It’s a Monday morning, St. Patrick’s Day to be exact, or as we like to call it, Thin Lizzy Day. Bryan Bassett has just gotten home after eight, err, three days on the road with Foghat. For a little over a quarter of a century, Bassett has been laying down those sweet slide guitar solos for England’s premiere boogie outfit. Throw in the few years he did with original singer Lonesome Dave’s incarnation, and we’re closer to 30 years, give or take. We sat down with Bassett to discuss Foghat’s return to the Chicagoland area, Molly Hatchet’s metal days, and playing that funky music…white boy.
Greetings Bryan and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Bryan Bassett: I’m doing great, Joe! Good to see you!
It’s good to see you too. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us. Of course, the crux of our conversation involves Foghat’s upcoming Chicagoland headline dates, Friday, April 4th at the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles and Saturday, April 5th at the Des Plaines Theatre in Des Plaines to be exact. When did you first play Chicago and what memories stand out from playing here over the years?
BB: Well you know, it’s such a mecca for blues. I’ve been playing there since the ’70s. With Wild Cherry, we played there several times. We played all over the area when I was in Molly Hatchet and Foghat as well, all the neighborhoods around downtown Chicago. It seemed like we were playing there 5 or 6 times a year, just playing the different festivals in the greater Chicago area, and then street fairs downtown, some of the great clubs. Of course, Scott Holt, our lead singer, played 10 years with Buddy Guy, so you’ve got Buddy Guy’s club (Buddy Guy’s Legends). If we weren’t playing there, we’d frequent it and see who’s in town.
It’s just a great music town. We always look forward to going there. Of course, the Arcada Theatre is one of our favorite places. Ron (Onesti), the owner there, he treats us like gold and makes the best meatballs I’ve ever had *laughs*! That’s always a favorite thing for us, to get up there. He always treats us well and feeds us like nobody’s business. I think his family are into Italian food too, so we always have a wonderful time up there.
I can certainly vouch for Ron’s meatballs! There’s nothing else like them. You know, it’s funny, because I believe I mentioned to (drummer) Roger (Earl) a couple years ago how I feel some parts of the country latched onto Foghat more so than others, and Chicago is definitely one of them. Between the regular classic rock airplay and sellout crowds, those ripples of the ’70s still linger through the Windy City today!
BB: Yeah, we’re a blues based band. We’re rock-blues, and of course, Foghat came out of Savoy Brown, which was one of the original British Invasion blues rock groups, along with Fleetwood Mac and John Mayall and all that. That sound really influenced me particularly as someone listening to it before I met everyone in the band. It’s just a great sound and it fits right in with the Chicago zeitgeist of the blues, the history of the blues in the Chicago area. I think so many of the artists that Lonesome Dave admired…he was practically a blues historian. He knew everybody and all the first generation blues people. People like me, who were just a few years behind them in age, I think we learned a lot about American blues artists through the British guys being such big fans of it and bringing it back to us all rocked up through Marshall amplifiers.
Definitely! Who are some of your favorite Chicago blues artists?
BB: I’m not sure who’s from where, but I became, through Dave really, and through my own research after my initial introduction to American blues through the British artists, a big fan. I love Otis Rush. I love Willie Dixon. All the classics, Muddy Waters, and all the Kings: Albert King, Freddie King, B.B. King. I can remember early on going to some rock concerts where Albert King would be opening the show. That was a real interesting introduction. I think a lot of those early English blues bands, or really blues rock bands, gave those artists a resurgence in their career by introducing them to a younger audience.
Dave used to carry a little briefcase. This was the days of MiniDisc, the format that lasted about three years *laughs*, but he had almost his whole 78 blues record collection on a little MiniDisc. After we’d play a show and get on the bus, we’d have Lonesome Dave’s blues hour on the stereo. He’d say, “Okay, tonight we’re doing Otis Rush!” *laughs* “Tonight we’re doing Lightnin’ Hopkins!” We’d just sit there, have a glass of wine, and listen to great blues music.
Buddy Guy has been up there forever. He’s one of the last original guys left, and still killing it at his age, which is amazing. We should all be so lucky. It’s so great to hear stories that Scott tells me, having been in his band for 10 years. We met through Buddy, so of course all of Buddy’s contemporaries would come and say hello if they were around at the different festivals we played. It’s great to hear those old stories of the old guys who spent their whole life travelling the country, playing the blues.
