"There's a city in Holland named Haarlem, they have a fantastic art museum, and back in '92 they were featuring comic strip artists from around the world, which was pretty cool," Magic Dick remembers. "I've always been interested in comic art, artistically speaking. A graphic artist named Peter Pontiac, was offered the responsibility to put together musical entertainment for this celebration of comic strip art, including R. Crumb...they had a huge exhibit of Crumb's original artwork."
"So Peter Pontiac was in charge of the music, and I happened to be one of his favorite musicians. So he got in touch with me and asked if I would be interested in coming over for a couple of weeks to front a Dutch blues band. I hadn't worked in quite a long time, and I thought 'this sounds like an interesting opportunity.' I love Holland, and so does my wife, so I decided to say yes."
Bluestime with Magic Dick & J. Geils
"So that's how Bluestime actually got started," says Magic Dick. "I went over there and met with the band, I didn't know any of them. They were all great guys, and pretty good players, too, so we put some material together. When I came back from that experience, I called up J. Geils and told him about it. I went over to see him and we chatted, J. hadn't been playing his guitar for quite a while, he had been focusing on automotive stuff."
"So I told J. that I was interested in continuing this format, that I was interested in singing and fronting a band. What I wanted to do was classic blues material that I had originally fallen in love with back in the day when J. and Danny, we were all immersing ourselves into this stuff at the time. I wanted to go back to the very roots of the J. Geils Band, which was Chicago style blues."
Bluestime On Record
Bluestime released two critically-acclaimed albums: 1994's Bluestime and 1996's Little Car Blues, both discs featuring a few Magic Dick/J. Geils originals sprinkled among classic blues tunes from folks like Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Willie Dixon.
"I wanted to do it more effectively than we had ever done before, and I think that we achieved that on the two Bluestime recordings," says Magic Dick. "The thing with Bluestime, it was much less rock-oriented blues and more pure to the Chicago style. So that's what we did for about ten years. J. was interested and he picked his guitar up again and we really got into it."
The Legendary Rhythm & Blues Revue
These days, Magic Dick is blowing his harp with the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Revue. "My involvement with the whole thing started as a request from Roger Naber," he says. "Roger Naber is a managing partner of the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, which goes twice a year - once in January, from Fort Lauderdale, and in October from San Diego. Both cruises are a week long. They feature 20 or more blues acts that are performing almost around the clock, it's really a 24/7 party for a whole week. It's a heck of a lot of fun!"
"I got this call from Roger Naber a couple of years ago," he remembers, "and he explained to me what the cruise is like, what they're doing, and he had this idea to bring me on board as a special guest to play with whomever I wanted."
"What happens is that Tommy Castro often leads certain jam sessions on the cruise," explains Magic Dick. "I got to meet Tommy and jam with those guys, and I also met Deana Bogart and Ronnie Baker Brooks. As a result of the great musical success that we had jamming on the ship, we decided to do a land tour. It's just gone so great, as far as audience response to what we're doing, that we continue to do it."
Up For The Challenge
"As for me, as a harp player, it's challenging playing with this group," says Magic Dick. "There's a horn section in the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Revue, which is a standard part of Tommy Castro's band. These horn players are great. Deana also plays horn, too - she's a sax player as well as keyboards and an amazing vocalist. Just to be up there with these people playing, the musical talent, it's pretty heavy."
"When we do our show, since it's in a "revue" context, that means that Tommy Castro starts the show, he does about a half hour. Then Deana does her set, then I come out and do my thing, and then we have the guy we call 'The Closer,' Ronnie Baker Brooks. We take a break, go out and meet and greet everybody, after a bit we go back onstage and play a pretty extensive jam. Sometimes we have some local talent come up and jam with us, too."
"The jam aspect of what we're doing keeps it fresh," says Magic Dick. "It's not planned, we don't really know what we're going to do, it's spur-of-the-moment, and it's pretty exciting stuff that happens." (Magic Dick interview by phone, March 23, 2009)
