If You Enjoyed This Article Please Share It With Your Friends, Thank You!

For The Best Video Links In The Blues Follow Us On Twitter!

Follow @BluesRevue

BluesWax Sittin’ In With

Mark Wenner of The Nighthawks

Part Two

A Road Warrior Redefines Authentic

By Don Wilcock

When Mark Wenner and I talked a couple weeks before the Blues Music Awards, he revealed that he was ready to climb the next rung of the ladder of success. “I’m 62 now, so I deserve a certain amount of cred,” said Wenner, the leader of a road warrior blues power quartet that’s crisscrossed the country for forty years. Forty years without ever even being nominated for a Blues Music Award. Two weeks later, in the surprise upset of the BMAs, his band walked away with The Best Acoustic Blues Album Award for their CD Last Train To Bluesville.

It was a surprise on several levels. First of all, The Nighthawks are road warriors who don’t do much original material. They come out of a 1960s blues mentality that originally dismissed them as “a white-boy blues band from Washington, D.C.” In Part One of our interview, Wenner told me, “My mom would take me to Lord & Taylor to buy me some friggin’ slacks, and I would go to Robert Hall and buy me some pants that would cost me a dollar with money I probably stole.”

Secondly, they were up against Eric Bibb, Lucky Peterson, Paul Oscher, and the South Memphis String Band, all acts that some might argue have a more “authentic” cache.  Wenner recalls one early band he fronted. “My business card said, ‘B-Town Slim and His Rhythm Revue.’ ‘B-Town,’ that was Bethesda [Maryland, a suburb of Washinton]. B-Town Slim and His Rhythm Revue, and then in quotes it said, ‘That Memphis Soul Beat,’ and everything had to go Brump-gump-ha-ha. Bump, grump gaga. It was a fundamental core of that I first started of a lot of Junior Walker and Booker T., except using the harp instead of the sax and the organ.”

Thirdly, The Nighthwaks won for an album, Last Train to Bluesville, which was recorded in a single session at the Sirius/XM satellite radio studios in their hometown, Washington, D.C., for broadcast with no intention of even releasing the tapes as a CD. It features down-home versions of ten blues classics from such artists as Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Slim Harpo, Chuck Berry, Sonny Boy Williamson. and James Brown, among others. Add to that that these guys are probably the most electric blues band this side of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, and you have a real anomaly.

Don’t get me wrong. The Nighthawks have been on my A list for most of their four decades and are definitely one of the top ten “bar bands” on the national circuit. But this award will force traditional blues fans to give them a new look.

Wenner loves playing harp and singing with this crack band, but he’s watched artists five to ten years his senior, like John Hammond and Elvin Bishop, climb the next rung on career ladder, and as you will read below he was ready to cash in on that extra dollop of success that comes from being an elder statesman of the blues. Now, with this win under his belt, that goal appears much much closer to happening.

Wenner’s come a long way, baby. In Part One, he recalled his days in the late 1960s as a student at Columbia University. “I started several bands and got singers and watched the bands evolve over into being the singer’s band because that’s where the real focus and energy of the band had to be. I got tired of that stuff, and the next band I started declared myself as singer and in those days the PAs were so funky I approached the job with great attitude, a little bit of style, and like a jump suit and Tom Jones shirt and some shades and pointy boots, jumped around, I was doing material that I wouldn’t even dare to touch at this time. I was doing “There Was A Time” into “Cold Sweat,” James Brown at the Apollo II and stuff like that. Everything was funky at that point in time. It was an interesting period of time dancing wise.

“In those days if you did a shuffle, the frat boys would stand there and look at you stupid.”

After recording Last Train to Bluesville, veteran drummer Paul Ragusa was replaced by Mark Stutso, who in concert with the band at the Dinosaur Barbecue in Troy, New York, a week before the BMAs added a new level of energy to a band that already pushes a lot of testosterone into its sets. Stutso has a history of playing with an offshoot of Black Oak Arkansas, one of the most gonzo rock bands ever to come out of the south in the 1970s. He spent nearly twenty years with Jimmy Thackery, who originally founded the Nighthawks with Wenner in 1974.

Stutso twirls his sticks, sings lead on songs like “Matchbox” and James Brown’s “Ill Go Crazy” and gooses the band into a rockin’ revamp of The 1965 Guess Who classic “Shakin’ All Over” that they call “Heartbreak Shake.” Together, the group jells into a hard and fast tank attack. Wenner has morphed into a very “authentic” singer and under-appreciated harp player, Paul Castle emulates the best qualities of Hubert Sumlin on guitar, and Johnny Castle nails down the rhythm.

Don Wilcock for BluesWax: Was there a feeling that you’d made a coup when you hired Mark Stutso as drummer after he’d spent twenty years with your former partner Jimmy Thackery?

Mark Wenner: Well, he was already away from Jimmy Thackery for a couple of years actually.

