Robben Ford – Always Evolving
by Matteo Bossi
We had the chance to talk with Robben Ford whose new album, “Two Shades Of Blue“, is out now on Mascot. It finds Ford in fine form, inspired by the late Jeff Beck to experiment with different bands and direction. There’s really no need to introduce a musician like him, who’s been around for so long, with countless recordings both on his own and with dozens of others. And his longstanding relationship with Italy is entering another chapter, “We’re in Tuscany, we have been here for two months to find a place…”, he says, “we’ve just moved into our new home here. I’m really happy about this new album, it’s probably in my top four, I feel like I’m besting some of my other work in my opinion. And it’s a good feeling”
You came to Italy for a tour in the fall of 2024 with Gary Husband, Darryl Jones and Larry Goldings and part of this record was cut with these guys while some other songs were recorded with your english band.
The whole idea was basically a Jeff Beck tribute and it is also dedicated to Alexander Dumble. I started writing instrumental music and working on the guitar in a new way for me. It was new for me to actually have Jeff Beck as an inspiration, as opposed to for instance Mike Bloomfield…but I have not done a tribute record although with my broher we did a tribute to Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield on his label, Blue Rock’it. But this was something I was excited about, being able to find new things to do on the guitar. Using a Stratocaster it was really a blast for me, to dive into that. He’s never been a real inspiration a stylistic inspiration for me, he was world apart from the way I play the guitar, but I felt really good about that.
With that band you saw, the Dragon Tales, we had recorded about 14 things before the tour…but only three of them in the final analysis I felt were worthy of an album. So I was disappointed of those sessions, it will remain a mystery to me why it didn’t turn out better in the studio. On tour it got pretty good, but something didn’t click in the studio. And we worked for five full days, we were in the studio together all the time…but in any case I needed to do some more recording and I took my british band into the studio to record much more along the lines of the things I have done. It’s a blues band. So it’s kind of two records in one instead of the original intent. There’s a lot of music on this record, I’m very proud of it.
“Perfect Illusion” you worked on that with Michael McDonald he put out a version of it on an EP some years ago.
I wrote that song, not Michael, he was not involved in the writing, but yes we were doing a lot of writing and recording together over a period of about two years. I and I just kept waiting for something to come out but he was not releasing anything. I knew from other people that Mike would do this, work on something forever and nothing would ever come out, it was a habit of this, I have never understand why. I bailed on the project at some point as it became clear to me that nothing was going to happen. He wound up releasing five tracks on Itunes or something like that, but I was no longer involved by the time he mixed and released those things.
It’s my song and my girlfriend, she’s actually my fiancé now, she said you got to record “Perfect Illusion”, she loved the song. I felt it was so different from the rest of the record and I was not sure I could be the guy presenting a song like that, it’s not something I normally do. But I’m glad we did it, it turned out great, lot of people told me it’s their favorite on the record.
Robben Ford photo Boris Hrepic Hrepa
I’ve heard you perform “Jealous Guy” on stage and it reminded me a bit of the Donny Hathaway version.
Well, I don’t know he did with a reggae feel but I feel what I did was much more like a rhythm and blues song, I don’t know what Lennon thought of it, maybe it was just a song that he wrote. But for me it was Donny Hathaway’s version that I heard first, I didn’t know it was a John Lennon song, I have always liked it. I found out later that it was a Lennon song and I heard his version. I was always sort of haunted by it. Something that I have learned, that musicians might take as advice or some wisdom, is you can’t do what somebody else already did, there’s no point in doing a Lennon song and try to capture John Lennon. If you’re gonna do a song, you gotta find your way, your key, your tempo….you have to consider, OK I’m singing this song but I’m not going to replicate what somebody else did, even the original. It took me a long time to learn that. If I’d like a song I’d do the cover in that key or sing it the way that guy sang it…it seemed like the way that you do. Maybe it is when you’re learning but when it’s time for you to be you, then you got be yourself. I don’t do covers quite as much as I did one time, I like writing my own music, but whenever I find a song that I really like and I actually can do…I felt good about doing that song. Other songs I thought I could do but no.
One other cover on the record is “Black Night” which, like “Fool’s Paradise” that you did in the past comes from Charles Brown’s repertoire.
I’ll tell you what, “Fool’s Paradise” I got that from Mose Allison…on the “Talk To Your Daughter Album” I recorded “Ain’t Got Nothing But The Blues” and too I got it from Mose. I used to listen a lot to him, he did a record called “Mose Sings” and I wore that record out. My singing was very influenced by him. He was so natural, like he’s talking. That’s funny, I’ve never thought about it but the musicians, the players that I like, most of them are saxophone players and Miles Davis’ trumpet. I’ve always liked guys that sounded like they were talking to me. They are not using words but they’re talking to me, so I took that road as opposed to developing my technique to the degree that many others had done, but I developed my phrasing and my sound, dynamics…
Another guy who was very natural was Lonnie Johnson, you did an homage to him on the “Pure” album. What did you like about him?
Well his style was…he almost just played the same song. You’ll hear an entire record and it’s just the sound of his voice and his guitar playing, he never gets louder, never gets softer. There is something I love about that. Do you remember a record I did called “Bringing It Back Home”? That should have been called a tribute to Lonnie Johnson, because that was me doing my version of Lonnie, if you think about it I was using a hollow instrument, Epiphone Riviera, I never got louder or softer, no overdrive, a straight clean tone, the guitar into the amplifier…that was the vibe for me on that record. So when we did the “Pure” album I wanted to do a tribute to one of my heroes, it’s just a straight up blues, an improvisation…it was recorded in the studio just guitar, bass and drums. I had horns after the fact. Then I rerecorded my guitar live on an instagram feat, you can see the performance done. It’s kind of a live performance with an audience of instagram people. I just wanted to do a tribute to him because nobody does that or talks about Lonnie Johnson…it was like an awareness of Lonnie.
