Legendary rock bass player and songwriter BOB DAISLEY has a new project back home in Australia.
It's a blues band called 'The Hoochie Coochie Men'.
The band's debut CD is a mix of blues covers and originals played and produced in an old blues style.
The CD is available only at Bob's official web-site
 http://bobdaisley.com

 

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Bob about The Hoochie Coochie Men and other current happenings. Check it out and check out his site to purchase the CD.

 

 

How did things come about? This is different to most of the stuff you've done for the past 20 years.

 

Bob: Well, I've always had a blues influence. Anything that was blues-orientated I preferred it, like I'm probably associated more with the heavier stuff like Ozzy and Uriah Heep and that kind of thing, but in my earlier days, when I was a teenager, the bands I listened to most were Cream - who were very blues orientated, The Yardbirds, then Led Zeppelin when they came along - because they're all very blues orientated. I hooked up with a friend of mine here, Tim Gaze, and I was in a band with Tim in 1970 called Kahvas Jute. And he had a blues band and he said 'do you want to do a few gigs?' and I said 'yeah, sure!' And we had lots of fun doing these blues gigs, and then we got together and wrote a couple of tunes, and then he was going to be doing a blues album anyway, and I got involved in that - playing on it, writing on it, and producing it, and hence we have the 'Hoochie Coochie Men' product.
I came up with the name Hoochie Coochie Men only because it was an old blues song "The Hoochie Coochie Man" by, I think, Muddy Waters recorded it and written by Willie Dixon. And I thought 'well at least it sounds bluesy'. I didn't know but in the '60s Long John Baldry, and I think Rod Stewart was in the band at the time - he had a band called Hoochie Coochie Men. I just found that out recently.

 

It's very old school blues; it's not like a lot of the modern blues stuff that's heavier and that...

 

Bob: We didn't want us to sound slick and clever, because to me slick, clever, highly produced stuff doesn't sound like authentic blues. I just wanted it to sound like people playing blues from the heart and from the soul, from their emotions - without being too clever...Really the Hoochie Coochie Men album is just a bunch of blokes playing music together, rather than perfection in the studio with a big production and lots of overdubs and everybody doing their part individually. We just got together and played it and that's how it is.

 

I don't have the credits here, How much of this is original?

 

Bob:  There's 10 songs and I think 4 are original and 6 covers.

 

The Willie Dixon song "I Just Wanna Make Love To You", that's been covered quite a bit.

 

Bob: Yeah. That's just our version of a song that's been done quite a few times, The Stones did it, lots of people have done it. The one song that sort of sticks out for me is the Willie Dixon song called "You Need Love". That's the song that Led Zeppelin put their names to [ha ha]. It's basically the same song; they did their arrangement of it, but arranging a song is not writing a song. And they put Page and Plant on that and they got sued by Willie Dixon and then his estate and Willie Dixon won. And I think now on later releases with that song on it - "Whole Lotta Love", it's got 'R. Plant / J. Page / [and] W. Dixon'

 

Yeah I was amazed...It's the exact same song.

 

Bob: Yeah, a different arrangement but it's still the same song. Let's say the difference of the arrangement of The Beatles' song "With A Little Help From My Friends" - how they did it, and then Joe Cocker did it totally different to The Beatles but he still had to put it down as Lennon and McCartney because it was their song.

 

The Cream song "Strange Brew"...

 

Bob:  Cream were sort of well known for taking old blues songs, like "Crossroads" and dressing them up in to a heavy '60s sounding blues-rock thing. So Strange Brew was one of their original songs, so we did the reverse - we took an old '60s blues-rock song and made it sound like an old blues song.

 

The originals - have you written some of this stuff? 

 

Bob: Yeah, I wrote... there's a song on their called "New Old Lady Blues" - that's mine, and there's a song called "24 / 7 Blues" - that I wrote most of, including all the lyrics, and Tim and I put the music together. So that's written between both of us.
There's a song called "Playin The Blues" by Tim, and there's another called "She Whines", and that's written by Rob the drummer.

 

There's just 3 of you guys!?

 

Bob: Well that's the main core of the band. One of the songs has a sax player; some of the songs have a keyboard player - which is the keyboard player from a band called 'The Whitlams' [named after an Australian Prime Minister]. And the harmonica player is Jim Conway. Jim is a very good harmonica player, probably one of the best in Australia, but unfortunately he has Multiple Sclerosis and he's in a wheel chair, so he can't do much touring and he can't do too much hectic stuff.
There's a possibility that next week we'll be doing some gigs with Jon Lord. Jon Lord's in Australia and he was do his Symphonic thing, but he's hurt his hand. So, he's suppose to play the Sydney Opera House and do a prestigious gig, but now he might just be doing a few blues gigs. So we might be with Jon, he might be playing keyboards with the Hoochie Coochie Men.

 

"6 Strings Down" I like; there's a lot of guitar in that...

 

Bob: Yeah, 6 Strings Down was written by Stevie Ray Vaughn's brother, and someone else - about Stevie Ray Vaughn. That's like "heaven welcomes another another blues stringer back home", kind of.

 

Have you guys been doing many gigs so far?

 

Bob: We do every now and then, but the drummer broke his leg, and then I hurt my ankle - and badly, for a long time. So if we do these gigs with Jon Lord, these will be the first gigs we've done for a little while.

 

What's the long term plan for it?

 

Bob: Well, we'll see how these gigs go with Jon Lord. If we do them, and it looks like it's going to come off [I hope it does], then we'll hopefully do another album or tour Europe. Anything can happen, I guess. Jon wants to stay involved and maybe do an album with us or whatever.

 

How is this album available, 'cause I've only seen it through the website!?

 

Bob: That's the only way it's available. We tried to get a deal on it; we tried to get it released, and everybody I played it to absolutely loves it; even people who are not particularly in to blues like the music...But we couldn't get it released!

 

Got anything else on the go? Are you mainly in Australia right now...

 

Bob: Yeah, I'm living in Sydney. I got to wait until this lawsuit thing is over, with the Osbournes. That hopefully should come to fruition this year. Hopefully the first half of the year we should have that cleaned up.

 

Anything else on the go?

 

Bob: Not as such, I think there's always the possibility of another Mother's Army album when I get the dough sorted out and everything is cleared and the black cloud is gone of the lawsuit. I wouldn't mind doing another Mother's Army album.

 

Are you looking positive on the outcome [of the lawsuit]?

 

Bob: Oh yeah, definitely! And so are the lawyers; they've always felt confident.
 
Are you guys taping any of the gigs with Jon Lord?

 

Bob: Yeah, there's probably going to be a live DVD.
There'll be news about it on the website.