and New Zealand, today.

Is there a message about this in your music? Do you need to say something with jazz that you can’t say with blues, something about happiness that doesn’t come across with blues?

Oh, I think it comes across in all of the music I play. Blues is very happy and very healing, because it’s very soulful, depending on the player. The first part of your question is absolutely right. Yes, I’m trying very hard for glimpses of spirituality to project in my music.

Your only New Zealand performance is at The Powerstation in Auckland. What are we going to hear – is it your regular touring band?

You’re gonna hear a band that I started out with twenty years ago. I have Anthony Jalowski on piano and B3 organ, Michael “Mudcat” ward on acoustic and electric bass and Mark Greenberg is our drummer. I’m gonna play music from a lot of my albums, most of my albums that don’t have singing, of course.

I’m very much looking forward to coming. I wish I was going tomorrow. We’re only staying for one day?

You’ve got one performance, yes…

I hope I get a chance to see the country a little bit…

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