Lonnie was obviously a great influence on B.B. King an artist you have paid tribute over the years. You even wrote a song about him with Keb’ Mo’, “Riley B. King” and you’re on the recent Joe Bonamassa produced tribute album. B.B. was very much a presence in your music upbringing since the Sixties.
Yes, we went to the Fillmore or the Winterland when I was fifteen or sixteen…I think there was the Electric Flag, the band I went to see and B.B. King, but I don’t think I knew about him. There must have been an opening act I think it probably was Quicksilver Messenger Service. Bloomfield must have swapped it and let B.B. play third. He introduced him and we were just floored man! He was forty and he had never played to a white audience before. My brother Patrick says it was the Fillmore while I remember seeing B.B. at Winterland Auditorium. I’m not sure but Patrick says we were there the first time. In any case it was the greatest experience of my life honestly, I think at that point it was the most amazing friggin’ thing it had happened to me. He was so powerful…it all started at that time.
That was a pivotal moment for him, he talked about that a lot in interviews, books or movies.
Yes! He thought he was in the wrong place, the wrong room, he said wait a minute…It was insane a wonderful moment. I did have, thank goodness, the fortune to meet him albeit briefly. I was on a blues festival in Mexico City. Albert King was there, Albert Collins, Robert Cray, The Staple Singers…I was leaving the backstage area, where the musicians had these little cubical behind, there was a door to the right and I was walking out from there and…here’s B.B. King! I swear he was huge he looked like the sun…I say “Oh hi B.B. I’m Robben Ford”, and Robert Cray was on the bandstand plying. He took my hand in both of his hands and he goes “Hi Robben!” and then he says “They sure sound good don’t they?” And he does this little dance with his finger in the air…and that was it. I’ve always been super shy around my heroes. I don’t know how to behave around them, it’s like I don’t wanna bother you, big fan!
What about Mavis Staples? You recorded one song with her, “Peace Love and Understanding” on the “Keep On Running” record.
Well, I had recorded the song, I did the arrangement of it and then we recorded it and my producer was friends with Mavis. He had worked with The Staple Singers, John…a british guy, I can’t remember his name right now…
Robben Ford photo Boris Hrepic Hrepa
Was it John Wooler?
That’s him! So he said “Oh I know Mavis Staples maybe we can get her to sing on this”. “Hell Yes!” I said. Mavis lives in Chicago so he called her up and sent her the tape, we were still recording on tape back then and she overdubbed her vocal part. I actually ran into her, that same year after the record came out, we were on the same festival in Australia, the Byron Bay Blues Festival. A big festival, everybody plays there…Bonnie Raitt was there, Keb’ Mo’ was there and Mavis too. I just happened to be arriving to check in at the hotel and she came walking along with a friend of hers, they looked like they just came from church little hats, wearing pink…and so I said “excuse me Mavis, you sing on one of my record”. And she said “I did?”, “Yes, my name is Robben Ford, John Wooler got in touch with you and you overdubbed on Peace, Love And Understanding”Oh yeah, I was digging your singin'”, she said, “and your guitar playing!”. We saw her in London last year, she’s just one of those special people.
You played with a lot of your heroes.
Not really…Jimmy Witherspoon was a hero of mine, I was playing with him when I was 20 and 21. Miles Davis of course was a major hero. George Harrison was my favorite Beatle when I was a kid, before I played the guitar, I just though he was cool…there have been a few here and there. In the world of jazz to some degree, partially because of my association with Miles, I wound up playing with Joey DeFrancesco, Bill Evans, Michael Brecker, Davis Sanborn who was a very private man but we had a nice relationship and had the music been more open I would have continued to play with him. Miles Davis has probably been my number one icon, because of the broad nature of his influence…his playing is one thing, my God…but just his approach to music, he was always changing, always evolving.
Every time you see someone and you think “Ok , that what he does…al right”. I saw The Who when I was living in Nashville and they had the symphony orchestra behind them, they did Tommy and it’s The Who, but it was a show…like seeing a cover band of The Who, I felt this is not The Who, it’s not. But I’m a huge Pete Townsend fan, they are my favorite rock band, Pete’s writing and Roger Daltrey’s singing..they were just one of those magic four, and in those days every album was completely different from the last one. The Beatles were like that too.
What was it like playing a Stratocaster for this record?
Oh, it requires a lot of commitment. And I did commit myself to it in the writing, the recording, the Dragon Tales tour…I have used it in parts of my shows since then, sometimes we do the Jeff Beck tribute even, it depends of who my group is, Gary Husband goes out with me sometimes, but I have like four different drummers that I have been working with since I moved to London. I have a feeling, and it makes me sad, that the Strat is going away, it’s gonna be something that happened…that I’m grateful for, but my interests are in new things, I wanna play new music and I want the music to keep changing. But I’m also very accustomed to a particular type of guitar and if you separate yourself nobody can do that…nobody can be Jeff Back and anybody else. Beck was Beck and he always played the Strat and he did that thing.
The other guy for me is Mike Landau, some might say Eric Johnson and they have reason to say that, but Mike really plays that friggin’ Strat, man. And he dos not sound like Jeff, he’s a real original. The second Renegade Creation album that we did together, which was called “Bullet”, is really good. I met Mike when he was 21 and I was probably 28, I really liked him and I asked him to play shows with me back then. He’s one of my favorite guitar players, no question about that. Living? I like Mike and Kurt Rosenwinkel, those are my two favorites. Oh and Derek Trucks is another one, he’s so musical and so soulful.
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