Mick Fleetwood touring with his blues band

[michelej1]

Huffington Post 09/16/2016 10:00 am ET | Updated 22 hours ago

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/..._entertainment

Chats With LOCASH, Mick Fleetwood, And Carl Palmer, Plus Rodney Parker & 50 Peso Reward, Firebug, Francis Cheer, And Huntertones Exclusives

A Conversation with Mick Fleetwood by Mike Ragogna

Mike Ragogna: I want to talk about the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band featuring Rick Vito, who was briefly part of Fleetwood Mac. Because of the amazing, off-the-charts success you had with Fleetwood Mac, a lot of people don’t associate you so much with the blues. When you do these tours as the Mick Fleetwood blues band I imagine it’s going full circle and you’re getting to the heart of what you really love about music.

Mick Fleetwood: No doubt. For me it’s sort of a seamless transition. I’ve never really not done this from time to time. I’m a blues player and Fleetwood Mac was a blues band and we went onto our merry way musically and developed into the band that people know and love, but there are hundreds of thousands that remember what we did, especially in Europe. This is always a pleasure, to go back and regroup. We do certainly focus on the old Fleetwood Mac but it’s also reconnecting more importantly for me. We’re a British band, it’s not that complicated, but you’ve got you’ve got to do it properly or else you fall very far away from the mark. There’s nothing worse than a bad blues band.

MR: [laughs] You’re going all the way back to “Black Magic Woman,” which I believe you were the first to record.

MF: Oh yeah, Peter penned that song with a band in 1968.

MR: When you play these songs are you still discovering things in them?

MF: Interesting question, especially to me. I’m not a super-slick player, but that turns out to be a benefit. I play most of these songs differently every night, which I always say is because I don’t know what I’m doing. Having said that, we do know what we’re doing, but every time it happens for me—there’s an old phrase: The band is as good as the drummer. I’m not back there ****ing it all up, but I am back there somewhat amazingly because of the nature of the way I do and don’t learn and retain information, which is nothing new. I’ve always been like that from childhood. I’m sort of on the edge of imploding, which is sort of a nice thing. If you get a player who is super slick there’s a danger that—yeah it’s all super great, but I know which choice I would make. It has to be a balance, I understand that, where you actually empathize with someone who’s on the edge of really pushing to express themselves. In this formula I’m really able to do that because there is more freedom to stretch and grab moments and change them if you like. When you don’t know what you’re doing, getting yourself out of trouble is what makes people take note. They ask, “What was that?” and you say, “We caught each other and turned it into something else.” That’s the magic that this platform affords. I think that’s the magic that you go after, and I really enjoy that and it really suits me because I’m able to express myself in the moment proportionally more than I am in the band as it is, and rightly so. It’s not hugely different, but it is different. Selfishly, I’m a blues drummer, so I’m out there and I need to do what I’m doing. It’s not more fun, it’s just more freedom.

MR: Within the format I understand how Fleetwood Mac recordings need to be more structured, and playing in the blues again allows you to improvise more and bring in other elements.

MF: Totally well put, in a much more succinct way than I did. For a percussionist I’m sort of speaking for myself, but it actually translates across the board. In Fleetwood Mac you’re playing with a hugely famous outfit all over the world and quite frankly beautifully, unbelievably successful. You’re on stage for three hours and you have a massive production with two hundred people working the show. It’s a very different situation to turning up to a five hundred, nine hundred, maybe twelve hundred people max little theater like on this tour. Of course the geography and the physicality of it is different. With a blues band there’s no fluff at all, meaning there’s no production. We don’t know the lighting guy, we do have our own sound guy, but every night is sort of on the come—you’re rolling the dice a little bit about what’s in the support team. When we come off it’s not about celebrating the same type of show as Fleetwood Mac. The element that applies to this band is, “Did I play well?” Then you have, “Did everyone have a good night?” Then you have “Did everyone in the road crew have a good night?” Was the production as good as we’d have liked it? Then you talk to the sound guy. “What was the sound like out in the front?” because you’re running a highly mechanized, huge studio really in the back of a circus truck. Then you go the audience and think, “How did they like it?” If you come out the other end with Fleetwood Mac you come out with all of those components in line and say, “Yeah, we had a great night playing, but apparently it sounded like **** out front.” The utopian statement is, “When everything’s right with Fleetwood Mac,” and there’s a lot more to be right, “That’s a good night.” With my band it’s really simple, and actually a lot more personal, since about the only thing you have is, “How did we play? Did the audience enjoy it?” It’s simple. Having said that, those components become hugely important and actually go right to the gut of a player, where you go, “The only thing we had to offer was to get on that stage and really, really pull it off.” That’s exciting, because you have to hit your mark.

MR: Within the blues, and especially in the live element, you have the experience of the creativity of setting up with a couple of friends and playing whatever comes up.

MF: There’s no doubt about that. The overview is, when I get going on a Fleetwood Mac gig or when I get going down at a three-hundred seat club, you hope you can get in the zone. Once you’re in the zone as a player, it’s really all the same thing, pretty much. In Fleetwood Mac, yes we have a production, but it’s not like seeing Beyoncé where there’s lights everywhere and bombs going off—with Fleetwood Mac or the Eagles, you feel like there’s some players on stage.

