Category: 2022

Featured Musician – Jimmy Schwarz

Over 30 years I’ve been privileged to have so many great musicians come through the band, and this current group is a dynamic collection of a 5-piece group that plays with 1 musical mind.

Tell us a little about your history as a blues artist. Bands you’ve played with, how long, etc.

I started The Blues Disciples over 30 years ago. In the late 80’s, I lived near Brady Street and started spending a lot of time at the Up & Under Pub.  Having been trained as a vocalist in college, I began to sit in at open jams and eventually started the band.

During those early years, I also played with “Jimmy and The Flamethrowers” which was the same core band with a different guitar player.  Over the years I have played a lot of harmonica for Rev Raven and a lot of other bands too numerous to remember.

What do you do for fun when you are not playing?
I watch soccer, drink coffee, and smoke reefer.

How did the Blues Disciples get started?
We were very much inspired by the Blues scene in Milwaukee at the time, and wanted to start a band to be a part of it.

Who are your biggest musical influences?
Kermit Stokes, Billy Flynn, Jim Liban, Lee McBee, The Belairs, William Clark, so many more!!

Tell us about your first paid gig.
I got us a gig at a bar in Port Washington, half the band had no gig experience, but it went well, and it became a semi-regular gig for us in the early years of the band.

If you could collaborate with another musician who would it be?
Right now I am collaborating with my favorite 4 musicians in the world, the other 4 Blues Disciples.  We have started work on a new release with everyone in the band writing new original songs.  Over 30 years I’ve been privileged to have so many great musicians come through the band, and this current group is a dynamic collection of a 5 piece group that plays with 1 musical mind.  Instead of myself writing and arranging all the songs, the next release will be a true collaboration of all members of the band, and I think it will be our best effort yet!

Also, I’d enjoy collaborating with Mike Morgan down in Texas, and of course a Robert Cray Collab would be a dream come true!

Describe Blues Disciples fans in 3 words.
The Best!   You can have 1 word back 🙂

What is your opinion about covers?
To me, the term “cover” means different things in different contexts and genres.  If we’re talking about popular music, and “cover bands” that fill church festivals, cruise ships, and weddings with the goal of sounding “just like the record”, I’m not a fan, but I definitely understand fellow musicians playing those gigs, cause that’s where the money is at for a musician that’s not touring a bigger show.

If we’re talking about Blues or Jazz, I would use the word “standards” as opposed to “covers.” When we cover a BB King song, we’re not trying to copy BB King, we’re trying to play a standard in our own style and interpretation, and hearing my musical peers interpret standards in their own way is musical growth.

What advice would you give to young musicians?
Don’t take any advice from me 🙂

but ok…

After you learn the technical fundamentals of your instrument, the next step is to find your own unique style, you have one, but it may take some time and experimenting with different things to weed out what's you from your influences.  Influences are great to have, but don’t try to be them, be you.

How much time do you spend listening to music each day or week?  Playing music?
I play about an average of 2 gigs a week, so that’s usually at least 6 hours of playing music a week, when I do recording for other artists that’ll usually be 10 hours per song by the time I’ve finished.  I do listen to music frequently, but also have frequent periods of no listening and sometimes long silent rides to and from gigs.

What is your least favorite type of music?
Karaoke

Karaoke – Yeah, or nah?
…. see above…

Jimmy Schwarz
Harmonica, Vocals
Blues Disciples

Blues Disciples Jimmy Schwarz.

“Over 30 years I’ve been privileged to have so many great musicians come through the band, and this current group is a dynamic collection of a 5-piece group that plays with 1 musical mind. “

Jimmy Schwarz

Featured Musician – Dave Cornette

Dave Cornette
Drums/Vocal
Blues Disciples

Tell us a little about your history as a blues artist.  Bands you’ve played with, how long etc.
I have been crafting grooves and keeping the time on the bandstand for 40 years. At 15 years old, the calling to drum set and percussion was undeniable after also pursuing piano, baritone horn and voice. He brings a groove mindset to every ensemble he accompanies laying out a great rhythmic platform to highlight the song as well as his fellow musicians.

I have performed with various musical acts and artists in the folk, blues, R&B and jazz genres both live and in the studio including The Blues Disciples, The Danny Miller Band, Paul Stillen Jazz, Inside Sky, The Chesterfield Kings, Roxi Copeland, Jimmy and the Flamethrowers, The Persuaders, New Living Spaces, Scott Sharrard, Larry Thiess, Susan Julian, Billy Flynn, Perry Weber, Steve Cohen, Stokes and many more.

