Sugar Ray Norcia is one of the most celebrated blues musicians of his generation and for good reason. He is a singer, harmonica player and song writer of the highest order. He leads one of the genres' most accomplished bands, Sugar Ray and the Bluetones.

Norcia is a three time Grammy nominated musician. His band Sugar Ray and the Bluetones have garnered twenty six Blues Music Award Nominations as a band and in individual award categories. This year alone Sugar Ray and the Bluetones are nominated for Band of the Year and individual band members have received nominations in six other categories.

On April 24^th the band received a very special honor as they were inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame.

However, Sugar Ray and the Bluetones aren’t resting on their laurels. They have already embarked on yet another busy spring and summer touring season and will be headlining blues festivals all over the world. They also have another fine album slated for a fall release.

I recently sat down with Sugar Ray to discuss all of this and more. Enjoy a conversation I had with the one and only Sugar Ray Norcia.

David Mac (DM): Let’s start off from the beginning and discuss your earliest exposures to music.

Sugar Ray Norcia (SR): I grew up in a very musical family. My dad played harmonica and was a singer. I should point out that he was a very accomplished musician as was my mother. I grew up listening to my uncle’s band in the basement. I would fall asleep listening to their music. To this day I can still recall the smell of those evenings.

DM: Smell?

SR: Yeah, it smelled of stale beer and cigarettes.

DM: (laughs) Oh yeah, the smell of the 50’s when everyone smoked...everywhere...all the time.  

SR: Ain’t that the truth?

DM: So not to put too fine a point on it, you have never lived in a world that wasn’t completely immersed in music.

SR: That’s right; my dad even sang to me when I was in the womb.

DM: When did you realize that this gift had been passed to you and you had an aptitude for music? 

SR: Pretty early on. I was also an actor, so I played the lead role in several school plays in which I also sang.

DM: When and how were you exposed to blues music?

SR: It was when I was in high school. I had friends that you might describe as hippies. You know...they had the long hair and kind of had a freestyle kind of attitude. So to be cool man, they would collect all these records like Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Elmore James. These were musicians that up to that point I had never heard of. I was always really friendly with these cats from the neighborhood and they knew me from singing in the school chorus and in those school plays. So they asked me if I would sing in their band. I said, “Sure...” They brought me a Little Walter tune, Hate to See You Go. It was the first tune I ever learned. So we started rehearsing. I was sixteen at the time.

DM: What I always have found interesting is that people of our generation, for the most part, aren’t exposed to this music as a part of our everyday lives. It won’t come to us. We have to go to it. Bad music will find you all day long, but the good stuff you have to search out. It’s like being an explorer.

SR: That’s the thing. For me and my buddies, we had to take a two hour drive up to Boston. We would go to these great record shops and come home with an armful of these records. We would go through the record bins like crazy...EXPLORING...DISCOVERING...

Then we would have these little record listening parties on the weekends where we would get together with our phonographs and sit around and listen. We would play for each other our favorite cuts of these new artists that we just discovered “Hey man, check out this Count Basie Band. Listen to this guy named Big Walter.”   

DM: Not too many years later you were playing with this iconic musical figure named Big Walter Horton. Did you ever think that would happen?

SR: No way, but that has happened to me a lot. But back then, did I ever think that would happen to me? Nope.

DM: Backing up just a bit, let’s talk about your earliest band experiences.

SR: I was just singing in those days. We had a band with a two piece horn section and then started to add the harp players into the band. We had one really good harp player. His name was Putz. (laughs)

DM: (laughing) Yikes that had to be one tough SOB.

SR: He actually was really good, but he kept missing gigs for whatever reason. So when he didn’t show up, I would fill in. I was just starting to learn and was dabbling with the harp back in those days, but I kept working at it. So at one point the other guys in the band said, “Hey you are starting to sound pretty good. We don’t need him anymore." That was about 1970...‘71.

DM: There was one guy who had already established himself in New England by that time and that was of course Duke Robillard.