Opening up both nights is the legendary Pat Travers. When did you first cross paths with Pat, and is there any chance he could join Foghat onstage for a jam session at these shows?
BB: Well you know, funny enough, I don’t know that we’ll do jamming, but Pat Travers, in large part, is the reason I’m in Foghat. I met Pat when I first moved to Florida. My bass player and I had a band called Blue House. I was working at King Snake Records as an engineer and producer, which was an independent blues label. Our first artists were Lucky Peterson, Kenny Neal, and Kenny Neal’s dad, Raful Neal. Those were the first records we did. Eventually, we recorded those records and they ended up on Alligator Records. Those were the artists I was working with when I first moved to Florida.
My bass player was Stephen Dees, who played with Hall and Oates early on in the ’70s, and he had a band called Novo Combo with Michael Shrieve of Santana, but he had also played in Pat’s band. When Lonesome Dave, he was in England for a few years, really taking a break from the endless touring they did in the ’70s and ’80s, he moved to central Florida to Orlando, and he was looking for musicians to put a band together. Pat Travers brought him to see my band in Orlando, and we played very eclectic music. Swamp blues is what we called it. It was Lightnin’ Slim, Lazy Lester, Lightnin’ Hopkins. That’s sort of a more country blues, with a little bit of a New Orleans kind of feel in there.
Dave knew every one of the artists we were playing. Every song on our song list, he knew them. He sat in and we jammed, and Lonesome Dave and I became great friends. It’s all really because of Pat bringing him to our show and introducing me to him. We became fast friends. In fact, for almost a year or so, we did a revue where my band would play, then Pat would come out and we would do 5 or 6 songs with Pat, and then Lonesome Dave would come out and we’d do a bunch of Foghat songs all together. Early on, when I first met Dave, that was what we did. It was Lonesome Dave and Pat Travers’ Blues Revue.
We toured that mostly in the southeast, mostly in Florida, but I did that for almost a year until Dave wanted to start touring the country again. He asked me to go out on tour with him, and I did, so that’s how I got introduced to the Foghat family. I did that for 4 years. This is probably ’88, ’89. Maybe it was a little earlier than that, but I played with him up until 1992. All that time, Roger Earl still had the original Foghat touring around. Dave just bowed out. He was burned out, and then he went back to England. They talked and they decided in 1992 to reform with all the original members, at the behest of a record producer.
I think it was Rick Rubin who got in touch with their original manager and wanted all of the original guys back together. He wanted to record them like he was doing with AC/DC and a lot of other older bands. Rick was a big fan and he wanted to record them. He never did get around to them. They were 6th or 7th on a list of things he wanted to do, but all of the original guys recorded Return of the Boogie Men. Nick Jameson was the producer, who produced Fool for the City: A great musician and great producer. At that time, I joined Molly Hatchet. This is 1992.
Dave and I were in Europe opening and playing along with Molly Hatchet for several weeks. I became really good friends with (Molly Hatchet singer) Danny Joe Brown and he knew what was going on. When we got back to the States, he goes, “I know you’re losing your job with Dave. Wanna join our band?” I was like, “Yes, thank you!” *laughs* So I did! I joined Molly Hatchet. I did 3 albums with them and was with them for 7 years. Then, in 1999, Dave had taken some time off for health reasons, but when he decided to go back on the road, (guitarist) Rod (Price) retired. Dave asked me to rejoin Foghat, which I did in 1999, and I’ve been here ever since, twenty-something years *laughs*. Time flies when you’re having fun!
There’s the CliffsNotes version of my time in Foghat and my musical career, really. That encompasses like thirty-something years, but you know, without Dave, who knows where my career would’ve went. I was working at the studio as an engineer at King Snake and we put out close to 100 albums over a 15-20 year period, all blues, independent blues. I met my wife touring with Dave out in California. I say my whole life would’ve been different without meeting him, and Pat Travers! Thank you Pat for that introduction! *laughs*
Foghat are still riding high on the success of their last album, Sonic Mojo, which feels like it was on the blues charts forever, am I right or am I right?
