When you’ve got a band that’s been nominated for Band of the Year five
straight times at the Blues Foundation’s Blues Music Awards (BMAs), you
know you’ve got one heck of a band.
So much so, that with nominations in that category in 2007, 2008, 2009,
2010 and this year, one might think that Nick Moss and the Flip Tops
have their names written in permanent ink on the ballots.
So what does Mr. Moss have up his sleeve to earn a sixth consecutive
nomination next spring?
Business as usual, maybe?
Just show up, plug in and play, right?
Not hardly.
Never one to take the path of least resistance over the course of his
20-plus years of playing the blues, Nick Moss has shaken things up by
recruiting a whole new batch of musicians – first hitting the studio
with his new guys, then taking them on a lengthy trek across the United
States and beyond to showcase his explosive new mates.
“It’s been a year of change. This band is really something else. After
the tour’s first show in Phoenix, people were coming up and saying they
loved the new material and the new band,” said Moss. “When our new
record comes out, I think it’s going to turn some heads with this group
of guys that are playing with me now.”
Moss’ new band-mates include Patrick Seals, drums; Travis Reed,
keyboards; Matthew Wilson, bass; and Michael Ledbetter, guitar and
vocals. If the last name ‘Ledbetter’ rings a bell, it should. Michael
Ledbetter is a distant relative of the King of the 12-Strig Guitar, the
late, great Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter.
Not only has Moss had to get used to the idea of looking around on stage
and seeing a different group of guys surrounding him, he’s also had to
become accustomed to leading a cast of considerably younger musicians
for the first time in his career.
“Yeah, I could be their daddy. That makes me the elder statesmen in the
band, which is kinda weird for me, especially since I’m still
12-years-old in my head,” he laughed. “It’s pretty funny to watch these
guys, because I know how I was when I was their age. It’s kind of
entertaining in its own way. I say, ‘wow! Is that the stuff I did and
the way that I acted?’ But musically speaking, this is probably one of
the most exciting groups that I’ve been a part of in a long time.”
Moss and his new road warriors have been testing a batch of fresh new
songs off his up-coming release, Here I Am, currently scheduled for a
Nov. 22 release date.
“It follows along the lines and the style of the last CD I did,
Privileged,” said Moss. “Whereas Privileged was a nod to the guys in the
world of rock that I grew up listening to – guys that turned me on to
the blues – this album has more of a focus on me, but still with a
modern, rock-edged feel to the blues. This album sounds a little more
like ‘me.’ Luckily, Privileged was pretty well received, so that really
encouraged me to do this new one. I’m really happy with the way this new
CD turned out.”
The first single off the album, “It’ll Turn Around,” has received a slew
of favorable reviews, even though it might take Moss’ diehard fans a bit
by surprise.
“It’s got a really positive message, with a gospel-kind of flavor to
it,” he said. “It’s something that I’ve never really done before. It’s
even got backup singers on it.”
Another break with tradition occurred when Moss left the friendly
confines of his own home studio - where the bulk of his other discs were
recorded – for Evolution Recording Studios in Elgin, Illinois.
“This gave me a chance to get out of my environment, my comfort zone,”
said Moss. “Sometimes that can actually help with motivation. I think at
times in the past, I’ve gotten complacent just because I’ve got a studio
right below my feet. And this (recording at Evolution) helped shake that
up a bit.”
Though his first seven albums could be comfortably labeled as
traditional Chicago-styled blues, the truth is, Nick Moss has always
been as equally inspired by the rock bands that he grew up listening to
in the 1970s, as he has been by the forefathers of the blues.