BW: Okay.

MW: And I had my eye on him because I knew [our then drummer] Pete [Ragusa] was moving towards bailing, and so I was keeping my ear to the ground for drummers, but I knew he [Stutso] was not quite as busy as he wanted to be. He’s living in Pittsburgh and he was playing around a little bit. He would come out when we’d play there and hang out.

So he was already on my list way at the top, but he and Thackery parted ways and I had been a fan of his playing, and his singing and the second I knew Pete was looking to make his move, I had the studio lined up and we had a very exciting little tryout session, and it was just totally obvious this was gonna be the next stage of the Nighthawks.

The blending of the four voices which had always been a thing, and it was something right from the get-go was – our version of “Bring It On Home,” for example, or doing “Little By Little” – I was really into those either adding multiple vocals or going for those unusual Chicago blues things that had multiple vocals like “Little By Little” – and me and Pete and [former bass player] Jan [Zukowski] and Thackery that concept was there, but when [guitarist] Paul [Bell], [current bass player] Johnny [Castle], Mark and me sang together it was – I’d been waiting a long time for this.

There were certain grooves I had a degree of frustration with Pete about, conceptual differences Pete and I’s concept of producing was so radically opposite. There were musical differences in how certain grooves should be, and certainly Pete and Jan were considered an incredible rhythm section, and they certainly were, but when it was Johnny Castle and Mark, I knew it was a new magic. It was one of those [things where] the groove was so wide you could jump in and climb back out. It was just really satisfying right from the instant, and things are happening now.

We had a rehearsal session, and I don’t usually use the “R” word – we had a rehearsal session a couple of months ago where Stutso came in with two songs off his solo album and a couple of fragments. Johnny came in with a sort of a fragment, and in like a four-hour session we had five original songs. I mean – there’s just a degree of working together that’s just so professional, so focused, so – and still having fun. We’ll just work until we get cross-eyed, and we can put other stuff together. We can add other material together quickly. We’ve done a lot of stuff. We just did three days with Billy Price backing him up. We’ve worked with Hubert [Sumlin] in this situation. All the cool things we get to do. We’ve got a thing coming up. We’re gonna do some stuff with Tracy Nelson at XM in an acoustic format.

BW: She’s got a new album out, yeah.

MW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re gonna do a couple of tunes off that album totally acoustic down at XM right after the Blues Music Awards about May 11, I think. Her and my wife – she and my wife, excuse me, are big pals, and she’s gonna stay here, and they just yak, yak, yak, you know, the whole time. So I don’t get a word in edgewise.

BW: You can’t always be the center of attention, Mark.

MW: No, I’m fine. I’m fine with that. Go in the garage and bang on things.

BW: So when are we gonna hear this new combination on record?

MW: Well, I think we’re close to having enough material at least to start recording.

BW: Great!

MW: Well, we did these two songs of Billy’s I think I can sing, so we already know them. So that’s two, I haven’t tried to sing ’em yet. I got two songs that aren’t original, and we got four Stutso’s and one Johnny. So that’s kind of enough to go in studio and maybe make something, make an instrumental up. You know, come up with one or two other covers.

Bill Wax told me, and I hate these rules, but he said the next album has to have seven, eight, or nine originals on it to stay in the ballgame that we started with American Landscape. With American Landscape we committed to spending a lot of money with [publicist] Mark Pucci, tooting the horn, which we had never really done before. With Last Train to Bluesville we really went back in the game. Our booking agent accused me of being a regional act.

I said, “F*** me. I’m in forty-nine states.” He sad, “Yeah, but that was nine years ago,” and I have been struggling with not having national identity. Yet it’s been real easy for me to just do the things I do every year, and keep on playing open house to Fred’s Bike Sop down the street, go to Florida in March and go to upstate New York in April and May, but that stuff of running from coast to coast and quarter to quarter is ancient history, and I’m not sure how much longer I really want to do that stuff. It’s friggin’ brutal. We about killed ourselves.

“So my biggest chance is being the last guy standing up,

the legendary old guy and that’s pretty close.”

BW: When are you gonna get to the point where you just say, “Okay, I’m only gonna do the high profile gigs, and they gotta come and pick me up at the airport in a limo.

MW: [Laugh]

BW: Are you ever gonna get to that point?

MW: I kinda doubt it.

BW: You like being a road warrior, don’t you?

MW: Well, there’s a twist of fate in terms of making it any kind of – I’m trying to get up one rung on a ladder is pretty much what I’m really trying to do. I’d rather be making [a little more than I am].  And I don’t think it’s that unreasonable, but that’s a huge chasm, and the difference is amazing, and very few of my peers can make it.

