JASON RICCI & NEW BLOOD "DONE WITH THE DEVIL"

When Jason Ricci & New Blood unleashed their genre bending album "Rocket Number 9" for Eclecto Groove Records in October of 2007, the band unwittingly turned the blues world on their respective ear with a visionary and sonically bombastic recording that created legions of new fans and spent a total of seven weeks on the Billboard Blues Charts hitting a peak position of #4. Ironically the band's initial intentions were not designed with the blues connoisseur in mind, but instead to forge an album that could reach out to a new audience by implementing a wildly artistic and innovative approach. Surprisingly, rather than alienating the blues community the album was embraced and accepted with open arms.

Reviews began to pour in heaping praise on the band's bewildering cache of talent and spectacularly breathtaking arrangements that rewarded the adventurous listener with a revelatory auditory experience that blasted them straight up into the stratosphere. Ricci landed a six-page feature article in the 2008 Feb/March issue of Blues Revue magazine and Living Blues (known for their strict coverage of the purely black traditional aspect of the art form), even heralded Jason as "one of the most innovative young harmonica players since Paul deLay and Charlie Musselwhite." In addition, New Blood veteran Shawn Starski was named one of the Top Ten Hottest New Guitarists by a reader's poll in the 2008 June issue of Guitar Player Magazine.

Now with the arrival of "Done With The Devil," Jason Ricci & New Blood deliver their most ambitious project to date. Recorded at the rustic Shadow Lane studio in Nashville, Tennessee, New Blood explores an album filled with even darker imagery than its predecessor. Prepare yourself for a journey unlike any other as the band throws into the fold all matter of instrumentation including chromatic, diatonic, chord and polyphonia harmonicas; tuba, bass harmonica, electric and upright bass; electric, acoustic and dobro guitars; Hammond B-3 and various percussion. Longtime fans can also revel in the surprising vocal debuts of guitarist Shawn Starski and drummer Ed Michaels. A truly collaborative effort, "Done With The Devil" represents another significant step forward musically for the band; an album that Jason Ricci mischievously exclaims "is a record that even a rhinoceros would like!"

Done With the Devil Writing your own liner notes is sort of a pretentious and arrogant thing to do, especially if you consider that I didn't write any one piece of music on this CD by myself, so why should I have any kind of literal say here on the contents of this disc myself? It would totally seem natural to me in theory, that the band should be writing these liner notes for this CD you're holding, as a band, including me as only a member of that band which indeed is all I am on this recording as far as the music goes. This is what makes this disc so special to this band. The group is called: "Jason Ricci and New Blood" and will continue to be called that for obvious marketing reasons, "I'm paying the cost to be the boss" in the words of BB King, but the job of being a boss ends when I climb on stage with New Blood and I become one of them at best, if not frequently even a student to them. I might own the van, I talk to the label, the managers, the agents, clubs, hotels, press etc, but when it comes to the music it's always a democracy, a collaboration and a meeting of minds, experiences, opinions, souls and the pronoun "I" disappears, or at least diminishes, to one fourth it's value. New Blood wrote almost every song on this disc together, we arranged them together, we learned them frequently together and here we play them for you together. Many bands, blues bands especially, consist of one front man calling the shots on and off stage, he's got his name on his guitar neck, his name on the strap, his name's on the side of the bus or the van and his name's usually all over the song credits as well. There is nothing wrong with that equation and that formula has worked to great effect for many artists too wonderful and too plentiful for me to dare denigrate in any fashion, however I will say that I am glad to be part of something much bigger than I could ever be on my own and even happier to shift responsibility either good or bad where it belongs to us as a group collectively. I feel honored and privileged to have been in the studio yet again with Todd Edmunds and Shawn Starski and to now have worked with Ed Michaels (our new drummer) as well in this collective process. Additionally our producer Phil Wolfe was literally much more than a producer here. He was the engineer, studio, owner, vocal coach, slide guitarist, accordion player, organ player and probably did more arranging than any two of us combined. Without Phil (P Woof) we never could have afforded to put a disc together like this with so much texture, detail and production. He was truly a fifth member of this band for the entire recording process and gave us just the right amount of criticism and assurance at all times to help each one of us do the best we could with the songwriting, vocals and instrumentation.

