Cetan Clawson

As sound check ended, Cetan, pronounced Chet-ah, started off his set with his version of the "Star Spangled Banner" - with his teeth.

Cetan certainly does personify professionalism and showmanship with his music. His repetoire consisted of his influences, Hendrix and various Blues, to set the tone.

The audience was captivated and flocked to the stage to watch his band's stellar performance. His technique and fills were flawless. Cetan played behind his back, with his teeth, and had the crowd mesmerized. His venues keep attracting a mass appreal; he has played in Milwaukee, Chicago, and parts of Michigan. It hearkens to the days of Jimi Hendrix, only younger and with more of a blues tone and feel.

This artist, who hails from Monroe, MI, is one keep an eye out for, I see him going places in the near future. His music has been featured on European radio. I would lay odds that Cetan Clawson will be touring nationally soon, if not overseas.

by Eva - Score Music Magazine

This is a once-in-every-four-years chance! Rock out on February 29: Cetan Clawson will knock your socks off and this is no exaggeration. Straight out of Monroe; this is the Cherokee Jimi Hendrix and he’s only twenty years old. He picked up a guitar at age three and hasn’t put it down since. Clawson has the Detroit Derby Girls stamp of approval.
Ann Arbor’s Third Coast Kings have made it a point to remain true to the style and technique of playing in the tradition of deepfunk and soul music. They provide people with the groove to make them move, while properly restoring deep funk and soul to its rightful spot on the musical map. The Third Coast Kings are a full fledged funk force!
Odell Blues Boy "D" is as real as it gets. Migrated from the Deep South’s Delta region, Odell came north to find work and settled in Detroit, bringing his blues history along with him. Odell sings with straight power. He also leads the weekly blues jam at the Lager House every Wednesday night. - The Lager House

The blues is alive and well in the Midwest. Just ask Cetan Clawson, a true child of the Internet generation and a devoted student of the blues.

Clawson has been playing guitar since he was 3 and making appearances around the area for much of his life.
iceCetan Clawson.
Photo Courtesy Melissa June.

Coming from a musical family, it was easy to find inspiration and band mates. When he was 11 years old, Clawson joined his dad’s band, the Soul Side, originally as a rhythm guitarist before growing into a front man and recording the album White Heat under the name Cetan Clawson and the Soul.

White Heat, released last year, is now available through CD Baby and iTunes.

Clawson has since moved on and is now fronting the Cetan Clawson Revolution with Mike Smith on bass and Andrew Spaulding on drums. The band is preparing a new, five-song EP due later this year and is currently touring the area.

Playlist had a chance to chat with the 19-year-old guitarist to find out what the future of Midwest blues has to offer.



Playlist: You got your first guitar when you were 3. When did you know that was what you wanted to do for the rest of your life?

Clawson: I can remember when I was seriously getting into it. I was watching Austin City Limits with Stevie Ray Vaughn. I must have been 11 or 12, and I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, look at that.”

I had been playing up until that point but it wasn’t until then that I thought, “This is it, I can really do some musical damage with this guitar.” That was the moment, I guess.

Playlist: Let’s talk about your influences. You mentioned Stevie Ray Vaughn and it’s obvious from listening to you that Jimi Hendrix is a major factor in your music. What other groups inspire you?

Clawson: Hendrix is one of the primary ones. But it’s easy to get mistaken for retro or nostalgic. The thing is, all that old music and old blues is still influencing the all the modern music like the White Stripes and the Soledad Brothers, all the garage blues and indie blues that’s coming out.

Playlist: Are you too young to play the blues?

Clawson: You will have the critics and naysayers about the younger generations that are rising up, but here’s the thing: you have blues the “style” and blues the “emotion.”

I really don’t think there is anything wrong with these kids digging Robert Johnson, Son House, Holing Wolf, Muddy Waters and then getting into the second generation of the blues – like Jim Hendrix, Robin Trower, the Allman Brothers – and they are getting into it as a musical style.

I don’t find anything wrong with that. It’s not like you have to have your girlfriend break up with you to play the blues. You don’t have to have the blues, literally, to get into the music.

Playlist: Are you planning to release any new material soon?

Clawson: We have a new five-track EP on the way. The cool thing about that is we are recording with Jim Diamond from Ghetto Recorders in Detroit, which is where the White Stripes made their debut album.

Playlist: What do you bring to the blues?

