Getting in touch with Budda Guedes was a total lifesaver.
Sounds like a joke, but it’s not – no way.
Thanks to just a quick back-and-forth on WhatsApp to set up the interview, maybe a little bit mesmerized by the sun and the gorgeous Sardinian beaches, I didn’t mess up the date. I actually went to see Blues Against The Machine and DK Harrell in Narcao as planned, instead of cluelessly showing up the next night and missing them completely.
But wait, there’s more.
Beyond the awesome set that he, Vasco Moura, Danny Del Toro, Bart Szopinski, and Tory Raugstad (filling in for Nik Taccori) put together at the Narcao Blues Festival – which, by the way, is one of the coolest Blues Festivals I’ve ever been to, both as a fan and a musician, in terms of organization, passion, and crowd engagement – it’s their vibe with the Blues that really stood out in our chat. It matched perfectly with what we saw and heard on stage. It felt like a breath of fresh air and, in a way, made me feel less alone.
So, I really want to thank him for that.
Here’s what we chatted about after their show.
Budda Guedes interview
Budda Guedes_Live Narcao Blues Festival (photo Daniele Tenca)
First off, thanks for your time, and congrats on the show! The first thing I wanna talk about is how Blues is so often sold as stuff for “guitar heroes” or “solo masters” in general. You only did two guitar solos – fantastic ones, by the way – that came around the seventh or eighth song of your set. Generally speaking, there weren’t many actual, proper solos. What really shines through is the musicianship. Am I wrong?
Man, I really hope so! Honestly, I’m pretty tired of solos, especially at Blues Festivals where you hear a ton of them. But that’s just not our vibe in this band. We’re all band leaders in our other projects, but here our goal is to focus on the core of the songs. Our vision is to bring Blues to a wider audience, and if you think about it, bluesmen have never really been true soloists. For instance, Muddy Waters, or even B.B. King in a way, almost never did actual, formal solos. It was more about phrasing within the songs – plus, B.B. King was an amazing vocalist! Sure, then Jimi Hendrix came along, who is one of my main influences, and he totally flipped the script. But hey, that was the ’70s, songs were longer, and above all, he was Jimi Hendrix! I mean, not your average human being! And the same goes for Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple – absolutely extraordinary musicians whose solos were, and still are, out of reach for anyone else.
So, we prefer to focus on the songs and the message, and how to get that across to as many people as possible in the 21st Century.
We live in a world where a 30-second attention span is already asking too much, so to keep the Blues alive, we have to try to adapt to the times we live in.
This vibe really comes through on your latest album, too. Ten tracks, thirty-six minutes. Meaning, just the songs, the message you wanna get across, and that’s it.
Exactly. I don’t want the songs to just be an excuse to jam a bunch of solos into them. If a solo fits the track, cool. If not, I’m totally fine skipping it. Plus, we have to deal with how streaming platforms work nowadays – Spotify, YouTube Music, and so on – which don’t exactly favor long tracks, precisely because of the attention span stuff I mentioned before.
It’s a pretty cool challenge, because not many bands in the Blues scene prioritize the message over instrument virtuosity, and maybe audiences aren’t fully ready for that either.
I don’t mean to sound sassy, but doing a ten-minute solo and just two minutes of an actual “song” is the easy way out. I prefer to do the exact opposite. Plus, there are five of us in the band, and if we all started ripping solos, the tracks would go on forever – like the Allman Brothers. But hey, they were the Allman Brothers! I mean, seriously mind-blowing musicians! None of us are on that crazy level, like Cream, Hendrix, or Led Zeppelin. And honestly, we just don’t live in that era anymore. People aren’t hooked by that kind of approach anymore; attention spans drop instantly. If we really want to keep the Blues alive, we’ve got to make it modern, fit for the times we’re living in. After all, that’s exactly what our idols did. Muddy Waters came from the fields, electrified the Blues, plugged the harmonica into an amp, and created a whole new world and sound. It’s a classic now, but back then, it was totally out of this world. Same goes for Jimi, same for Led Zeppelin. We have this huge passion for the Blues, but we aren’t Black, we aren’t American—we’re white Europeans. And the best way to respect the Blues is to make it contemporary; otherwise, it risks dying out.
Budda Guedes_Live Narcao Blues Festival (photo Daniele Tenca)
Your lyrics are another real-deal proof of what you’re talking about, since they’re so far off from that “Old Time Blues” vibe…
Totally true! Again, I’m not Black… let me tell you a story. Once, I was talking to Doug MacLeod – a wonderful American, white Blues storyteller – and I asked him, “What’s the number one piece of advice you’d give a white musician playing the Blues?” He told me, “Never play a note you don’t believe in, and never sing a word you don’t believe in.” That really opened my eyes. I mean, I’m Portuguese. I can’t sing about slavery in Mississippi, but I can sing about the Cávado, which is a river near where I live. Or about Serra da Estrella, where people have to walk 5 miles just to go work in a factory. Or about the dictatorship – my mom was actually persecuted by the political police. My childhood wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. I remember my mom wondering if she could even afford a coffee after lunch or dinner, because even 50 cents made a difference. See, this is stuff I can talk about. Not slavery, which I’ve only read about in books or seen in movies. I feel very close to the topic and love the music the Blues Masters created out of it, but I’ll never be like them, that’s for sure. They did mind-blowing things, and I can’t just try to copy them and say, “Hey, close enough!”. You want something that sounds “like Muddy Waters”? Go listen to Muddy Waters, it’s definitely way better than anything else!
I think that’s a super humble and respectful approach, plus it really works for spreading the Blues in today’s world…
Definitely. I don’t want to be misunderstood here – I’m not putting down the Great Masters at all. In fact, I think they’re completely out of reach and a massive source of inspiration. But we are Europeans living in our own era, and that’s the story we need to tell to be believable and pass down the blues torch, giving it new shapes. The more we are, the more diverse styles we can create.
One last thing before I thank you – I was really blown away by the energy you guys put out on stage when you play. It’s a real rush…
We’re truly great friends, we love hanging out together, and every time we see each other it feels like a family reunion – even with Nik, who couldn’t be here today. I’m so glad that really comes through on stage!
The goodbye and the wish we share at the end is for this kind of respect and modern take on the Blues to spread as much as possible. And if we’ve got Blues Against The Machine as Quality Ambassadors leading the charge, well, I’m pretty sure it’s bound to happen.
Daniele Tenca
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