So rather than detail each song one by one and speak authoritatively and quite out of turn about a group effort, let me tell you a little more about where I think the collective consciousness of this band was before, during and after the recording of this album. I started this band with the intent of making great music like millions of bands before and after me. Initially I found guys that would go on the road for next to nothing as I was getting paid about the same. This restricted us to playing 12-bar arrangements, covers, and simplified versions of our original music. As the years went by and my reputation and cash began to increase I was able to find, keep and pay like-minded musicians who shared musical interests and were sincerely motivated to make them happen. The result was that as my own name grew and the band became more popular, my role in the group musically became less like a leader and more like a side man amongst side men, serving an unseen leader who embodied our collective consciousness and whose sole intent was not to create my music, her music, his music, blues music, jazz music or any kind, but to create our music or more accurately simply only MUSIC.

Before recording this CD I had met up with and done a ton of live shows with Shawn Starski (Guitar, Vocals) and Todd Edmunds (Bass, Tuba, Vocals, Bass harp, etc.). On the last CD, "Rocket Number 9" the listener heard the initial melding of minds between Shawn and me after five or so years of playing together. On this disc the listener gets an even wider spectrum of visions with writing contributions from Todd Edmunds and Ed Michaels. Ed wrote and sang the song "Keep The Wolf From My Door" by himself and his name does not appear on the credits for any other tunes within, however his contributions to the often unpredictable sounding arrangements on these songs was invaluable and his experience in the studio really shows through on the whole project. Todd Edmunds really shines on this CD with one of his own songs and writing credits on many others. Here we see "Weed," as we call him, standing up in the band as a sophisticated and realized member of a unit leading, conducting, writing, arranging, and singing. Shawn and I usually write all the tunes as with our last record "Rocket Number 9" and the other band's past CD's but we decided that we're awesome enough to let other people help too.