Clawson: It’s all about the sounds. Here’s a perfect example: Albert King and Jimi Hendrix influenced Stevie Ray Vaughn. If you listen to “Texas Flood,” which is one of his main hits, and compare that with “Blues Power” by Albert King, it’s almost the same notes but it’s the tone Stevie uses on his guitar, it’s the way he hits the notes (that makes it different).

So you can play the exact same thing, and your own sound and own personality comes out through the music. That’s where the original sounds come from – playing the same thing in a different way.

Playlist: Do you feel you are a part of the Midwest Blues movement, following in the footsteps of the Soledad Brothers, White Stripes and Greenhornes?

Clawson: Yeah, totally. We feel we are a part of that sound. What we’re trying to do is get that blues sound out there to people who haven’t necessarily heard it before. We are a tool of the blues, so to speak.

Playlist: You’ve been on radio shows around the world. How did you manage that?

Clawson: Surprisingly, and I’m not ashamed to admit this, I did it all by sitting on my butt here in my bedroom.

When you post music online you can get in touch with anyone around the world.

Here in the States, a lot of the radio stations have contractual obligations that they deal with. They can’t even play music without having some kind of license from ASCAP or BMI so there’s all kinds of contractual things going on in the States.

Over there (in Europe), there aren’t so many restrictions from the government imposed on the radio stations so they can play left field talent from America, the UK and Australia.

As a result, we built ourselves up in this area (and) started selling on CD Baby. They distributed us through different online outlets, and these people started coming to us like 88.7 Amsterdam, 91.7 in Toulouse, France, and that’s how we got on international radio.

Pl - Playlist

By Bill Holdship

Cetan Clawson has an incredibly positive and powerful energy in person.The just-turned-20-year-old musician, who made his live debut in the sixth grade, has made a name for himself locally in the last two years by gigging constantly and displaying a guitar virtuosity and an onstage showmanship that belies his youth — at least in this day and age. There's also an innocence and naïveté to Clawson that's kinda unique and endearing.

For example, the guy showed up at the Metro Times offices at 11 a.m. for a scheduled 2 p.m. interview and then just sat in the lobby with his acoustic guitar, displaying an extremely cool aura for the next two-and-a-half hours when this writer was engaged with a deadline. ("I've been on the road for 24 of the last 48 hours," he said in response to an apology, "so it gave me a chance to sit and relax.") And near the conclusion of the interview, Clawson told the interviewer: "I have a few questions for you at the end, if you don't mind." Expecting the standard "Can I can read the story before you print it?" and such that he's heard from novices often over the years, the interviewer is a little touched when Clawson pulls out his list and sincerely asks for career advice. (He also takes the interviewer's suggestion to read Charles Shaar Murray's epic Hendrix critical evaluation, Crosstown Traffic, to heart.)

Onstage, though, there's no innocence or naïveté displayed whatsoever. The kid is most frequently compared to Jimi Hendrix, not just sonically; he also fronts a band that follows the same classic lineup as the Hendrix Experience — a modern variation on the blues-rock power trio. Clawson also showboats onstage much like Hendrix, including playing stunning solos, with plenty of the requisite distortion and feedback, behind his back and with his teeth.

He's really quite good. This observer has grown tired of some of the groups Clawson cites as the initial influences that led him back to the real stuff, including Cream and Zeppelin. On the other hand, take it from someone who once toured Ireland, from Belfast to Dublin, with the late, great Rory Gallagher, one of the pioneers of the whole power trio concept, when Clawson takes a stage, he's every bit the rock star.

He even looks the part, both onstage and off. "Well, I once read an article on Jack White and he mentioned something about that — about the blues guys and how they always dressed high-class and in high style," Clawson says, regarding his sense of onstage fashion. "It's almost ... well, it's polite. When you get on a stage, you want to look your best. You want to look how you sound. We've played with some metal bands that've shown up with chains. Some people are like, 'Hah, hah, look at them!' But it's like, no! They're trying to look how they sound! So I gotta hand it to them. Besides, I try not to dis anybody. There's too much dissing going on in the music scene."

On that front, Clawson's seen some dissing himself. He's been accused of "guitar wankery" on a few of the local blogs, a criticism he simply laughs off. "We've dealt with every type of critic and fan at this point in time," he says. "It's some people's thing; others just don't dig it. And that's fine too. I believe there's no such thing as bad publicity. I've had people come up to me and say, 'I've read stuff about you on the blogs that wasn't too hot. But then I saw you live and I'm a fan now.' So the bloggers actually did us a big favor!"

