Interview: Alastair Greene Blues Rocker

Photo: Alastair Greene by R. Keith Lambert, blues rocker

By Martine Ehrenclou

Blues/rock guitarist, singer, songwriter Alastair Greene recently released a live album, ‘Alive In the New World’ produced by Tab Benoit. Out on Whiskey Bayou Records, the album sees Alastair perform 10 songs as a power trio with Tab Benoit on drums and Corey Duplechin on bass. The outcome is an electrifying live blues/rock album recorded over six sold-out shows at The City Winery in Chicago.

Greene spent eight years touring internationally with rock legend The Alan Parsons Project and major dates with Starship with Mickey Thomas. He’s a compelling and soulful player, a multi-charting Top 10 Billboard artist. His last album, The New World Blues (2020) was also produced by Benoit. Alastair also spent a year as the guitarist for Grammy nominee and Blues Music Award winner Sugaray Rayford. Greene rocks the blues and has made guest appearances with Walter Trout, Coco Montoya, Savoy Brown, Eric Burdon, John Nemeth, Debbie Davies and more.

After congratulating Alastair on his new album Alive In the New World, I shared that I love the first song, the instrumental “Back At The Poor House.” I said, “Your guitar riffs and solos are killer, but also soulful. I’m curious about that.”

Alastair said, “Thank you. I’m getting older and I’m getting tired of trying to play really fast. I came from hard rock so I spent some time on technique. At a certain point, practicing over the years, I kind of realized that I was going to shift my attention to writing, phrasing, trying to get the most out of my technical ability. I realized that I want to put my attention somewhere else because it’s not as important to me to be able to play blistering fast anymore. I want to have my identity as a guitar player and to do that, I felt it was in my best interest to try and be more lyrical. Maybe that’s what you refer to as soulful. I want to be melodic and not just feel like I’m firing off rapid fire finger exercises but actually trying to play to be in moment.”

“It’s a pleasure to listen to. There’s space between the notes,” I said.

Alastair continued. “I appreciate you saying so. I’ve been doing it for a long time but when I go to improvise, when I get an opportunity to solo where I know I’m going to stretch something out, I just don’t worry about making mistakes, ’cause I kind of know that there’s going to be what I would notice as a mistake. It’s a little bit of reckless abandon because that’s where, to me, it becomes really fun. I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen’ and that’s when it becomes fun. And I think people connect with that.”

Adding to what Alastair descibed, I said, “I think that’s where, at least for me personally, where some of the magic is in guitar playing and in your guitar playing. When I listen to it, I feel something and I notice that there is space between the notes. I don’t know if it’s purposeful or not, but it seems like you’re really in it.”

“Back At The Poor House (live)”

 
Alastair shared that “at the end of the day, this kind of music, however you want to label it– blues rock–that music comes from blues, which was created out of a lot of feeling. And I think that’s what draws so many people into that music because it makes you feel something. I try to honor all those people that came before. And at the same time, I just try to be true to myself and what I am trying to get across as a musician.”

We discussed his new album, the shows at The City Winery in Chicago, with Tab Benoit on drums and Corey Duplechin on bass. I was curious how he chose the songs from those nights to go on Alive In The New World.

Alastair explained the beauty of playing six nights in a row and how you don’t have to travel or set up or tear down the gear and how he got to know the sound engineer and got comfortable in the room. “I felt like it kind of stacked the odds in my favor to get some good recordings.” He shared that he chose what he thought were the best of the songs, handed them to Benoit who weighed in and mixed and engineered.

Alastair described the chemistry between him, Benoit and Duplechin as a trio. He said, “For me it is so funny to refer to Tab as a drummer because he’s one of the most amazing singing-guitar playing frontmen on the scene. I refer to him as, well, the drummer in my band, but Tab is a guitar player and songwriter and he’s toured incessantly for a long time. He’s played a lot of music, played a lot of guitar solos. He’s aware of what I’m doing, and in some way he’ll hear where I’m going sometimes. And it’s really fun to play with him because he interacts with what I’m doing and I interact with what he’s doing in a unique way because of his experience as a musician.”

“Tab loves playing drums, so you can kind of hear that excitement too,” Alastair said. “He’s known as this guitar playing singer, legendary Louisiana guy. And he gets behind the kit and he has a lot of fun and you can hear that in his playing.”

I urged Alastair to go on about what it’s like to play with Tab and Corey as a trio.

Photo: Alastair Greene by May Ellis, blues rocker

He said, “We’re having fun and that’s kind of an X factor with these things is you can have competent or amazing musicians all playing together and it’s going to sound great. But if you have guys that are having fun and exploring these improvisational spaces–it can be because we do have a lot of fun offstage, we’re laughing all the time and joking. And we’ve got some inside jokes on stage. We’re having fun. And I think that that’s important for the audience. The audience may not know exactly what’s going on every single moment, but they can tell that we’re having a good time. When you’re improvising, and this is something that I like about improvisational music is, if it’s similar every night, it’s still different. And I think that gives the audience a chance to feel like they’re a part of something that’s special, that’s never going to happen again the exact same way.”

Alastair Greene comes from a rock musical background. Tab Benoit is Louisiana blues. I asked, “Since you’ve been playing, performing, and recording with Tab, do you think you’ve moved more into blues?”

“He and I had talked a little bit about how he wanted to record,” Alastair said. “He wanted to show me the tune, let’s record it, get our first impressions just knowing some of his repertoire or he came from. I really wanted to be open to he and Corey really putting their stamp of a rhythm section on it and bringing that to it. So, I kind of wrote in a way that was going to be conducive to that, not try and come up with big complicated rock operas. I wanted to keep it simple blues based, and then just let it be whatever it was going to be and let them shine as well. This one ended up, organically, being a little bit more kind of blues based, simpler song structures in a way. ‘Living Today’ is a rock song and ‘Heroes’ is a rock ballad.”

I said, “But some of them have a lot of groove. Did that come with working with Tab?”

“Absolutely,” Alastair said. “That’s what I mean. I wanted to have material that would allow them (Benoit and Duplechin) to really put their thing on it. All the funk music that from New Orleans–look at all the great grooves, all the great music that comes out of that part of the world. I really wanted that to be a part of the record.”

I asked what was coming up for him.

“The next few months are going to be busy,” Alastair said. “April, I’m going to be going out with Tab for about three weeks, mostly the south and a little bit of Eastern Midwest shows. And then in May I’m going go to England and open for Walter Trout for about two weeks worth of shows. And then June and July, I’ve got a bunch of stuff with my trio. We’re going to do a couple tours to the east and play some up the Eastern Seaboard and then back to the Midwest. And then in July we’re actually going to come out to California and then make our way back.”

For more information on Alastair Greene see his website here