Before and during the recording of "Rocket Number 9" I was in a slight stage of rebellion. Coming out as the first openly gay blues musician was just about as fun as many of you might think and I didn't make it any easier on myself by dyeing my hair a thousand colors a year and wearing the punk looking clothes that I do, and playing Sun Ra and Cheech and Chong songs at festivals. The music of "Rocket" was in many ways a reaction to the reactions myself and the band were getting in print and otherwise. Additionally, and on perhaps a more benign level, the band was simply having a lot of fun experimenting with musical forms and the lack thereof. We didn't care what kind of music it was; we only wanted it to be real to us and it was and still is. Many people were saying he's not "blues" or they're not "blues". We of course had enough self awareness and knowledge of history to know exactly what they were talking about and what that implied "blues" definition looks and sounds like. As an individual and as a band, Shawn, Todd, Ed and I have always had an affinity for "Real Blues" music and it is that same affinity, respect and love that has kept us from attempting to remake it exactly or market ourselves in any way like the African-American inventors and originators of the music. Blues music is THEIR music, my experience playing and living with Junior Kimbrough, RL Burnside and his sons, Big Bad Smitty, Eddie Cotton, King Edward, The House Rockers and others in Mississippi taught me, if nothing else, "Real Blues" comes from growing up in it, and being born into it that's what I saw... It comes from churches, it's in families, histories, food, and their blood and its in all of those, not one alone. Quite literally the guys I was hanging with were the relatives of Fred McDowells, the John Lee Hookers and the Muddy Waters of the world. What I learned being around these guys was that our backgrounds were so different and in many ways completely incomparable and that I myself would never be "One of those guys"...However I did learn the one ingredient I needed to be kind of like one of them and that was to be sincere in what I did, played and sang. "Sing your own song kid!" I didn't want to! I wanted to be like Junior or like Little Walter or anybody who was "REAL BLUES!" Here's where it gets cool: When I started listening to all the music around me, jazz, punk, classical, funk, rock, Eastern...When I started dressing like myself and not some version of what I thought my blues heroes were...When I started being myself: gay, quirky, hyper, white and from Maine those guys started accepting me and talking to me like I was one of their own. The irony became clear they were NOT TRADITIONAL BLUES PLAYERS and never had been. They were innovators, they were modern, they had already done what they were trying to teach me to do. Yes they were "real Blues Men" in their lives, histories and family trees, but their music was, and had always been, their own as individuals, not as black individuals, or as southern individuals, not as men, not as woman, not as secular, not as religious, not as poor, not as rich, but as primarily something that was true to them. They were themselves more than anything and that's what our band is trying to be. Junior Kimbrough was Junior on and off stage. He didn't play like Fred McDowell, and Fred McDowell didn't play like Charlie Patton. One could argue, and they often do, that although my background and boys in the bands' backgrounds as middle class white guys doesn't line up with "traditional blues" stereotypes, that we could at least make an attempt as a band to adhere more closely to the traditional blues forms musically speaking. That we could at least stick to the 12-bar form more frequently. Charles Bukowski wrote a short poem he called "Art" that reads simply: "as the / spirit / wanes / the / form / appears." Blues forms were written down by historians, critics, writers, and teachers, not by blues players. Great blues players old and new have always been breaking them changing, them, ignoring them, and redefining them. This is not to imply that we are great, only that we are in the business of keeping our spirit from waning and making art that is true to ourselves and our ears, which feels to us more akin to the masters musical intentions than "a form consisting of a "12-bar structure, and lyrics in a three-line stanza in which the second line repeats the first, distinguished by a strong 4/4 rhythm, flatted thirds and sevenths." I'm sorry to anyone who finds us presumptuous, arrogant or disrespectful, but my definition and experience of blues music at large cannot be contained with the constraints of this definition from Webster's. We don't need a book, a skin color, a chart, a suit, a hair cut, a certain kind of amp or guitar, or any kind of a form for us to feel like blues men and our album "Rocket Number 9" in addition to being simply a fun and musically challenging record, was also in some ways a statement to that. In some ways on "Rocket" I believe the band was subconsciously and playfully like children rebelling against their parents to shake things up, and refusing to conform to those stereotypes that we felt we had to live up to. We made the record thinking "Most blues fans will hate this so it doesn't matter what we do, lets play anything we want and see what they say now when we don't even try to be blues." I think that attitude produced a great record and some very sincere songs and realized creative goals, but the feedback from the release did not generate the negative buzz we were expecting to experience from it. The result was simply most people liked the record a lot, it did well, hit number four on the Billboard blues charts, we got very little criticism even where we deserved it and came out realizing (at least I did) that people in general were pretty cool, pretty smart, pretty tolerant, and I am not as important as I think I am. It was actually pretty funny. So I think the band grew up a little, we relaxed started having more fun, played sets sitting in with Bob Margolin, Watermelon Slim, Willie "Big Eye's" Smith, Mark Hummel, Sean Costello, and a whole host of other "traditional Blues" guys who were cool as hell to us. So with this record here, "Done with the Devil," we are really not trying to prove, disprove or otherwise, our philosophy, music, art, or debates. We're just jamming and I hope people dig it as much as the last one. We're done trying to test others limits, test the festivals and shocking blues fans. All the festivals, magazines, blues societies, critics, fans, the label, everyone has showed us so much love, you gave us enough rope to hang ourselves twice, you took us in as one of your own into this community we call the "blues" and we thank you for it and are happy to be here and grateful for your tolerance, love, respect, awards, accolades, articles, patronage and ears that you have lent us. We love you back for it and we give you back this record here "Done with the Devil" humbly, with no angst, with nothing to prove, with no intentions of redefining, we will be honored if you call it blues and we will respect you if you don't, we think it's the bluesiest thing we have ever recorded. In the words of Sonny Boy Williamson, "You can name it your Mammy if you want to." We thank you and hope only that you enjoy this music on some level. We thank Eclecto Groove for the freedom they have given us to record anything we have ever wanted and we thank the fans for appreciating it and accepting it. We thank the traditional masters and modern masters for their inspiration, open minds and influence.

In closing, I only wish to say that these tunes are all very close to us, this record is more about the songs than anything else. No tune on this record was written or chosen as a vehicle for solos, or musical pyrotechnics, even the instrumentals were carefully chosen with mood arrangements and content in mind. Although we may not be rebelling against our metaphoric parents as loudly here, we have in no way mellowed either. These songs simply happen to be the product of what I feel is a more sophisticated, adult version, of a band growing up together on the road. I have always written my lyrics autobiographically and most of these tunes are no different, although many of the lyrics I have composed are not about me like this record itself. I think this is a record that even a rhinoceros would like.

- Jason Ricci

Produced, Recorded, Mixed & Engineered by Phillip Wolfe (Shadow Lane Studio - Nashville, TN) • Executive Producer: Randy Chortkoff • Creative Fulfillment President of Eclecto Groove Records: Robert Fitzpatrick • Mastered by Glenn Meadows (Sheridan Square Entertainment) • Artwork, Design & Photography by Joshua Temkin • Sequenced by Jeff Fleenor • Liner Notes by Jason Ricci • Radio Promotion by Jody Best • Retail by Jeff Fleenor • Business Affairs by Malcolm Wiseman