Blues At The Fair
By JOHN BECK
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 5:15 p.m.
At 71, Nick Gravenites has outlived most of his idols. Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, the blues greats who mentored him back when he was a 20-something punk who carried guns in southside Chicago blues clubs, never made it into their 70s.Many of his running mates and collaborators never lived to see the second act, much less the third act, of the tough-luck play on life that is the blues.
Mike Bloomfield, the gifted guitarist who lit solos on fire in Gravenites' 1969 major-label debut "My Labors" and later joined him in Electric Flag, was found dead in his car of a drug overdose at 37.
Janis Joplin overdosed at 27, the day before she was scheduled to record the vocal track on Gravenites' "Buried Alive in the Blues."
Paul Butterfield, who helped make Gravenites' life anthem "Born in Chicago" famous in 1965, died of a drug overdose at 44.
But Gravenites is hardly alone these days. There are still enough fellow blues survivors - guitarist Harvey Mandel, harmonica player Corky Siegel, organist Barry Goldberg - to soldier on with the Chicago Blues Reunion tours and Electric Flag revivals Gravenites has enjoyed in recent years.
When the blues hall of famer hits the Sonoma County Blues Festival this weekend, he'll share a stage with Chicago blues alum Charlie Musselwhite, whom he affectionately calls "Chuckie Mussels." When it comes to nicknames, Gravenites usually gets "Nick the Greek" or, as Siegel calls him, "Nicky Two-Hats."
At 71, Nick Gravenites has outlived most of his idols. Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, the blues greats who mentored him back when he was a 20-something punk who carried guns in southside Chicago blues clubs, never made it into their 70s.
Many of his running mates and collaborators never lived to see the second act, much less the third act, of the tough-luck play on life that is the blues.
Mike Bloomfield, the gifted guitarist who lit solos on fire in Gravenites' 1969 major-label debut "My Labors" and later joined him in Electric Flag, was found dead in his car of a drug overdose at 37.
Janis Joplin overdosed at 27, the day before she was scheduled to record the vocal track on Gravenites' "Buried Alive in the Blues."
Paul Butterfield, who helped make Gravenites' life anthem "Born in Chicago" famous in 1965, died of a drug overdose at 44.
But Gravenites is hardly alone these days. There are still enough fellow blues survivors - guitarist Harvey Mandel, harmonica player Corky Siegel, organist Barry Goldberg - to soldier on with the Chicago Blues Reunion tours and Electric Flag revivals Gravenites has enjoyed in recent years.
When the blues hall of famer hits the Sonoma County Blues Festival this weekend, he'll share a stage with Chicago blues alum Charlie Musselwhite, whom he affectionately calls "Chuckie Mussels." When it comes to nicknames, Gravenites usually gets "Nick the Greek" or, as Siegel calls him, "Nicky Two-Hats."
On this day, he was preparing for his in-laws to roll through town in their RV, which meant he had to go grocery shopping. He and his wife have been living in and around Occidental for nearly three decades. A few years back, he wrote a song with slide guitarist Roy Rogers called "Since the Gas Station Left Town" about the wooded West County hamlet.
Most mornings, he gets up around 5:30 or 6 a.m. and eventually makes his way down to the Union Hotel for coffee with a regular klatch who call themselves the Joe Stalin Commie Club.
Two weeks ago, he was supposed to play San Francisco's Fillmore center with a re-formed Electric Flag (sans the late Bloomfield and late drummer Buddy Miles), but the show was canceled due to slow ticket sales. He blames it on headliner Sons of Champlin for booking too many shows (Hopmonk in Sebastopol, Rancho Nicasio) around the same date. It would have been his first concert in two decades at the Fillmore, where he first met and played with guys like B.B. King, Albert King and Eric Clapton back in the '60s and '70s.
Initially drawn to San Francisco by the call of Jack Kerouac and "On the Road," he was a Beatnik first, singing with an acoustic guitar in North Beach coffeehouses where he first met Janis Joplin and David Crosby. But it was the blues that kept him coming back. From his early Chicago days of drinking Old Taylor bourbon and Coke with Muddy Waters in a smoky bar called Pepper's Lounge, "the main thing I learned is the blues depends on new blood - you gotta be yourself. Once you've learned from all these guys, you can't ape that stuff for the rest of your life. You gotta do it the way you wanna do it."
