BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
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In 2019, the blues world celebrates the 30th anniversary of the German blues band, B.B. and the Blues Shacks. As they begin their fourth decade as an ensemble, they continue to thrill audiences with impeccable musicianship and exuberant live performances. With fifteen albums (by my count) under their belts, and countless concert and festival performances, these five musicians are heading to Southern California for a mini tour which will include their third appearance at the Doheny Blues Festival. Those lucky enough to catch any of these shows will be treated to some of the best blues being performed anywhere. The band is led by the brothers Arlt. They are guitarist Andreas and his younger brother, vocalist and harmonica player Michael. I recently caught up with Andreas and Michael Arlt. Enjoy a conversation I had with the heart and soul of B.B. and the Blues Shacks.
David Mac (DM): Where are you guys from?
Michael Arlt (Michael): We come from a small village in the southern part of lower Saxony, Germany. I still live in that area in a town called Hildesheim.
DM: Do you come from a musical family?
Michael: It is kind of funny because our parents don’t play any instrument and they mostly listen to some kind of awful German music. But our grandpa was a very busy musician way back in the fifties. He played upright bass and tuba. So maybe it just skipped a generation.
DM: What are some of your first memories of listening to music?
Michael: I remember my older brother (Andreas) was playing guitar in a dance band. They did weddings and stuff like that. He used to pay me some money for lyrics. So, I was listening to a lot of stuff just to find out what the lyrics were.
DM: Let’s get that guitar playing, older brother in here. Andreas, was the guitar the first instrument you played?
Andreas: I started playing flute, but very soon I started playing the guitar.
DM: Andreas, did you have any music teachers, mentors that helped you as a young person?
Andreas: Not really. Most of the music we found ourselves. I practiced guitar in dark rooms with closed doors for many hours a day. I started playing to vinyl records, which was more difficult than with CD’s or other digital media.
DM: How did you get started playing and singing music?
Andreas: I guess it was at school. I practiced guitar very early. But the passion for music came with blues and soul music. When I heard this music is when I really got started.
DM: Michael, do you remember the first time you heard American blues?
Michael: You have to work your way back to this kind of music. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and there was no blues on the radio or TV. Everybody was listening to a music called “new German wave” over here. That was real crap music. It was an awful kind of plastic music. I turned my back to this and tried to find something more real. I was listening to some old Stones records. I was interested in who wrote some of the material and by looking and searching on the vinyls, I found all those cool names like Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Slim Harpo and so on. I bought all that stuff and found what I was looking for. It sounded like real music made from real people.
DM: When was this? How old were you?
Michael: That was in the late eighties. I was about fifteen years old.
DM: What were your thoughts as it relates to hearing this music for the first time?
Michael: I remember one of my first records was a Walter Horton and I thought, ‘Man that sounds really sh*tty.’ After a while I got used to that old sound. Listening to that rough old sound was absolutely new for me and I had to get used to it.
DM: Michael, how did you get started playing and singing music?
Michael: I started out blowing harp in my brother’s band. He mentioned that it looked stupid for me to just be standing there on stage doing nothing when I wasn’t blowing. So, he decided that I had to sing because otherwise I looked too dumb (laughs).
DM: What attracted you to the harmonica in the first place?
Michael: I was just knocked out when I first heard someone blowing the harmonica. Also, it was an instrument I could afford. I was pretty much on my own blowing the harmonica and listening to blues. None of my friends could hear what I heard in this music.
DM: Let’s talk about some of your musical influences.
Michael: On harmonica it’s the same guys everyone loves, Little Walter, Rice Miller (Sonny Boy 2), George Smith, Slim Harpo and so on.
When it comes to singing, my favorites are the soul singers. To me the soul singers are real monster singers and they really knock me out. Some of my favorites are James Carr, Sam Cooke, Spencer Wiggins and Al Green.
DM: What was your first band experience?
Michael: My first band was and still is B.B. & The Blues Shacks. I never did anything else besides this. My brother brought me in because I was trying to play harmonica and their old player got fired.
DM: Were there others in your community who listened to or played this music?
Michael: No, there was no one interested in live music and there was no interest in blues music at all.
DM: I hope that has changed.
Michael: We have been making a living at playing blues music for a very long time now. I’m very thankful for that. So somehow our audience likes us over here.
DM: Your first record I believe dates back to the mid 90’s.
Michael: We made our first record in 1994 after we’d spent four weeks in the states. That’s when I fell in love with your country. We traveled from Chicago down to Memphis and then further to New Orleans. When we got home, we recorded our first record.
Andreas: We had already been together for five years. The record was all original material with only one T-Bone Walker cover. We were moving in the right direction, but looking back on it, it is not very strong.
DM: What was the reaction to your music in Germany?
Andreas: It was really difficult for a German band to build up a crowd. Nobody expected a good traditional blues band from our country. I mean early on we had gigs when no people showed up.
DM: This might be a good time to talk about the European blues scene.
Andreas: The European blues scene is pretty busy these days. As you know Dave, we have great bands in Scandinavia and fantastic players in Belgium, Holland, Italy and France as well. But it is sad that blues-rock became extremely big. This is not our music and I think it is confusing for some people because they sell it as “blues”.
DM: That happens everywhere, Andreas. There will always be a large market for bad taste. You have played over here a few times since that first trip you talked about.
Michael: Since our first trip over to the states we have been trying to come back as often as possible. We opened up a show for James Cotton at Buddy Guys Legends in Chicago and played some club gigs there.
DM: Then there was your first big Doheny Blues Festival appearance, out in my part of the country back in 2008. You destroyed the place.
