Back in February I hit the road for a sojourn to the iconic Knuckleheads Saloon in Kansas City, to launch the first pair in what I hoped to be a series of stories called “Cover Them There, To Bring Them Here”. The idea was to cover artists or bands that were playing in venues relatively proximate to the Denver Metro, but who, for whatever combination of reasons, were not booked to play in the Denver area. It was my hope that by covering these artists/bands, I might generate interest locally that would translate into a movement to bring those artists/bands to Denver in the near future. A naïve aspiration? Read on…
The first artist covered in this new series was blues rocker Alastair Greene. You can find my post following that show here… https://denverentertainmenthub.com/2023/02/14/alastair-greene.
Lo and behold, after a number of emails back and forth with Alastair’s publicist Amy Brat, and with Alastair himself, it was announced a few months later that Alastair would be playing a gig at Golden’s Buffalo Rose, on Sunday, July 23. In fact, the Golden show was going to be one of five shows over the course of five days in Colorado. A coincidence? Hmmm…
Last week I spent an hour on the phone with Alastair, talking about his upcoming tours, his musical influences both within and outside the blues genre, his move from his boyhood home in California to the Hill Country of Texas, and the somewhat unorthodox career path that’s brought him to where he is today.
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A native of Santa Barbara, CA, Greene has called Austin, TX his home for the last year and a half. When I saw him perform in Kansas City earlier this year, he quipped to the crowd that he moved to Texas because “Austin really needs more guitarists”. When you see Greene perform live, you get a lot of that. He’s incredibly playful on stage, which is one part by design, and one part just because it’s who he is.
“I take music seriously, and I take my career seriously and all that kind of stuff”, Greene says. “But humor is a must because life is so heavy and so serious. And if we’re gonna hang out for 90 minutes, or whatever the show is, I want to play music, but I also want to see if I can make some people laugh a little bit. Because, if it’s not fun, and if you’re not smiling and stuff, what are we doing this for?”
Greene’s motivation for leaving California for Texas was a combination of pragmatism and the allure of one of America’s great music cities.
“California is fantastic. I love it, and I miss it. But you know, if you look at the map of the United States, things become very clear to you as far as where all the gigs are. All the gigs are primarily from the Mississippi River to the eastern seaboard. Austin kind of fell in my lap. I have an old friend out here that I moved in with. And Austin is really a music town. There’re multiple venues here with music every single night. There are a lot of great young players here. I’ve got a great young band that I’m going to be bringing out for the first time on the next couple of tours. And it’s inspiring. I’m not a big go out and see music all the time guy. But when I do, it’s nice to know that I could pick any night of the week and find something to go check out.”
Greene’s career has spanned more than a quarter of a century, starting with the formation of his first power trio in 1997, through the release of his first album, A Little Wiser in 2001, then through six more studio and three live albums over the next 20 years. But his career path has been anything but a straight line. For a good part of that career, he shifted back and forth between the pursuit of his solo work and playing guitar for such notable artists and bands as Alan Parsons, Starship featuring Mickey Thomas, and Sugaray Rayford.
I asked Greene how he managed to balance those two concurring paths for so many years…
“I didn’t really balance it in a way. The Alan Parsons gig was one of those things that sort of fell in my lap. I didn’t really go out to get that gig. It was a really great opportunity to play with a legendary character and travel the world and, you know, get paid to play my guitar.”
“I learned a lot doing that, and I had some amazing experiences. And it was very wonderful. On the flip side of that, though, I wasn’t really able to focus on my band. I wasn’t able to really put my solo career into overdrive during that period of time. Because anytime something came up with Alan, I mean, that’s where I was making the rent.”
“In hindsight, if I had it to do over again, I probably should have bailed out three years sooner, and started focusing on my blues rock thing”
That’s exactly what Greene’s been doing for the past several years. A meeting with Tab Benoit in 2019 led to him being invited to release his next solo album on Benoit’s Whiskey Bayou Records label. That album, called The New World Blues, was released in 2020. Produced by Benoit, the album debuted at #3 on Billboard, and pushed Greene firmly into the spotlight. His previous albums had faired well commercially, and even better critically, but The New World Blues, which received broad critical acclaim, established Greene as a player to be reckoned with.
Says Greene, “I feel like I’m doing a little bit of career catch up right now, as far as, you know, some of my contemporaries that have been driving around in the van a little longer than I have.”
Greene followed up The New World Blues with a live album, Alive In The New World, in January of this year. Recorded during a multi-night set of gigs in Chicago, with Benoit on drums, and Benoit’s long-time bassist Corey Duplechin, it featured all but one of the tunes from The New World Blues. If you’re looking for the single best recommendation to get to know Greene’s music, I suggest checking out Alive In The New World.
Greene has begun thinking about, and working on, a follow up to The New World Blues. “I’ve been writing and I’ve got a bunch of songs demoed up and working on some more and trying to kind of figure out which songs I want to record in the studio. So yeah, the goal will be to have a studio record out sometime next year.” In the meantime, there’s a LOT of live music to focus on.
Having just returned home from a multi-week trek through the UK where he opened for Walter Trout, Greene is back in Austin, preparing for back to back tours that will cover a good part of the US. In June he’s working the eastern part of the country, over a two-and-a-half-week period. In July he sets out west, for a three-week tour that includes those five shows in Colorado mentioned earlier. Here’s the schedule for those Colorado shows…
- July 20 – Fruita, Thursday Night Concert Series at Civic Center Park and Pavilion
- July 21 – Colorado Springs, Stargazers Theatre & Event Center
- July 22 – Paonia, Top o’ The Rockies Bike Rally at Paonia Park
- July 23 – Golden, The Buffalo Rose
- July 24 – Fort Collins, Private Event
Lots of great opportunities to see a truly talented artist. I’m definitely going to be at the gig in Golden, and encourage anyone in the Denver Metro who loves live blues rock music to join me. Tickets are available at https://tickets.holdmyticket.com/tickets/412916.
Before we close it down, I want to return to the seed I planted at the beginning of this article, when I talked about the coincidence of these Colorado shows showing up shortly after I visited with Alastair in Kansas City in February. We talked about that during our conversation last week…
Rick: I’m telling everyone that you’re coming to Colorado because of our conversation in Kansas City. So I’m taking that.
Alastair: Yeah, man, go for it.
I’ll let you decide…
Story and photos by Rick Witt www.rickwittphotography.com
