Toronzo Cannon
His day job is driving a bus for the City of Chicago – but Toronzo Cannon is also one of the most charismatic, straight-talking blues guitarists working today. We get his advice, learned the hard way in the heart of the Windy City, on playing better blues
While some blues guitarists fill their songs with fictional tales of whiskey and women – then go backstage and drink Perrier – Toronzo Cannon draws his inspiration straight from the streets of Chicago. The city that gave voice to Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy and many more masters is still a tutor to blues musicians who use their eyes and ears to observe life as it really is. Cannon’s song Insurance, for example, is about not being able to afford medical cover – which is no joke in America if you get sick and don’t have enough cash to pay the doctor’s bill.
“It’s the same old blues but in a new suit,” says Toronzo. “I mean, I took the template of Jimmy Reed’s Take Out Some Insurance, with that feel but put the modern-day spin on it where you can lose your home if you haven’t got proper insurance. Some of it’s funny, like when I talk about the colonoscopy part or whatever. But then the part where I talk about a guy lost his wife and then he lost his home, everybody gets quiet,” he adds. Your album’s called The Preacher, The Politician
Or The Pimp. What’s behind the name? “Well, I’m a bus driver for the city of Chicago, 25 years. I work 10 hours a day. I travel through several tax brackets on my route, and I see from the richest of the rich to the poorest of the poor. The neighbourhoods I work, you see billboards for ‘Vote for me’ and things like that. Then you might see three or four churches. You know what I mean? And then on that same block, you might see a pimp looking at his money-maker. And then, too, they’ve all got the gift of words. It’s like they move people to do things that they might not want to do. Do things that are against their best interests. All three of them do.
“How can you be a preacher and tell a poor neighbourhood to ‘Give me some money’? And they’re late on their rent, or they’re late on buying food, but they want 10 per cent of the money that you earn, because it’s in the Bible.
“You’ve got politicians saying the same thing: ‘Vote for me and I’m going to set you free.’ It’s like, ‘Okay, but the neighbourhood is still ravaged.’ You know what I mean? And then you’ve got the pimp that’s telling his woman, ‘I’m going to give you a better life. But you go out and do the hard work and give me the money.’ So they’ve got the gift of words to motivate people to do things against their best interest.
“So I just basically wrote from the viewpoint of a guy that gets on my bus, because I know a lot of good people that just happen to live in bad neighbourhoods. But they go to work every day, they try to raise a family, but the money that they make can’t afford them to live in better neighbourhoods. But they’re good people, so some of them have to take guns to get to work to protect themselves. They don’t even want their kids going to the store to pick up bread or whatever, you know?” What defines the Chicago blues guitar sound? “A lot of my friends from down South will say, ‘Well, most of those guys came from down South,’ so they’ll take the credit. But I think when they crossed the [MasonDixon] line and came up to Chicago, it got more dirtier and grittier. There was more electricity that could be used, more amps, more things that were available.
“So the slide in Mississippi might not sound the same with the slide on an amp in Chicago. And then just the way of living, because most of the people who lived down South, when they moved up north they were around the same people: everybody still kind of
“I travel through several tax brackets on my route, and I see from the richest of the rich to the poorest of the poor”
knew each other. It’s like they gravitated to each other, you know? They’d say, ‘Hey, there’s a place you can live down the street.’ So they’d come from down South, but the next thing you know, the people who lived on the same block in Mississippi are on the same block in Chicago. So I just think the music got a little bit dirtier, more life experiences, trying to find a job in a big city, things like that. Maybe more women available to give you heartache, you know?
“But I think it got a little bit more grittier and dirtier, because of different life experiences. When you’re in the country, things are kind of like, ‘Okay.’ It’s smooth. It’s hard but it’s smooth. But when you get to the city, there’s a little bit more hustle, more cars, more sounds, more things going on around you. So that might change the tone of how you write or play.” What player represents that style of blues most powerfully for you? “The person that kills me is Elmore James. His voice – I can never recreate that. It’s just the pain in his voice. But that’s one of the guys, even though I don’t play slide like him, or play slide very well. Then, too, you’ve got people like Buddy Guy… he manhandles the guitar like it’s alive and he’s trying to subdue it [laughs]. You know what I mean? But yes, Elmore James is one of the ones who just stands to me where I can listen to that man all day. One of those ‘desert island’ kind of recordings.” How about Jimmy Reed? “Oh, yes. Well, he’s the king of the ‘Lump’ [Reed’s lopsided laid-back shuffle – Ed]. You know what I mean? The King of the Lump, man. Jimmy Reed, Lonnie Brooks… a lot of those guys came from down South, but when they came here they kind of switch it up or whatever. ” How do you write blues music today that has a chance of standing comparison with players such as Elmore James? “Write what you know – because I don’t know how it feels to drink out of a ‘coloured’ [segregated] water fountain or pick cotton. But I can write about being on that bus for 10 hours a day, you know? I can write about being followed [by security] in a supermarket because they think I’m going to steal something. I can write about stuff that I know about and make it blues. But I don’t know the pains of what Muddy and all those guys went through. They were full-grown men being called ‘boy’. I don’t know nothing about that, so I just write what I know.” What’s your approach to soloing? “The culture in Chicago blues jams is you get two turnarounds and you’re out when you’re jamming. So that’s always been a thing. I noticed Gary Clark Jr builds solos. He’s like a master in taking it, calming it down, then building to where you’re just in a frenzy at the end. But in Chicago when you do blues jams, like I say, you get two turnarounds of your ‘1/4/5’ and then, ‘Boom!’ that’s it, so you have to play what you have. You get cultured into that, then now it’s like you come in with the solo on the 12th fret. It’s like, ‘Oh, okay, wait a minute. Hold on, calm down.’
“I just jammed with Gary Clark a couple of weeks ago performing Lollapalooza. And I was going to do my two and go back, and he was like, ‘Oh, no, no.’ I was like, ‘Oh, okay, I could have spoken a little bit more.’ But yes, I just go for what I know I guess [laughs].
“There are certain licks, of course, like licks and phrases that you want to do at certain parts of the songs. I noticed people like Jimi Hendrix used to do it. There’s certain parts of Purple Haze where he’s going to have to do a particular lick to get to the end of that song. And then there’s certain licks that you have to do so the band will know, ‘Okay, time to wrap it up.’
“Other than my soloing, man, I just try to be as soulful and on point as possible. If a bend don’t sound good, I might bend it until it sounds right. I’m not a technical player, because I don’t know how to read music. I picked guitar up when I was 21 or 22, so I’m not a technical player. I just play it if it sounds right.”
“When you get to the city, there’s more hustle, more sounds, more things going on around you. So that might change the tone of how you play”