Michael: That is where we first met you Dave. That nearly knocked me out...we had way too much fun.
DM: Yes, we did.
I would like our readers to know that you are the only international band to play the Doheny Blues festival twice as they brought you back in 2011 and you actually played both days. This is also extremely rare, if not unprecedented. Your 2011 return was based on the fact that the festival organizers put out a questionnaire asking people who they would like to see play the festival again. Of all of the literally hundreds of bands that have played that festival over their long history, B.B. and the Blues Shacks were in the top five. Congratulations!
Michael: We have Jeff Scott Fleenor to thank for that. He booked us the first time. He had been familiar with our music for a long time. We are very glad the people liked what we were doing.
DM: Here in 2019, some eight years after your last appearance at Doheny, you are coming back for a third appearance to engage with some old Blues Shacks fans and to introduce your music to some new ones.
Andreas: We are looking forward to coming back here in 2019 and celebrating our 30th anniversary as a band with you and all the good folks out in California.
DM: Is it fair to say that the B.B. and the Blues Shacks most recent album Reservation Blues, your first on Rhythm Bomb Records, is a return to the old B.B. and the Blues Shacks sound?
Andreas: Yes, after we changed labels the band is going back to more traditional blues stuff.
Michael: On 2012’s Come Along and 2014’s Businessmen we wanted to do songs that are groovy, that also have an interesting bridge or something. We didn’t always use the regular twelve bar blues structure. You know, a bit like Little Milton did in the 1960’s when he recorded those great Chess Records tunes like Who’s Cheatin’ Who. Stuff like that.
DM: But now you have a not so secret weapon in your arsenal to perform that kind of material. Let’s talk a bit about Bonita Niessen and how this side project, if I may call it that, came about.
Andreas: She is from Cape Town, South Africa,but has lived here in Germany for years. Of the 110 live shows a year that we do, the band we call Bonita and the Blues Shacks makes up about 20% of them.
DM: How did this musical partnership come about?
Andreas: She played a side project in our home town during the time we were searching for a female duet partner on the Come Along release in 2012. It came out fantastic and we agreed on a new project which is a combination of really traditional blues and blue-eyed soul stuff. She can really sing that stuff.
Dave, you and I have talked about this before. Like yourself, Michael and I both love all kinds of American roots music, blues, soul, jazz and country. Bonita can sing the heck out of all this stuff. She makes it possible to reach more people and even younger fans. It opens more doors for us.
On stage she is on fire, people love her, she is very open, talented and she always gets the crowd.
DM: Congratulations on the brand-new Bonita and the Blues Shacks album scheduled for an April release. Rhythm Bomb Records just sent me an advanced MP3 and it sounds great. However, you know me, I’ll wait until I hear a hard copy before I make any type of serious assessment of this new music. The hard copy was dropped in the mail box this morning by your North American Distributer. (NAD)
Andreas: (Laughs) that would be our mutual friend Art Martel.
DM: Yup…Let’s talk about the other members of the band besides the brothers Arlt.
Andreas: At the moment I think we have the best band together since our start. We have Henning Hauerken on upright and electric bass. He has been with us since 1995. With Fabian Fritz on piano and organ and Andre Werkmeister on drums, along with Henning of course, it’s possible to get deeper in this great music.
DM: Will this be the band that will be traveling out to California as B.B. and the Blues Shacks?
Andreas: Yes…
DM: What do want to do while you are here in Southern California, besides play music of course?
Andreas and Michael: SHOP!
Michael: ...and have some good Mexican food. Both of these things are more fun in California than in Germany.
DM: I could hook you guys up with some GREAT Mexican food. What are your interests and hobbies outside of music?
Michael: I like to ride my motorcycle.
DM: What kind of bike?
Michael: It’s a Triumph Bonneville T 100.
Andreas: Soccer, hey man…we are Germans!
DM: What’s next for B.B. and the Blues Shacks?
Andreas: As part of our 30th anniversary celebration this year there’s going to be a big event in October and we invited some great friends being part of our career. Alex Schultz, R.J. Mischo, Jeremy Johnson and also Bonita will join us on stage.
We are also planning on releasing two or three remastered versions of some older Blues Shacks CDs with some live and other bonus tracks. Also, we are working on a new record with freshened up songs we wrote in the past and some new material. It seems like a lot of work and I can’t promise if this will really happen, but we are working on it.
DM: I know you guys are always moving forward, but now might be the time to reflect back a little on the last 30 years.
Andreas: As we look back on more than 4000 gigs around the world, I can’t believe this happened to a band from the German countryside. After 30 years it’s still a fight against the demons of bad taste in the blues scene.
DM: Yet despite people who are in charge of the business who can’t hear sh*t from shinola you are still at it and succeeding. What is it about this music that is so appealing to you?
Michael: To me this music is real music. It’s not fake. I mean listening to B.B. King’s live recordings can change your life. I still have to learn a lot and I always find something new that knocks me out. Andreas and I are also record collectors and there’s still a bunch of material that we want to hear.
DM: What is your favorite part about being a blues musician?
Andreas: Being able to make a living doing what we love. That’s the most important thing.
DM: What would you like people to know about yourself and the band B.B. and the Blues Shacks?
Andreas: We are basic guys who just love the music and the people around our gigs. We are easy to work with and are looking for some fun around the world.
DM: What should I have asked you that I didn't?
Andreas: Would you like to play more in the United States? Yes!!!!!
DM: I’ll see you guys in a few weeks.
Michael: We can’t wait.
Andreas: Thanks Dave!
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BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
info