MR: You were nominated for a Grammy for Blue Again!. You’re getting recognition in your field. Where does the reward come from for you? Is it in playing, the creativity, the audience response—what is the blues doing for you?

MF: Selfishly, it’s a platform that is entirely my comfort zone. That’s really a huge, lovely thing for me, that I can go out from time to time and do this and really get to play in a woodshed that is in the backyard of your upbringing. That’s a good feeling. It’s like coming home. It’s not a huge statement, “Oh, I can’t stand playing the music with Fleetwood Mac,” absolutely not, but it is sentimentally a fun thing for me to do. It’s not that we sit there playing Fleetwood Mac songs, because we don’t. We play some of Rick’s stuff and change it up occasionally and just do stuff we like playing. That’s really the essence of it. I’m freer, if I want to get up from the drums and get on the microphone and start telling a story about a song, I’ll just go and do it. You can’t do that in a Fleetwood Mac show, the whole show would fall to pieces.

MR: There’s obviously going to be lots of loyal fans at your shows, but does your demographic also skew young at all?

MF: Good question. I think we’re blessed in Fleetwood Mac where we have a lot of young people going back into the archives as they do with people like Neil Young. We’ve got like thirty albums flying around, I think young, musically inclined, inquisitive guys and girls like that journey. We often get people that are going, “I started listening to you with Stevie and Lindsey and then found out there were albums before that.” We’ve got those elements, I think it’s pretty across the board and we do enjoy quite a young demographic that turns up. If we were doing this in Europe I think it’s fair to say that a lot more of the older generation that were weaned on early Fleetwood Mac, which was more popular in Europe than America, come out and enjoy hearing stuff they heard when they were nineteen years old. It’s almost a more refreshing area to be in over here because there’s a sense of the unknown. Sometimes you’re like, “Is anyone going to turn up at all?” I hope so, that’s why I’m on the phone with you.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

MF: I say, find your audience and play to them. There are a lot of people that have totally become privatized and made it all online and so forth. That’s a world I don’t know enough about, but I always end up saying, “If you have both, that’s great,” and if you haven’t got the live component and you’re capable of having a live audience, there is nothing more loyal, nothing more personable than looking someone in the eyeballs. Do you want to communicate with all of your school friends on an iPhone for the next fifty years and never see their face? An element of that is great, it often leads to a holistic, multi-purposed outcome, “Hey, we can arrange to spend the weekend skiing,” but I’m just saying to the young audience, explore the unknown. They come from a different world, but bodies in seats is something that’s going to keep you company, and you’ll be quite grateful for it if you’re interested in forming a career that’s going to make you a living until you push up daisies.

MR: Are you working on an album? What’s the future?

MF: That’s a long answer. Plenty of music. The hope is one way or another Fleetwood Mac is going to get some music out. This band, we’re going out with no album, just the simplest of thoughts: to go out and play. It’s sort of a nice innocent way of approaching it.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne

[michelej1]

Neal Preston Rock 107

http://rock107.com/mick-fleetwood-sa...lineups-music/

Mick Fleetwood Says His Blues Band Helps Him Reconnect with Original Fleetwood Mac Lineup’s Music


Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood‘s side project The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band kicks off a brief fall North American tour tonight in Aspen, Colorado. Fleetwood founded the group about 13 years ago with ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist/singer Rick Vito as an outlet for their mutual love of the blues, especially the music made by the group’s original lineup led by singer/guitarist Peter Green.

As Mick explains to ABC Radio, “It’s a four-piece band, just like the original Fleetwood Mac. Simple, straight-ahead, and we have a lot of fun
reconnecting [with that material].” Among the early Fleetwood Mac songs his Blues Band plays are such Green-penned tunes as “Love that Burns,” “Oh Well,” “Rattlesnake Shake,” “Stop Messin’ Round” and “Black Magic Woman,” which, of course, was famously covered by Santana.

“We’re certainly not gonna be playing ‘Rhiannon’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’ or any of the [band’s more contemporary songs],” Mick notes. “This is about me and early Fleetwood Mac, Rick and the boys in the band — four dudes that love playing blues.”

Fleetwood is used to playing arenas and stadiums with the current Fleetwood Mac, but he says his Blues Band gives him the chance to perform in more intimate venues.

“We’re playing, really, in the same way as I played when I was in my twenties…which was playing in clubs and small ballrooms and festivals,” Mick explains. “It’s a great reconnect for me, and I’m a player, so I’m happy playing anywhere, really.”

The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band’s tour stops in a variety of venues in the Western U.S. and Canada, and is mapped out through an October 2 concert in Victoria, British Colombia. Rounding out the group’s lineup are bassist Lenny Castellanos and keyboardist Mark Johnstone.

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by michelej1

MR: Are you working on an album? What’s the future?

MF: That’s a long answer. Plenty of music. The hope is one way or another Fleetwood Mac is going to get some music out. This band, we’re going out with no album, just the simplest of thoughts: to go out and play. It’s sort of a nice innocent way of approaching it.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne

Ugh.

[jbrownsjr]

When he says, "this band". I think he means his blues band.

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by jbrownsjr

When he says, "this band". I think he means his blues band.

Agreed. He hopes that FM will get music out one way or another and "this [blues] band" is going out without an album.

