Willie McBlind
Blues / Psychedelic / Rock
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"Harmonically Tuned Electric Delta Blues"
New York, New York
United States
Profile Views:
2800
Last Login:
10/4/2008
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http://www.myspace.com/williemcblind |
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| Willie McBlind: General Info
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| Member Since | 2/15/2007 | | Band Website | microtones.com | | Band Members | Jon Catler, on 64-Tone Just Intonation, 12-Tone Ultra Plus and fretless guitars and vocals;
Meredith 'Babe' Borden, electric Delta shamaness, on vocals;
Neville L'Green of the Blues on bass;
Lorne "Doctor" Watson on drums and percussion. | | Influences | Jimi Hendrix, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Jeff Beck, Harry Partch, Blind Willie Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Janis Joplin, Leslie West, Gyorgy Ligeti, Richie Blackmore, Charlie Patton, Ornette Coleman, Aerosmith, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jaco Pastorius, John Coltrane, The Wood Thrush, Willie Dixon, Johnny Winter, Felix Pappalardi, Diamanda Galas, Robin Trower, Black Sabbath, Bees, Olivier Messiaen, Wes Montgomery, Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Joe Cocker, Willie Brown, Meredith Monk, Moody Beach. | | Sounds Like | Jimi and Night Bird meet La Monte at Partch's house. | | Record Label | FreeNote Records | | Type of Label | Indie |
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| About Willie McBlind |
Profile written by Frank-John Hadley, 2007 Blues Foundation Keeping the Blues Alive (KBA) awardee (Journalism) ~
New York City-based guitarist-composer Jon Catler and singer Meredith “Babe” Borden are on the short list of the most striking blues musicians performing today. Catler’s artful use of his 12-Tone Ultra Plus Guitar and 64-Tone Just Intonation and Fretless guitars in the service of his Just Intonation system of tuning--the underappreciated pitches that fall between the notes of the familiar Western scale--along with Borden’s authoritative three-octave voice are crucial to the fresh, vibrant blues conjured up by their acclaimed band, Willie McBlind with Neville L’ Green on bass and Lorne Watson on drums.
Catler is a world-class guitarist. Rolling Stone’s David Fricke noted: “In the extended improv-reveries of guitarist Jon Catler you hear the same blue-note pitch swerves that have been the poetry in motion of guitarists from Son House to Jimi Hendrix.” The late esteemed critic-producer Robert Palmer observed: “Jon Catler has integrated his Berklee chops, microtonal intonation, and idiomatic blues feel into a radically original voice.” The January 2008 issue of Guitar Player featured the Ultra Plus, judging it was “well-made, wildly innovative…a pretty amazing thing to experience.”
Accolades from the music press, too, have been heaped on Willie McBlind’s debut album, Find My Way Back Home. All Music Guide noted, “[The album’s] well worth exploring if one is seeking something fresh and unconventional from blues-rock,” while DownBeat, among other media outlets in North America and Europe, used the word “stunning” in its laudatory review in their January 2008 issue. Radio stations from Connecticut to Alaska, Minnesota down to Texas, and throughout Europe, have given substantial airplay to tracks on Find My Way Back Home.
The psychedelic electric Delta blues so astutely and convincingly performed by Catler and Borden, two connoisseurs of pitch, bodes well for the blues future, indeed. Willie McBlind is one of the few risk-taking bands contradicting the often voiced notion that stagnation has spread across the entirety of blues and that the loss of so many key figures in recent years has left the 12-bar music in a moribund state. Catler and Borden reach the high bar of exquisitely nuanced blues feeling on Find My Way Back Home and in concerts at leading NYC venues like The Cutting Room, Makor, C-Note, and Le Bar Bat.
Catler understands the direct connection to the rich blues past. “If you look at the early masters of microtonal blues, Robert Johnson and Charley Patton,” he says, “these guys were really masters of pitches and rhythm to a subtle degree that just got lost over the years.” He continues, “After Patton and Johnson, blues became hammered out to a 12-bar pattern and the notes became sort of standardized. You could bend in between them, of course, but we lost some of the subtlety of that old language.”
Catler and Borden’s remarkable restoration work isn’t a sudden, accidental occurrence. “Where we come from is as important as who we are,” says Borden. She explains that she listened closely to blues-rock and opera growing up in central Massachusetts, and she had college musical training that now profits her blues investigations. “My [operatic three octave] range that I’ve developed through classical training at the New England Conservatory of Music has really influenced my singing as a blues singer.”