SR: Duke was one of my major influences. He had a blues band back in the mid 60’s when I was growing up. So about the time I was playing in this little band, he was playing every week right down the street in Providence at the Knickerbocker Cafe with an early version of Roomful of Blues. The drinking age back in those days was eighteen, but I was sneaking into the Knickerbocker even before that. I got to see Red Prysock, Helen Humes, Ruth Brown, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson the list goes on. Roomful would back all these great artists.

There was another guy who was my neighbor Johnny Nicholas. He introduced me personally to Johnny Shines and Big Walter Horton. That is how all this got started for me.

DM: Johnny Nicholas is one of those guys who kind of represented that Boston to Austin connection.

SR: That’s right he has lived out in the Texas Hill Country way out west of Austin for years and has that place called the Hilltop Cafe. He also did a record with Big Walter. I mention Johnny because he was very instrumental in getting me exposed to the blues. Back then Boston, Massachusetts, to me was this big giant city a million miles away and he used to tell me to get on the train and come to Boston and sit in with his band. That was a big thrill for me.

DM: Let’s talk about your influences on harmonica.

SR: Well you know Dave I’m going to mention Little Walter, Big Walter and both Sonny Boy Williamson 1 and 2, but Big Walter in particular because I knew him, got to see him play. I also recorded and toured with him. Then one night I saw George “Harmonica” Smith and I went ‘Holy shit.’ Many of these artists I mentioned, I just heard on records of course, but I’d wear those records out man. Hanging out with some of the cats and talking to them was a big help too. That’s how I learned. I had no classes, no computers or anything.

DM: Let’s talk about some of those long time relationships which helped to establish the band known as Sugar Ray and the Bluetones.  Let's start with a gentleman named Ronald Horvath.

SR: In 1979, my drummer, Neil Gouvan, who I had been playing with since junior high school, got a call from Ronnie who wanted to hire him. He told Ronnie, “I’ve been working with this guy named Sugar Ray.  You might want to check him out.” Ronnie had been playing with bassist Michael Ward and pianist Anthony Geraci. Their band was called The Deuces. So I went along for the ride to Providence and we clicked like crazy. Not long after that we changed the name to Sugar Ray and the Bluetones.

DM: So all of you go way back. What’s the math on this...what 37, 40 years? 

SR: The papers like round numbers you know and they were saying last year, “Celebrating Their 35^th Anniversary....” I was thinking well that’s nice, but we might be a little older than that. Let me put it to you this way Dave, there has been a touring and recording band called Sugar Ray and the Bluetones before our longtime guitar player, Monster Mike Welch was even born. (laughs)

DM: ...and he’s been with you something like 15 years. That is remarkable. Let’s talk about some of your early recordings.

SR: It was Roosevelt Sykes who put the bug in our ear to record something. We opened up for him and backed him up at a club in Cambridge called The Speakeasy. He really dug our shit. He said, “You guys can really play. You’re good. You should record.” So we did. The first song I ever wrote was called, Bite the Dust. It was put out as Sugar Ray and The Bluetones featuring Ronnie Horvath.

We did that record with Big Walter that was recorded live at The Speakeasy and then a couple with Ronnie on Black Top in 1984. Those records had both Kim Wilson and me singing. By that time he was known as Ronnie Earl.

DM: By the late 80’s you were starting to record full length albums under the Sugar Ray and the Bluetones banner.

SR: That’s right our first full album was called, Knockout that came out on the Bullseye label in 1989.

DM: Was there much of an adjustment in working in the studio as opposed to the stage?

SR: It is all kind of second nature now, but there was a learning curve. It took some getting used to being in separate rooms. You have to play sometimes without seeing each other, but we drank so much it didn’t matter. (laughing) Back then we were partying pretty hard. Looking back on it I’m surprised we got the records that we did.

DM: (laughing) Now I’ll think of those old records in a whole new light. It has to be such a different experience not playing off of an audience. 