Michele

[michelej1]

SEPTEMBER 22, 2016 8:00 AM, Sacramento Bee
Fleetwood’s got baggage, but he’s bringing the blues

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/...#storylink=cpy

BY MARK HALVERSON Special to The Bee

Drummer-percussionist Mick Fleetwood’s incumbency as the pulse of Fleetwood Mac has survived a dozen personnel permutations since the band’s 1967 inception in London. The band has a messy legacy of artistic brilliance, voracious drug appetites, phenomenal commercial success, madness, religious fervor, obscene stage antics, burnout, romantic convulsions and operatic betrayal. And through it all, to borrow from his favorite Shakespeare couplet (“If music be the food of love …”), Fleetwood plays on.

Fleetwood, familiar to fans for his height (6-foot-6), full beard, long hair and a pair of wooden toilet-chain balls slung from the front of his belt that he nicked from a pub, was affable, eloquent and candid during a recent phone interview. And he is bringing the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band to the Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium in Grass Valley on Friday, Sept. 23.

“I live in Maui,” said Fleetwood. “That’s my home. I run a restaurant (Fleetwood’s on Front Street in Lahaina). I’m in a band called Fleetwood Mac that’s still one way or another quite active. Whether we’re on the road or not, we’re always up to some long-term planning of what we’re doing. And behind it all, being me, you know I’m 69 years old, which is not ancient, but I’m quite frankly more active now and multifaceted than I was in my mid-20s, so I think it comes under the heading Not Dead Yet.”

“I’m continually on a busman’s holiday,” said Fleetwood. “I’ve reconnected with the fact that I am a musician and drummer and percussion player, and I don’t do well with the aesthetics of my particular private, emotional well-being. It’s really important, I’ve discovered, for me to play. When I came off the road after pretty much a two-year tour with Fleetwood Mac with the return of Christine McVie, within not much more than 2 1/2 months I was back down in Australia and New Zealand with the same band that I’m touring with now with Rick Vito (who replaced guitarist-vocalist Lindsey Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac from 1987 to 1991) playing blues festivals.”

The Fleetwood Mac that resonates with most people today is the congregation of Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, vocalist-keyboardist Christine McVie, vocalist Stevie Nicks, and Buckingham. Their 1977 album “Rumors” became one of the best-selling albums of all time. Fleetwood’s blues band, featuring Vito, bassist Lenny Castellanos and keyboardist Mark Johnstone, pays tribute to the late ’60s all-male Mac ensemble, taking Fleetwood back to his blues and blues-rock roots.

The founder of that first Fleetwood Mac was guitarist-vocalist Peter Green, who replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. He targeted fellow Bluesbreakers Fleetwood and bassist McVie for a rhythm section of his own. He drafted Elmore James-channeling Jeremy Spencer as slide guitarist. He also added guitarist Danny Kirwan as band members stretched their writing to include the explosive “Oh Well Pt. 1” and the dreamy, tropical instrumental “Albatross.”

That roster was legendary for both its incendiary performances and demise, with Green, then Spencer, and then Kirwan departing in the early 1970s due to mental, spiritual and emotional meltdowns. And they played here at the Sound Factory on Alhambra Boulevard in February 1969, closing their set with a lyrically modified “Blue Suede Shoes” that included references to oral sex.

“It was worse than the Sex Pistols,” said Fleetwood. “We used to do crazy stuff like that all the time (Spencer often hung a dildo out his trousers during their encores). It was filthy. We slipped into this behavior at this Southern Baptist college and (there) was nearly a Jim Morrison episode. We never did it again. If we had been arrested, I wouldn’t be talking to you now. We’d have been thrown out of the country, and you would have never heard of Fleetwood Mac.”

“We were musically astute, I hope,” said Fleetwood, “and known as a really good blues band. Sadly, that incarnation didn’t last but its reputation and music (did), which is partially what this little tour I’m doing is about. We play from the old Fleetwood Mac catalog (including Peter Green’s often-covered ‘Black Magic Woman’ and ‘Rattlesnake Shake’) and stuff we love to play, ostensibly straight ahead rock-’n’-roll and blues.”

Fleetwood fully embraces the irony, as he put it, of “a bunch of … mainly white dudes in England and Europe bringing back music that they worshipped to America where the art form of blues music was all but buried.”

“I like to think the magic formula of blues is pervasive in any form of music that in my mind is emotionally responsible for projecting people’s feelings. And that to me is what blues has done for the whole music scene, period. And that was Fleetwood Mac. And that’s what we identified with.”

[michelej1]

^ "I'm in a band called Fleetwood Mac."

[michelej1]

Monterey Herald By Beth Peerless, Monterey Herald
POSTED: 09/21/16, 2:36 PM PDT | UPDATED:

http://www.montereyherald.com/arts-a...-fleetwood-mac

Where It’s At: Mick Fleetwood taps into the blues vibe that first created Fleetwood Mac

By Beth Peerless, Monterey Herald
POSTED: 09/21/16, 2:36 PM PDT | UPDATED: 1 DAY AGO 0 COMMENTS
Blues fans! Whether you’re aware of drummer Mick Fleetwood’s deep history in the blues or not, having the chance to come out and hear blues done authentically and soulfully is an opportunity not to be missed. We’re lucky to have the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band appearing here in Monterey at the Golden State Theatre this Saturday night, playing original blues as well as performing music from the early form of Fleetwood Mac, before the group moved to the U.S. and brought Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham into the mix.