BB: Yeah, it debuted at #1 on the Billboard blues charts, which we were ecstatic about. That’s great, but in fact, it stayed on there for over 30 weeks in the Top 10! That just means people were listening to it, which we were just ecstatic and couldn’t be more happy about. Usually when you put out an album, especially a band of our age, we do pre-sales, so when they all drop on one day, you get on the charts for a week or two. The fact that it stayed on there so long, we were shocked and really happy about it. To me, it means a lot of things, that our new lineup is acceptable to our fanbase. We just couldn’t be happier. We’re working on another one now, but Sonic Mojo was a big surprise for us. We’re really happy people liked it.
Can we expect to hear some of those songs live amidst the classics in the setlist?
BB: Yeah, definitely. Depending on the length of our show, we do 2 to 4 songs from the new album. I always compare it to, what’s the saying at a wedding? We do something old, something new, something borrowed, and some blues *laughs*. That’s what I say! We always do the old classics that everybody loves to hear, and then we do some songs from the new record. We play a couple blues songs and we always try to do some deep album tracks.
We’re sort of hitting a period where Foghat records are in their 50th anniversary. The last 3 or 4 years, album by album, it’s hitting the 50 year mark. Fool for the City hits 50 years this year. We already do several songs from that record, but every year we try to add at least 3 or 4 deeper cuts from the earlier albums, so people that see us often can see a different show and hear some songs we haven’t performed live in a while. I think we’re doing “Chateau Lafitte ’59 Boogie”, “My Babe”. We have a couple older tracks we haven’t played for a few years. It’s gonna be a little bit of everything *laughs*.
As lead guitarist, you handle those classic slide guitar solos made famous by Rod “The Bottle” Price. What qualities stand out about Price as a guitarist to you, and what are some of your favorite solos of his to play?
BB: Definitely my two favorite solos of his are “Stone Blue”, because it’s a very extended solo and it has a minor chord in it, which is interesting when you’re trying to place notes on a guitar that’s tuned to open E tuning. That’s a little esoteric there, but Rod was…people ask, “Who’s your influence?” Well, it’s definitely Rod Price because I spent so long studying his technique and his songbook. What’s really interesting about him, there’s so many great slide players out there and it’s such a versatile sound.
You have people like Little George, who Rod loved, and Bonnie Raitt, that play that more clean Strat sounding slide, but Rod played rock slide through a Marshall stack. I had the pleasure of playing with him. One of the last tours I did with Lonesome Dave before I joined Molly Hatchet was with Rod Price. That would be an anniversary because ’71 was when Foghat started. So in 1991, we were gonna go to Europe and tour. Rod, he didn’t like touring that much at all, really, but he liked touring Europe. He came on. I was like a spare tire because it was Rod and Dave, but I got to stand right next to him for close to a year and watch how he played, how he set up his amp.
He played ferociously. He played with a lot of energy, reckless abandon. He had a very wide vibrato. Just watching that and listening to that, I really paid attention to his note selection and his early signature licks in certain songs. Slide was such an important part of the Foghat sound, so to try and capture his parts was really important to me. I’m not sure that I can get his ferocity. He used to play so hard, but I was really influenced by him, his style and the way he played. It was almost like a masterclass to stand next to him for several months.
Then, he went back off the road. Not too long after that, I was gone for a period of time when I joined Molly Hatchet, but that stuck with me, the way he played. We became good friends. There were 5 guys, so we would alternate getting single rooms. Sometimes I’d room with Dave, sometimes I’d room with Rod. We became close friends. When I was dating my wife, he was the one going, “That’s the one! Marry her!” *laughs* We used to have those life conversations. We had a similar taste in music outside of blues. We were both Philip Glass fans, so we used to listen to a lot of different styles of music that we would discuss. He was a great guy, and very influential on me as a player.
Speaking of influences, growing up, what drew you into music? Who were your favorite bands, and was there any one guitarist you’d point to as the reason you picked up the instrument?
