Just a couple of months removed from one of the highest moments of his
career, Grady Champion couldn’t have been much lower.
Less than an hour before he was scheduled to hit the stage at the
Greater Ozarks Blues Festival in Springfield, Mo., almost two summers
ago, the winner of the 2010 International Blues Challenge (IBC) was
issued an ultimatum from his guitar player.
Pay me more money or I’m not going to play.
Talk about having your back shoved up against the proverbial wall.
“I basically had a young guitar player with me at that time – and after
driving eight hours to get to that show, we get to an hour before it –
and he told me he wasn’t going to play if he didn’t get some more
money,” Champion said. “At first, I didn’t know what to do … somebody
trying to strong-arm me? But I had a budget that I had to stay with, so
he was out.”
Stunned, shocked, dismayed and disappointed though he may have been,
Champion still managed to pull himself together and found a way to
complete the task at hand, which was to entertain those in attendance.
“I just refused to be handicapped by that situation. Something told me
to pick up the phone. So I called the blues society (Blues Society of
the Ozarks) and asked them to send me the best guitar player they could.
And they sent Nathan Keck,” said Champion. “And he learned on the run
and has been with me ever since. He’s been a real blessing. Just what we
needed at the time. He’s fit in really well with us and we’re all just
growing together.”
While it certainly worked out in his favor in the long run, the
attempted hijacking by his former guitar player is about the only bum
thing that’s happened to the singer/songwriter/harp player since he was
crowned IBC winner in February of 2010.
The rest, as they say, has all been gravy for Grady.
“Man, it’s been unbelievable (winning the IBC). Just unbelievable. I
probably wouldn’t have a career right now if I hadn’t won the IBC,” he
said. “It was really hard (up to that point) because I just couldn’t get
anything to break through. People just wasn’t paying me any attention.
And it takes a lot of money to stay out on the road and stay in front of
people. I really didn’t have the support and backing I needed until I
won the IBC.”
Flush with that success, Champion entered into the recording studio and
emerged with the highly-touted Dreamin’ (GSM Records).
And the reaction to Champion’s fifth full-length compact disc has been
very positive, to say the least.
“It’s been awesome. It’s been nominated for Soul Blues Album of the Year
at the Blues Music Awards, and a single off the album, “Thank You For
Giving Me The Blues” is up for song of the year at the BMA’s,” he said.
“And then it was nominated for Album of the Year at the Blues Critic
Awards and also had a single (“Make That Monkey Jump”) nominated for
Single of the Year. So we got quite a few nominations and it’s been a
real blessing.”
That’s quite an impressive coup, especially when considering that “Thank
You For Giving Me The Blues” and “Make That Monkey Jump” were late
arrivers to the party and very easily might have been left off of
Dreamin’.
“Well, three of the songs off the album, I wrote in Newark, Delaware and
all three turned out to be really good songs,” said Champion. “Zac
Harmon (producer, guitarist) called me up and said, ‘Grady, you need
about three more songs to finish the album up.’ And I wrote the songs –
“Make That Monkey Jump,” “Thank You For Giving Me The Blues” and “Laugh,
Smile, Cry Sometimes” – all in one night. I wrote “Monkey” first and
then I went to sleep. Later on that night I woke up and wrote “Laugh”
and then went back to sleep. Then when I woke up early the next morning
… ‘woke up this morning with a lot on my mind’ … and I wrote “Thank
You.”
Writing songs on the road as he bounces from hotel room to hotel room is
nothing new for Champion. Matter of fact, that style of penning songs
seems to agree pretty well with him.
“When I’m touring, I’m collecting a lot of information mentally and I’m
also capturing different situations with my iPhone or recorder. If I run
across something that I think might be a good idea for a song, I put it
down,” he said. “And then I go back and visit my ideas. I’m starting to
mature more as a writer and I think a lot of that is due to just being
out on the road touring.”
While it may seem that Champion became a veritable ‘overnight sensation’
after besting over 150 other entries to take top prize in the IBC, that
couldn’t be any farther from the truth.
The truth is, Champion was a veteran of the road already, having played
the blues for 17 years before that fateful winter weekend in Memphis
when he was anointed as IBC champion.
It’s a wonder that Champion even decided to stroll down the blues
highway to begin with.
The youngest of 28 children, Champion, was turned on to music at an
early age thanks to singing with his family in church in Canton,
Mississippi.
“Man, my momma and them really rocked that church when I was growing up.
Imagine being in Mississippi with a Baptist church and that church was
rockin,’” said Champion. “Seeing momma and them play in church and then
me singing in there when I was about 8 years old really got me going.”
So being brought up singing in a southern Baptist church automatically
equals a career playing the blues, right?
Uh … no.
Champion first turned to rap music as an outlet for his creative juices
and energy.
“I recorded a rap album and even released a rap single. I’ve even got
footage of me rapping on a TV show in Jackson,” he said. “I really
didn’t get into the blues until I was about 23 years old.”
But after the rap scene started to become a place he didn’t want to be,
with all the fights at the clubs he was performing at and with all the
negative lyrics that can go hand-in-hand with the genre, Champion
decided to abandon that ship.