Formed in 1967 in London, England, Fleetwood Mac was an integral part of the blossoming blues music scene there that included John Mayall, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Eric Burdon and the Animals and, later on, Led Zeppelin. There are more big names in British Blues of course, but all of these artists went on to become big stars in the rock and pop world with their revolutionary take on the original Delta and Chicago blues performed by their idols such as Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, and John Lee Hooker, among others.

“Well, there was a huge sociological shift in fashions any which way,” Fleetwood, 69, said in a phone interview from his Maui home in the hills. “It was so creative. It was like when people talk about Paris in the 1920s when just everything was alive in art and fashion and wild lifestyle. It was all about change. It was all about not conforming to what had been before. It was truly a renaissance vibration going on. And blues music was a boutique area in a huge landscape of creativity.”

There he hooked up with guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer, and bassist Bob Bruning, before the eventual inclusion of bassist John McVie, to form a blues band that would achieve a United Kingdom No. 1 song in “Albatross.” Preceding Fleetwood Mac’s formation, Green played guitar with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, having replaced Clapton. McVie was also a member and Green, who had been in bands with Fleetwood before, lobbied to have him join, which he soon did. The nucleus of Fleetwood Mac began with Mayall, eventually splitting off and creating the foundation for the band’s long and convoluted history.

“It was perfect for me,” Fleetwood said. “I’m not a very complicated technician as a player. So I was perfectly suited to find a way to express myself in really more of a guttural level than a technical level. Which really, really was a perfect fit for me as a person and thus as a musician. London was ablaze with an exchange of information with musicians. We were so in the genre that I ended up blundering into, which was being around people with huge knowledge, enthusiasm, dreams of aspiring to go see some of the blues players. That’s the world I was brought up in when I was 16 years old.”

leetwood’s current blues band formed in Hawaii about 12 years ago. He invited former Fleetwood Mac guitarist/vocalist Rick Vito on board as musical director, and invited musician friends he had met when he moved to the islands about 17 years ago, bassist Lenny Castellanos and keyboardist Mark Johnstone. This is the core lineup that gets together to play when Fleetwood is not too busy with his “other band” Fleetwood Mac. Early on it was a neighborhood band, with all the players living on Maui. But Vito returned to live in Nashville for personal and professional reasons, although the band continues to perform live on the road.

A live recording titled “Blue Again,” was released in 2010, featuring a performance recorded at the Sheldon Concert Hall in St. Louis, Missouri in February of 2008. The record earned a 2010 Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album. Fleetwood said the band is putting out another live album in the near future, recorded at the Belly Up in Solano Beach, near San Diego. Other than that, Fleetwood keeps busy with his restaurant, photographic art gallery and store in Lahaina.

“We did a short tour about three months ago,” he said. “We played the Bayou on the Bay Blues Festival in Brisbane, Australia. We put in about eight or ten shows, some in Australia, some in New Zealand. So we’ve been out there not too long ago for about three weeks. This tour is about a month, on and off, five shows a week. We’re busy. We’ve got 18 shows. So we do get out from time to time. This band mainly works here in Hawaii.”

Songs he said the band is sure to perform includes the classic Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac tune “Oh Well,” a powerful composition that veers in and out of talking blues and driving rock interludes. I consider this one of the all time blues rock gems that heralded what was to come from Led Zeppelin and other blues rock bands of the time. Also on the set list is “Rattlesnake Shake,” “Love That Burns,” and “Black Magic Woman,” later made famous by Santana, another rocker who originally played the blues. Other blues classics included are “Shake Your Money Maker,” and “When the Levee Breaks,” made famous by Led Zeppelin.

To wit, it’s important to remember how important the British Blues movement was to the growth in mainstream appreciation of the blues in America. It was fascinating to discuss with Fleetwood the zeitgeist of that era, and how the blues was an underground African American art form here until it was brought back “over the pond” by the Brits.

“Being connected, I don’t want any medals or anything,” Fleetwood said. “But it is true, and ironic, these funny little white dudes in Europe that saved an American art form almost entirely. And it actually is true. Sounds like an awfully aggrandized statement. But I’ve heard it from the best. B.B. King would often say, ‘Hey the reality is the black community itself and I get it.’”

While the name Fleetwood will most likely be recognized as a founding member of the mega huge rock band today still known as Fleetwood Mac, this show will hopefully illustrate the original side to the story that many are not familiar with. Long live the blues!

[michelej1]

Legendary drummer, Fleetwood Mac cofounder brings his blues combo to the Fox

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/201...love-of-blues/

By Nathan Weinbender 9/22/2016, Spokesman Review

Mick Fleetwood has perhaps one of the most prominent surnames in rock, having lent it to the enduring, platinum-selling pop outfit Fleetwood Mac. But the towering British drummer now has another namesake, the rootsy quartet known as the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band, which stops by the Fox on Wednesday.

“This tour is short and very busy, and we don’t often do it,” Fleetwood said from his tour bus, en route to California. “It’s spotty. It’s not a consistent thing.”

But it’s not like Fleetwood has a lot of free time. Fleetwood Mac recently completed two world tours (one of which brought them to Spokane in June 2013), and four members of the band’s most successful lineup have been working on new original material. Now that he’s back on the road with his other band, Fleetwood admits that he’s something of a “glutton for punishment.”