BB: Well, you know, Hendrix. I was a sports guy. I played football and ran track in high school. Right around ’69, ’70, that’s when some of the great records in classic rock history came out: Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Johnny Winter. Then, The Allman Brothers came out. I can still remember being in downtown Pittsburgh, shopping with my mother at a department store and they had a little album section. I’d go there and hang out while my mother did her thing. I remember the first Allman Brothers album came on the stereo in the record area. When I heard those harmony guitars, I was like, “What is that?!” *laughs*
Then, all the John Mayall records, and Peter Green. I was a huge Peter Green. Of course, Clapton and his work with the Beano album (John Mayall’s Blues Breakers) and then with Cream. And then, The Ed Sullivan Show. I think every musician my age, that really got into music, was because of The Stones and The Beatles and The Doors and all the great bands that were on The Ed Sullivan Show. I think everyone in my neighborhood got either a guitar or a snare drum or a bass and within a year, there were 5 or 6 basement bands just playing “Louie, Louie” and jamming out. It just stuck with me.
Pittsburgh was a great city for playing music in the clubs. There was literally dozens and dozens of clubs in the Pittsburgh area at that time in the early ’70s. I was playing 5, 6 nights a week in the clubs and I wasn’t even old enough to be in there. I was probably 18 or 19. I was making close to a grand a week in the ’70s playing clubs! They had a cover charge. You would play for the door. I was making a pretty good living doing it, just being a club guy.
It was a great learning experience because you’d listen to the radio. Every week, you’d pick up 5 new songs that were hits at the time. I was just lucky enough to make money at it and keep going. Then, in 1976, I was in Wild Cherry and we had that hit record, “Play That Funky Music”. That solidified it for me. I said, “Oh, okay. Maybe I can be professional at this!” I’ve been there ever since, lucky enough to go from one thing to another *laughs*.
I’d be remiss if I went this whole interview without asking about Wild Cherry and “Play That Funky Music”. Specifically, I have to ask about that riff. Had it been laying around prior to the song’s inception, or is it true that the band came up with it on the spot?
BB: Yeah, we came up with it on the spot. Our singer, Rob Parissi, he had the lyrics. Someone came up to us at one disco. It was a big giant dance club that had bands in Pittsburgh. Someone came up, and this was right at the time when KC and the Sunshine Band were coming out, David Bowie came out with “Fame”, The Bee Gees were starting. Everything was going R&B, The Commodores, Earth, Wind & Fire. We were playing in this big giant disco and we’re playing Robin Trower, Foghat, Led Zeppelin, Rainbow, Whitesnake *laughs*.
We’re playing that kind of music, and it’s crickets. There’s a big lighted dancefloor and everyone’s having drinks. As soon as we would take a break, they’d put on the latest funk record and the dancefloor would pack out. Someone came up to our drummer and said, “Better start playing some funky music, white boy!” *laughs* Insinuating that if we wanted to keep playing at this club, we’d have to do so. We laughed about it, then Rob started writing the song right on the spot at the club. Really, the lyrics are autobiographical. We’re a rock n’ roll band and we were checking how the scene was changing. Someone said, “Start playing some funky music.”
The riff itself, I came up with the riff, but it was sort of a formula. We started playing Commodores’ music, and that always had a rhythm guitar playing 6-9 chords, and a single note funk line behind it, and almost a slap bass part underneath it. That was the funk formula. We took those parts because we were learning those songs to change up our setlist, and added it to our song. It was inspiration by the Commodores on my part, that riff. In fact, we used to play a song called “I Feel Sanctified” in our set, which is similarly constructed.
We were just hoping to make a 45. We paid for it ourselves. We wanted to put it in the local jukeboxes and jack up our club price by a couple hundred bucks by having a record *laughs*, but it got picked up. Someone was visiting the studio while we were recording it, took it to Epic Records, and before you know it, it was going up the charts. Once we heard it for the first time on the radio, we did the Chinese fire drill thing where we pulled the car over, went screaming and running around in circles *laughs*.
It’s funny, there’s so many different versions of it. It’s a great guitar song and it’s a great dance song, even to this day in clubs. I always like to say we made the wedding circuit because it’s played at every party, every afterparty at a wedding, along with “We Are Family” and all these other great funk ’70s dance songs. We got to tour with all those bands too: Commodores, Earth, Wind & Fire. We did some of the last Jackson 5 shows. Toured a lot with Average White Band, The Isley Brothers, so I got to meet all those people back in the ’70s as a young person, which was very exciting.
