Charlie Baty of Little Charlie and the Nightcats comes to mind.
Great example. People seeing the band for the first time look at Rick Estrin and assume he is Little Charlie.
Fun! That link is to an essay by twicks at a website called The Broad Street Review. It’s the rules for being a guitar god. Good read - insightful, funny and well written.
Good grief, just come out and admit that Noah Hunt reminds you of an old boyfriend who done you wrong.
I honestly can’t see where all the hate comes from. Hunt has a great, strong, baritone voice and it stacks up quite well against KWS guitar work.
He does though suffer from guitar-prodigy-lead-singer syndrome. I’ve seen it with the likes of Mike Mattison (Derek Trucks Band) and David Lee Roth. How do you handle your time/self while your guitarist is blowing away the audience with his moves?
Do you take the Mattison approach and just stand there? Poor Mike looked lost while Derek mesmerized the audience with his moves. Mattison in fact, looked somewhat bored the few times I saw him work as a front man. Now as a back up singer to Susan Tedeschi he’s usually got a big happy grin on his face and appears to love his roll.
Roth and Hunt take a different approach and try to match the energy of their performer. Sometimes it comes off as grandstanding but most times it visually pumps the energy for the guitarist.
Fair warning Twickster. If you keep up this attitude I’m going to have serious misgivings about tossing Trucks your way after I steal Tedeschi from him.
If you read the essay I link to above, you’ll find that I mention Mike Mattison by name as doing the lead singer thing properly – he sings as another instrument in the band, not as “hey! look at me! I’m a rock star!” – a pose which his voice would support much more than Hunt’s. Hunt has a nice strong baritone, but it’s not distinctive (a la Rod Stewart, who I also mention by name WRT Jeff Beck), and he doesn’t do anything interesting with it (a la Imelda May, ditto).
And, no, no ex-boyfriend vibes at all – I’ve never gone for guys a little too full of themselves.
I DID read the article. And liked it except for the part where you dumped on Noah Hunt.
Your article actually mentioned my two favorite journeyman guitarists (KWS and Trucks).
My agreed with your point that Mattison was part of the combo and not the front man. But I also understand that Derek had been criticized in the past for not engaging the audience, at times totally ignoring them and facing the band instead of the stage front. A front man goes a long way in curing the “left out audience” experience. Mattison didn’t do that. He’s just not that kind of guy.
Don’t assume that I’m not a Mattison fan. His solo album is just a few days old and already in heavy rotation through my headphones.
Lets just say we have a wide disagreement about Hunt. I’ve seen him do the posturing that you labelled “schtick”. While it is over the top I think it also feeds KWS’s energy and gives him a mental boost to push himself.
I can understand your dislike for his showmanship. That’s just preferential. What I’m confused about is your statement that Hunt lacks a distinctive voice. I found it very distinctive. Hunt did a quasi-solo album a few years back (with guitarist Jason Dennie). More than once while that album was playing in the background I’ve had a friend remark that the voice sounded familiar but they couldn’t quite place it. The questioners weren’t KWS fans but somehow Hunt’s voice from the long ago “Blue on Black” days was a reminder to them.
Now I only know Hunt from his recordings and performances. He may be quite full of himself as you say. But I’ve seen him back off and share a vocal duet with a great local vocalist ( Danielle Schnebelen of Trampled Under Foot). During that part of the performance his demeanor changed. No big show. Just great vocals.
It’s interesting that you think that KWS’s singer is a tool. I was a fan of the band in the early 2000’s or so, and at the time, KWS appeared to be a tool and Noah Hunt seemed to be a good guy. Granted, KWS was a teenager, and had just gotten married. He spent the whole concert making googly eyes at his new wife and kind of ignoring the fact that he was there to perform. Noah Hunt and the rest of the band seemed to be picking up the slack. Maybe the intervening decade has changed the dynamics.
KWS only sang a song or two on the first few albums. He released one album that I think was all him singing (without telling the rest of his band he was doing so, BTW), but I thought his voice was not very good.
Okay, BubbaDog – clearly this is a potato/po-tah-to issue. And you may well have a point about Hunt’s energy driving on KWS – hadn’t thought about that possibility.
And Marley was recommending Mike Mattison’s album to me just yesterday – downloading it is on my to-do list for today.
I thought of Robin Trower and vocalist James Dewar, too… my only qualm is that Robin was never anything like a pure blues musician. His work was as much prog-rock and hard rock as bluesy.
I saw this thread and thought of Robin Trower also but I was waiting to see if others thought of him as mainly a blues guitarist.
Bridge of Sighs, is an album that should be in everyone’s collection, blues or rock. Some of his later stuff was inconsistent but there were still some gems in the later albums.
Here is a Youtube link to the entire Bridge of Sighs for those who may be interested.
Jimmy Vaughan during his time behind Kim Wilson in the Fabulous T-Birds.
Duane Allman behind various people like Clapton and Betts.
Elvin Bishop’s best known song by far (“Fooled Around and Fell in Love”) featured Mickey Thomas on vocals.