“It’s just for the love of playing, really,” Fleetwood said. “We’re not out promoting anything. We’re just getting up and doing what we do. I like to play, and this is a great little band.”

The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band formed 12 years ago and frequently serves as in-house entertainment at Fleetwood’s Maui restaurant, Fleetwood on Front St. Unlike Fleetwood Mac, which has had some major personnel shakeups over the years, this band’s lineup has remained the same: Fleetwood on drums, bassist Lenny Castellanos, keyboard player Mark Johnstone and guitarist Rick Vito, who briefly replaced singer-guitarist Lindsay Buckingham during a hiatus from Fleetwood Mac in the late ’80s.

Despite being widely associated with melodic pop, Fleetwood Mac actually started out as a blues band in 1967, when Fleetwood founded the group with bassist John McVie and guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer.

“Blues is my boot camp. It’s where I really came from,” Fleetwood said. “This is a band that is fairly similar to the early days of Fleetwood Mac. I just keep it swinging.”

After enduring several stylistic permutations and lineup changes (Fleetwood and John McVie are the only original members still present), Fleetwood Mac eventually settled into soft rock in the late ’70s, with Buckingham, singer Stevie Nicks and keyboardist Christine McVie rounding out the group. The band became a radio juggernaut, and its bestselling 1977 album “Rumours” is now considered one of the most significant musical statements of its decade.

Fleetwood Mac still sells out arenas with its most famous lineup – Christine McVie recently rejoined the band after a 16-year absence – but when he’s on tour with his blues band, Fleetwood says he can relax a little bit.

“With Fleetwood Mac, you’ve got 150 people running around, and lighting directors and carpenters,” Fleetwood said. “And here we are on two buses, doing our own thing and keeping it lean. You don’t expect certain things. For me, it’s like going back to when I was 20 years old.

“I have more freedom musically. You have to hit the mark when you’re out doing the Fleetwood Mac stuff because there’s so much at stake. But it’s still the same thing. The music is freer, but the attitude of playing is the same. I can’t play if I’m not into it. I play from my gut. … So if I don’t get there, I don’t feel good about what I’m doing. For me, it’s pretty simple.”

Fleetwood says the band’s set lists primarily feature traditional blues staples and some of Vito’s original songs, but audiences can also expect to hear some early cuts from the bluesier iteration of Fleetwood Mac.

“We’re a blues band. We’re not playing ‘Rhiannon,’ ” Fleetwood said. “We touch on a lot of the original Fleetwood Mac music – ‘Black Magic Woman’ and ‘Oh Well’ and ‘Need Your Love So Bad.’ … That’s who we are.”

And as for new music from Fleetwood Mac, it’s supposedly coming soon, along with yet another world tour next year.

“John and Christine and Lindsay, the four of us, are going to be finishing up some great music we’ve been working at,” Fleetwood said. “The music is really vibrant and really cool, and it’s Fleetwood Mac, basically.”

The only drawback: Stevie Nicks, who’s currently on a solo tour with the Pretenders, likely won’t be involved.

“Unlike anyone else in the band, she really does have a complete career on her own, you know?” Fleetwood said. “She doesn’t want to spend time in the studio, and she’s doing her own thing. You wish for something else, but that’s not fair after 30, 40 years of doing what we do. Everyone’s got to do what they feel they need at this point.

“But never say never. Down the road, we’re in a good position that we could add her songs and integrate her into some of the music we’ve been working on for four years. So that’s the state of Fleetwood Mac Nation.”

[michelej1]

Mick Fleetwood back to Mac’s roots with blues band

http://www.sfchronicle.com/music/pop...es-9237757.php

By Aidin VaziriSeptember 21, 2016 Updated: September 23, 2016 3:34pm
San Francisco Chronicle

Mick Fleetwood can’t help it. Even though Fleetwood Mac is on another hiatus and he’s got a nice little spread in Maui — house, restaurant, art gallery — he’s back on the road, giving fans a rare opportunity to see him play intimate venues with the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band. The outfit, which features guitarist Rick Vito, revives the raw sound of the group’s formative years working the London pub circuit, long before the years of drug addiction, wife swapping and personal upheaval. Fleetwood spoke to us from his home in Hawaii shortly before the tour kicked off on Sept. 16 in Colorado.

Q: You live in paradise. Why would you ever leave to play anywhere else?

A: You’re right. It’s not for everybody, but I’ve spent my whole life traveling, and I’m always quite happy doing it. I don’t often stay in one place very long. This is my home, and it’s my only home. I’m sure there will be those times when I go, “I’m not leaving.” That will probably have something to do with a form of age acknowledgment.

Q: In the meantime, you’re 69 going on 16.

A: You look at Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, even Elton John — they never stop working. Why? I think we’re quietly addicted to what we do. It’s really straight ahead. I’m not promoting an album. When you go out and woodshed — this is what we used to do when we didn’t have 200 roadies and carpenters and makeup artists — you just get off the bus and you play and hope a few people turn up. That’s the world we came from. The only reason Fleetwood Mac stops is because we’re all dysfunctional, and the five of us are trying to find things to do together.

Q: Is it a relief leaving things like “Go Your Own Way” and “Don’t Stop” off the set list and going back to your roots?