Then, I hear people like Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme did a version of “Play That Funky Music”. George Michael did it. Prince did it in his encore! He did “Play That Funky Music” as one of the songs in his encore, so it’s just a fun song to play. For a guitar player, you can do whatever you want with it, stretch out. Prince did a 5 minute guitar solo in the middle of it *laughs*. It’s nice to have a song like that that just hangs around all these years.
Funny enough, I can attest, having been out as recent as 36 hours ago with my friends for St. Patrick’s Day weekend, that song hit the speakers at a club we were at, and every single person was singing along and dancing. It’s like you click it on and the happy button goes off!
BB: *laughs* I know! People would dance to it before we even recorded it. We’d go, “Well, we got something here.” Because I think guys that don’t like to dance, especially at that time, they’re eyeing a girl, and then our song would come on and they’d go, “OK, I’ll try this one.” *laughs* You go up and ask a girl to dance. It still has that appeal!
After Wild Cherry, you played a pivotal role in the operations of King Snake Records. What drew you to the behind the scenes aspects of music, like production, and what was it like being a blues artist recording and performing in the ’80s and ’90s?
BB: For me, I love the blues, and that was my inspiration to be a guitar player, but at that time, you really needed record company support to put a record out. I had a great band in Pittsburgh, more like a Night Ranger kind of thing, but we had great management. Charlie Brusco was our manager, who now manages Styx. We made demo tapes and shopped them to all the major labels, but we didn’t get a record deal. All our good songs died on the vine there because really a band by itself could not do manufacturing, distribution, financing, call all the radio stations: Everything that a record company did in those days. Without a record company, you were dead in the water.
It’s so unlike today, where everybody’s entrepreneurial and you could have a record on YouTube in a week. In those days, you needed that support. When I moved to Florida, and I was always the guy that brought a cassette recorder or a four track to the band rehearsals. I was always interested in the technical aspects of recording. That was always a second love of mine, being an engineer. So when I moved to Florida and I met Bob Greenlee who owned King Snake Records, he asked me to come over to his studio.
We did a Noble “Thin Man” Watts record that I had a couple songs on and played. I didn’t really engineer that one, but I was in the studio while they were doing it. He was getting ready to convert from a 16 track to a full blown 24 track operation, and get his label up and running. To be involved with an independent record label at that time was fulfilling to me because we were getting artists like Kenny Neal and we were able to record, manufacture, get it mastered, get the artwork done, get it produced, get it out on the street, mostly through college radio and NPR blues stations, that kind of thing. We were real successful in Europe as well, who are big blues fans, so they were big fans of our label.
To have that completion for us, to be able to get our artists’ product to take with them on the road. At that time, that was important to me to have that completion thing going, with a great band, able to record them, and have them get product, put it out. That was really appealing to me. Lucky Peterson, one of the greatest musicians I ever met, was on a lot of our early records. I think I engineered 3 or 4 records of his. He eventually ended up on Alligator, as well as Kenny did. Kenny’s still a big blues star, going out there in the world. Lucky, we lost a few years ago, but seriously, he was a child prodigy. I think he was on Johnny Carson or Ed Sullivan early on, playing Hammond organ. His feet couldn’t even touch the ground, but he could play like Jimmy Smith. He was a fabulous guy.
That was what it was for me. We were doing 10 records a year, and to get them out on the street, get our artists having product to sell while they toured around the country. That was a big deal. Yeah, I was real proud of that area, met a lot of great musicians, and had a lot of fun watching technology change. We were a totally analog studio then, two inch tape, analog board, no synthesizers, B3. We had great horn players, so we made some really cool records. Then, I watched everything go digital over the course of that 10-15 year period. I still do all the recording performance for Foghat, and I have been doing that since I joined the band over 20 years ago. I’m all digital now, but I still have an analog mind, I say *laughs*.
Expanding upon the last question, and I’ve asked other blues guys this, as far as that era went, did you experience a sort of tidal effect as a result of the mainstream success of Stevie Ray Vaughan?
