MICHAEL PICKETT

Music:

Member Since: 4/12/2007
Band Website: michaelpickett.com
Band Members: MICHAEL PICKETT
Influences: SONNY TERRY/BROWNIE MCGHEE, JAMES COTTON, ROBERT JOHNSON, SPIDER JOHN KOERNER, MILES DAVIS, BOB DYLAN... to name but a few

QUOTES

"Michael Pickett was mesmerizing, he opened for David Wilcox but in my opinion, stole the show. I would definitely go to see him again." (fan/Sudbury Summerfest ’07)

"Mesmerize he did! Lots of people have commented to me how this man took command of his stage with his personality, music, voice and instruments! He truly did charm the audience. His show was everything you said it was and more... We were blessed and now 2000 more people know who he is!" (Vic Theriault/Sudbury Summerfest ’07)

"He entertained Massey Hall in the way a Robert Johnson or Ledbelly could and did decades earlier. It was a great pleasure for this writer and I’m sure for most if not all of the audience (2500 strong) at Massey Hall this night, to witness perfection at its rootsiest and purest best, from a man whose style and delivery is as good as the blues ever gets!" (J.Curtis, freelance writer/Massey Hall)

"AWESOME ! I’ve been going to the Acoustic Edge in Belleville for a couple of years now. Have seen and heard some pretty good muscians. Until you showed up last night ! Your passion and skill just blew me away. AWESOME ! Thanks for a great show...." (fan/Belleville Club)

"I had a vision that he was gonna be one of the best. In my book he is." (Hubert Sumlin)

"One of the finest harmonica players of our time." (Lee Oskar)

"An amazing artist who breathes a new life into the blues by bringing it back with original energy and charisma." (Downeast /USA)

"His songs transcend the urban blues idiom... " (Billboard/International)

"Acoustic, traditional blues at its best performed by a true bluesman!" (Concerto/Austria)

"He’s got it folks! A real student of the blues. If it’s hard to get over as a singer/songwriter, it’s exponentially harder to write good blues, and he does it." (Sing Out!/USA)

"Pickett continues to amaze everyone with even more unexpected talents and creative dimensions. A world-class tunesmith. One of Canada’s top acoustic blues artists!" (Blues Revue/USA)

"Gives good chase to John Hammond on guitar and leaves him behind on harp." (Blues Matters! /UK)

"A seasoned master on Guitar, brilliant Harp and Voice." (WMPG/USA)

"Quite simply, when Michael sings it, we believe it. Mr. Pickett’s work has that timeless quality that says we’ll still be listening a long, long time from now." (Blues On Stage/USA)

"How can one man sing with so much soul!?" (KYNR/USA)

IN CONVERSATION
By Steve Wildsmith
The Daily Times/TN, USA
February 1, 2008

Michael Pickett
Pickett’s charge: Blues man finds satisfaction in acoustic roots

Michael Pickett is living proof that you can teach an old dog new tricks.To be fair, the “old dog” — Pickett, who was 51 at the time — taught himself a new trick. And it wasn’t so much a new trick as it was a refresher course in how he first started playing the blues.

It took a while, but what emerged was a complete reinvention of Pickett’s style, a full-circle return from the full-band sound he’s been a part of since the 1970s. And it all started when he sat down to play the blues on an acoustic guitar all by his lonesome.

“I had grown up listening to that stuff, and I sat down one afternoon to produce a tune where the guitar is strong throughout, the harmonica on the rack is strong, the singing is strong,” Pickett told The Daily Times this week. “At that point in my life, I was 51 years old, and I’d had a guitar kicking around in my house collecting dust forever. So I sat down to do it — and it sounded awful. I knew what it was supposed to sound like, and I wasn’t getting it.

“I played at it for about an hour and then took a break, because the concentration, the focus, was way too much. It takes a lot of focus to present a song as a solo player. But the next day, I did it again. And the next day, again. Pretty soon, I was practicing 10, 12 hours a day. And I just stayed at it, like a bulldog. At that point in my life, I had been on hundreds of recordings and played all kinds of tunes on stage — I knew how it was all put together.

“I thought, I should be able to do this — to just sit in my chair, play my guitar and sing a song,” he added. “I should be able to do that, shouldn’t I? It turned out that the answer was no.”

It had been a while since Pickett, who’s made quite a name for himself in the blues over the years, faced such a steep learning curve. As a kid, he started singing for his grandmother when he was 4; at 13, his mother bought him his first harmonica. Not long after, watching legends Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee on TV hooked him on the blues for the rest of his life.