A: It’s a lot of fun playing original, old Fleetwood Mac material — “Oh Well,” “Rattlesnake Shake” and a few other songs. That’s what we do. I was a party animal for far too long. During some of those periods when we would have years off, I look back on it now and think, “What did you do?” I forgot I was a musician, which is a terrible thing to admit. It suddenly dawned on me: This is what we did to put bread on the table. We weren’t planning to be famous rock stars. If I never made it, I would still be turning up in San Francisco at the back of the bus. It’s the only thing we know how to do.

[elle]

Originally Posted by michelej1

But it’s not like Fleetwood has a lot of free time. Fleetwood Mac recently completed two world tours (one of which brought them to Spokane in June 2013), and four members of the band’s most successful lineup have been working on new original material. Now that he’s back on the road with his other band, Fleetwood admits that he’s something of a “glutton for punishment.”

hope this means he's closer to OK-ing them to finally releasing this FM album as 4 out of 5!!

[michelej1]

The Georgia Straight by Steve Newton on September 28th, 2016 at 3:59 PM

Mick Fleetwood returns to his roots with blues band


http://www.straight.com/music/797016...ots-blues-band

Mick Fleetwood is best known as the drummer for one of history’s most popular recording acts, Fleetwood Mac. But eight years before that band became the multiplatinum voice of mid-’70s pop, it was a gritty blues-rock outfit led by a stunning guitarist by the name of Peter Green.

So when Fleetwood calls from a tour bus near the tail end of a 16-hour trek from Telluride, Colorado, to San Diego, California, I’ve gotta ask him if—as much as he may have enjoyed selling millions of albums with Stevie Nicks and Co.—his current Mick Fleetwood Blues Band is what brings him the most satisfaction as a musician.

“Uh, I wouldn’t say that,” replies the 69-year-old skinbasher. “I think there’s more freedom, just the whole way we approach what we’re doing. But having said that, you know, once you’re in the saddle, it’s about the same ethics of musical commitment, hopefully, to the evening. And at that point, playing is playing.

“Neither’s better or worse,” he continues, “it’s just different. But if you really pinned me down, I’d say I’m probably more expressive, for sure, playing out here with Rick and the boys.”

The Rick he refers to is singer-guitarist Rick Vito, and the boys are bassist Lenny Castellanos and keyboardist Mark Johnstone. Vito is a veteran sideman and studio ace whose credits include John Fogerty, Albert Collins, John Mayall, Jackson Browne, and Bob Seger. (That’s his widely heard slide guitar on the Seger hit/Chevy truck ad “Like a Rock”.) Vito’s role in the MFBB has him singing and playing on a number of old Fleetwood Mac blues tunes written by Peter Green—including gems like “Black Magic Woman”, “Oh Well”, and “Rattlesnake Shake”—but Fleetwood doesn’t really see the quartet’s current tour as a tribute to Green.

“I don’t look at it like that,” he says. “This band has always played bits and pieces of the original band, not only because that would be my request to be doing that, but it becomes relevant that I’m connecting to an audience through the songs that I used to play. Rick is a huge advocate and admirer of Peter Green in any case, but having said how much he likes Peter Green, he’s very formed as a player himself. He’s very much his own stylist, but he loved what Peter used to do, so he was the perfect fit.”

As well as the Green-penned classics, the band’s current set list includes some Vito originals and the odd blues standard. But when it comes to the choice of encore, it’s all about that “Greenie” vibe, via Fleetwood Mac’s dreamy 1968 instrumental—and surprising U.K. hit—“Albatross”.

“Rick plays it beautifully,” notes Fleetwood. “I don’t know how he does it, but he plays both parts, he does the harmony and the melody, answering each other. So we invariably do end our crazy evening with this very ethereal, haunting song.”

The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band plays the Molson Canadian Theatre at Hard Rock Casino on Friday (September 30).

[michelej1]

Mick Fleetwood bringing his blues to Victoria

Mike Devlin / Times Colonist OCTOBER 1, 2016 06:00 AM
- See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/mick-fl....FWWcCPu2.dpuf

Mick Fleetwood, right, and singer-guitarist Rick Vito of the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band, will hit Victoria with bandmates Lenny Castellanos and Mark Johnstone on Sunday. Photograph By Photo By Jonathan Todd
PREVIEW

What: Mick Fleetwood Blues Band featuring Rick Vito with opening act Dino DiNicolo

When: Sunday, 7:30 p.m. (doors at 6:30)

Where: Farquhar Auditorium, University of Victoria

Tickets: $77.50-$97.50 at tickets.uvic.ca, the UVic Ticket Centre, or by phone at 250-721-8480



The longer musicians work at their craft, the more skilled they become at playing the blues.

“At some point, the returns may be a little suspect, but you’ll always find a way of doing it,” said drummer Mick Fleetwood. “Even if you can’t accomplish what you did because of some physical thing, you find methods to get around it — which is a form of getting better at what you do.”

Though he’s known for popularizing folk-rock in Fleetwood Mac, the band’s namesake (who turned 69 over the summer) knows as much about the blues as anyone.

He first started playing the blues in the mid-’60s, with singer Rod Stewart in a band called Shotgun Express.

Fleetwood went on to join John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, before leaving that institution to form an early version of Fleetwood Mac with fellow Bluesbreakers Peter Green and John McVie.

