"I swear, the chicken wire is to protect the audience from the Thunder Chiefs. Southern rock, funk and blues? They're dangerous. Enjoy."
- Mixerman
The Thunder Chiefs were born much in the same way that a Texas storm is. You take some elements blowing around in the big blue sky, have them run into each other at the right time under the right conditions and before you know it, you've got thunder, lightning, a gale that will knock you over and sheeee-it, somebody's fixin' to lose a trailer.
Just like a Texas storm, the Thunder Chiefs are a force of nature that must be reckoned with. Hold on tight to something or get down somewhere real low because the twister is coming and it will not be denied.
This latest incarnation of Thunder Chiefs began innocently enough with a recording session. Jeff runs a small studio in Austin where Blackie works part time as his assistant engineer. They are also two thirds of a nut crushing hard rock combo called the Trash Rock Kings . One day Ed booked a session at the studio to record the music for a play that he had scored featuring period Thirties music leaning heavily on the blues. During the mix sessions, Jeff called the guys and told them while holding his phone up to the monitors, "You GOT to come over and listen to this."
And so they did.
They sat at the back of the control room listening while Jeff rolled the playback from his seat at the console. Somewhere in the middle of the second track, Jeff turned around and said, "We have GOT to put a band together with this guy." Glances were exchanged and the guys just smiled and nodded to Jeff in a manner that could only be interpreted to mean, "Well.. ummm... DUH!"
Phone calls were made, emails were exchanged and they all pulled a couple of songs out of their back pockets, as well as from the original demos that they thought would work. This all took place in the space of four days. Two days later, Jeff and the guys were in the studio laying down tracks as the Thunder Chiefs. Two days after that, Ed came in to record his vocal and harp tracks. When they all listened back to the mixes of what they had done, there was no denying that they had become more than the sum of their parts. Within minutes, they had begun their first full band rehearsal.
The elements combined, lightning struck, thunder rolled and they were carried away to a place that was both higher and lower than themselves. Thunder Chiefs had been born, kicking and wailing into a world where their blues rock tornado was ready to take on all comers and leave them begging for more in a wake of beautiful destruction.
Thunder Chiefs are here, grab on to something tight, get down real low and be prepared to be blown away.
