Release date: October 11, 2024
Alligator Records
By Mark Plotnick
Photo: Jim Summaria
What happens when you bring together Ronnie Baker Brooks, manager John Boncimino, Bruce Iglauer of Alligator Records, Grammy-winning producer Jim Gaines and a stellar cast of supporting musicians? You get Ronnie Baker Brooks’ finest studio album to date with a collection of songs that should move the needle from a multiple awards nominee to an awards winner. Blues In My DNA grabs the listener from the opening cut and doesn’t permit a bathroom break until the final audible note.
During the pandemic, the son of the late Lonnie Baker Brooks was at a crossroads. His father’s comforting guidance was gone. The Covid shutdown robbed touring musicians like Ronnie of their living. Musically, he stayed connected via social media and worked on new material. The blues was a healing agent. When the dust settled, he brought thirty songs to Alligator Records and twelve originals were chosen for this – his fifth album.
Blues In My DNA is Ronnie’s first on Bruce Iglauer’s renowned Alligator Records label, home to a majority of his famous father’s recordings. By taking a pause from his Watchdog Records label, the guitarist, singer and songwriter focused on creativity rather than other time-consuming responsibilities associated with label management.
For his Alligator debut, the bluesman flirts with rock, funk, Memphis soul, rhythm n’ blues and even the spoken word. A cross-pollination of styles and imaginative song structures are present throughout, but in the end, it is still a blues album. After all, Ronnie put the word blues in the album’s title.
But it’s the kind of blues record that borrows from the past and present while offering a formula for keeping the blues alive. “Each record I do, I try to build a platform to grow musically either through my guitar playing, singing, writing and [expression] that I hadn’t done before.” With Blues In My DNA, he succeeds in spades.
There is so much gold to be mined from this new record beginning with Ronnie’s guitar playing – the album’s centerpiece. It’s incendiary without over indulgence. He’s a player who understands taste. He’s mastered those techniques that add vibrancy and emotion to the pentatonic and hexatonic scales that blues and rock guitarists work from.
To appreciate the artist’s guitar playing, I recall what Eric Clapton said about Freddie King, “He taught me just about everything I needed to know. When and when not to make a stand. When and when not to show your hand. And most important of all, how to make love to a guitar.” Ronnie Baker Brooks makes love.
Not to be outdone are the guitarist’s songwriting and singing. Listen closely to the lyrics…the stories…lest you miss some of the best moments on this album. The Chicago native has learned his lessons well. His father taught him breathing techniques while Willie Dixon schooled him on “vocal delivery.” Legends like his father, B.B. King, Junior Wells, Albert Collins and Koko Taylor advised him to learn everything he could from their ways, but to make the final product his own. To be authentic and professional. Play from the heart. Show respect. This album is validation.
Ronnie has toured the world and made connections with blues and rock royalty. He enjoys seeing people get off on his live performances, but writing songs for his Alligator debut was as fun and exciting as playing live. “I love writing as much as performing…watching an idea become a song and a song that people can relate to.”
The Songs
The album’s gateway song is “I’m Feeling You.” Conceived as an acoustic piece, Ronnie’s friend Todd Park Mohr (aka Big Head Todd) believed the song deserved a bigger platform. Baker Brooks fought hard for the song’s acceptance but once it came together, producer Jim Gaines was all in.
“I’m Feeling You” kicks off with a somewhat discordant and metallic-sounding guitar figure that had me pondering the song’s next move. And then bam! Ronnie explodes with a snarling guitar riff as this funkified fusion rocker falls into place and holds your attention with creative chord and tempo changes. There’s just so much to enjoy here. The lyrics abound with riches:
“I want to get close to you like a dog to a bone. Like a talker to a cell phone. Like water is to wet. Like the Wi-Fi is to the internet.”
A James Brown grunt and Stevie Ray Vaughan-inspired “Ooee Baby” serve as exclamation points.
Clocking in at only thirteen seconds, “Lonnie Brooks Blessing” is a spoken word nugget. Think of it as a séance where Ronnie speaks to his departed dad, hoping to hear a message from the great beyond. You’ll need to buy the album to “feel” the haunting response. Hint: Ronnie includes something of his father on all of his albums.
“Blues in My DNA” – the album’s title track - is Ronnie’s most personal song. Blues come from life experiences, and this song is Ronnie’s vehicle for explaining – but not complaining – about the life he inherited.
The song’s opening pays tribute to Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man” and Muddy Water’s “Mannish Boy.” It sets the tone for the chronicle that follows:
“I was born in the ghetto, protected by the man above. Didn’t know we had no money because we were rich with love. Trying to stretch one meal to last us the whole week. My stomach was growlin’, my tears were fallin’, down my mama’s cheek. I’m not complaining, just explaining, I’ve got the blues in my DNA.”
Ronnie’s guitar solos are wickedly aggressive without being superfluous. You can hear the influence that Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Johnny Winter have had on his technique. In key moments, Ronnie’s vocals overlap with his guitar playing note-for-note thus giving the song a heavier, Led Zeppelin blues treatment.
“My Love Will Make You Do Right” and “Accept My Love” are tunes that demonstrate his maturity as a songwriter by offering material that appeals to audiences beyond the artist’s core constituency.