What do you do for fun when you are not playing?
Furniture refinishing and custom painting/finishing.

Who are your biggest musical influences?
Too many to name and many in different genres. Drumming influences would be (to name a few): Art Blakey, Brian Blade, Steve Gadd, Hal Blaine, etc.

Tell us about your first paid gig.
At 15 years old (I am 55 now) I played drums on a folk-rock gig with older musicians every Thursday night at a small club in Shorewood Wisconsin. My parents needed to accompany me.

What’s the most important skill to have as a musician right now?
Intense listening skills to allow the best support of the fellow musicians on stage with me. Also, a sense of what to play and not to play to best support the band and the groove. This is acquired through mileage in performance. I call it creative sensibility.

If you could change one thing about the music business, what would it be?
Better pay. Financial compensation in this business is nowhere equal to the compensation in other walks of life. Also, the pay rate never changes to compensate for inflation. That does not happen in any other profession.

What is your opinion about covers?
I see no point in playing a cover exactly as the original. Although some purist fans that go to hear cover bands would disagree. Playing a cover with a musical group’s style and creativity infused into it makes it a completely different song and makes it completely unique even though the form and lyrics may be exactly like the original version. Music is meant to be creative and interpretive. If a group is covering songs exactly like the original, then save the cost of a band and play the original CD instead.

Tell us about one of your music teachers.
I have had a few different teachers/mentors with different instruments, voice and in the percussion realm. Larry Theiss was a vocal teacher of mine. He is particularly memorable as he had a significant impact on my choice to pursue music and always had a gentle, nurturing approach to pull the best out of you and to inspire you to perform better. You never know who your next teacher might be. One of my favorite pastimes is to observe a band/drummer. I learn something every time.

What are the benefits of listening to music? Playing music?
Both activities can be a sort of out of body experience where I am fully in touch with my creative side. While performing, there is an incredible creative collaboration with the other musicians and transcendence from normal reality that I have never been able to duplicate in other aspects of my life. Performing clears and unclutters my brain and leaves me with a contented feeling especially if the band/group was really connecting on stage. It sort of completes you.

If music were removed from the world, how would you feel?
Empty. Like someone took away my favorite food or person.

Karaoke –  Yeah, or nah?
Yeah, because even though it can be brutal for musicians to listen to, it is a venue where non-musicians can touch the joy of performance. Everyone should experience that in their lifetime!

Featured Musician -Too Sick Charlie

Eric Heiligenstein  AKA Too Sick Charlie
Cigar Box, Vocals

Tell us a little about your history as a blues artist.  Bands you’ve played with, how long etc.
Too Sick Charlie plays the cigar box guitar, a once forgotten instrument of American blues and roots music. His music has been described as traditional Upper Midwestern cigar box guitar blues.

Too Sick was born in a Nassau blue Chevy Bel Air that was being used as a beagle pen on the outskirts of Belleville, Illinois. He performed on the Mississippi River Medicine Show Circuit for several years before transitioning into a practice of medicine. After developing various snake oil cures for ailments that proved unfounded (but very, very profitable) he made his way to Madison, Wisconsin where he lives a quiet, ascetic life of medical study, song writing and robustly varied acquiescence to almost constant temptation.

What do you do for fun when you are not playing?
I love to work out. Run, bike, ski, etc.

How did Too Sick Charlie get started?
I had to take some time off from music due to family issues. In addition, the harmonica player I performed with moved. So I decided to return to performing as a one man band as much driven by necessity than desire to do so. With that change I also transitioned to home-made instruments (3 string cigar box guitars) and multiple instruments (harmonica, drums). The three sting guitar was a perfect fit for my vision of blues music. Less is sometimes more… A major attraction to playing a 3 string CBG was not having rules to deal with. Anything goes.

Who are your biggest musical influences?
RL Burnside, Lightning Hopkins, The Ramones, ZZ Top, Spinal Tap

Who is/are the most famous person(s) you’ve shared the stage with?
Samantha Fish

Do you write songs?  If so, where do you write? How do you find time to write?  What’s your writing process like?
I write songs but they are more often spontaneous combustion in my head than purposefully sitting down to write them. When a song comes to me I go with it. But otherwise don’t try to force the process. When they come to you, the process is pretty quick so doesn’t take that much time as you’re in a zone.

