Handful of Blues Order Here

Produced by Danny Kortchmar

Comments on "Handful of Blues"

On Robben Ford & The Blue Line's third CD, Handful of Blues, the leader/guitarist/singer gets back to what he's always been about, even when he wasn't playing it:the blues. "Its like my brother Mark said," Ford laughs. "'Well, you have regressed all the way now.' I have a tendency towards simple music, but it has to be a real, authentic, artistic statement, and its never done without complete sincerity. There's something that heppens when you get the music down to such basics. Rather than needing to make the music simpler so I could feel freer, I sort of rediscovered that kind of openness that exists in the blues. That is the beauty of the blues, from a technical point of view. It inherently has an openness, due to the simplicity that I personally love."

Having self-produced their first two Stretch/GRP albums, the trio chose Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar to produce Handful of Blues. "I wasn't sure I wanted a guitar player producing," admits Robben. "But the more we talked about it, he was obviosuly right to help us do what we wanted to do on this album - very live, very spontaneous. He basically insisted that that's the way the record turn out. He just wouldn't let us polish it. We cut all the tracks for the album in four days. Not because we had to, or that there was a time or a budget constraint, it was just heppening." Breichtlein adds, "Having a producer meant a lot. Once we took the hat off and gave it to Danny, we immediately just became a band playing in a room. It allowed us to create." Kortchmar's blues credentials were up to the task at hand. "That's really his genre, where he's coming from as a guitarist," Robben adds. "He's very much like me in that he learned all that stuff just by playing it - like learning to swim by being thrown in the water."

Of the level of maturity and authenticity displayed by the trio, Beck comments, "I don't think you get any sense that anybody's trying to prove anything anymore. If it fits the song not to play something, then nobody plays it; if it fits the song to play out a little bit, then somebody plays out. And the potential has always been there to play 'the plain shit on the deal,' to quote Jimmie Vaughn. Robben and I especially had that background and were into blues in our early teens. Jazz was kind of natural progression from blues and at some point the blues was a natural progression back."

Ironically, Robben's reputation as a guitar great forced him for many years to neglect his natural vocal ability, which Handful of Blues shows is stronger than ever. "My vocal chops atrophied to some extent. There was a long period where I was not singing at all and when I would sing I'd just go out and do it. For the last year I have been working with a vocal teacher, so my range has increased tremendously, as well as, my control. I committed myself to bringing my singing up to the level of my guitar playing and everybody else in the band." Eleven of the CD's 12 songs are in fact vocals, including seven originals by Ford and one by Beck, along with a lowdown nod to Muddy Waters (Willie Dixon's "I Just Want To Make Love To You"), a funkified reworking of the traditional "Chevrolet" and a jazzy reading of the old Animals hit "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" (inspired by Nina Simone's original version). "I thought,'We should at least do one instrumental,'" Robben laughs. "So, "The Miller's Son" was written about two days before we went into the studio. I got the idea from listening to Sonny Boy Williamson, Rice Miller, who was one source I'd never tapped. I tried to find a harmonica line he would play that might inspire something, but I have to admit the Clapton influence there. And I'd wanted to do kind of a Clapton dedication."

With Handful of Blues, Robben Ford & The Blue Line go back to what they are about simply and sincerely, the blues. Robben smiles.

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