SONNY TERRY/BROWNIE MCGHEE, JAMES COTTON, ROBERT JOHNSON, SPIDER JOHN KOERNER, MILES DAVIS, BOB DYLAN, TAJ MAHAL, JACKSON BROWN, JOHN HIATT... really too many to name here. Pickett listens to blues, jazz, soul, gospel, classical and all the ones in between. He listens to everything as long as the music is good and the musician is real.
Women weave in and out of things, high, low, near and far. A chillingly well-sung piece about murder committed with a razor, planned and executed without mercy or any expectation of forgiveness. A very sad Woody Guthrie piece about migrant workers, written in the 40’s. Songs of travel, coming home, running away, looking for….something. Trains. Hitchhikers. Cars. Airplanes. The face of America laid out, mile after endless mile, measured by footsteps, measured by lives, measured by fate and circumstance. Love, sweet and bitter. Loss and longing. Tears shed. Lives broken. Lives made whole.
Guitar and harmonica serve as background, punctuate, and dominate in a swirl of exchanges.
The National Steel, in particular, seems possessed.
~~James MacLaren~~
QUOTES
"Michael Pickett was mesmerizing, he opened for David Wilcox but in my opinion, stole the show. I would definitely go to see him again." (fan/Sudbury Summerfest '07)
"Mesmerize he did!
Lots of people have commented to me how this man took command of his
stage with his personality, music, voice and instruments!
He truly did charm the audience.
His show was everything you said it was and more...
We were blessed and now 2000 more people know who he is!"
(Vic Theriault/Sudbury Summerfest '07)
"He entertained Massey Hall in the way a Robert Johnson or Ledbelly could and did decades earlier. It was a great pleasure for this writer and I'm sure for most if not all of the audience (2500 strong) at Massey Hall this night, to witness perfection at its rootsiest and purest best, from a man whose style and delivery is as good as the blues ever gets!" (J.Curtis, freelance writer/Massey Hall)
"AWESOME !
I've been going to the Acoustic Edge in Belleville for a couple of years now. Have seen and heard some pretty good muscians. Until you showed up last night ! Your passion and skill just blew me away. AWESOME ! Thanks for a great show...." (fan/Belleville Club)
"I had a vision that he was gonna be one of the best. In my book he is." (Hubert Sumlin)
"One of the finest harmonica players of our time." (Lee Oskar)
"An amazing artist who breathes a new life into the blues by bringing it back with original energy and charisma." (Downeast /USA)
"His songs transcend the urban blues idiom... " (Billboard/International)
"Acoustic, traditional blues at its best performed by a true bluesman!" (Concerto/Austria)
"He's got it folks! A real student of the blues. If it's hard to get over as a singer/songwriter, it's exponentially harder to write good blues, and he does it." (Sing Out!/USA)
"Pickett continues to amaze everyone with even more unexpected talents and creative dimensions. A world-class tunesmith. One of Canada's top acoustic blues artists!" (Blues Revue/USA)
"Gives good chase to John Hammond on guitar and leaves him behind on harp." (Blues Matters! /UK)
"A seasoned master on Guitar, brilliant Harp and Voice." (WMPG/USA)
"Quite simply, when Michael sings it, we believe it. Mr. Pickett's work has that timeless quality that says we'll still be listening a long, long time from now." (Blues On Stage/USA)
"How can one man sing with so much soul!?" (KYNR/USA) ___________________________________________________________________
LIVE PERFORMANCE REVIEW
by Aaron Stewart
Knox Acoustic Cafe
November 15, 2008
After a brief break to set the stage... Michael Pickett stepped up and proceeded to use the blues to blow the roof off the place.