BB: Oh, absolutely. I think he was monumental to introducing a whole new generation to blues. He almost did to the music scene what Hendrix did. It was an exciting, great guitar player in the blues genre, but it was radio friendly. He was a masterful performer live. My brother in law had a club in Pittsburgh called the Decade. He played there. I think it was one of the first gigs he played above the Mason Dixon Line. He was just a three piece then. I went to the place, and within a short time, he was world famous.
I think it was the David Bowie association early on, and they did a lot of their early recording at Jackson Browne’s studio out in California. He just blew up, and for good reason. He was one of the best players. I think he inspired so many guitar players. Like the blues rock guys that inspired me, he inspired a whole new generation of players in that style. You hear his records today, they sound as fresh as ever. He’s just a powerful player, one of the best, classic.
He was totally influential on keeping the blues scene alive, introducing it, and broadening the audience. It wasn’t blues clubs or small theatres anymore. It was an arena size blowup. He was definitely influential on keeping that style going. Now, you got guys like Derek Trucks and the whole Allman Band revival. I take a lot of heart in the Allman Brothers having a whole new resurgence, with Duane (Allman) and Dickey (Betts) gone, but you got two new guys who can really play. Gov’t Mule, all that stuff I think started with Stevie Ray bringing that sound back to the radio.
I want to ask you about your time in Molly Hatchet, and specifically their 1996 album, Devil’s Canyon. This was the band’s final album to feature the involvement of Danny Joe Brown. What memories stand out to you from the writing and recording of that album?
BB: Well we did a lot of the writing with Danny Joe in Florida, but his health was failing at that time. We had been touring for a while. I joined in ’92. We recorded Devil’s Canyon which, I did 3 albums, but I consider that one my favorite. The writing for that record involved Danny. For a 4 year period, we were collecting songs and working on arrangements. When we went to record it, we were signed to SPV, which was a German label, so we were going to Germany to record. Danny’s health just was not up to it. I loved the guy. He was so funny.
When I would do a solo, he would always run over to me and put me in a headlock *laughs*. He’d have me like this and be giving me noogies on my head. It’s a little hard to play in a headlock *laughs*. We just had a lot of fun together. He was so charismatic onstage. He would walk out and put his hands on his hips and stare at the audience. They would just erupt in applause. He hadn’t even sung a note yet, but he just had that kind of stage presence.
Anyhow, he was real involved in the creation of a lot of the songs on that first record, but he suggested we get Phil McCormack, who was in a band called The Roadducks up in the D.C. area and had played with Molly many times as an opening act. So Danny said, “I think Phil will do it.”, and he did for many years. Starting in ’96, all the way up to the time I left the band in ’99, Phil was the singer. He was great, a good frontman.
Danny was really instrumental in the direction of the band. We didn’t change the style too much, but we were a little bit harder rock than say the original version. It was definitely southern rock and had a little bit more clean guitar sounds, country influence like on “Gator Country”. Our band was a little heavier. We used to get interviewed by all the metal magazines in Europe, Metal Hammer and whatnot. They did things different in Europe when you had a record release. It was almost like the ’70s where you would go into a building and do interviews for 15 hours with 10 or 15 different publications. Magazines, that was a big part of the advertising in Europe at the time. Danny, his personality and presence always permeated the band as far as what we wanted to do stylistically. I miss him. He was a cool guy.
It’s funny you mention the change of sound. I feel Molly Hatchet always boasted hints of hard rock, but there’s also a boogie thing and a swamp thing. They were kind of like Skynyrd, playing a little bit of everything. But upon revisiting Devil’s Canyon, I was reading some of the comments online regarding it, and I think the comment that summed it up best is, “It’s like Manowar gone south.”
BB: *laughs* That’s a good description!
Did that direction come naturally, was it a conscious decision, or was it somewhere in between?
BB: I think it was just natural because the way Bobby (Ingram) and I played. Our guitars really melted together great. We spent hours and hours on harmony guitar parts and all that stuff. We were just a really good dual guitar combo. Both of us had more aggressive guitar sounds. I remember meeting all the original guys in Molly Hatchet even before I played with them. They were playing through Peavey amps. It was more of a cleaner sound. Me and Bobby were playing through Marshalls and 5150s, so we just had a much more aggressive guitar sound. That changed the dynamic. I think our approach in our arrangements were similar, but I think just the overall sounds were different. And we recorded it in Germany, so that alone, the engineers and the producer had a more metal edge to them, so that influenced the record as well.