“Well, I was a single father at the time and really wanted to start
performing for a more mature audience,” he said. “So I started to move
away from rap. I knew something about the blues – more the Malaco kind
of blues – because that’s some of the music we were raised on.”
Champion really fell head-over-heels and started his personal history
lesson in the blues after being turned on to Chess Records’ iconic
roster of stars when he was 23 years old.
“Man, when I heard Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin’ Wolf and stuff like
that, it was a done deal. I said to myself, ‘I don’t want to do nothing
else but sing the blues,’” he said.
“And I bought my first harmonica
when I was 25 years old, back in 1994. I used to sleep with Sonny Boy
Williamson’s Chess Collection playing all night long. I saw a study that
year where a doctor said the brain never sleeps, and I said if that’s
the case, even though my body is asleep, my brain will still be
listening to that music. And a year later, I was recording the blues.”
His first blues album, Goin’ Back Home, was issued in 1998, followed in
succession by 1999’s Payin’ For My Sins and 2 Days Short of a Week in
2001. Those later two Shanachie albums are about to once again see the
light of day.
“I’m still going to promote Dreamin,’ but I went back last year and
bought my masters from Shanachie. So I took every song I wrote off those
two albums, which was 17 songs, and I’m going to put all those on one CD
called Shanachie Days,” Champion said. “I’m going to release that one in
May.”
And there’s no doubt that CD release will be followed up by plenty of
hard-earned road miles, a process that Champion and his mates are well
versed in at this point in time.
“It all comes from me being out on that road in 2011. Me and the band’s
done a lot of touring and we’re not through. We’re getting ready to go
out now on a month-and-a-half tour, so we’ve got a lot of work left to
do,” he said. “And touring is very important. It lets the people see
what’s going on. You have to be able to tour to really make a difference
(in how an album sells). I’m really starting to understand about
touring, for one thing. And what it takes to tour. We’ve met a lot of
great people and being on the road this past year has been a great
experience.”
And Champion knows that life on the road, along with a willing support
staff at the record label, is what has really helped to set Dreamin’
apart from his previous four offerings.
“It (the creative process) was about the same for this album. I go with
what I write, which is what I did on my albums for Shanachie,” he said.
“The thing was, they (Shanachie) just didn’t put a lot into promoting
the record. I mean, you can make a great record, but if people don’t
know it’s out there, it doesn’t do you any good.”
After Keck’s ‘trial by fire’ of going from lead guitarist and vocalist
in Branson, Missouri’s Underground Blues Division earlier in the
afternoon, to climbing on stage and jamming with Champion’s band at the
Greater Ozarks Blues Festival later that same evening, things finally
seem fairly stable for the Grady Champion band.
“I think Nathan has become an even greater guitar player since he’s been
with us. He came from a more rock-type background,” said Champion. “But
I call him the ‘baby Steve Cropper,’ because he can play anything. We
were riding from Springfield, Missouri (when he first joined) to Utah
and he was practicing the whole way, learning the songs on the run. And
man, by the time we got to Utah, he was ready. He catches on real
quick.”
Kind of like the way that after a mere 17 years of hard life in the
trenches, fans of the blues are starting to quickly catch on to the
glorious tunes that Grady Champion is churning out.
Photos by Bob Kieser © 2012 Blues Blast Magazine
David
Maxwell & Otis Spann - Conversations in Blue
Rita
Engedalen – Chapels and Bars
Bushmaster
- Revolution Rhapsody aka: Uprising Music
Billy
Lee Janey – No Saints Ringin’ The Bells
Clare
Free - Dust and Bones
Big
Nick and the Gila Monsters - Shaken Not Stirred & Working
Without A Net 
The
live set Workin’ Without A Net shows us the band doing some
classic covers along with a pair of their own tunes. They open with a
Willie Dixon song of Muddy Waters’ fame (“I’m Ready”), shift gears with
the gritty “She’s Dynamite” with the bass player fronting the band
admirably, and then the drummer leads them in “Framed”. They give these
covers a good treatment, the last with their signature call and response
that the crowd loved. Then they broke into an original cut, “Dancin’
With My Baby” which appears to have had the crowd dancin’ with their
babies as Big Nick crooned out the lead. They then pay homage to Jimmy
Vaughn (“Can’t Say No”), Chuck Berry (“Brown Eyed Handsome Man”), JJ
Hawkins (“I Put A spell On You”) and Lightnin’ Hopkins (Play With Your
Poodle”). Down and up and down and up in tempo with those songs gave the
crowd a great ride and the band was obviously into it. I am impressed
with Big Nick’s vocals and harp and el Ray on guitar, but Muddy and
White Shoes also add their style to some of the cuts and give us a
slightly different look on their leads. They then go into “Horn and
Headlights Part 2”, a revisit of the studio cut but with a little
different approach to the beat and style. They close with Clarence
Carter’s “Ain’t Got You” sung by Mike Lewis. He handles the lead pretty
well, but the harp punctuating the vocals and Lewis’ guitar really sell
this. 