Nothing But The Blues
Nothing But The Blues #59
This week a Bullfrog Brown special, with an interview with guitarist Andres Roots and music from most of the band's CDs, plus tracks from John Hammond Jr, Black River Bluesman and Alaska Kalan.
Hello, this is Anwar Sruitz from Bullfoot Brown and you are listening to Nothing But The Blues with Pip Macnite. [Music] [Music] To tell when the walking down the railroad track saw that big old freight train with a car right on his back. [Music] The lady said I'd cross the rails and said I had enough. I may be an enable but I sure can't beat this stuff. [Music] Let's go down to Hollywood and see what I can do. They take me for the sound to close. That just ain't no clue. [Music] [Music] Speeding down the road. They count a brand new holly's and the heavy metal clothes. [Music] To tell when I'm walking around across the sky and all that they could manage. Was it winking down the road? That's right boys, let's break it up. Sad to sheriff and law. [Music] That was Bullfrog Brown. That was Bullfrog Brown where Devil went to walking from the 2005 album, Snakes and Devils. I've played the music fairly regularly on the show and I'm a big fan of their work. At the end of September they did a gig in a pub in Leicester which is only about 15 miles from where I live. So I arranged to meet up with them and interview the guitarist on dress routes. Conditions weren't optimal as you'll hear. We had to do the interview in the pub which was increasingly noisy and we only had 20 minutes before the first band took to the stage. So this week's show is built around the interview with most but not all of the music coming from Bullfrog Brown. Right, let's get into it. Welcome to Leicester. It seems to be the first thing that people say about Bullfrog Brown is from Estonia. Does that annoy you or give you a sense of national pride? That's a difficult question. No, I don't think it would possibly annoy me. And then again I don't think that what we're doing in music is that much associated with being Estonian. So I don't think it's a question of national pride either. That's the fact of life. I seem to remember saying a long time ago that what people need to get past is the fact that you're from a particular place and listen to the music. So I don't know if that is necessarily true of the international audiences and Bullfrog Brown because I think one of them has been getting special treatment in some places for being Estonian and vice versa. But I do find it strange that in Estonia probably in many other countries there are sort of double standards for music. So it's essentially everybody has to have one favorite Estonian group, even if they really don't like the music, they have to have something. And there are a lot of people saying that it is what it is, but it is very good for an Estonian band. It's sort of like the Estonian mathematicians get together and say that well elsewhere, two plus two is four, but we're a small country, so three and five are also good. So I don't think you should really do that. There was a phantom menace upon this pretty world, and all the pretty faces on all the pretty girls. There was a smell of terror, faintly in the air. And all the ice cream cones, they had a taste of fear. And on the television, they say it's not like that. And even in the White House, they know just where it's at. The smell of sweet destruction, the clothes you decide. The night is strobing near, and the tide is getting high. [music] [music] [music] [music] Well, I was born the night before, and I know what I am. And about these pretty faces, I don't give a damn. When the field is ark, they all thought he was not. But he just had a card, and he had a lot of cuts. Now I'm going sailing, I'm out of here, you know. This world that you've created can never be my home. I'm going, oh, we're under, back where I belong. When you just watched you eat, it got to play too soon. The smell of raving madness can stick to you like glue. You better wash your ears, or it will get to you, while you eat your ice cream. And watch those pretty girls. There is a phantom in us, about this pretty world. [music] [music] Bullfrog Brown and Phantom Menace from the 2006 album Uncooked. Next I asked Andress about his influences. What did you grow up listening to? What kind of music did you grow up listening to? Well, in the Soviet Union, you couldn't really walk into a store and buy a rock or glue album. It was somehow available, but I did have my father's record collection. And also, since I grew up in Berlin, we had the opportunity to finish television and listen to the finish radio, national radio, which had different shows, back then, for blues and for heavy metal and stuff like that. It's associated with heavy metal, particularly, not something like that. Well, if you talk about Finland these days, then there's no way of not associating Finland with heavy metal. Just walk down the street and have sinky and have the people dressed in black. But, yeah, if I grew up listening to the Stones and Deep Purple and ACDC that later on, which was what got me started playing the guitar, I think. I was going to say, what made you want to pick up on guitar? Was it Richard Blackmore? No, I have the utmost respect for him as a songwriter, but somehow I never really got into his soloing that much. But I think it was ACDC's 1990 album, "The Resils Age", hearing that made me go and get my father's nylon strength off the wall and ask him to show me a few chords. And then a few years later, I saw John Hammond Jr. live in Estonia at the Jazz Festival, and that was kind of the moment. Well, I don't think I'm going to play any ACDC on this show. I might as well know the show has been around nothing but the blues, so let's have some John Hammond Jr. ♪ Oh, baby! Look how you got me stalling 'round crime. ♪ Oh, baby! ♪ Look how you got me stalling 'round crime. ♪ I know I don't love you, little girl, but you. Baby, you always restin' on my mind. ♪ Oh, baby! ♪ Honey, I ain't gonna be ridin' you around in my automobile. ♪ Oh, baby! ♪ Honey, I ain't gonna be ridin' you around in my automobile. No, I ain't good baby. ♪ You got so many, man! Oh, darling, I'm afraid you might get me killed. No, baby, don't get me killed. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Oh, baby! ♪ Darling, you ain't nothin' like you used to be. Oh, no, baby! ♪ Oh, baby! ♪ Darling, you ain't nothin' like you used to be. ♪ ♪ When I was deep in love with you, little girl, you just... ♪ You're just as sweet as an apple on a tree. ♪ ♪ Oh, baby! ♪ Look how you got me standin' on crime. ♪ Oh, baby! ♪ Look how you got me standin' on crime. ♪ ♪ I know I don't love you, little girl, but you... ♪ But a hurry you always restin' on my mind. ♪ ♪ John Hammond Jr. and standing around crying from his 1980 album, Mileage. Presumably he didn't have much access to instruments. I mean, if music was hard to combine instruments. Well, it depends on your definition of instruments. Certainly, fender guitars were not that easy to find, but they did make guitars in the Soviet Union. The electric ones were usually quite terrible, because I think at least in Leningrad, now it's in Petersburg, they used to make them in a furniture factory, so they used all the pieces that didn't go into tubbels. They kind of looked cool, but you couldn't really tune them in any way, but you did have East German made guitars and guitars and Czechoslovakia, which were, and still are, quite good, apart from the pickups. Yeah. Again, I associate Russian more with things like the Pala Luica rather than the guitar. Yeah, well, the Russian type of acoustic guitar actually has seven strings. Seven. And they tune it differently. I never had one, and I don't know quite how you tune it, but they used to have seven strings. Okay. [music] [music] Dragging your feet on the spiral stairs, never stop to worry 'bout foreign affairs, soul and peace, 'cause the mind is empty, skies up blue, though you'd feed a journey. [music] Never proud it for a time, I've been proud it for space, I've been a little lover out of heavenly grace, like a frog in a football, running and falling. Yes, I think I can hear you calling. I can hear you calling. [music] Say I'm rockin' rollin' stay, and buried in the crown. Johnny went and screwed, and now he's living town. Both dumb and retired, and Jimmy couldn't play. The doors are just moving, and the stones were rolled away. The stones were rolled away. [music] [music] Well, the king is slicking, when he and wherein he's crowned. The king is slicking, even when he's living town. The king is slicking, it's only just being a sound. The king is slicking, even in this morning town. [music] The king is slicking, you've come, love them, but in town. The king is slicking, even when he's present bound. The king is slicking, you've kind of changed it around. The king is slicking, parrot's six feet in the crown. [music] Well, parrot's six feet in the crown. [music] Bullfrog Brown and Blues for Masters, from their 2007 album, are Tundra. Presumably you've still got a day job, have you? Well, I'm on extended leave right now. I was going to say how the boss could continue. Well, as you know, the economy is the way it is right now. So they are not unreasonably unhappy with me, not collecting celery right now. But I'll have to sort that out when I get back. You've done some strange gigs lately, two sprints of mine. It's the Estonian Eurovision. I mean, you weren't competing, but you were the entertainment for it. How did you get that? That's really a long story. It starts from the Canadian website on Blues Underground Network, where you're actually planning our last year's EP, the Best European Blues Recording, which was picked up by the Estonian press. And so on and so forth, we got to be on national television twice, earlier in the year. And finally, we got the invitation to appear that they had five bands competing, but were allegedly doing very well abroad. So we fit into that category and we did have a long hard think about whether we should do this. Yes, there were 250,000 people watching, and it was a few more days. We've got a lot more fans now than we had before that, so it has worked out fine. Any exposures got to be good, isn't it? Yep. The other strange one I thought was the Dylan Fest. How did you get that one? Actually, they asked us, last year already, to be part of that on Myspace. And we couldn't do it then and we couldn't have gone back this year without the help of the Estonian embassy who stepped in and supported the trip, because the invitation came so late that we were already booked in Finland for the weekend before and the weekend after. So we only had two or three days we could be there, so there was no way to make that pay for three people. Why it seems strange to me is I associate Buford Brown with two and a half minutes, three minutes, so it's not associated with ten minutes of deceleration row, or forty-two verses of tangles or something. But it's all sorts of things, and the set wasn't that long, but we did three Dylan numbers. I think one of which was Maggie's farm, which you made here tonight, also outlaw blues. And we did, if you see, have say hello, except it was to the tune of Key to the Highway. He didn't reply in the room, I tell him something like that. No, he was in German, I didn't want to, but I don't have that kind of pressure. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]