SR: People always ask if we have a live album out. We don’t. What seems to happen is we record a song and it comes out great and then we start performing it live night after night and then we say to one another, “I wish we could go back and record that song now because now we really got it.” When you perform in front of an audience you get that special magic happening.

DM: Sugar Ray and the Bluetones are cooking right along and then you started playing with another band. How did that come about?

SR: That band, as you know Dave, was Roomful of Blues. This was in 1991. For me that was a dream band especially back in those days as they were at the top of their game man. I used to sit in with the band from time to time. So we all knew each other of course.

DM: Let me stop you there, if I may and touch on something you just mentioned. You said it was a dream band for you. Why?

SR: For a lot of reasons that are obvious to anyone who heard the 80’s and early 90’s version of the band. They were so great, but when I say dream band it is because they were so versatile as well. I’m a blues singer, but I can sing a little jazz, swing, jump blues...Louie Jordan, Kansas City/Count Basie kind of thing and they could do all that. Having that strong horn section behind me was also a dream. I never figured I would get the call. but I did. You probably recall Dave that Ronnie had already been with the band for several years at that point. So there I was working with him in a whole new context.

One day the band’s front man and tenor player Greg Piccolo gave me a call and said, “We got a tour coming up in California and we are going to be making a record and we need a singer. Are you interested?” I said, “When do we leave?”

It was really daunting because he had a list of about 200 songs I had to learn in two weeks. So I jumped on the van and was with them for almost eight years.

DM: That band had such great arrangements...

SR: ...and they never used charts. It was all from memory and from heart.

DM: Unreal...as I recall that band was really barnstorming hard back in those days.

SR: Tell me about it. We were doing 250 one nighters a year. All the while traveling around the country in one of those funky elongated vans…it was very uncomfortable.  

DM: What, no Das Book...the converted bookmobile.

SR: So you have heard of the bookmobile. That was gone by the time I got there. One time the van broke down in Yuma, Arizona.

DM: Summer?

SR: Oh yeah.

DM: Lovely...What was it, 125 degrees?

SR: Oh no, nothing like that...it was only 120 (laughs) I’m serious. I’m not exaggerating.

DM: I know, I know. (laughing) You were probably thinking, ‘Why couldn’t we break down in Beverly Hills or the beach...anyplace but just outside of Yuma?’ You probably said to Greg, “Hey pal, this wasn’t in the brochure.”

SR: (laughing) Fortunately the vehicle cast a shadow. So here we are the entire band pinned against the van and huddled in the shadow all thinking the same thing...that we were going to frickin’ die...and the shadow kept getting smaller and smaller. (laughing) We got rescued a few hours later and made it to the gig.

DM: How would you summarize your nearly eight years with Roomful and that whole chapter in your life?

SR: Eight years of constant touring and camaraderie. We had a blast. But it was almost like being in the army or something. It was like, “How long have you been in?”  At the very end of my time they did finally get us a tour bus. So I had my own bunk. I mean I would fall asleep in one state and wake up four or five states away. I finally felt rested. That was a big plus. I was in my thirties. So that helped. At age sixty two, I can’t imagine.

DM: After your tour of duty with Roomful you gathered up the Bluetones.

SR: That’s right Ronnie by then had resumed his solo career so we brought in Paul Size on guitar from the Red Devils. We also had Troy Gonya as well as Johnny Moeller on guitar at various times.

DM: How did Monster Mike Welch become a Bluetone and who pinned that moniker on him?

SR: Back in the day they had opened up the very first House of Blues in Cambridge, Mass. They had a regular Monday night blues thing going on that featured this young twelve year old guitar phenom named Mike Welch. My band was the house band for those gigs. One night Danny Aykroyd came down and introduced the band and he referred to Mike as a monster guitar player. Well, Monster Mike stuck.

So it was a very smooth transition having Mike in the band. I love the way he plays. He has that intensity that always reminded me of the old days with Ronnie Earl, but it’s also more than that. I love the way he is able to back up the vocals and harmonica.

DM: So the band picked up right where it left off...

SR: Like riding a bike.