For those of you who don't know, Michael Pickett is a Juno-nominated blues guitarist from the Toronto area whose chops are completely undeniable. Remember way back to Whiskey Howl, Wooden Teeth or the Michael Pickett Band? Of course, he's been solo for a few years now, but it's all the same guy, and what a stunner of a show he put on for us tonight! I was glued to my seat and rendered speechless as he whipped off song after song of passionate, searingly gorgeous blues tracks on a well-loved Gibson acoustic and, what was clearly his favourite, an original 1931 National Steel guitar. The sounds he wrung from the necks of these instruments, as well as a plethora of harmonicas, were dredged straight from the depths of the Mississippi, caked in delta mud and as harrowing as any blues songs I've ever heard. He played entirely unplugged (though through a PA for the house) which lent a more genuine, raw feel to the music. His fingers flew and his voice growled, cried and laughed as he expertly took us through the gamut of human emotions as only the best blues can muster them. He told stories between songs that completed the atmosphere, self-effacingly proving my point that this gentleman is a performer to revere.
One gets the sense from Michael Pickett that the blues isn't just a form he's mastered, it's one that he feels in his blood and bones, in his very being. It contorts his body and his face as he plays, it makes him sweat, steam and stomp, and there were many points where it seemed he was holding onto his guitar for dear life as he played. He may well have been, which was only more fuel in the fire of what we witnessed tonight. He played many original tunes, a few covers and, no matter what came next, each song was a tour de force, a monument to the power of the universal language of the blues.
Michael Pickett is a genuinely great guy, and simultaneously he's a one-man blues wrecking ball, a true hero in a form I love. If he is playing a gig anywhere near your house, or for that matter within a conceivable driving distance, you have to go. You can say I told you so. Don't think, just go. You can thank me later.
IN CONVERSATION By Steve Wildsmith
The Daily Times/TN, USA
February 1, 2008
Michael Pickett
Pickett's charge: Blues man finds satisfaction in acoustic roots
Michael Pickett is living proof that you can teach an old dog new tricks.
To be fair, the “old dog” — Pickett, who was 51 at the time — taught himself a new trick. And it wasn’t so much a new trick as it was a refresher course in how he first started playing the blues.
It took a while, but what emerged was a complete reinvention of Pickett’s style, a full-circle return from the full-band sound he’s been a part of since the 1970s. And it all started when he sat down to play the blues on an acoustic guitar all by his lonesome.
“I had grown up listening to that stuff, and I sat down one afternoon to produce a tune where the guitar is strong throughout, the harmonica on the rack is strong, the singing is strong,” Pickett told The Daily Times this week. “At that point in my life, I was 51 years old, and I’d had a guitar kicking around in my house collecting dust forever. So I sat down to do it — and it sounded awful. I knew what it was supposed to sound like, and I wasn’t getting it.
“I played at it for about an hour and then took a break, because the concentration, the focus, was way too much. It takes a lot of focus to present a song as a solo player. But the next day, I did it again. And the next day, again. Pretty soon, I was practicing 10, 12 hours a day. And I just stayed at it, like a bulldog. At that point in my life, I had been on hundreds of recordings and played all kinds of tunes on stage — I knew how it was all put together.
“I thought, I should be able to do this — to just sit in my chair, play my guitar and sing a song,” he added. “I should be able to do that, shouldn’t I? It turned out that the answer was no.”
It had been a while since Pickett, who’s made quite a name for himself in the blues over the years, faced such a steep learning curve. As a kid, he started singing for his grandmother when he was 4; at 13, his mother bought him his first harmonica. Not long after, watching legends Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee on TV hooked him on the blues for the rest of his life.
Starting in the 1970s, he began to cut a swath through the genre with his monster chops on the harmonica. First with Whiskey Howl, he was the co-front man with the late John Witmer, one of Canada’s most revered R&B singers. The band signed to Warner Bros. in 1972 and toured across the country before Pickett moved on to Wooden Teeth, a new band, in 1976. His new project built on a foundation of blues and funk that covered everything from Little Feat to Tower of Power, with an occasional jazz-fusion number thrown in for good measure and an incomparable ability to improvise on stage. One of the band’s highlights was opening for Big Mama Thornton and John Lee Hooker.
In 1981, after a brief reunion with Whiskey Howl, Pickett put together the Michael Pickett Band, which included a rotating roster of musicians over the years (most notably Shawn Kellerman on guitar). Although his harmonica was strong enough to steal the show, he was content to layer his work in with the rest of the band, creating a crackerjack unit that never used a setlist.