You’ve got an occasional Tab Benoit, but I’m not as pretty as he is, and I don’t have that whole “Lou-Easy-Anna” thing goin’ on. So my biggest chance is being the last guy standing up, the legendary old guy and that’s pretty close. I remember when Charlie Musselwhite and Tracy Nelson, John Hammond, Elvin Bishop, they’re pretty much all the same age, and I remember when they all turned fifty, and I remember when they all turned sixty, and how they were all able to gain a degree of stature in spite of their racial background in the blues world just by being old enough, and, Christ, I’m sixty-two now, so I deserve a certain amount of cred.

All those people who, when they were struggling like I am, I kinda have friendships with all those people. They’ve always been encouraging. They were all out there when I was getting started so they were definitely role models.

BW: Yup, yup, yup.

MW: I mean John Hammond’s kicked us in the ass a number of times and given us a helping hand. We’ve worked with all of them. We’ve worked with Tracy. We’ve worked with Charlie for that matter. So I like to see myself just down the ladder from them. They’ve all pulled that off, and I’ve got – at this point I hate it, but it comes down to having original material.

BW: Oh, yeah. Why do you hate that?

MW: Well, because I don’t believe it.

BW: Why don’t you believe it?

MW: Somebody’s imposed this rule on me, and I see through it, you know. I see how much great stuff is being down and wasn’t original. Here’s the irony of it. We go into XM and we spend two hours cutting classic blues stuff in our acoustic format, and everybody does double back flips over it. Why is that against the rules? I don’t understand it. It’s our most successful stuff, Jacks and Kings, Last Train to Bluesville. It’s like, “Well, Elvis never wrote a friggin’ song, and Etta James never wrote a friggin’ song, so you know.

BW: I was gonna say you’ve gone against the tide. Most people who’ve lasted as long as you have at the level you have have done it on original material, and there’s a certain – maybe it’s an attitude. I know Bruce Iglauer has it.

MW: Oh, yeah.

BW: Iglauer won’t hire anybody who won’t write their own material.

MW: And the Blind Pig guy. The Blind Pig guy told me sixty percent of the album has to be original.

BW: Yeah.

MW: I didn’t know there was a rule book. You send me the rule book, and I’ll look at it.

BW: I boycott American Idol because they won’t let the artists sing their own songs. I’m contributing to the problem, if you want to call it a problem.

MW: There you go. It’s your fault.

BW: Yup, it is my fault. As a journalist I appreciate artists that add to the genre with their own original material.

MW: It’s always suspect ’cause half the time I know where these guys stole it from. I’m sure you’ve read the Keith Richards book [Life] by now, right?

BW: Yes, oh, I love that book!

MW: I’m seeing so many fine little details that I’m really identifying with. He talks about how Andrew Oldham locked him and Mick [Jagger] in a room and can’t come out until you write a song, and then they write all these schlock ballads and stuff. It took ’em another year before they could write something they would dare to even present to the band, which was “The Last Time,” where they took he chorus from The Staple Singers song and wrote a couple of lyrics. You know?

BW: Yeah, but look at their entire songbook and tell me that we would be better off if they were still doing Slim Harpo and Staple Singers songs in 2011.

MW: Somebody should have taken me and Thackery and locked us in a room once upon a time.

BW: I’m sorry I have to take Bruce Iglauer’s point of view on this, and I would much prefer to see you stretch and do original material and, yeah, you may start off by copying old stuff and giving it new lyrics and changing the melodies just a little bit, but somewhere in there, there’s diamonds in that rust.

MW: Right. I’m still relying on two songs I wrote twenty-five years ago. When we’re doing the sets now that are primarily original I do “Back to The City” and “Guard Your Heart.”

[Discussion about insane touring routing]

BW: There was a time when I booked Byther Smith into Peggy’s Restaurant in Schenectady. He drove from Chicago, did the show and drove home.

MW: [Bob] Margolin’s doing that these days.

BW: Really?

MW: He’s frigging insane. He’s driving places and turning around and driving home. It’s like, “Bob, get some sleep.”

BW: Yeah, that’s not good.

MW: We finally had someone fall asleep at the wheel with us, and we lucked out, but we ruined a van, a perfectly good van. I’m really hesitant to do the overnight driving we’d been accustomed to. I’ll drive us home from Philadelphia or something or even New York City. The band knows its way home. We’re getting older, and that gets harder. There are only so many cups of coffee you can drink before you have to start eating Rolaids, and I can’t do that five-hours energy stuff. I’m not gonna do that.

BW: No, that’s not good.

MW: Other stimulants. I rely on coffee or nothing.

BW: I can’t drink that stuff. I don’t even drink coffee. I drink iced tea. That’s as stimulated as I allow myself to get.

MW: That’s the same thing, they say.

BW: For some reason, no. When I drink coffee, I get jittery, but when I drink iced tea I don’t. I’m not quite sure why.

MW: Huh, interesting.

Don Wilcock is editor in chief of BluesWax. You mat reach him by commenting below.

Pull Quotes:

“I’m sixty-two now, so I deserve a certain amount of cred.”