DM:  Then you started making just one terrific album after another. Without revisiting all of those recordings let’s talk about a couple. In 2007 you made a phenomenal record called My Life, My Friends, My Music. It is the album I refer to as Sugar Ray and the Roomful of Bluetones.

SR: (laughing) I love that...I never thought of that, but you know what Dave that is exactly what it is. I put Neil, Mudcat, Anthony and Mike with the great Roomful horn section of Bob Enos on trumpet, Carl Quaforth on trombone along with sax men Greg Piccolo, Doug James and Rich Lataile. I even brought Duke in and put him on the record. It was a real reunion. We had such a great time recording that record.  It was also Bob Enos' last recording as he passed away shortly thereafter. He just loved that record. It is a very special album for that reason as well.

DM: It’s a beauty that’s for sure. As a vocalist you have sung on a long list of albums by some of the greatest musicians in the world. We couldn’t possibly cover them all, but there has to be some experiences and projects that stand out in your mind.

SR: Sometime back I worked with Italian bluesman Maurizio Pugno. We became real close friends. Those were some of the happiest days of my life traveling to Italy to make those records with Mario.

I also recorded with a band out of Rome.

DM: The Red Wagons....I call them “Rome Full of Blues.”

SR: That’s right. As you know they are a nine piece band with horns. They flew me over there to make a record with them. They took me sightseeing....we did a lot of gigs with that band.

DM: Let’s talk about a favorite of mine, Otis Grand.

SR: As you aware Dave I have done several things through the years with Otis Grand. Otis loves the Bluetones. The first record I did with him goes back to his 1995 album, Nothing Else Matters. I’m all over his most recent album Blues ’65. I don’t know if you have heard that album. It is terrific.

DM: I have...you’re right. It is fantastic.

SR: I even made a record that I guess is a little outside the box where I sing thirteen Bob Wills tunes. It’s called Goodbye Liza Jane, Hello Western Swing. The record even has one of Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys, Herb Remington, playing steel guitar on it.  He is the guy who wrote the tune Remington Ride. I grew up listening to old country records as much as I did old blues records. One of my favorites is Merle Haggard who just passed away yesterday. I also like George Jones, Hank Williams and so many others.

DM: Speaking of all things Western, you have played a Native American wooden flute on a few tunes through the years. Most recently and, I might add, quite effectively on the Tribute to David Maxwell on Anthony’s recent album on Delta Groove Music, Fifty Shades of Blue. Let’s talk about that instrument. That is something you rarely, excuse me, never hear on a blues recording.

SR: I have always had a fascination with Native American history and culture. I even went so far as to buy a teepee from a company out of Colorado. I had it up in my backyard for ten or twelve years or so before it disintigrated. I would light a fire in the middle and go out there, drink beer, smoke pot and play the flute.

I own three of these cedar flutes. I bought them out west. They are really very beautiful instruments. It has such a beautiful sound. I just love it. I do it for my own enjoyment, but one day I took it into the studio just to see if I could make it work.  

DM: ...and it worked. There is another tune I want to talk to you about. One of my favorite slow blues of all time is Evening by T-Bone Walker. It is the title track of the Bluetones' 2011 album on Severn Records.

SR: Ooooh yeah! T-Bone is one of my favorite sounds. He is one of my favorite singers and guitar players of all time. I just love that tune.  I guess like most musicians, I just can’t get enough of T-Bone Walker. Jimmy Rushing covered that tune. Actually I’ve heard a few different versions.

I thought I’d use the chromatic harmonica, which to me is kind of like the Native American flute in a way that it is sweet sounding and very melodic. I just thought the chromatic would be a great way to bring that song in. Someone told me that I almost get kind of a Miles Davis muted trumpet sound and feel on that song.  

DM: It is so atmospheric that it sounds like it could be used in a film noir movie soundtrack or something. It has kind of an almost spacey, smoky sound that is just marvelous. Then it has that dramatic climax.