In 1998, he released his debut album, “Blues Money,” which was nominated for a Juno (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys) as well as several other awards. In 2000, he put out his second album, “Conversation With the Blues,” earning himself another Juno nomination and a Canadian Indie Music Award for Blues Album of the Year. It was during that time period that he felt the call of the acoustic blues once again.
“I sat down to write a third album under my own name, and it was all coming out solo acoustic,” he said. “I would come up with something and think, ‘This is a cool tune; it sounds like Lightnin’ Hopkins would play a tune like this, sitting there by himself. A lot of the songs that I wrote for the band actually came up out of that genre of music. But I would put bass and drums on them, even though it was essentially a tune I could play solo.”
When he attempted to stick strictly to acoustic blues, however, he learned his lesson. Undeterred, however, he put aside his ego and forced himself to go back to school. He went back and found the old acoustic blues he’d fallen in love with in the 1960s on CD. He went searching for contemporary acoustic blues players. He bought stacks of CDs, returning the ones he didn’t care for, and simply stayed with it.
“I was probably three years into it, maybe even more, before I actually sat down and played along with a record,” he said. “I’m one of those guys who will listen to a record and then go have something to eat before I pick up a guitar and play. That way, I might be trying to imitate what’s on the record, but I’ll end up coming up with a tune of my own. I’m not a guy who studies tunes and replicates them; mostly, I just make noise.”
In those early years, he was still playing with the full Michael Pickett Band. He would show up for rehearsals or to a gig with his guitar, even though his role was that of the band’s vocalist and harmonica player. Gradually, with his bandmates’ encouragement, he took the guitar out of the case and eventually worked it into the show — opening up the second set with a few of his own acoustic songs.
“If I was comfortable with the sound, I would play three or four tunes; if the sound was really (bad), I would play one tune and say, ‘Enough of this,’” he said.
Even doing that was an adjustment — used to playing plugged in, Pickett couldn’t quite get the acoustic blues sound just right if he used a PA or an amplifier. Eventually, he took a cue from guys like McGhee and Son House and did away with amplification altogether.
“Those guys, back in the 1960s, would walk on stage with no guitar tuners, one or two microphones on stage and they wouldn’t plug their guitars in,” Pickett said. “That’s unheard of today, and occasionally, I’ll run into a sound guy who tells me I can’t do it that way. Well, why not? If you can put a microphone in front of it and turn it up to a level where it can be heard, there’s something wrong technically.
“I’m completely unplugged; I won’t plug my guitars in. It’s all a mindset, I really believe. I’ve played on huge stages, for 3,000 or 4,000 people, and it just sounds like a million bucks. I’m sure it would make everybody’s life simpler if I plugged the guitars in, but it changes the sound, and I just don’t want to go there.”
Sometimes, he added, he runs into the occasional club owner, sound man or fellow musician who scratches his head at Pickett’s set-up. For some, it seems limiting; if he’s learned anything from the reinvention, however, it’s this — the sky is the limit when it comes to acoustic blues.
“If you think you know how to play this stuff, then you’re a real arrogant fool,” he said. “Something I heard years ago — if you want to learn to play guitar, sit down and play 12-bar blues, and just keep playing it, and if you think it’s all the same, you’re completely wrong.
"There are a million ways to play that same riff, that same turn-around, that same groove. If you’re not growing and learning, you’re standing still, and if that happens, you’re dead in the water.”
Solo Acoustic Singer Songwriter
Guitarist, Harmonica Player
2x JUNO nominee
Award Winning Recording Artist
Roots Delta Blues Americana
Pickett embraces the Blues with style, substance and integrity. In the 70s, 80s, and 90s he established himself as a musically ground-breaking, electrifying singer/songwriter/harmonica player, leading seminal bands Whiskey Howl, Wooden Teeth, and the Michael Pickett Band. These bands pushed the envelope for Blues and funky Roots music. He provided the direction for all three projects, surrounding himself with the top musicians in the country.
1998 saw the release of his long anticipated and eagerly awaited debut CD, Blues Money. This all original recording was nominated for a JUNO and received the Jazz Report and Real Blues awards for ’Blues Album of the Year’. Michael was also presented with the coveted Maple Blues ’Blues With A Feeling Award’ in recognition of his passion and lifetime commitment to the Blues.