Over the years, he recorded dozens of albums as singer, songwriter or producer and played in numerous bands, including Electric Flag, Michael Bloomfield and Friends, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Nick Gravenites-John Cipollina Band and as a solo artist for decades.
"Michael and Paul were movers and shakers, but Nick was the leader," Goldberg told the Boston Globe a few years ago. "Nick would check everyone out, and if you didn't have the goods, he'd let you know."
Along with keeping people in check, his knack for summing up real-life experiences always punched up his songwriting and made people move. You can hear it in his two most covered songs: "Born in Chicago," about a string of friends who were killed in his rough early Chicago days, and the bad-luck wailer "Buried Alive in the Blues."
While others around him later fell victim to drugs and over-indulgence, he attributes his longevity to a middle-class Greek upbringing instilled by parents who ran a candy store in Chicago.
"It's the Greek ideal - all things in moderation," he says. "Doesn't matter what it is, just don't go overboard."
"I didn't know exactly what I wanted to be or that I'd wind up playing blues for the rest of my life. But the main thing is I knew how I didn't want to finish. I didn't want to be an alcoholic. I didn't want to be a junkie. It was more about what I didn't want to become than what I did want to become."
More than 50 years after he first picked up the guitar, the music is his greatest addiction. That sweaty rush he only gets on stage may have kept him alive all these years.
"It's the only thing that feels good," he says. "Everything up until the first moment of striking the note - it's all (nonsense). But once you start playing, it all comes back. Your body temperature changes, your heart rate changes, your metabolism goes flip-flop, your hormones go flip-flop. It's a feeling. The actually physical thing of playing, not talking about playing or thinking about playing, but the actual job of blood on steel, as I call it - that's it. Once it's over, it's over."
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 5:15 p.m.
At 71, Nick Gravenites has outlived most of his idols. Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, the blues greats who mentored him back when he was a 20-something punk who carried guns in southside Chicago blues clubs, never made it into their 70s.Many of his running mates and collaborators never lived to see the second act, much less the third act, of the tough-luck play on life that is the blues.
Mike Bloomfield, the gifted guitarist who lit solos on fire in Gravenites' 1969 major-label debut "My Labors" and later joined him in Electric Flag, was found dead in his car of a drug overdose at 37.
Janis Joplin overdosed at 27, the day before she was scheduled to record the vocal track on Gravenites' "Buried Alive in the Blues."
Paul Butterfield, who helped make Gravenites' life anthem "Born in Chicago" famous in 1965, died of a drug overdose at 44.
But Gravenites is hardly alone these days. There are still enough fellow blues survivors - guitarist Harvey Mandel, harmonica player Corky Siegel, organist Barry Goldberg - to soldier on with the Chicago Blues Reunion tours and Electric Flag revivals Gravenites has enjoyed in recent years.
When the blues hall of famer hits the Sonoma County Blues Festival this weekend, he'll share a stage with Chicago blues alum Charlie Musselwhite, whom he affectionately calls "Chuckie Mussels." When it comes to nicknames, Gravenites usually gets "Nick the Greek" or, as Siegel calls him, "Nicky Two-Hats."
At 71, Nick Gravenites has outlived most of his idols. Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, the blues greats who mentored him back when he was a 20-something punk who carried guns in southside Chicago blues clubs, never made it into their 70s.
Many of his running mates and collaborators never lived to see the second act, much less the third act, of the tough-luck play on life that is the blues.
Mike Bloomfield, the gifted guitarist who lit solos on fire in Gravenites' 1969 major-label debut "My Labors" and later joined him in Electric Flag, was found dead in his car of a drug overdose at 37.
Janis Joplin overdosed at 27, the day before she was scheduled to record the vocal track on Gravenites' "Buried Alive in the Blues."
