To quote Firesign Theatre, Mitch Woods is going forward into the past. And the latest step in his journey is Happy Hour, a new album filled with Woods’ original material, which is steeped in the musical styles of days gone by.
For several decades now, the keyboard player has waged an ongoing campaign to keep the music of the late ‘40s and early ‘50s alive, exploring the jump blues era that existed between the end of big bands’ widespread popularity and the start of rock and roll. We’re talking Louis Jordan (“Saturday Night Fish Fry”), Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats (“Rocket 88”) and Bull Moose Jackson and His Buffalo Bearcats (“Big Ten-Inch Record”).
Woods honors the jump blues form while putting a fresh spin on the material. He has even coined a new term for the approach, “Rock-a-Boogie.” So how did Woods discover the wealth of music that kept people dancing before the dawn of rock and roll?
“It was a gradual process,” Woods says, speaking from his home base in the San Francisco Bay Area. “First, I got into boogie-woogie, when I was staring to play around, to sit in, when I was at the University of Buffalo, when I was 18 or so. And people said, ‘Oh, you sound like the old boogie-woogie guys.’ And so I went out and got all the records I could find by them – Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis – and I loved it. And then, as a progression, I started playing – actually, my girlfriend was the singer – and it was called ‘Mitch Woods and His Red-Hot Mama.’ And we did a lot of Billie Holliday, Bessie Smith, Fats Waller and that kind of stuff.
“And I remember one night we opened for [harmonica player] Charlie Musselwhite, and his guitarist said, ‘Man, you sound like Louis Jordan.’ And then the light went on, and I got all the Louis Jordan albums I could find, and that really got me going into jump blues. He was sort of my entry way into that. I just loved that era, the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, when big bands got smaller. It was the birth of rock and roll, really.
“The other thing that I loved about [Jordan] and that music was that there was a lot of humor in it. And now, rarely is there humor in music.” Woods stems this morose tide with “Jukebox Drive,” the opening cut from Happy Hour. In less than four minutes, Woods’ lyrics encompass Cadillacs, tail fins, a girl in a pink sweater, a flying saucer and little green men.
Happy Hour is a combination of the old and the new, containing re-recordings of songs that Woods wrote and cut during the ‘80s and ’90s. When COVID reared its head and forced people to stay home, avoiding interaction with others, live music ground to a halt. After some initial gnashing of teeth and twiddling of thumbs, Woods thought that the time was right to revisit some of his older material. There were no gigs to play, so why not?
But Happy Hour? Kind of an ironic title, no? “It is called Happy Hour because of that situation. There was COVID, but at least we could have an hour of happy music. It was an opportunity to record and play some music with the band, which we hadn’t been able to do. We were all vaccinated and masked up, and it all worked out really well,” Woods says.
In addition to keeping Woods occupied, Happy Hour served as an opportunity for him to rediscover some of his original material. “I wanted to get out all my original tunes,” Woods says. “They’ve been recorded, but they haven’t been [in print for] 30 years. And it’s a whole new take on it. So I felt like I could have a whole new audience for my material.”
Many times, when musicians record a song and then play it on the road, the composition morphs and changes over time. Such was the case with the batch of tunes that make up Happy Hour. “Oh yeah, the tempos changed, my voice has matured since I recorded those songs – some of them back in the ‘80s – so we’re talking a long time ago. I think my voice is a lot better. Some things have slowed down, a few things may have sped up a little bit. And we tried a few different things, different solos than were on the original tracks. And we got creative with a lot of that, actually,” Woods says.
Happy Hour was recorded at Kid Andersen’s Greaseland studios in San Jose, CA. Andersen has gained a reputation as a highly-regarded guitarist, producer and engineer in the blues community, working on records by Albert Castiglia and Monster Mike Welch among others. For Happy Hour, Woods was in the producer’s chair, with Andersen playing guitar, engineering the sessions and mastering the final product.
“Everybody wants to record at Greaseland,” Woods says. “The first time I went into the studio, I was playing piano for somebody else’s album, and I had heard all of these great things. So I went into the studio and I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ It’s in his house, and the piano is in the kitchen. I thought, ‘This is really funky. I don’t think this is gonna be so great.’”
But Woods was soon enough convinced. “[Andersen] is a mad genius, and he’s a master with what he’s got. So he’s able to get great sounds out of this funky room. And it feels really good. You’re just at home there. So for blues and this kind of music, everybody’s enjoyed it. Plus, he has tons of vintage equipment in there, so if you want a certain sound, you can get that.”
So how does Woods manage to keep boogie-woogie and jump blues sounding fresh, considering that their heyday was over 70 years ago? “For me, I write in that style, as if it were the ‘40s or the ‘50s. Of course, there are my own lyrics, so that updates things,” Woods explains. “I’m still writing humorous songs, fun songs. I’m not Bob Dylan or any of that stuff. To keep that music alive, we play it fresh. It’s not like we’re trying to imitate a style that was done a long time ago. We’re playing it now. And any musician that plays in my band really understands the idiom and puts their fresh style into it.”
Though Woods is a West Coast guy, Happy Hour does contain a major nod to Texas in the song “Boogie Woogie Bar-B-Q,” in which he sings (literally) the praises of Texas barbecue and name-checks Lone Star beer. Are these lyrics based on internet research or personal experience?
“Personal experience,” Woods states adamantly. “Actually, my first wife was from Houston. ‘All My Exes Live in Texas,’ right? So I started coming down there on my way to New Orleans, coming through Texas. And of course it was the best barbecue I had ever had in my life. And I still agree with that. I used to not be able to pronounce “pecan pie” the right way, I was like ‘PEE-can pie.’ But I was told, I was told.”
More information on Mitch Woods and Happy Hour is available at MitchWoods.com.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
