Binky Griptite shares video for bluesy swinger "What's My Number"

Watch Binky Griptite's new clip for his Howlin' Wolf-inspired single "What's My Number" Parts 1 & 2 available from his site. 

From Birth to Binky Griptite

Franklin Stribling is better known as Binky Griptite, guitarist and emcee with The Dap-Kings and a co-founder of The Soul Providers (with Gabriel Roth) which were the Desco Records house band in the days before Daptone. He recalls the years leading up to becoming Binky Griptite in 1999 below. 

Born June 25th 1966 just after midnight at Milwaukee County General Hospital. I'm the youngest of 7 and the 4th boy child thus breaking the tie. I've been listening to music actively since I was 5, so that's 1971. I was raised on a combination of black radio of the time and my older siblings' and mom's record collections, ranging from David's Funkadelic and Deep Purple records to Ann's Three Dog Night and Simon & Garfunkel records, as well as the bands I saw on Soul Train and American Bandstand and Midnight Special. On TV I saw Al Green, James Brown, Bobby Bland, The Edgar Winter Group, The Faces, so many artists. Even Hee Haw! Anything with music and especially guitar players in the shot. 

Like, I remember when "Superstition" was the HOT NEW JAM by Stevie Wonder, stuff like that. Any music that happened after '71 or '72, I got to  experience it in real time and I'm very thankful for that. This is what informs everything that I play. 

My sister Ann's nylon string guitar was always around but the neck was too big for me for a long time so I mostly treated it as a toy until I discovered it made a pretty nice drum if I tapped it with my fingers so I truly started as a drummer. When I was first handed a set of bongos by my first grade music teacher I knew exactly what to do with them, thanks to my experience drumming on the guitar and from watching I Love Lucy. Thank you Ricky Ricardo!

Then my brother Ted showed me how to play Smoke On The Water by Deep Purple because one of his friends showed him. He didn't play guitar either but the beauty of the riff is that anybody can play it! I was 7 when that came out, so I had that to play for a while but I really didn't get on the path to playing til I was 12 or so.

The Funkadelic album Cosmic Slop also came out when I was 7 and has been my favorite record ever since. I wanted to do that, to be that. I decided to be a musician long before I was one. My brother David took me to P Funk shows at Summerfest in Milwaukee starting in '75 I think, and I became a Bootsy fan.

David bought me a bass when I was 11 or so but I had no one to teach me so it laguished for a while and eventually disappeared from the house under mysterious circumstances. I found it in a pawn shop some months later and it was rebought. I took a few lessons and it got stolen again when I set it down at a bus stop  on a cold day. 

It was replaced with an electric guitar. Still without a teacher I was intimidated by the 6 strings and thought bass would be easier so I traded it for a bass. Then I became intimidated by thinking "I'll never be as good as Bootsy so what's the point"

Round about this time I happened to see Devo on the TV show "Friday's" (wannabe SNL by ABC). I fell in love with the guitar Bob Mothersbaugh was playing. It was a brand new looking thing I'd never seen before and I wanted one. I wanted to play be a guitar player and I wanted THAT guitar.

The very next day I went to the music store I frequently loitered in and I found it, they had a cheap knockoff of the sparkly blue Ibanez Iceman that I wanted! The Lotus version was the wrong color and made of plywood but it was as close as I could afford to get to the real thing. It took a few weeks but I musta begged and traded or whatever to get it and it got got. That was the guitar that finally got me started at 14. Now, 42 years later I have a lot of guitars but I still don't have an Iceman.

Check out Binky Griptite's latest single "What's My Number" below. Get a copy from his site right here: Binkygriptite.com 

 

Quarantunes: Katie Bulley

Hamilton's Katie Bulley has been busy posting solo performances from her home, check out a couple of 'em.

Shannon Shaw channels Amy Winehouse on Dan Auerbach produced album

Here's the clip for Shannon Shaw's "Broke My Own" off Shannon In Nashville out June 8 on Easy Eye Sound.

Patti Smith @ Massey Hall tonight

  Patti Smith interviewed on NPR's All Songs Considered

Paul Burch lights up Wacos on Great Chicago Fire

Over eight boisterously blustery albums for Bloodshot, what the Waco Brothers have lacked in the subtleties of singing and songcraft, Jon Langford and his bruising band of British country-pub bashers have always made up for with pure piss 'n' vinegar. Way over on the opposite end of the twangy spectrum, Nashville traditionalist crooner Paul Burch has a well-earned rep for knocking out new tunes that sound remarkably like early 50s honky tonk classics. So put them together in a studio and you could have an epic brawl on your hands or a heavenly hayseed hybrid destined to go viral.

Either way, it had to be worth the risk for both parties since the Wacos have been putting out pretty much the same album for the last few years and Burch's recent associations with Mark Knopfler and PBS documentary filmmakers was a worrying turn considering his prior string of artistic successes fronting the WPA Ballclub. 

After hearing the recorded results on Great Chicago Fire (out April 24), it appears that cooler heads prevailed, at least long enough to come up with something even better than anyone could've expected. As with Wilco's unexpectedly successful throwdown with Billy Bragg on the Woody Guthrie song project Mermaid Avenue or even Amy Winehouse's career-changing encounter with Brooklyn's Dap-Kings for Back To Black, there seems to be something in the Brits-meet-Yanks concept that sufficiently ups the creative ante to make great things possible if everyone involved is willing to participate in the cultural exchange.

There are a couple of songs where Burch sounds like a tipsy club-owner who jumped onstage for a Wacos encore and others which you can envision the seated Wacos plonking their way through Burch's sheet music but Great Chicago Fire's finest moments are the true collaborations like Wrong Side Of Love, Transfusion Blues and Up On The Mountain which neither could've done better on their own. Hopefully it's not a one-off.

Paul Burch will put down the books to join the Waco Brothers in Austin for Bloodshot's annual day party at Yard Dog (1510 South Congress)  on Friday (March 16) at 5:30 pm prior to Bloodshot's official SXSW showcase at Red Eyed Fly (715 Red River) on Saturday (March 17) at 10:30 pm. Additionally, Burch will appear on a bill with Jon Langford, Rosie Flores and Garland Jefferies at The Ginger Man (301 Lavaca) on Thursday (March 15) at 2:30 pm. 

LINKS
label http://bloodshotrecords.net/wacosburchpress/
Paul Burch http://www.paulburch.com/fr_homeplate.cfm
Jon Langford http://jonlangford.de/
Yard Dog Gallery http://www.yarddog.com/

RIP Amy Winehouse, 1983 - 2011

MIA - "27"

said your all mouth and no brains
all rock stars go to heaven
you said you'll be dead at 27 seven
when we drunk in a English tavern
the owner poured you the Bourbon
and you drunk your self so rotten
so he got so rich he bought a Bentley
and moved himself to Devon

you started dirty dancing
and you bar tended a dozen
i took you to the clinic
to get you clean but you couldn't
said in 2 days ur 27 and and ur destiny was comin
so ur papa passed so sudden
and left you with lil somin

you blew that money on a mountain of drugs
and staged your self a bed in
a month later when i popped in
your still high but the winter set in
i bought you a coffee and a muffin
and you quoted me some Lenin
i wished i was that clever
but thats what kept me coming
your friendship did mean somin
but you left me for nothin
when i left, you befriended a rope
and i saw you both were hanging.

  27 by _M_I_A_