Paul Butterfield, who helped make Gravenites' life anthem "Born in Chicago" famous in 1965, died of a drug overdose at 44.
But Gravenites is hardly alone these days. There are still enough fellow blues survivors - guitarist Harvey Mandel, harmonica player Corky Siegel, organist Barry Goldberg - to soldier on with the Chicago Blues Reunion tours and Electric Flag revivals Gravenites has enjoyed in recent years.
When the blues hall of famer hits the Sonoma County Blues Festival this weekend, he'll share a stage with Chicago blues alum Charlie Musselwhite, whom he affectionately calls "Chuckie Mussels." When it comes to nicknames, Gravenites usually gets "Nick the Greek" or, as Siegel calls him, "Nicky Two-Hats."
On this day, he was preparing for his in-laws to roll through town in their RV, which meant he had to go grocery shopping. He and his wife have been living in and around Occidental for nearly three decades. A few years back, he wrote a song with slide guitarist Roy Rogers called "Since the Gas Station Left Town" about the wooded West County hamlet.
Most mornings, he gets up around 5:30 or 6 a.m. and eventually makes his way down to the Union Hotel for coffee with a regular klatch who call themselves the Joe Stalin Commie Club.
Two weeks ago, he was supposed to play San Francisco's Fillmore center with a re-formed Electric Flag (sans the late Bloomfield and late drummer Buddy Miles), but the show was canceled due to slow ticket sales. He blames it on headliner Sons of Champlin for booking too many shows (Hopmonk in Sebastopol, Rancho Nicasio) around the same date. It would have been his first concert in two decades at the Fillmore, where he first met and played with guys like B.B. King, Albert King and Eric Clapton back in the '60s and '70s.
Initially drawn to San Francisco by the call of Jack Kerouac and "On the Road," he was a Beatnik first, singing with an acoustic guitar in North Beach coffeehouses where he first met Janis Joplin and David Crosby. But it was the blues that kept him coming back. From his early Chicago days of drinking Old Taylor bourbon and Coke with Muddy Waters in a smoky bar called Pepper's Lounge, "the main thing I learned is the blues depends on new blood - you gotta be yourself. Once you've learned from all these guys, you can't ape that stuff for the rest of your life. You gotta do it the way you wanna do it."
Over the years, he recorded dozens of albums as singer, songwriter or producer and played in numerous bands, including Electric Flag, Michael Bloomfield and Friends, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Nick Gravenites-John Cipollina Band and as a solo artist for decades.
"Michael and Paul were movers and shakers, but Nick was the leader," Goldberg told the Boston Globe a few years ago. "Nick would check everyone out, and if you didn't have the goods, he'd let you know."
Along with keeping people in check, his knack for summing up real-life experiences always punched up his songwriting and made people move. You can hear it in his two most covered songs: "Born in Chicago," about a string of friends who were killed in his rough early Chicago days, and the bad-luck wailer "Buried Alive in the Blues."
While others around him later fell victim to drugs and over-indulgence, he attributes his longevity to a middle-class Greek upbringing instilled by parents who ran a candy store in Chicago.
"It's the Greek ideal - all things in moderation," he says. "Doesn't matter what it is, just don't go overboard."
"I didn't know exactly what I wanted to be or that I'd wind up playing blues for the rest of my life. But the main thing is I knew how I didn't want to finish. I didn't want to be an alcoholic. I didn't want to be a junkie. It was more about what I didn't want to become than what I did want to become."
More than 50 years after he first picked up the guitar, the music is his greatest addiction. That sweaty rush he only gets on stage may have kept him alive all these years.
"It's the only thing that feels good," he says. "Everything up until the first moment of striking the note - it's all (nonsense). But once you start playing, it all comes back. Your body temperature changes, your heart rate changes, your metabolism goes flip-flop, your hormones go flip-flop. It's a feeling. The actually physical thing of playing, not talking about playing or thinking about playing, but the actual job of blood on steel, as I call it - that's it. Once it's over, it's over."
Santa Rosa
Occidental's Nick Gravenites, Blues Hall of Fame member, heads the lineup at the fair.