According to Baker Brooks, producer Jim Gaines wanted a retro sound for the first of these two songs. You hear elements of Memphis soul, disco and funk as Ronnie’s inserts sweet and sublime guitar licks at moments when they’ll have maximum impact. Fragments of Eric Clapton, B.B. King and Carlos Santana populate his playing. He’s learned from the best!
“Accept My Love” is a slow burning, Otis Redding type soul ballad. During live performances, Ronnie likes to say that his father told him to always play one for the ladies (thank you Linda Cain). This is one of those romantic ballads.
Although it wasn’t written with his late mother Jeannine Baker in mind, her presence was felt when Clayton Ivey added Hammond B3 organ to the mix at a studio near Muscle Shoals, AL. The sax and trumpet parts - courtesy of session players Brad Quinn and Drew White - recall the sound of the Memphis Horns back in heyday of Stax/Volt records.
If you’ve witnessed a Howlin’ Wolf club performance, you’re familiar with The Wolf’s playfully lascivious gestures on songs like “Back Door Man.” Baker Brooks pays tribute to this classic with his own take titled “All True Man.”
“I’m not saying that I’m Mr. Right, but I’ll take care of you girl morning, noon and late at night. All true man…all true man.”
Freddie King’s spirit takes control of Ronnie’s guitar while studio musician Rick Steff provides subtle but integral electric piano.
“Robbing Peter to Pay Paul” is a twelve-bar blues shuffle with a tempo twist. The song grew from a conversation Ronnie had with his manager to whom he owed money at that time. Lonnie Baker Brooks’ failing health and the Covid pandemic were a one-two punch to the family’s finances. But the blues can be healing, so Ronnie wrote a song about his predicament:
“My daughter needs some new shoes and she wants a cell phone too. I’m walking around talking to myself because my taxes are overdue. I have the blues so bad I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I’m tired of robbing Peter to pay Paul when I still owe John too.”
There’s a moment in the song when Ronnie declares “play the blues now.” He pulls from his encyclopedia of blues guitar influences and taps into the spirit of B.B. King and T-Bone Walker. The song fades as Ronnie recites a list of debts owed.
“Instant Gratification” rocks big with piano, horns, vocal doubling, overdriven guitar leads and string bends that reach for the heavens. It’s not surprising that Ronnie knows how to rock as he explained, “I came up with rock ‘n’ roll too.” There’s nothing subtle about the singer’s aim:
“I’ve waited too long to have it my way. Give it to me now and a lot more later. I want some instant gratification, cause I’m sick and tired of my current situation. I’m not going to let my life pass me by with a full bucket list choosing when I die…gimme, gimme, gimme.”
Although “I Got to Make You Mine” was written in Chicago, Ronnie credits the song’s funky, Al Green style vibe to Jim Gaines and the environment in and around his Bessie Blue Studios in rural Tennessee. Adding soulful reinforcement with chants of “Make You Mine” are backup singers Trenicia Hodges and Kimberlie Helton.
At over eight minutes, “Stuck on Stupid” is the album’s longest cut and a fan favorite when played live. It first appeared on Ronnie’s 1998 debut album Golddigger but is redone for his Alligator debut.
The globe-trotting musician has shared the stage with Eric Clapton, and his blues chops have clearly found their way into Ronnie’s repertoire. From the opening guitar licks on “Stuck on Stupid, we hear the influence of Clapton playing lead guitar on the song “Have You Ever Loved a Woman” from the Layla album.
“Stuck on Stupid” builds tension verse by verse, lick by lick, until it reaches an unbearable crescendo:
“You stay out all night and I don’t even mind. I call you on your telephone woman but you’re always on the other line. I think I’m stuck on stupid…but I ain’t your kind of fool.”
Ronnie instructs the band to “play the blues fellas” and “let’s go home” as the guitarist and his mates push the slow twelve-bar blues jam to its climactic ending.
“I Found a Dollar Looking for a Dime” is a metaphor for getting more than you expected. The song came to Ronnie while observing the “action” at a South Side Chicago music club. The song stalks and struts like a lounge lizard who comes across “a keeper” late in the evening amidst the thinned out “talent.”
“Oh, she’s so fine, her personality is sweet, she not easily impressed by every man that she meets. I just came out here to have a good time, listen to the blues to ease my worried mind. I got to, got to, make her mine. Cause I’ve found a dollar, looking for dime.”
Confession: The title of the album’s final song contains an expression that I’d never heard. Thank you Urban Dictionary! The protagonist in “My Boo,” will do anything it takes to impress this woman he desires:
“So, tell me baby can I be your boo? I’ll work ten jobs and bring that money home to you. I’ll fight ten men just to have one of you. Just got to make you my boo. Just to have one of you.”
Fight ten men? Hopefully one at a time!
This is a soul-stirring, must have CD. Pick up a copy at Ronnie Baker Brooks’ album release party on October 18th at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn, IL.
For more information, go to: https://ronniebakerbrooks.com
About the Author: Mark Plotnick is the co-author, with photographer Jim Summaria, of the book "Classic Rock: Photographs from Yesterday and Today”