In turn, Catler found his life work after happening upon a microtonal guitar as a student at Berklee College of Music in the late-1970s. “Before I got that microtonal guitar, I couldn’t understand why I was hearing this beautiful pitch but I didn’t have a fret for it,” he recalls. “That was really the start of my realizing that that we didn’t have all the notes that we needed on the guitar—there were other notes that had magical qualities that were hidden from us.”
In 1981, Catler introduced himself to world-renowned contemporary classical composer La Monte Young after attending a long, epic performance of Young’s “The Well-Tuned Piano.” His mental image of the show remains vivid: “You’d look at his fingers, sometimes they were so fast, it was a blur. But other times he was so slow, he’d put his hands down by his side and just play these notes and let them ring. I’d never seen anybody play so fast and so slow in one song. And his melodies were just incredible.” Soon after, Young and Catler began working together.
The 1990s found NYC-based Catler, originally from the Greater Boston area, performing with Young’s Forever Bad Blues Band at sold-out venues in North America and Europe, and recording a well-received double-album on the Gramavision label. Droning sound washes swept along overtones and harmonics for 2-3 hours at FBBB shows; Catler’s guitar and Young’s synthesizers (simulating a specially tuned piano) plus bass and drums lulled listeners into a trance one instant and startled them with a sonic onslaught the next. “We’d pull into town and play one song,” he recalls. “We were the only band that could do that. It was such a great experience.” The Catler-Young creative affiliation continues to the present day, with the guitarist playing FreeNote Fretless Sustainer Guitar in his mentor’s Just Alap Raga Ensemble.
It was in 1993 when Catler and Borden joined artistic forces in NYC. The premise of their initial project called Birdhouse was microtonal transcriptions of bird songs; they imaginatively married blues, avant-garde art song and the piano-orchestral birdsong inquiries of modern classical mystic Olivier Messiaen. The team next founded an electric version of Birdhouse, delving into heavy metal rock expression.
“Whenever Meredith and I would rehearse with any band,” says Catler, “we would warm up to some blues stuff and we gravitated to that because it could hold so much. We could make it avant-garde, make it heavy or light blues.” Borden agrees: “With blues we found a way that we could expand and take all the elements that we’ve developed so far—improvisational Birdhouse music and the heavy electric--then mix it all together and come up with a blues fusion—‘blusion.’”
Willie McBlind, which started up in 2004, opens Borden to creative possibilities while posing new challenges. “I particularly find that I’m really learning so much about being a singer now. I thought the most difficult mode of singing was singing Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” aria, a virtuosic pinnacle with its use of coloratura [use of rapid trills, scales, etc.], but the things Jon is teaching me about are much harder than singing a high F.”
Their blues is NYC urban. “Everything’s resonance, everything’s energy,” Borden says. “The harmonic system that we use is based on tuning into the hum because that’s the most predominate energy in an urban society, 426.7 hertz cycle, as opposed to an earth energy.”
Besides Willie McBlind, Catler and Borden have been busy with the 13 O’Clock Blues Band. Borden says, “Now we’re getting into a new aspect of the blues, getting down to the rhythmic component, exposing the harmonic element of rhythm. Blues is a hot bed of a place where you can develop all these ideas.” Catler adds: “It’s a blues project, but it’s really different. Meredith doesn’t sing. She plays autoharp. There are a couple different guitar players. It’s all instrumental and we play one piece, ‘Parallel Blues,’ for an hour, and we are using Nature’s first complete scale based on the 8th through 16th Harmonic. Each harmonic has its own rhythm.”
Catler approaches the 13 O’Clock project with characteristic enthusiasm: “It’ll take me a lifetime to understand ‘Harmonic Rhythm.’ I find it so fascinating. It’s as important as the Just Intonation pitches. The way pitch and rhythm are fused is hidden but it shouldn’t be because it’s such a building block of everything.”
Like Catler, Borden knows digging down into the grit of blues to reveal its awesome melodic, harmonic and rhythmic shadings requires dedication and resolve. “Finding the emotion, the simmer, in blues is deep and challenging,” she shares, “so that’s my personal journey as a singer. I can easily travel this road for the rest of my life and still have a huge amount more to learn as a singer.”
Seldom has the combined learning process of two stellar blues artists been so fascinating to hear. Stay tuned.
– by Frank-John Hadley
2007 Blues Foundation Keeping the Blues Alive (KBA) awardee (Journalism)
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