At 73, bluesman Elvin Bishop still flourishing
Elvin Bishop chalks up his banner year to longevity, and he just might have a point. The Bay Area bluesman has been around long enough to have paid dues on Chicago’s thriving Southside scene in the early 1960s, soaking up the sounds of giants like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter and Otis Rush.
An original member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, with whom he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April, the guitarist has waxed and waned as a recording artist for more than five decades, but there’s no denying he’s in the midst of a surge. Bishop’s latest album, 2014’s “Can’t Even Do Wrong Right” (Alligator), earned a rare hat trick at the Living Blues Awards earlier this year, bringing him trophies for best blues album, best band and best song (for the title track).
“This year seems to be our year,” says Bishop, 73, who plays Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage on Dec. 19 and San Francisco’s Biscuits & Blues on Dec. 30. “We’re winning all kinds of awards. I think they said, ‘Look at the old son of a bitch. He might not be here next year. We better give him something.’ ”
Sticking around does have its benefits. Bishop hasn’t been this visible in pop culture for some time. His 1976 hit “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” featuring vocalist Mickey Thomas proved particularly effective ramping up the romantic tension between Zoe Saldana and Chris Pratt in last year’s monster hit “Guardians of the Galaxy” (a film that made brilliant, self-conscious use of 1970s Top 40 playlists).
“I haven’t seen it,” Bishop says, “but I’m told it (the song) came at a really appropriate place.”
Like the best blues musicians, Bishop is a decidedly idiosyncratic player who has built his group on the crags and crevices of his searing guitar and pleasingly gruff croak of a voice. Featuring Ed Earley on trombone and vocals, Bob Welsh on guitar, piano and keys, Steve Willis on accordion and piano, Ruth Davies on standup bass and Bobby Cochran on drums and vocals, the combo encompasses seemingly divergent sensibilities, urbane and rootsy, looselimbed and drum-tight.
“I tell people we’re the only blues band in the world with an accordion and a trombone,” Bishop says. “Ed is a great backup singer who puts a nice soulful stamp on everything. Bob Welsh is very open-minded and will try unconventional stuff. We’ll do this thing I call a slide sandwich, with the accordion and trombone playing a note on either side of my slide guitar.”
Bishop credits Davies, who spent more than a decade touring and recording with R&B legend Charles Brown, with providing the title track concept (which is rendered in vivid and hilarious detail on the album cover graphic by artist and roots rocker Paul Thorn, who plays the Freight himself on Jan. 16).
“Ruth would tell me stories about a horn player with Charles Brown who had a saying, ‘I can’t even do wrong right,’ ” Bishop says. “That stayed with me. I wrote this song about those guys you see on the news all the time, the dumbass criminal who drops his wallet at the scene of the crime.”
In many ways “Can’t Even Do Wrong Right” touches on just about every facet of Bishop’s career. His Chicago compatriot Charlie Musselwhite contributes harmonica work on two tracks, and Mickey Thomas sings lead on “Let Your Woman Have Her Way.” He also revisits “Honest I Do,” the Jimmy Reed hit that first turned his attention to the blues as a teenager growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“I come back to it every few years,” he says. “There’s not a hell of a lot technique required in blues. Most people have too much. But ideally, your understanding deepens as you go along. With the people I have now and my understanding, I can do better justice to it.”
Bishop has been around the blues block, but he’s not averse to trying new tricks. He introduces Elvin Bishop’s Big Fun Trio at Don Quixote’s on Dec. 26 (the group performed on the Nov. 7 broadcast of Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion”). It’s a stripped-down combo featuring Bob Welsh on piano and occasional bass and Willie Jordan on vocals and cajón, a boxlike Afro-Peruvian instrument.
“We’re just starting out, and we’re all really pitching in,” Bishop says. “You never stand around waiting for someone to finish their solo. I’ve known Willie for a hundred years. He’s a big gardener, and I am, too. He’s a great singer and beautiful guy.”