I guess when you’re recording in a country where the bar is set by Accept and Sodom, you’re going to have a heavier album by default!
BB: *laughs* You’re right! Exactly! The engineer would go, “Turn it up a little bit! Yeah, crank that up a little more!” So yeah, it was just the overall technique and our preferred guitar sounds *laughs*. I like that! I’m gonna use that comparison now *laughs*.
We talked about some of your favorite Foghat solos. Molly Hatchet was another band with iconic solos. What were some of your favorite solos of theirs to play?
BB: I love “Flirtin’ with Disaster”. Of course, that was the big song. That has some great solos in it. “Dreams”, their interpretation of the Allman Brothers song, that was one one of our big in-concert things, with a big stretch out. For the new band, my favorite song off Devil’s Canyon is “The Journey”, which has a really long, extended…almost as long as a Skynyrd ending, with several minutes of harmony guitar parts. I’d say those three are my favorite ones. We worked really hard, Bob and I, on utilizing guitar harmony parts and playing, interweaving structures.
It was really interesting as a guitar player to make those records. We worked very long hours perfecting the parts, so it was challenging. I put on the record not too long ago to see if could remember my parts. I think I hit about 40% or 50% *laughs*! “I don’t remember that part!” Mostly, I’m playing harmony while Bob plays the root, so I’m trying to remember all my parts. I said, “Oh, I was pretty good back then!” *laughs*
And still killing it today! What advice would you give to the young, aspiring guitarist today?
BB: Several things. First of all, be true to yourself and your own personality. That’s the one great thing about guitar. Everybody that plays guitar sounds like themselves. I think that’s why the instrument’s so popular. It translates personalities so directly. You can have one guitar and one amp sitting on a stage and have 10 different guys come up and play it. It’ll sound 10 different ways. That transparency of the instrument itself lends you to express yourself more like a voice than say a lot of other instruments. Be true to your personality.
Get into composition. Now if you’re a singer or a songwriter, that’s sort of your main thing. If you’re an instrumentalist or something, participate in songwriting. In the music industry, almost all the money outside of live performance is in composition. That’s where you make your money as you go along in the music industry, being part of songs that do well. The other thing is when you’re young, check out as many styles that you can. At least to my experience, after so many years of playing, maybe your first 5 or 6 years, your style starts to settle in.
The more style input that you’ve given yourself, there’s gonna be more for you to access as you mature as a musician. You look at a guy like (Matteo) Mancuso who plays classical guitar fingerstyle and plays amazing everything. Then, just concentrate on your instrument. Get out and play live. I think it’s harder these days than it was when I was young. Pittsburgh was a great town and I was able to play a lot live. That really helps you develop your stage craft, so those are the most important things. Get out there and play, study real hard with a lot of different genres, get into writing, and be yourself.
In closing, what does the rest of 2025 have in store for you and Foghat?
BB: We’re just gonna do what we normally do. We tour all year. We don’t go out on a bus for 6 weeks at a time like we did in the old days. We fly everywhere, but we play almost every weekend for the whole year. We do 1 or 2, sometimes 3 shows. Once the summer hits, we do a little bit more and get into festival season. Then, when we get a break, we go back to our band house where I have our studio set up. While we’re travelling and doing soundchecks, we capture little bits of grooves and parts of songs, little inspirations. When we have a few days off, or maybe an unusual week or two, we go into the studio and try to capture those ideas.
It seems like it happens every two or three years, we have enough tracks that we really like that we put out another record. That’s the way we’ve done it for the last 15, 20 years. It seems like we put out a studio record, then a year or so later, a live record, and then another studio record. I think our next release will probably be a live record, and then maybe next year will be a new studio album. We were so happy with how Sonic Mojo turned out. We hope we have another one of those.
Foghat will be playing the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles, Illinois on Friday, April 4th, and the Des Plaines Theatre in Des Plaines, Illinois on Saturday, April 5th. Tickets for the St. Charles show can be found here. Tickets for the Des Plaines show can be found here. For more information on Foghat, click here.
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