In 2000 he released his second CD Conversation With The Blues which earned another JUNO nomination and won the Indie Music Award for ’Blues Album of the Year’. Described by Billboard as "transcending the urban Blues idiom", it is an eclectic mix of ten originals comprised of Blues, R&B, Soul, Jazz, Delta, and Gospel.
PICKETT RE-INVENTS HIMSELF
It’s worth mentioning here that Pickett laid down an acoustic guitar track on Blues Money... he hadn’t taken his guitar out of the box for 20 years. He did the same on Conversation With The Blues. His focus was still on the band but he found himself steadily drawn back into the realm of acoustic Blues which was how it all began for him as a 13 year old discovering Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. In 2001, he immersed himself in the guitar and was soon practicing up to 14 hours a day. This musical transition transformed him into a formidable guitarist on the six-string and National Steel-Bodied Duolian. In the fall of 2002, leaving the band behind, he re-emerged revealing yet another layer of his seemingly endless reservoir of musical talents. With exceptional rack harmonica skills and powerful vocals, he delivers charismatic, compelling, and passionate performances that are charged with electricity, authenticity, and a unique style. He puts his own spin on obscure tunes of legendary icons such as Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Mississippi John Hurt, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and showcases his own potent material. This songwriter has evolved into an eclectic and captivating storyteller through Delta Blues, Country, Folk, and Americana, revealing a profound understanding of where this music comes from and why it stands the test of time.
As a solo acoustic artist touring North America, the UK, and Europe, in Blues, Folk, Jazz clubs, coffee houses, house concerts, theatres, and festivals - he receives standing ovations and calls for encores. He has hosted and participated in harmonica and acoustic guitar workshops and his presence in songwriting circles has proven to be extremely valuable because of his authentic representation/interpretation of acoustic Roots/Blues.
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He has played and/or shared the stage with Big Mama Thornton . John Lee Hooker . James Cotton . Jeff Healey . Bo Diddley . Koko Taylor . Downchild Blues Band . John Hammond . Matt "Guitar" Murphy . Doug Kershaw . Willie ’Big Eyes’ Smith . Snooky Pryor . Sunnyland Slim . Lazy Lester . Tom Rush . Josh White Jr . Rory Block . Matt Minglewood . T.Graham Brown . Kentucky Headhunters . Hubert Sumlin . Taj Mahal . Muddy Waters . Son Seals . Big Bill Morganfield . Robert Cray . Buddy Guy . Jon Cleary . Tea Party . Gary Nicholson . The Players . Fortunate Sons . Colin Linden . Brian Stoltz . George Porter Jr . Rev. Billy C Wirtz . The Nighthawks . Lee Oskar . Mark Hummell . Jerry Portnoy and more.
In 1988, Michael’s voice was chosen to be The Budman in an unprecedented seven year Budweiser ’Blues’ campaign which aired nationwide on radio and tv. . A jingle career was born and Michael’s voice/sings/harp were used in a vast number of commercials across Canada and into the US.
I'm hitting the road in a couple of weeks to raise money for War Child, Coast-to-coast – 50 cities – ALL PROCEEDS TO WARCHILD. Why? 66% of all war victims are CHILDREN. Shocked like me? War Child helps these children that have been affected by war. Check out the new blog – the whole story is up there. Love to have you be a part of it.
You’ll find a Blog, Tour page and a Bio page. I’ll be blogging daily from the road.
Thanks coming over and visiting JAZZ BLUES FLORIDA, Florida’s online guide to live jazz and blues! We need all the good friends we can find to support good music, so sure to come back again to see what is happening. Our other friends are the best of performers, venues and fans, so take a look and make a lot of new and interesting friends…Please stop by and check us out at www.JazzBluesFlorida.com for state-wide show and club listings which might help in finding places to gig if you are thinking of heading down this way!
Hello for the last time from Hot House Florida! We are moving over to our new space, JazzBluesFlorida, and wanted to be sure you came along so we can put you back in our TOP FRIEND section to promote you and your music! See you over there! The inaugral edition of Jazz Blues Florida will be posted later tonight at www. JazzBluesFlorida. com. Thanks for the music!