During its early days, Fleetwood Mac was known as one of the premier blues bands in Britain, rivalling for a time the output of the Rolling Stones and Cream. The band split from Green, considered one of the greatest guitar players in history, in 1970, but the foundation from that era has set Fleetwood upon a path that continues today under the guise of the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band.

The quartet is technically considered a side-project — Fleetwood Mac continues to tour, and is reportedly working on material for a new studio album — but the blues will always be a prominent part of his life, Fleetwood said.

“It has been a real shot in the arm, this group. We’re working. I love playing, and there is nothing getting in the way. We’re not trying to prove anything, so it’s all about those two hours on stage.”

Fleetwood said the Grammy Award-nominated group, which has been an on-and-off entity for the past dozen years, is like “a real fraternity.” He is joined in the group by singer-guitarist Rick Vito, bassist Lenny Castellanos and keyboardist Mark Johnstone — none of whom are getting any younger, he quipped.

But with old age comes experience, he added.

“I’m not dead yet. There’s a huge, massive amount of baby boomers who are still vibrant, and they are all finding ways to express, to be emotionally connected. That generation is not going to go easily.”

Vito, an impressive slide-guitar player who in 1987 joined Fleetwood Mac following the departure of Lindsey Buckingham, gives Fleetwood a strong counterpoint in the group. Their long friendship has produced an unspoken musical connection, through which a series of Fleetwood Mac blues classics are channelled in concert. The band’s Victoria debut, which goes Sunday at the University of Victoria’s Farquhar Auditorium, is set up to be something special, Fleetwood promised.

Albatross, Oh Well and Black Magic Woman, three of the biggest hits from the early Fleetwood Mac era, will be performed with zip.

“Someone who is lucky enough, in my opinion, to know how it feels to be passionate … if you have that, you won’t settle for anything less,” Fleetwood said.

Fleetwood has great memories of his career, many of which are centred on his vast collection of photographs.

Fleetwood always had a camera back in the old days, and caught through his lens private moments with members of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, among countless others. It is great to have the images as a reference point today, he said, even though his camerawork made him “the party bore” at the time.

He has shown many of his photographs at exhibitions over the years, including a recent one at a museum near his home in Maui. He is also putting together a pictorial book with Genesis Publications, the company behind similar books of photographs from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd and David Bowie, among others. Fleetwood said his first compendium with the publisher will tell the story of the early days of Fleetwood Mac, before Buckingham and Stevie Nicks arrived.

Another volume of photos during the band’s peak years, which saw them become one of the most commercially successful groups in the history of pop music, is expected to follow.

“I’m not a brilliant photographer, but I loved doing it,” he said. “Really, where it started was the influence of my father, who always carried a camera. I did that with Fleetwood Mac, as did John McVie, to some extent. The corny adage, ‘Every picture tells a story’ is so true, and it certainly helped. A form of mythology can be triggered by an image, by a memory, by a sound.”

Fleetwood has plenty of thoughts on the role musicians of his ilk play in the grand scheme of things. He’s a big believer in paying forward to younger generations some of the knowledge he has acquired during his long career in music.

All they have to do is ask.

“Where your power resides is: ‘What worth are you?’ Sadly, in our society, people forget. But there’s huge worth in Europe, where elders are respected. And they are respected because they have something to say. They are a very good sounding board. He can’t run around the field with you, but you can talk to your grandfather about anything.”

- See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/mick-fl....FWWcCPu2.dpuf

[michelej1]

[Review of Album] Reviews 2016/11/18 by Kristopher Weiss

Jam Bands.com

http://www.jambands.com/reviews/cds/...t-the-belly-up

Mick Fleetwood Blues Band Featuring Rick Vito
Live at the Belly Up

Lest anyone forget where Fleetwood Mac’s roots lie, the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band has a not-so-subtle reminder for anyone willing to listen.Live at the Belly Up finds Fleetwood’s side project doing what it does best – namely breathing life into a genre that has never gotten the love it deserves. That must be why the blues is always so sad. Led by former Fleetwood Mac guitarist/vocalist Rick Vito (1987-1991), the Blues Band pays homage to the band originally known Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac while also covering artists like Willie Dixon(“You Can’t Judge a Book by Looking at the Cover”), Elmore James (“Shake Your Money Maker”) and Sonny Boy Williamson (“Eyesight to the Blind”).But the two-hour, 17-track album is dominated – as it should be – by Green-era Fleetwood Mac blues-rock numbers like “Black Magic Woman,” “Rattlesnake Shake,” “Oh Well” and “Albatross.” A mashup of Green’s “Rollin’ Man” and Vito’s “Voodoo Woman” also works incredibly well as it bounces seamlessly from blues to reggae and back without missing a beat. Bassist Larry Castellanos has the unenviable job of stepping into John McVie’s shoes and shines in the role, while keyboardist and occasional lead vocalist Mark Johnstone is similarly stellar. The quartet is the real deal and does justice to the heavyweights on whose shoulders they stand. That said, Live at the Belly Up sports a few weaknesses. For instance, a 16-minute version of the Lindsey Buckingham-Christine McVie joint “World Turning” feels a bit gratuitous.

Nonetheless, this is a stellar album that will baffle fans of the contemporary Fleetwood Mac and bedazzle fans of the original incarnation.

[michelej1]

Malibu Surfside News, May 9, 2017 by Barbara Burke

http://www.malibusurfsidenews.com/ma...al-bring-noise

Malibu Guitar Festival to bring the noise

The faces and transmitters have changed with the years, but musical appreciation is still as sound as ever.

