Lance Lopez

Louisiana native Lance Lopez has been playing professionally since he first started playing bars in New Orleans at the age of 14. He lived in Dallas for a short time as a child, and when his family moved back there while he was 17 he was hired to tour for six months with soul legend Johnnie Taylor. At 18 he was working with modern blues great Lucky Peterson, where he later became band leader at the age of 21. His first solo album First Things First was released in 1998. Lance has opened for such artists as Steve Vai, Jeff Beck, B.B King, Joe Bonamassa, and ZZ Top. His newest offering Salvation From Sundown is available now.

Maximum Ink: What was it like growing up in Louisiana and Texas? What were you like as a kid?
Lance Lopez: My parents split up when I was 5 so that was kinda rough and it gave me the Blues almost immediately. But other than that I had a good
ole Southern Boy upbringing. I played out in swamps and the woods. When I wasn’t in my bedroom practicing on my guitar, I was fishing and trying to catch Crawfish in the Bayou and going with my older brother to hunt Alligators and all kinds of crazy stuff like that. My mom could never find me if I wasn’t in my room playing guitar, I was either out in the woods or the swamp. I got bit by snakes and chased raccoons and did all kinds of crazy stuff like that. When we moved from Louisiana to Texas we moved to Dallas, and it’s a major big city. It was a big culture shock for me. I didn’t have any woods to run around in and no swamps to catch Crawfish and snakes in anymore. So I spent a lot more time playing guitar in my room. By that time I was 12 and I was obsessed with playing my guitar anyway. I would sit in school and literally fiend for my guitar, I couldn’t wait to get back home to play it.  I would play it first thing in the morning and as soon as I got home. And when I moved from Dallas to New Orleans to live with my Dad all I did was play, every waking second of the day. My Dad started taking me out to Bars in New Orleans and that is when I first started playing real gigs and then it was on (laughs)

Read More...

The Mifflin Street Block Party

The University of Wisconsin has traditionally held two giant student parties every year. One is Halloween (where out of town revelers caused so many problems, it evolved into Freak Fest, still a good party but one that turns State Street into a demilitarized zone each year) and the other is the Mifflin Street Block Party. Started in 1969 as a reaction to the Vietnam War (the event that seems to loom over every student activity or university story from that decade), the party has been an annual tradition some times at odds with the city and some times with the city’s blessing. After a long time of relative peace, in 1996, drunken and foolish partygoers decided to attack a fire truck that came to put out a bonfire started in the middle of the street. Next thing you know, there’s riot gear, people are screaming bloody murder, and lots and lots of arrests are made. Needless to say, the 1997 party was kind of a drag. But the fest has continued in the ensuing years, and now local music promoters DCNY PRO, Madison natives and longtime Mifflin Street attendees, David Coleman and Ny Bass, have taken the bull by the horns. They spearheaded the party in 2009 to one of its most successful years. On the fortieth anniversary of the festival and even with over fifteen-thousand people in attendance, arrests were down from the year before and in 2010, they’re bringing more changes to make it a friendlier and safer place.

Read More...

Joel Pingitore and the Playground of Sound

Joel Pingitore isn’t wasting any time. He has been performing with his most recent group, The Playground of Sound, for only six months and they’re already booked and/or played 150+ shows. Besides a weekly show at The Dam Bar in Belleville, WI and a once-a-month visit to Stella’s Speakeasy in Stoughton, WI the band is fresh of a stint of gigs at Bike Week in Daytona Beach. In an e-mail interview Pingitore admitted he wouldn’t mind a show every day.

“Naturally,” He also conceded, “it’d be fantastic to be ‘The Next Big Thing.’” With an energetic six month old band that’s already working on an album and playing outside the state, however fantastic the dream, they seem to be aiming for it. On a more realistic, and partially realized note, Pingitore also said “I’d like to see [the band] as a nationally touring act.”

Read More...

