What: David Gogo
Where: Hermann’s Jazz Club
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Tickets: $20 (sold out; for waiting list phone 250-388-9166)
David Gogo is poised to return to the recording studio. And this time he plans to crank his amp to the max.
“We want it to be a very balls-out, rockin’ blues album that’s very transferable to stage,” the 45-year-old guitarist said this week from his Nanaimo home.
Although a recent jaunt to Alberta saw him playing solo acoustic shows, he’s best known across Canada for his blistering blues-rock guitar. Friday night, Gogo is joined by his trio (bassist Jay Stevens and drummer Gordon Grant Baird) for a sold-out gig at Hermann’s Jazz Club.
Expect a rocking, high-decibel good time. Speaking with typical bluntness, Gogo declared: “I’m looking forward to strapping on the electric guitar and f---ing wailing.”
The singer-guitarist, signed to Victoria’s independent Cordova Bay label, will collaborate with his longtime producer Rick Salt for the upcoming disc. Salt is moving his recording studio from Lois Lane Studios (under Nanaimo’s Queens Hotel) to the basement of his house. Gogo’s will be the first album to be cut in the new digs.
“It’ll be a throwback to when I was 14 years old and jamming with buddies in my parents’ basement,” the guitarist said with a laugh.
Gogo’s as-yet-untitled album, to be released in time for the summer festival season, will offer mostly originals and a few cover tunes. It’ll be his 14th recording in 21 years.
Despite this wealth of experience, he’s still tweaking his approach to the studio. Gogo said this time he’s especially determined to capture the energy of live performance.
“In the studio, sometimes I’ll tone down my solos a bit, like: ‘Oh, I don’t want to be too much of a guitar wanker.’ But then I realized, that’s what people like about me.”
The disc will be released both as a compact disc and LP. Gogo said he’s especially excited about the latter, as it’s his first vinyl recording. He has always wanted to cut an LP, just like the musical heroes of his youth Magic Sam and Otis Rush.
When Gogo enters the studio, he’ll also be thinking of another one of his heroes. He was a friend (and touring mate) of legendary blues guitarist Johnny Winter, who died last July at 70.
It was Gogo who was selected by Winter’s band to replace Johnny in November when the group played Gravenhust, Ont. This was the sole Canadian concert in a series of tribute dates, said Gogo, who was understandably chuffed by the honour.
The Nanaimo musician has fond memories of Winter, who (along with the late Stevie Ray Vaughan) was a mentor.
On tour, the pair often played music together during sound-check breaks in Winter’s Winnebago. The senior guitarist also enjoyed watching old movies and TV shows he had missed over the years, partly due to a longtime heroin habit.
“Apparently, he’d never heard of Saturday Night Live. So they would get the box set and he would watch it and get all caught up,” Gogo said.
He remembers Winter explaining how he produced Muddy Waters’ 1977 comeback album, Hard Again. The classic disc is admired by blues enthusiasts for its rawness and energy. Winter spoke of how he carefully arranged the microphones for these sessions, making it “sound live, like it would in a club in Chicago in the late 1950s.”
That’s what Gogo’s after when he heads into the studios.
Ironically, he said, many vintage blues discs fail to authentically reflect the live blues experience. That’s because, in the early days of Chess and other labels, recording engineers had bluesmen turn down for fear of overloading their equipment.
“And then you have these blues purist [musicians] that are going in and trying to play this s--t like those are the blueprints. And it’s just a paint-by-numbers. You know what you’re doing, you’re playing a safe, homogenized version of that music.”