In an age in which anyone with a computer and Internet access can be an "expert" and so many can tell you what they like but have absolutely no clue how to explain why they like it, it's refreshing to meet a 20-year-old who genuinely knows his stuff. During the interview, his references range from legendary Howlin' Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin to the even more obscure Blind Joe Reynolds. And in an age in which irony (whatever the fuck that even means these days) has virtually destroyed rock 'n' roll — after all, it's much easier to not mean it, maaaan, than it is to put your ass on the line — it's even more refreshing to meet someone who's actually passionate about, and believes in, what he does.

Clawson was born in Toledo but soon moved with his family to Monroe, where he still lives. Although he's been mistaken as Middle Eastern, his first name (it's pronounced "Chet-ah"; think of how Bostonians pronounce "cheddar" cheese) is Native American; his mother was a full-blooded member of the Oglala Lakota tribe; his father was a European mix of German, Irish and French. Clawson's parents split up when he was very young and he grew up in a motherless home.

"It was OK, though," he says. It was a very musical family. His sister is now a pianist in Boston. His uncle is a guitarist in Japan. And his father is a drummer; in fact, Dad played drums on Clawson's 2005 debut CD, White Heat. "When I was a kid, it was my dad on the drums and me on the guitar. So it was fun times growing up! And as a re - Detroit Metro Times

By Eric Allen

Have you ever witnessed a musical revolution? Not just a shitty local band you thought was amazing because of the adrenaline in your body, but a full-on breath-taking act that you knew would take on the world someday. I know I hadn’t up until the beginning of this year.

I unfortunately, like most folks around today, missed The Stooges and The MC5 in the late ‘60s. Then I missed revolution again in 1977 when The Clash came to fruition and released one of the best albums of all time. Then, when I was actually alive in 1994, I wasn’t old enough to understand the pent up angst and frustration of Nirvana and the Seattle sound. Again, I missed the boat in Detroit during The Gold Dollar days and didn’t get to see the early days of The Gories, The Hentchmen, The Paybacks and The White Stripes. But, finally, I had a date with destiny, as I was able to see an act of absolute genius and perfect quality musicianship. Meet the boy genius and remember his name: Cetan Clawson.

The site was The New Dodge Bar in Hamtramck. Onstage stood a gangly kid, strapped with a trusty Fender Strat, that looked like the long neglected offspring of Jimi Hendrix and Jack White. I had heard his songs online and was immediately intimidated to have my band open for him. Now, as he took the stage, he was set to tear the place apart. He immediately tears into a tune, an original that sounds like Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction” sped up, and blows the entire room of 20 people away. His bass player didn’t even show up and he knocked it out of the park. “I’ve been playing since age three,” Clawson says of his amazing guitar prowess. “The main reason is due to listening to old blues records. The stuff has an inherent magic that no other style has.”

The sound of the Revolution, which features Clawson, bassist Marc Winter and Andrew Spaulding on drums, harkens back to the blues inspired riff fests of Hendrix, The Yardbirds and most recently The White Stripes. Clawson admits to being fans of this newer school of blues musicians, but he does have an affinity for searching for older blues artists.

With the release of a Cetan Clawson Revolution EP impending and a Trans-Atlantic tour on the way, the outlook looks extremely bright for Clawson and his band as he actually has his head screwed on right, unlike most rock stars. Look for him someday to go down as one of the greats. | RDW - Real Detroit Weekly

By Doug Coombe

What would old Jimi Hendrix drive? Were he alive, it's easy to imagine him dragging Jeff Beck in a Jag near Johnny Depp's country villa in the south of France, but a 2001 Ford Escape? No way, José.

Well that's how puppy-dog guitar prodigy Cetan Clawson gets his ass around his hometown of Monroe and all gig points in between. Sure, the Escape's big and powerful like Clawson's Marshall stack roar, but not exactly sexy and ostentatious like Jimi's guitar-strut moves, which Clawson has down to a T. (There's some Johnny Thunders in there too.)

But no matter how over-the-top Clawson's stage élan is, he's, well ... a fairly practical guy. "Yeah, it's true," the semi-foppish and budding guitar hero says. "I keep a miniature screwdriver set in my car to fix my sunglasses."

Clawson's relentless gigging demands a reliable ride with enough room to haul all 10 (that's right, 10!) of the Stratocasters he owns. There's that Marshall beast too.

The Ford Escape is Clawson's first car; he saved up for it.

"It's a workhorse. ... It's nice to have a car that fits your personality — I'm a utilitarian kind of guy," he says. - Detroit Metro Times