GA-20 gives a try to tribute album, label collaboration
Alligator Records founder Bruce Iglauer heard something magical in the sound of New England band GA-20. He wasn’t the first to fall under the blues trio’s spell.
“Bruce had seen us in Chicago the last time we went through and really liked us,” guitarist Matt Stubbs said. “He reached out in July of 2020 about working with Alligator but we were already committed to Colemine.”
This is a good problem for a band. Alligator, a definitive Chicago blues label, wanted GA-20 but Colemine, a hot soul label centered on vinyl, already had GA-20 signed. Stubbs got the idea that maybe both labels could get something out of a unique collaboration. He was right and the two companies came together for the band’s new album, “Try It …You Might Like It! GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor.”
“We were at home, had no tour dates, and we had a couple records of original music already done, but were holding off releasing that stuff until we could support it with a tour,” Stubbs said. “I emailed both labels with this idea of a tribute record to Hound Dog and I wanted both labels to be part of it.”
Alligator has been celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and the landmark release of Taylor’s “Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers” in 1971. Since the band’s founding in 2017, GA20 has been championing Chicago blues with the same fire and chaos as Taylor — like many acts of the style, GA-20 has no bassist and is rounded out by guitarist/ vocalist Pat Faherty and drummer Tim Carman.
Listening to the two records back-to-back, two LPs separated by 50 years, you can hear the same energy pulsing through them. (Fans and radio agree, “Try It …You Might Like It!” has been burning up the blues sales and airplay charts.)
“I got to talk to Bruce about how he produced those first few Hound Dog records,” Stubbs said. “I got all the information from Bruce about how those sessions were, all the gear, how they miked it, what the mood in the room was, because I was producing our record. I built a studio at my house, had an engineer, Matt Girard, come in, and we recorded the record in November in about a day and a half. We did ten songs all live in the room in about two or three takes.”
Stubbs and Faherty formed the band when Stubbs found himself with some unexpected free time when his regular boss, blues legend Charlie Musselwhite, spent a year on the road with Ben Harper. Since then, they haven’t wasted time. The trio writes and records at a quick clip and have jumped back into live dates. The big homecoming gig will be Brighton Music Hall on Dec. 17 but before that the weeks will be spent between Rochester and Kansas City, Albuquerque and Alberta.
“This October it’s six nights a week on tour, about a week off in November, and then six nights a week again, come home in December for the Brighton Music Hall show, then the holidays, then in January it’s six nights a week all the way through February.”
It’s nice to see Stubbs and the band this busy (it’s nice to see any band this busy). And it’s equally great to know that GA-20 has a few albums of original tunes in the can.
“During the lockdown we had one record totally done and ended up doing three more,” Stubbs said.