SR: I think that is one of the signature sounds of Sugar Ray and the Bluetones. You just don’t hear that too often. Very few approach their material that way. You know what another one of my favorite songs that just came to mind, Misery.

DM: ...a Norcia original from the 2014 album, Living Tear to Tear...

SR: That is very free flowing. It doesn’t stick to a twelve bar blues. It just goes with the feeling of each one of us. We have been playing together for so long that we are all able to burst in and out of the proper time signature and make it all work.

DM: What all of these Sugar Ray and the Bluetones albums have in common is that on every CD, sitting alongside some interesting adaptations like Evening, which we discussed, are songs written by you. Let’s talk about that part of your repertoire as an artist.

SR: It is a discipline. You just have to sit down and do it. Sometimes nothing happens and it could be discouraging. But I’m the type of guy who has to have a deadline, a project coming up in the near future and that keeps the fire burning inside of me. I do carry notes in my pocket with phrases or something that catches me a certain way. I will write that down and put it away. Then I hear “Hey we are going to go in the studio in a month.” That’s when the juices start flowing.

I talk to other artists and they say, “Ray that’s not how to do it.” Well to that I would say, ‘There is no one way to do it. It’s personal and this is my way.’ I have in the neighborhood of 100 songs that are registered with BMI that were written my way. 

DM: How would you describe Sugar Ray and the Bluetones?

SR: We are described as a Chicago blues style band that features searing guitar solos with extended harmonica improvisation. So we are put in that 50’s style Chicago blues, Chess records category. That’s the easiest way to put a label on us.

DM: I know how you are marketed out there. What I’m asking is how would you describe your band?

SR: I think that’s a fair description, but we expand beyond that. We have been playing together for so long now that we can telepathically create on stage or in the studio in ways you can’t learn in a book. It comes from a lifetime of playing together. We have an awful lot of miles and a lot of gigs under our belts. It takes a lifetime to learn this shit and we got it down pretty good. That doesn’t mean we aren’t still learning, because we are. But let’s face it, we’ve been playing together as a band longer than many of those old Chicago blues guys lived.

DM: ...and you’re not done yet...a little birdie told me... OK, Anthony told me, that you have a new album in the can. Is that something we can talk about?

SR: Sure...it is called, Seeing is Believing. If everything goes as planned, it will be released in the fall. It is in the same vein as the song we talked about earlier, Evening.  It is very “T-Bonish” let me put it that way.  Mike Welch just kicks ass on it.  

DM: What is something that people might not know about you?

SR: I’m a country boy. I know people think of Rhode Island as this tiny little state with a whole lot of people in it, but I live in a state forest that is fourteen thousand acres. I own twelve acres. My closest neighbor is about a mile away.

DM: That’s great. So you don’t have neighbors pounding on your wall screaming, “Turn down that damn cedar wood, native American flute.”

SR: (laughing) No I don’t. There is a long dirt driveway which leads to my house which is perched on a hill. It is real gorgeous out here. I have chickens and even a little waterfall and a pond on the property. As I get older it makes it harder and harder to leave home.  

I have a little mini cabin out back that I call the music room. It is a one room country shack. It has a little wooden stove, a piano and a stereo. There is a small sun room that I built off to the side and that’s where I write my music.

There is no computer and no phone in there. I spend a lot of time in cities, hotels, nightclubs, festivals and airports all over the world, so it is nice to come home and hear the whippoorwills and frogs.  

This is the kind of thing that most people don’t know or care to know.

DM: However you are going to be leaving your home and music room and that idyllic part of one of our original thirteen colonies to fly half way around the world to a state that is younger than both of us.

SR:  That’s right, in May we are going to Hawaii for two dates on two islands before heading right back to the mainland and your neighborhood Dave. I’m looking forward to playing at the Doheny Blues Festival again out in California. I suspect I’ll see you there.

DM: I wouldn’t miss it for the world Ray. I look forward to a very rare West Coast performance by Sugar Ray and the Bluetones. Take Care...

SR: You too man. See you in a few...



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