Willy Porter

Wisconsin folk artist WILLY PORTER has been touring around North America for the past two decades, seeing national success that began with the release of his 1995 album, Dog Eared Dream, which led to opening spots for Tori Amos, Jeff Beck, Toad The Wet Sprocket, and The Cranberries and catapulted his style of folk rock meets Dylan-esque wordplay to the top echelon of modern singer-songwriters.

His new album, How To Rob A Bank, just came out in June of this year and he produced it himself, a process that he says was more difficult in some ways and easier in others. “I think that it’s harder in some ways”, he says, “especially when you’re singing to know if you have the right inflection or you’re capturing the feel of what you want to convey. But I’m a big believer in the things that are a mistake today are the things that you love tomorrow. If the musicians played something and the musicians think that it’s cool and if you respect them and trust them, then it’s good. I tried not to use technology to edit or fix things into a state of unrealistic perfection and that was very liberating. I’ve worked with some people who let the machines get in the way and I’m not feeling that at all lately.”

Read More...

Ratdog

Maggot infested skulls on bony blood-dried bodies, skulking graveyards in midnight mists is how people usually picture the rise of the dead. Bushy-beards and wonky wa-wa waves on a six-string, tie-dye twists and baby boomers lighting up, is however, the reality.

Far from the grave, ex-Grateful Dead frontman Bob Weir and his solo project RatDog, have scoured the sphere, playing over seven hundred shows since 2006. Along with a slew of brilliant musicians such as lead guitarist Mark Karan and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, RatDog has dug deep into the core of improvisational riffs and melodies, and is safely the most musically comprehensive jam band formed post-sixties. A chunky brew of blues, jazz fusion, progressive bluegrass, and folk, RatDog delivers with an equally diverse palette as the latter day Grateful Dead. Weir channels Garcia in numbers like “Black Muddy River” and “Scarlet Begonias.” Yet the spectacle lies in the audience. The peace-loving, daisy-smelling youth that once swarmed Dead shows have become the stock-broking, suit wearing, SUV-driving dads, moms, and grandparents who come see Bob Weir to remember the days of freedom and hope, if just for a couple songs. 

Read More...

Todd Sharpville

It isn’t everyday you come across a Blues musician who comes from one of the UK’s oldest aristocrat families(with a history that spans a thousand years), but Todd Sharpville is just that. Nor is it everyday you find one that plays so well they have been asked to open for the likes of BB King and Joe Cocker.

No stranger to the blues himself after his marriage ended, Todd found himself being hospitalized for a nervous breakdown and spent 4 years fighting for his children. It was during this hospitalization he was asked by Leo Sayer to make guest appearances on 5 tracks (with Sayer driving 8 hours to negotiate face to face with the hospitals chief consultant to get Sharpville released a week early in order to be flown out to the studio in Denmark..whilst still wearing his pajamas,slippers and a dressing gown!)

With is whiskey soaked voice and music played from the soul he pours all of his past experience into the music in a most intriguing fashion. His latest offering the double album Porchlight(produced by the legendary Duke Robillard, featuring special guests: Joe Louis Walker, Duke Robillard, and Kim Wilson) is due to hit the US in November 2010.

Read More...

Soul Shaker

I often get asked what’s new and interesting in the Madison music scene, and these days usually the first couple words to roll off my tongue are “Soul Shaker”, a hot new ballsy bluesy rock band in town. Their calling card states “Dirty Blues Rock Fo’ Yo’ Dirty Minds” which sums it up pretty well, and somehow they already knew my mind was usually in the gutter.

The guys on the guitars and drums may look familiar if you were a fan of Trinity James And Big Bad. Guitarist Jason “JP” Peterson, bassist Scott Aumann, and drummer Brent King had backed up singer/songwriter Trinity James for a couple years before Trin moved on to the land of grueling competition Nashville. JP, Scott, and Brent kept writing on their own and eventually joined forces with singer and harmonica player Adam Zierten of Reason For Leaving and Jose And The Sumlimes fame.

Read More...