“I never really set out to go in any certain direction. I just try and
play what I feel like playing. But before my last album, I felt like I
had been at a bit of a standstill and was getting stale. I love
traditional Chicago blues. That stuff is in my heart and I still play
it,” he said. “But I just kind of felt stuck in the mud a little bit. So
Privileged and my new record are even larger steps to try and get new
fans that maybe wouldn’t have bought my other records, because they were
‘too blues sounding’ to come aboard. And that really worked with
Privileged. I managed to maintain the fans that I already had – they
enjoyed it – and I also picked up a whole new section of fans, too. It
got a bunch of AAA and college-radio jamband play, which none of my
other CDs had managed to do. ”
While it’s not something he’s spent a lot of time dwelling on, Moss has
had to shake free of the same burden that a lot of entertainers,
musicians and actors alike, are shackled with - having a certain label
slapped on you, thus automatically narrowing the scope of your work.
“Over the years, I seemed to have acquired this tag of being just a
Chicago blues player. And that really didn’t bother me. But what
bothered me was that I knew that I had a lot more influences than just
the straight Chicago blues – influences that have made me the singer,
songwriter and guitar player that I am today. And this new CD, I hope,
goes to showing people that,” Moss said. “The title track has a line
that goes, ‘what you see is what you get, don’t make a mistake and place
the wrong bet.’ But it still makes me feel good and I do appreciate it
when someone says, ‘oh, man. He’s a Chicago blues guitar player.’ I
really appreciate it when someone thinks that highly of me to give me
that tag, because that puts me in a class with all the guys I love. Guys
like Buddy Guy, Magic Sam and Earl Hooker and all those guys. And even
those guys had a hard time at what they were labeled as sometimes. I
mean, they all played different things. Earl Hooker … that guy could
play any style of music you threw at him.”
As evidenced by his nominations in the Best Instrumentalist – Guitar
category at the BMAs, Moss knows his way around the fret-board.
But as he found out early in his solo career, just because you have
unlimited potential and a world of talent to draw from, the path to
making a name for yourself in the music business can still be a long and
sometimes cruel one to embark on.
Even if you have a couple of impressive names like Jimmy Rogers and
Jimmy Dawkins penciled onto your resume.
“Well, I was just fresh off the sideman thing and thought it would be
easy (a solo career),” he said. “I had just got done playing with Jimmy
Rogers and thought that everyone in the world should know me. But when I
tried to sign with record labels, it was like, ‘you’re just a sideman.
Nobody knows you.’ That was the first thing that people told me – I was
an unknown, even though I’d spent four years with the legendary Jimmy
Rogers and a few years with Jimmy Dawkins. I was just a sideman.”
Undaunted, Moss just did what any aspiring artist would do.
He created his own venue to get his music out to the public.
Thus, Blue Bella Records, named after an aqua-blue 1971 Lincoln Mk III
that Moss owned while living in California (“I still miss that damned
car,” he said), was born.
“It’s just as simple as being able to put out a product. I couldn’t get
anyone (record labels) interested in putting my stuff out, so I decided
to do it myself,” he said. “To be honest, I was so naïve, and had no
idea what the business was about. But that same naivety also drove me to
do a solo thing to begin with, so really it was just another dumb move
on my part that happened to pan out. I just didn’t know any better.”
Even though Blue Bella Records has been around since 1998 and has issued
discs by favorites like the Cash Box Kings, Kilborn Alley Blues Band and
Bill Lupkin, Moss is still grappling with the learning curve associated
with being a label owner and business executive.
“After 11 or 12 years of doing this, it is still a learning experience,”
he said. “But fortunately for me, I have my wife Kate who has grabbed
the reigns tightly by herself. She’s the one that makes things run
smooth for the label.”
It’s not just as a label owner, but also as an in-demand producer, that
keeps Moss’ phone ringing off the hook these days.
And as one might think, Nick Moss the producer is influenced by Nick
Moss the musician when it comes to helming the project of another band.
“I do tend to put myself in their shoes a lot and be another member of
the band, even if I’m not playing an instrument,” he said. “I think it
really helps to know the band you’re producing. I really want to hear a
bunch of the band’s records and see them play live before signing on to
produce them. I want to grasp what the band is about. When I produce, I
want the person listening to the CD feel like they’re setting in a club
watching the band play. I really try and get the most live performance
(in the studio) out of a band that I can. And I think a lot of that
comes from being a musician myself.”
