A Chat with NOFO Headliner Elvin Bishop

July 27, 2011

A Chat with NOFO Headliner Elvin Bishop

by Joe Gerani

This weekend it’s the second annual NOFO Rock and Folk Festival.  Headlining Saturday’s jam packed lineup is blues legend Elvin Bishop.  Elvin Bishop has been travelling the Blues road longer than most, and he’s got the stories to prove it. Stops along the way include his work as a founding member of the groundbreaking Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the early ‘60s, recordings with legends such as Clifton Chenier, John Lee Hooker, and The Allman Brothers, and Pop success with his own 1976 smash hit “Fooled Around and Fell In Love”. Bishop’s long and varied career has included plenty of side trips as well, from deep down gutbucket Blues played in smoky South Side Chicago taverns, to raucous roadhouse R&B, to good time Rock & Roll on concert stages and festivals around the world. And at every stage along the way, he’s instilled all of his music with passion, creativity, and a healthy helping of wisdom, wit, and good humor.

Elvin spoke with Spot On LI this week!

JOE: This Saturday you’re headlining the NOFO Rock and Folk Festival – how long has it been since you’ve performed on Long Island?

ELVIN: I’ve been there many times – years ago with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band we played that arena with the revolving stage – Westbury Music Fair! I’ve been on the Island at several clubs and concerts over the years, but – it’s been a really long time, since we’ve performed.

JOE: Your current tour had you in Spain and Belgium, just last week.

ELVIN: Yes, and we’re heading over to Norway as a matter of fact next week after the NOFO Festival.

JOE: Your newest release is “Live on the Legendary Blues Cruise” – featuring live performances of you and your band on the cruise the “Raising Hell Revue”  You have a lot of your own favorite musicians playing with you on the album – tell us a little about how the album came to be.

ELVIN: Well, the cruises are pretty cool!  Some of my favorite musicians…you know, as musicians you don’t really get a chance to know them or hang out with them as much as you’d like, between playing and traveling it’s pretty much a short conversation at the gig and that’s about as far as it goes, and I tried to get together with some guys I don’t get to see enough of and I really wanted to play with.  I was lucky enough to catch them all with a schedule that worked for it.

John Nameth is on it – he’s really a great upcoming guy! Finis Tasby – he’s sort of an older guy – but he has just the greatest resume and seasoning, he’s a real joy – he just opens up his mouth and the blues come out, he was with Freddie King for many years.

JOE:  I see you also had Kid Anderson and Terry Hanck join you.

ELVIN:  Right! Do you like Terry Hanck?

JOE: I do, it’s just sad that not more people know about how talented he is.

ELVIN: Right – there are a few guys in that category.  It’s amazing that they can’t get more exposure.  I think it’s harder to get known these days than it used to be I really feel for the young guys trying to get their foot in the door these days because I don’t think, particularly in the blues field there’s quite the opportunities there used to be.

JOE: It’s really seems the blues genre more than any has more performers that you’ll go to a club and see and walk away wondering “how are these guys not major stars?”

ELVIN: Well, the media is what it is these days and you’ve got to go with the flow – there is a lot of luck in this business. Timing too has to always be right – if you have what they want, at the right time…

JOE: When you were starting out, you left Tulsa to go to school in Chicago.  Was that in part because the Blues scene in Chicago was so much more active at the time?

ELVIN: It was 100% because of that!  I went crazy for Blues, and this was at a time when there weren’t many white people in blues.  Living in Tulsa at the time it was hard core segregated, in the late 50’s, early 60’s before the civil rights movement.  It was really hard to hang out with other blues players in the South at the time.  I knew Chicago was a lot looser and that’s where the Blues was really happening, the main guys, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf were really strong.

JOE: You enjoyed your time in Chicago?

ELVIN: Yea.  I got into college on a scholarship, I was lucky otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to go.  College was really just my cover story as a way to get to Chicago (laughs).  The University of Chicago was in a neighborhood called Hyde Park, which is like an island in the middle of the South Side ghetto.  It was just about the perfect place to be about that time.  Spent a lot of time there and it got my foot into the blues, which is what I really wanted to do anyway.

JOE: You met Paul Butterfield in Chicago and co-founded the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.  This Saturday you’re on the same bill with John Sebastian who played at Woodstock.  You and Paul performed at the other iconic 60’s concert –the Monterey Pop Festival.

ELVIN: And it got interesting even before the festival!  We were flying in on a little plane, this was before they had instrument landings, and Monterey was totally fogged in.  We were on a plane with the guys in Otis Reddings band, it was a little bit of a culture shock for everybody, because we were out and out hippies by then, and these guys had on golf shirts with the little alligators on them.  Real straight southern boys! So the plane’s coming in and it’s fogged in, the pilots scared to land because in those days you had to do it visually.  He’s circling around and circling around and finally he starts running out of gas so he’s gotta take a chance.  He starts going down through the clouds and all of a sudden the plane just drops 200 feet! Hit an air pocket or something, but I look across the aisle, the guy across from me had a cup of coffee, and all of a sudden it was about two feet long from the quick drop!

But we finally made it, we got in there and it was great.  Janis Joplin sang. You know if you saw her live you could really feel that electric thing she put out.  Jimi Hendrix burned his guitar, and Otis Redding got up there and just kicked the world in the ass!  I remember he was in a suit, dressed like they would for the soul circuit and he looked out at all the hippies and he said “I’m gonna do this for all you FLOOOOOOWWER children!!” It was really some experience.

JOE: Speaking of the live experience, I know many blues performers have a looser approach to a set list, is that your approach when performing or are you more structured?

ELVIN: Well it depends, a lot of times you kind of eyeball the crowd see where they’re taking you.  We have a lot of tunes to choose from, and I like ‘em all or they wouldn’t be on the list! So it doesn’t matter to me which ones we do, but we try and choose the ones that we feel are best to make the particular bunch of people you’re playing for happy.  You also take into account if there’s ever any shifting in your personnel, and those songs you know the band can perform real well.  We always want to make all of our fans happy – and make sure they have a real good time!

Don’t miss Elvin Bishop and his band this Saturday July 30^th at the second annual NOFO Rock and Folk Festival at Peconic Bay Winery – Main Road in Cutchogue!

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