Starting in the 1970s, he began to cut a swath through the genre with his monster chops on the harmonica. First with Whiskey Howl, he was the co-front man with the late John Witmer, one of Canada’s most revered R&B singers. The band signed to Warner Bros. in 1972 and toured across the country before Pickett moved on to Wooden Teeth, a new band, in 1976. His new project built on a foundation of blues and funk that covered everything from Little Feat to Tower of Power, with an occasional jazz-fusion number thrown in for good measure and an incomparable ability to improvise on stage. One of the band’s highlights was opening for Big Mama Thornton and John Lee Hooker.

In 1981, after a brief reunion with Whiskey Howl, Pickett put together the Michael Pickett Band, which included a rotating roster of musicians over the years (most notably Shawn Kellerman on guitar). Although his harmonica was strong enough to steal the show, he was content to layer his work in with the rest of the band, creating a crackerjack unit that never used a setlist.

In 1998, he released his debut album, “Blues Money,” which was nominated for a Juno (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys) as well as several other awards. In 2000, he put out his second album, “Conversation With the Blues,” earning himself another Juno nomination and a Canadian Indie Music Award for Blues Album of the Year. It was during that time period that he felt the call of the acoustic blues once again.

“I sat down to write a third album under my own name, and it was all coming out solo acoustic,” he said. “I would come up with something and think, ‘This is a cool tune; it sounds like Lightnin’ Hopkins would play a tune like this, sitting there by himself. A lot of the songs that I wrote for the band actually came up out of that genre of music. But I would put bass and drums on them, even though it was essentially a tune I could play solo.”

When he attempted to stick strictly to acoustic blues, however, he learned his lesson. Undeterred, however, he put aside his ego and forced himself to go back to school. He went back and found the old acoustic blues he’d fallen in love with in the 1960s on CD. He went searching for contemporary acoustic blues players. He bought stacks of CDs, returning the ones he didn’t care for, and simply stayed with it.

“I was probably three years into it, maybe even more, before I actually sat down and played along with a record,” he said. “I’m one of those guys who will listen to a record and then go have something to eat before I pick up a guitar and play. That way, I might be trying to imitate what’s on the record, but I’ll end up coming up with a tune of my own. I’m not a guy who studies tunes and replicates them; mostly, I just make noise.”

In those early years, he was still playing with the full Michael Pickett Band. He would show up for rehearsals or to a gig with his guitar, even though his role was that of the band’s vocalist and harmonica player. Gradually, with his bandmates’ encouragement, he took the guitar out of the case and eventually worked it into the show — opening up the second set with a few of his own acoustic songs.

“If I was comfortable with the sound, I would play three or four tunes; if the sound was really (bad), I would play one tune and say, ‘Enough of this,’” he said.

Even doing that was an adjustment — used to playing plugged in, Pickett couldn’t quite get the acoustic blues sound just right if he used a PA or an amplifier. Eventually, he took a cue from guys like McGhee and Son House and did away with amplification altogether.

“Those guys, back in the 1960s, would walk on stage with no guitar tuners, one or two microphones on stage and they wouldn’t plug their guitars in,” Pickett said. “That’s unheard of today, and occasionally, I’ll run into a sound guy who tells me I can’t do it that way. Well, why not? If you can put a microphone in front of it and turn it up to a level where it can be heard, there’s something wrong technically.

“I’m completely unplugged; I won’t plug my guitars in. It’s all a mindset, I really believe. I’ve played on huge stages, for 3,000 or 4,000 people, and it just sounds like a million bucks. I’m sure it would make everybody’s life simpler if I plugged the guitars in, but it changes the sound, and I just don’t want to go there.”

Sometimes, he added, he runs into the occasional club owner, sound man or fellow musician who scratches his head at Pickett’s set-up. For some, it seems limiting; if he’s learned anything from the reinvention, however, it’s this — the sky is the limit when it comes to acoustic blues.

“If you think you know how to play this stuff, then you’re a real arrogant fool,” he said. “Something I heard years ago — if you want to learn to play guitar, sit down and play 12-bar blues, and just keep playing it, and if you think it’s all the same, you’re completely wrong.

"There are a million ways to play that same riff, that same turn-around, that same groove. If you’re not growing and learning, you’re standing still, and if that happens, you’re dead in the water.”

Sounds Like: MICHAEL PICKETT
Record Label: Wooden Teeth Records
Type of Label: Indie