Doyle Bramhall II
The Texas bluesman on psycho bikers, playing on speed and his mutual respect with Slowhand
I got my first real six-string…
“I grew up in a band house in Texas. Musicians coming in and out all the time – Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmie Vaughan, my dad and uncles. It was just music all the time. Music and drugs. I guess it was in my DNA that I would be a musician. For my 14th birthday, my father gave me a ’63 Harmony Rocket that he had gotten from Marc Benno, who had gotten it from Lightnin’ Hopkins. So I started out on Lightnin’ Hopkins’ guitar. It was a light cherry sunburst.”
It’s not about the money, money, money…
“I used to do a lot of work as a session guitarist here in Los Angeles. But in the last five years, I’ve stopped charging. If I believe in the music, I don’t charge. I feel like it takes away from the process. I know people have to survive. But it’s like [US jazzman] Sun Ra said, ‘If you get paid to play music, you are not an artist’. It’s pretty hardcore, but over the years, I’ve just started doing that. I play music. That’s what I do. Just experiencing music itself, y’know?”
Take a chance on me…
“Eric Clapton instilled in me a confidence I didn’t have before. I grew up listening to Eric, from John Mayall, to Cream, to his solo records. But cut to a million years later, when I get asked to play in his band, I didn’t think, ‘Holy shit, I’m playing with Clapton’. That might have been a survival thing. But it was also because he made me feel so comfortable, like I was a peer, even if I wasn’t. I just felt like, ‘I’m playing with my buddy’. I never felt intimidated. He was so gracious with his compliments. So that made me feel like I could do anything.”
The show must go on…
“When I was 15, I played this party for some Hells Angels in California. And they paid me by giving me speed. We started playing, and after four hours, they told us to keep going. They forced more speed on us. We played for another three hours. And when we finished, they said, ‘Keep going’. We couldn’t get off, because they were threatening us, saying they were gonna take care of us. So they kept putting speed up our noses and making us play all night.”
Turn it upside down…
“I play guitar upside down because it felt comfortable that way. By the time somebody said, ‘Hey, you’re playing wrong’, I was like, ‘Well, I know 200 songs, so I’m gonna keep going’. Eric sometimes can’t work out what I’m doing. And I’m the same way. I grew up watching right-handed players, so when I’d go see upsidedown players like Albert King and Otis Rush, I was completely lost. I couldn’t even compute what they were doing. So I definitely know what people are going through when they watch me.”
I am the one and only…
“I’ve always been interested in diverse music. A year after I started playing guitar, I was listening to Egyptian music, and I’ve always been attracted to music from the Middle East, Africa, India. As a guitarist, I’ve studied so much music, and I’ve travelled the world so much, and also performed with the likes of Eric, Roger Waters and Sheryl Crow. Whatever you’re listening to, it influences what you’re doing, then it becomes your thing. You can hear my personality in my guitar playing. Like it or not. Jagged edges and all…”
Doyle opens for Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall on 22/24/25 May. His latest solo album, RichMan, is out now on Concord
“Eric Clapton made me feel so comfortable. I just felt like, ‘I’m playing with my buddy’”