Though Moss’ sound was no doubt shaped from tours of duty with Jimmy
Rogers, Jimmy Dawkins and The Legendary Blues Band, his very first
influence – the spark that started the fire – was found a lot closer to
home. Matter of fact, it was found just down the hallway of his
childhood home.
“My first influence on the guitar was my brother Joe. My parents bought
us both guitars for Christmas one year and he was the one that first
really took to the instrument,” Moss said. “He (Joe) was a natural.
Right away, he could play a song. By the end of the week, he could play
a handful of songs. By the end of the month, he was playing a whole
record’s worth of songs and by the end of the summer, he was in a band.
And my uncle Randy, who was my dad’s younger brother, was kind of like
an older brother to me and Joe. He turned us on to so many cool records
and bands – like Free, Traffic, Blind Faith, Hendrix and Zeppelin – so
those were the bands we grew up with listening to in the 70s.”
Though his first exposure in the wild world of gigging came as a bass
player, even laying down the low-end in Jimmy Dawkins’ group, Moss was
particularly drawn to the unique sound of a guitar player that certainly
did not get his due, at least during his too-brief time on earth.
“Paul Kossoff from Free. Now more than ever, I really appreciate that
dude’s tone and style and phrasing. He was just a blues player; I don’t
care what anyone says. He had the most wicked vibrato. And guys like
Page and Hendrix were next. And Stevie Winwood, as a guitar player, is
hugely underrated. As great a keyboard and organ player as he is, I
think he’s just as killer of a guitar player. Those guys were my first
real influences. And then reading Cream and Circus, magazines like we
used to read before there was Guitar World, you’d see Page or one of
those guys say, ‘oh, I just love Otis Rush or Willie Dixon.’ And my
brother figured out that our mom had some of those guy’s records, along
with some B.B. King records, so we went through her records and figured
out who Page and those guys were talking about. And then, come to find
out, half those guys were Chicago dudes, living right in our own
backyard. So we’d go look for those guys and things just snowballed from
there. We just could not get enough of those guys.”
Once he was turned on to the music, Moss was so hungry to keep digging
through the blues that he likened his musical archeology hunt to “an
addiction” and he couldn’t stop from finding out who inspired the cats
that he was beginning to love.
“That was the thing that I really liked about exploring the blues –
after you got into one guy, you wanted to know who his influences where,
so you started chasing down those records,” Moss said. “So it was like a
thing where the rock guys led me to the blues guys and then the blues
guys led me to more blues guys and eventually, here I am at age 41 and
the blues guys have led me back to the rock guys. The whole idea is to
soak up as much of this stuff as you can and then hopefully, a little
bit of you comes out. If you’re lucky, you take everything that you know
and have been taught, give it the respect it’s due, play it the best
that you can and put a little bit of yourself in there. And then if
you’re even luckier, someone will go, ‘wow, you’ve got a really nice
style. I hear this guy and that guy in your style, but you’ve still got
your own thing going.’ That’s a really cool thing to hear.”
So how has Nick Moss managed to forge a decade-plus solo career, become
a label owner and turn into a grizzled-old bandleader?
The way he explains it, it might be simpler than you think.
“If you don’t have respect for what you do, you can’t love it. And I
respect the music so much, that I love what I do – playing music,” he
said. “And to have longevity in this business, you have to be able to
put your blinders on and just hack away, man. Just see if you can find
that light at the end of the tunnel.”
Candye
Kane (featuring Laura Chavez) - Sister Vagabond
Aaron
Williams and the Hoodoo - 10:49
Earl
Green & The Right Time – Live At Brönte Blues Club
EG
Kight - Lip Service
Big
Joe Shelton - The Older I Get The Better I Was