If you could collaborate with another musician who would it be?
Any: Prince.  Alive: Billy Gibbons

What’s the most important skill to have as a musician right now?
Persistence.

Describe  Too Sick Charlie  fans in 3 words.
All my friends….

What is your opinion about covers?
Straight covers are boring. When people make them their own (derivative works) then you have magic. Incremental change makes music better. Best example: Stevie Ray Vaughn

 What are the benefits of listening to music? Playing music?
Listening always generates ideas for new ways to look at your music. It helps you look at ways in making your music more interesting to listeners.

 Karaoke –  Yeah, or nah?
 Ugh.

Behind the Music: The Godmother of Rock and Roll

By Eric Heiligenstein, MD (aka Too Sick Charlie)

Rock-n-Roll was invented by a woman who played the electric guitar in ways very few people could have ever imagined.

The Godmother of rock music is Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Her Gibson guitar and voice changed the trajectory of rock & roll, blues, and soul music. She influenced individual musicians such as Tina Turner and Aretha Franklin, while her guitar style had a significant impact on Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Keith Richards and innumerable others.

Born Rosetta Nubin in Cotton Plant, Arkansas in 1915, her parents were both passionate about music. She grew up in the Church of God in Christ where her mother was the preacher. As in many Black churches, religious worship was conducted through musical expression. Rosetta was described as a music prodigy and at age four she began singing and playing her guitar in the church.

She later traveled with her mother around the South, performing in churches as Little Rosetta Nubin, billed as the “Singing and Guitar Playing Miracle.” She became Sister Rosetta Tharpe in 1938, after a brief marriage to her first husband Thomas J. Tharpe ended. She then moved with her mother to New York City, by way of Chicago. (Tharpe and her husband legally divorced in 1943.) The first songs she recorded on Decca Records in New York, “My Man and I,” “That’s All,” “The Lonesome Road,” and “Rock Me,” were instant hits and made her the first commercially successful gospel artist.

She later began performing in Harlem nightclubs where she played gospel songs with astonishing self-assurance and flair. By the 1940s, she distorted the sound of her guitar, a technique that was completely original at the time and would be copied by legions of rock guitarists in the future. A woman playing guitar and singing spiritual songs in nightclubs was unheard of. Gospel singers didn’t cross over to secular music. You were one or the other. She did it anyway and lost many of her religious fans.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe continued to tour and make new music throughout the fifties and into the sixties. In May 1964 she performed a legendary show as part of the American Folk Blues Festival. Filmed at an abandoned railroad station in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, it was broadcast nationwide in England. The young audience sat on one platform while the performers played from the other side of the tracks. The program- makers placed tubs, barrels and other items on the platform to apparently resemble the porch of a southern shack.

The producers arranged a tacky entrance for her. She pulls up in a horse and buggy and New Orleans jazz singer Cousin Joe Pleasant helps her out of the carriage. Dressed in a luxurious fur coat, Tharpe was rock-and-roll royalty whether people knew it or not. She then walks across the edge of the platform and picks up her guitar.

Tharpe hits a chord but is in the wrong key. She turns to the band for the right key and then the magic happens. Tharpe hadn’t planned to sing the gospel number “Didn’t It Rain”, but due to a downpour that preceded her entrance, she made the impromptu decision, and the producers agreed. As this performance demonstrates, her voice, charisma and guitar playing made her one of the most influential and under-rated musical talents of all time.

Nine years later at age 57, Sister Rosetta Tharpe died from a stroke and complications of diabetes. She was buried in Philadelphia in an unmarked grave. A headstone erected decades after her death bears these words: “She would sing until you cried, and then she would sing until you danced for joy. She kept the church alive and the saints rejoicing.” She was posthumously inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

Performance link Didn’t It Rain Performance on You Tube.

Watch her move at 3:30 of the video. If this doesn’t give you chills, then I can’t help you… “Didn’t It Rain”, sometimes titled as “Oh, Didn’t It Rain”, is a spiritual about Noah’s flood. In 1919 it appeared as sheet music in an arrangement for voice and piano by Henry Thacker Burleigh (1866–1949). If you’re like me and were stunned after watching her virtuosity, here’s another performance link for her hit “That’s All” (date unknown but likely 1940’s). Her guitar intro is ample proof of her genius.

Performance link That’s All Performance on You Tube.