Pity poor Chris Cain. The blues singer/guitarist is just trying to make his woman happy. But he always keeps screwing things up.
Sure, she told him to be home by 11 p.m. and he didn’t show up for another hour and a half. He figured he’d smooth things over by bringing her a pizza—only to walk in and find she’d prepared a now-cold romantic candlelight dinner.
Then he tried to throw her a surprise party—but ended up inviting her sister, who she detests. Finally, he bought her some shorts and took a guess at her size. But when she tried to put them on, they were too big. As in way too big. “How big do you think my butt really is?” she hisses at him.
Well, at least those are the travails that befall the narrator of the song “Good Intentions” off Cain’s new record, Good Intentions Gone Bad (Alligator).
In reality, Chris Cain seemingly couldn’t be happier with both his professional and personal life, which on this day has thrown him an unexpected but not unwelcome curveball. He’s scrambling to book a flight to, of all places, Romania, to play a last-minute one-off fill-in gig before heading to Italy for a string of late July concerts.
“Sometimes, these things just happen. And if you’re free, you do the show. And it’s an opportunity to play for people you haven’t before!” Cain laughs over the phone. “And my greatest times overseas have been in Italy.”
He recalls being at a restaurant when he could tell a group of Italians were talking about him, before waving him over. “They spoke no English, I spoke no Italian, and we ended up hanging out for a week before I played the concert. It was great!”
Back in 2021, Cain told the Houston Press that the songs on his previous album, Raisin’ Cain, were “the best pack of tunes” he’d ever written.
And with the material on Good Intentions Gone Bad ranging from jump blues (“Too Little Too Late,” “Still Drinking Straight Tequila”) to blues rock (“Fear is My New Roommate,” “Time to Cry,” “TGIF”), shuffle (“Had About All I Can Take”), uptempo (“TGIF,” “Thankful”) and slow burners (“Waiting for the Sun to Rise,” “Bad Dream”), might he have to revise that statement?
“You know, I felt the same way now as I did making the last record. My guitar playing is as good as I can possibly do it. I did everything in my power to make what I was doing sound good,” he says. “And I’m glad that you dug it!”
He said making it “easy” was the return of Kid Andersen as producer. Though Andersen’s “real gig” is as guitarist with Alligator labelmates Rick Estrin and the Nightcats, he has more than made his mark as both a producer and player on others’ records. He oversees it all from his Greaseland, USA studio in San Jose, California, which also happens to be Chris Cain’s hometown.
In fact, Cain practically talks more about his high praise for Andersen than his own work on Good Intentions Gone Bad.
“He’s just fantastic. Kid doesn’t just use one template for every band he [produces]. He finds out what you’re trying to do, and then helps you do it. He’s got a gift. And he’s already an insanely talented musician,” Cain says.
“Everybody’s going to his studio because you can capture a vibe on the record, a mood on the fucking thing. That is the thing he can do immediately. Some guys take two days to get a drum sound right. Kid does it right away. And it’s a joyful and relaxed experience putting it on this fucking piece of plastic. That is a gift, man. He’s a beautiful cat.”
Cain adds that he mostly knows when he’s playing well by looking at Andersen’s face while he’s recording to see if he’s nailed it or not.
Another thing he credits Andersen with is convincing him to put down for posterity an extremely personal song for the record.
“Blues for My Dad” is a tribute to Cain’s late blues-and-R&B loving father who not only encouraged his young son’s interest in music but took him to many shows (often gliding their way backstage, his father’s natty suit giving him seemingly magical Jedi powers of access), as well as giving him his first guitar.
As Cain tells it, he had taken some recordings over to Andersen to pick out material for the record. One not even slated for consideration was “Blues for My Dad.” Cain had laid down a bare bones acoustic nearly a quarter century ago as a lark and was definitely not intended for this project. But Andersen heard it, flipped, and lobbied heavily for its inclusion.
“He said he played it for Rick Estrin and Rick was in tears! He ground me down and we recorded it. It wasn’t even finished!” Cain says, before recalling those shows from decades ago. “Every place my dad ever took me to see music was life changing. It’s etched in my soul. He loved the stuff.”
One of his favorite father-son experiences was when he was told to put on a suit, but not where they were going. The pair ended up at a James Brown show where “the walls were sweating.” And a young Cain vividly recalls toward the end of the concert when James Brown came out dancing frenetically and holding a suitcase like he was just raring to head to the next town.
Also, in terms of production, Cain credits arranger and trombonist Mike Rinta for the record’s prominent use of horns. Even though Cain hadn’t written the songs with them in mind.
“When he was writing the arrangements, his mother was dying in the hospital. And he worked his ass off on them. I cried when I heard it. The made those tunes jump out at me.”
Good Intentions Gone Bad is only Cain’s second album for the Chicago’s storied Alligator Records, though his debut effort on the first of a series of labels over the years was way back in 1987.
And while it seems like Alligator and Cain would have always been a perfect match, it turns out that the musician’s efforts to be one of their artists back in the day were actually met with rejection.
Cain says he had sent a demo of his early songs “Late Night City Blues” and “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee” to Alligator founder Bruce Iglauer. Iglauer wrote back telling him that his vocals sounded too “mannered” and that he was “trying to sound Black.” What the label head might not have known is that Cain himself is biracial with a Black father and white mother.
Cain vowed to pin the letter on his wall as motivation. He later ran into Iglauer while playing at Buddy Guy’s blues club and then later the Chicago Blues Festival, where Iglauer approached him.
“He comes up and the first he says to me is ‘I know we got off on the wrong foot, but I really like what you’re doing.’ And I told him I was a wise ass back then. We ended up talking for two and a half hours and really hitting it off.”
Finally, if Chris Cain exerts anything during this interview as well as the last time we spoke with him, it’s gratitude, appreciation, and thankfulness for the career he has now. And the people who helped him along the way.
“And I really appreciate talking to you!” he says. “I’ve been very lucky. And I don’t take it for granted.”
For more on Chris Cain, visit ChrisCainMusic.com
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
