After 30 years, Grills gets the real deal on CD
Jeff Spevak • Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Staff music critic
Jeff Spevak • Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Staff music critic
- Steve Grills has been playing around this city for so long — 30 years — that he's maybe become just like the music he plays — the blues. Familiar, and easy to overlook. But he's grateful that people around here still come around to hear him play, and wonders if his first album "might expand my territory a little bit."
Friday night, Grills' territory will be Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, a celebration of the new CD, After Hours. It is exactly what he does best: strong guitar interpretations of songs by some well-known names in blues (Albert Collins, Ike Turner and Freddie King) and guys you have to dig a little deeper to find (Pee Wee Crayton).
After Hours includes longtime Steve Grills & the Roadmasters drummer Mike Plouffe, Philadelphia-area bassist Steve Gomes (who once played with John Lee Hooker and Ronnie Earl ) and an Eastman School of Music horn player, Mark Collins. Plus Rochester blues icon Joe Beard, who once let a 19-year-old Grills make his debut between his sets at the old K&T Tavern, sings on one track.
But the real co-star is Ernest Lane, the 78-year-old Los Angeles blues pianist and singer, whose long history includes playing alongside greats such as Jimmy Nolan, Earl Hooker, Canned Heat and, oddly, the Monkees.
Grills, who lives in Rochester, met Lane when he was playing a 2002 show at Montage with Lane's old childhood friend from Mississippi, Ike Turner. They hooked up a few times, most recently last September for a long weekend of shows, and earlier in 2009, when Grills and Beard went out to San Francisco to play some club dates together.
They flew Lane up from L.A. to sit in with them, with Grills paying him back by helping Lane land a gig at a Robert Nighthawk tribute at the Chicago Blues Festival. These blues folks keep the circle tight.
Grills has always kept company with the veteran bluesmen (at 50, he's starting to move into that category himself). Besides Beard, he's counted the late Robert Lockwood Jr. among his friends.
"It makes me feel validated," Grills says of winning their approval, "especially with the way people are about the blues. ..."
Yes, the blues: Black people's music.
"You hear that so much," says Grills, a white guy who has never played anything but the blues.
"'Oh the real deal, the real deal with the blues is someone who's black.' Well, not really. I played with Robert Lockwood and Joe Beard, and they always gave me tremendous encouragement and acknowledgement, so I don't see how that comes into play. It's not a stereotype, so much. It's just some kind of complaint out there, I guess."