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David Gogo’s scattered guitars are not for show

What: David Gogo When: Saturday, 8 p.m. Where: Tally-Ho Sports Bar and Grill, 3020 Douglas St. Tickets: $20 David Gogo is a capital-G guitar player. And with that designation comes a serious stable of guitars, pricey possessions he keeps in B.C.
David Gogo.jpg
David Gogo plays the Tally-Ho Sports Bar and Grill in Victoria on Saturday.

What: David Gogo

When: Saturday, 8 p.m.

Where: Tally-Ho Sports Bar and Grill, 3020 Douglas St.

Tickets: $20

 

David Gogo is a capital-G guitar player. And with that designation comes a serious stable of guitars, pricey possessions he keeps in B.C., Ontario and Europe to help reduce shipping charges when he tours.

“I actually do play them,” Gogo said with a laugh, doing his best to dispel the rumour that axe-slingers are prone to hoarding valuable instruments. “I feel like a guitar is meant to be played.”

Play them he does. When it came to recording his 14th album, Vicksburg Call, he moved the roomful of guitars he keeps at his home in Nanaimo — from his 1959 Gibson 355 and 1972 Les Paul Deluxe to his Gretsch White Falcon and his Martin D-35 — into the Nanaimo studio of producer Rick Salt.

Gogo has plenty to pick from. His stable of six-strings is 30 deep — a respectable number given that the 46-year-old bluesman has been playing professionally for 30 years. And lots of them can be heard on the record, a blazing, woofer-busting tip of the hat to the British electric-blues bands he adored growing up.

It’s a Les Paul-heavy recording, according to Gogo. But the range of styles incorporated on the album also gave him the chance to use one of his earliest guitars, a sticker-laden Fender Stratocaster he has had since he was 16. It was that type of fun-filled recording for Gogo and his bandmates, bassist Jay Stevens and drummer Billy Hicks, who together laid down a version of the Stephen Stills song Jet Set in a single take.

Gogo had his past to guide him on this journey.

“When we talk about a record, and how we’re going to make it, we always go back to what we think is the best thing we ever did. And usually [his 2002 album] Skeleton Key is the one. That’s the one we judge all others against. I don’t sit around and listen to my records all the time, but I did listen to that one a few months ago, and went: ‘Yeah, that’s pretty good.’ That’s what we’re trying to recapture.”

The four-time Juno Award nominee has been on the road of late, bringing the songs from Vicksburg Call, which arrived Sept. 4 on his longtime local label, Cordova Bay Records, to his fans. The tour, which stops in Victoria tonight at the Tally-Ho, has produced some of their best gigs in recent memory, Gogo said, in part because the band “is like a tiger” with new material to perform.

A typical setlist will see Gogo and Co. play everything from classic covers (B.B. King, Depeche Mode) to fan favourites and new material.

“We’re kicking ass and taking names. My fingers hurt, so it’s good.”

His intention was to make this run of concerts sound like the new record, not always an easy feat. He wanted concertgoers to hear the music in the way it was recorded, with just himself, Hicks and Stevens plying their trades in the studio. His bandmates were more involved than ever in the writing process, and you can hear the collaborative efforts of both the band and Salt, whom Gogo calls one of the best engineer-producers around, throughout Vicksburg Call.

“These boys were involved with the whole project, and I think that’s what has made the difference. I really believe in the album. This record is too good to let it float away.”

Gogo was in an emotional state during the writing and recording of the album, which gives his six originals on Vicksburg Call a shot of reality; a passionate spin on the Annie Lennox hit Why adds even more emotional punch.

A longtime relationship went south prior to writing, Gogo said, which compounded the grief he was feeling after the deaths of friends and acquaintances including Johnny Winter, B.B. King, Ron Casat and Rick Parashar, the Pearl Jam producer who also handled Gogo’s 1994 debut.

“I had a little bit of a rocky go of it in the old relationship department, plus a lot of close people to me in the business passed away. But that’s living life.”

That’s the blues, to be sure. No one becomes a blues guitarist and songwriter to make ends meet. Making a living ripping 12-bar solos for audiences across the world is the happy-accident part of the equation, he said. Most musicians who play the blues do so because it’s in their blood.

“[Great Speckled Bird guitarist] Amos Garrett told me it’s a calling, that we don’t have a choice. But I’m happy I chose the genre I chose because you get better at playing blues as you age and experience things in life. And, unfortunately, a lot of those things you experience are loss and upheaval.”

The hard-scrabble life of a blues musician is made easier on Gogo by where he lives — a picturesque parcel of Nanaimo property that was handed down to him and his family through generations of Gogos. Returning home from the road to a spacious property in his hometown, not far from the water, leaves him little to complain about. But that doesn’t mean he works any less than his blues-playing, dues-paying brethren.

“I don’t want to be lying in a hospital dying, thinking: ‘Man, if I just tried a little harder maybe I could have done better.’ I pride myself on working my tits off.”

mdevlin@timescolonist.com