And the third annual Malibu Guitar Festival, scheduled for May 18-21, offers plenty of talent for all to admire.

“This is not a blues festival,” said Mick Fleetwood, of The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band, headliner for the Malibu Guitar Festival, “but there’s a lot of great music on this festival, and people enjoy listening to blues.”

“Pretty much Buddy Guy is one of the few guys that frankly is left alive … we just lost Chuck Berry, and Little Richard [is] about 90,” he continued. “I mean there’s a whole era that’s coming to a close, and it’s just nice to know that there’s a lot of great young players and young listeners who love listening to the blues and rock ‘n’ roll and have taken an interest.”

Accolades will be given to The Doors’ Robby Krieger and Chief Arvol Looking Horse, who spearheaded efforts against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

But most of all, there will be fun, harmony, optimism, unity and love.

“Our theme for the Guitar Festival this year is Ignite. Unite. Inspire,” said John Watkin, co-founder of the festival. “In almost every house in Malibu, there is a guitar with guitar players ranging from a hack or a legend like Bob Dylan and everyone in between.”

The event will bring the community together to enjoy a veritable potpourri of genres — from blues, to rock and roll, country, indie music, Southern rock and American roots.



Tuning up for the festival

On Monday, May 15, there will be a Jam Night at the Malibu Guitar Festival Headquarters at 23359 Pacific Coast Highway (located behind the Wells Fargo Bank in Malibu Village). At that event, patrons can swap gear and jam and prepare for a wonderful days-long musical experience.

YouTube guitar guru Tim Pierce will give a master class at the festival headquarters on Tuesday, May 16. For that event, the doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the show begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35 if prepaid, or $45 at the event. For tickets, visit www.ticketfly.com/event/1474586-mas
terclass-tim-pierce-malibu.

The opening night event will be at Casa Escobar on Thursday, May 18. This year, the festival’s official charities are THERAsurf, The Emily Shane Foundation and The Karl LaDue Wodakota Foundation.

In addition to great food and live performances, two new awards will be presented.

The Lifetime Achievement in Music Award will be presented to Robbie Krieger, American guitarist of The Doors, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the band.

The Humanitarian Award will be presented to Chief Argol Looking Horse, chief of the Dakota, Nakora and Lakota Nations, and keeper of the Sacred Calf Pipe. The chief spearheaded the efforts at Standing Rock.

The opening night event will feature the multi-talented, multi-instrumentalist platinum selling country artist Hunter Hayes, who, along with Paul McCartney’s Wings’ Laurence Jubery, will also visit Malibu schools to share their love of guitar and music. The pair will perform three special sets for the students at Juan Cabrillo Elementary, Our Lady of Malibu School and Webster Elementary.

Laurence Juber, the Marco Beltrami Ensemble and the Kenneth Brian Band will also take the stage on opening night.

John Hiatt will also be featured.

“He’s one of the greatest songwriters of all time,” said Doug De Luca, co-founder of the Malibu Guitar Festival, of Hiatt. “He’s been incredibly prolific.”

Malibu Youth band New Killer Stars will also take the stage.

As the weekend begins, things will heat up.

Hot Licks Night at Casa Escobar on Friday, May 19, will keep things kickin’ and feature select segments from the upcoming documentary film “The Axe Factor: She Rocks,” along with spectacular performances by Nik West, Lari Basilio, Gretchen Menn, Zepparella, and the legendary Steve Vai.

That evening will also feature Hollis Brown, The Palms, The Band Steele, Dankrupt, the Carothers Brothers and Malibu band the Karma Dealers.

The main event

The main event for the festival will be in the Malibu Village parking lot next to Soul Cycle, located at 23575 Civic Center Way.

Mick Fleetwood and the Blues Band will launch the day’s amazing lineup.

Hunter Hayes will take the stage again. Jamtown, featuring Donavon Frankenreiter, G. Love & Cisco Adler, will follow. The Kenneth Brian Band, Hollis Brown, The Soft White Sixties, Wrenn, The Buzz Wizards, featuring Cleto Escobedo, Duane Betts’ Pistoleers, and Michael John Hayes will all thrill and keep things grooving.

Malibu’s own Malibooz will entertain next. Starting as a surf music band, Malibooz has been riding the waves of musical success for more than 50 years, as they were formed in 1964. The Malibooz lineup includes John Zambetti on guitar/vocals, Walter Egan on guitar/vocals, Scott Monahan on keyboards/vocals, David Chamberlain on bass, and Michael Mason on drums. Egan and Zambetti are the only original members.

“This will be the third time The Malibooz have performed at The Malibu Guitar Festival,” John Zambetti said. “Our genres are surf music and British invasion.”

Zambetti said fans may recognize Egan’s hits, including “Magnet and Steel” and “Hot Summer Nights.”

The day will still be young.

Marcy Levy & Deacon Jones, Laurence Juber, The Band Steele, Lenny Goldsmith and the New Old, and Malibu Youth band Mrs. Gil will all entertain as well.

Australian guitar virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel will also play.

“Tommy has the finger style of Chet Atkins,” DeLuca said. “He can turn the guitar into a whole percussion instrument. He’s amazing. It’s almost like he’s playing a drum.”