Scott Ramminger's Alive & Ornery

Compared to the Jay Willie Blues Band release I just reviewed, this 2-CD live set from sax player Scott Ramminger is more typical of today's blue scene--it's a live recording so it has plenty of interaction and counterpoint between the performers and the audience. In five albums since his 2011 debut Crawstickers, Ramminger has gained a reputation for composing original blues tunes that are both meaty and funny, with slightly bawdy lyrics that capture the sexual undercurrents that help define the blues. (On "Rebecca, Rebecca," he tells his lady love to get her "big legs" on him ASAP.) That means his performances are punctuated by knowing laughs from the crowd--it's all about everyone getting just a little naughty and having a good time.

Ramminger understands this. In the liner notes he states "I love to write, and dig the production aspect of making studio records. But I also really like getting out and playing live, particularly with a good band in small or medium-sized clubs." That's exactly what we have here, a series of performances in Washington DC captured last summer in very small clubs where you can here the enthusiastic responses of individuals in the crowd rather than the sterile sound of mass applause in a large hall. These are the kind of performances where you can hear Ramminger saying "Thank you sir for demonstrating the tip jar" during the fade out.

As I mentioned in the Jay Willie review, the blues as a genre is tough to explore because there is a strict formula for doing it right. It's basic music with a basic structure and the quality of any particular performance is based upon what is laid on top of that structure without diluting the whole. Ramminger's band--drummer Pete Ragusa, bassist Chris brown, trumpeter Vince McCool and a variety of guest guitarists and keyboard players--are solid and professional and daring enough to include nasty guitar lick or a seductive growl of yet more Hammond B-3s. The added layers, therefore, consist of lots of humor and swagger.

Isn't that what the blues are all about? Attitude is what makes this type of music special, and Ramminger's floating in a big heated swimming pool full of attitude. Like most blues singers, he knows that the secret to the blues is to act like a ladies' man who knows nothing about ladies and that's why he's so funny. Alive & Ornery is funny and consistently so across two discs of music. I think those qualities increase exponentially, however, when you get out and hear his band live.

Jay Willie Blues Band's Jay Walkin'

I've been a little rough on the blues over the last few years. It's not that I don't like blues music, it's just that I think the definition of the genre is so narrow that any innovative approach places it outside of the genre into one of many sub-genres--blue rock, R&B, funk-blues, whatever you got. Once you've heard Muddy Waters' Folk Singer, the Howlin' Wolf catalog and a few titles from Chad Kassem's sessions at Blue Heaven Studio in Kansas, you have a pretty good survey of the art form. The magic, I feel, is in live performances and how the performer connects with the audience. That's something you can't get sitting alone in the dark with your hi-fi.

I've received a couple of straightforward blues albums to review--this one from Jay Willie and another from Scott Ramminger--and my first question is well, what have you got? Are you gonna show off some blistering guitar riffs? Are you gonna put a new spin on some old blues classics? How are you going to catch my attention? The Jay Willie Blues Band digs deep into history in their approach, bringing blues music primarily from the '50s and '60s into the 21st century. This band hails from the rock and roll wing of the blues, which means their approach is based on dirty, edgy guitar work and a steady beat.

While there's strong vocal work from several contributors--guitarist and frontman Jay Willie, multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer Paul Opalach, guitarist Bob Callahan and drummer Bobby T. Torello, the ace in the hole is two songs featuring Malorie Leogrande. Her voice is so immediately likeable and expressive that I find myself wishing for a "Malorie Leogrande featuring the Jay Willies Blues Band" album. One of those songs, "The Other Side," was written by Willie and Opalach and Leogrande and goes far beyond the parameters of the blues into pop-rock and is, quite frankly, a stand-out. It's not the blues, obviously, but I'd love to hear Leogrande explore this sound in a future solo release.

When it comes to the question of "what have you got?," the answer here is "all the prerequisites." Willie plays a mean, angry guitar that brings modern sensibilities into very old songs (two of the songs, Roosevelt Sykes' "44 Blues" and Blind Willie Johnson's "Soul of a Man," come from the Great Depression). Jason Ricci's harmonica is there to remind you that this is the blues, even when it's rocking mighty hard. To a hardcore lover of the blues this album may stray here and there, but it walks the tightrope when it comes to honoring old traditions and keeping it fresh and interesting.