Guitar Red

Guitar Red is a street musician who plys his trade daily “in and around the Square in Decateur, Georgia” – and on this, his debut CD, he delivers a lowdown set of downhome blues that I assume are indicative of his street performances.

Backing himself on guitar and clavinet - with Chris Francisco’s bass as his only accompaniment – Red reminds me of artists like Super Chikan, who show no compromises in delivering their own brand of “gutbucket” blues.

Red opens with “Box Car No 9” – a train blues with perfunctory backing replete with crowing vocals and the obligatory “ooh-oohs”. “Lips Poked Out” is a jook-joint shuffle with declamatory vocals that remind me of a lowdown version of Smokey Smothers – the same influence melded with elements of Blind Lemon Jefferson are also evident on the doomladen “Ain’t Got Nobody But Myself”.

“Three Legged Dog Blues” is a sprightly rocker – “Chain Gang Blues” is a morose, but compelling, dirge a la Short Stuff Macon - whilst the title track will appeal to “punk-bluesters” with it’s eccentric vocals, hip-hop and rap sensibilities, and seriously funky guitar and bass.

“Out Of My Mind” is an anguished gutbucket blues with an apt title – “Decateur Boy Blues” is a funky “I Just Wanna Make Love To You” derivative – “I Believe” is a catchy blues that I am sure gets bystanders’ feet tapping – whilst “Song About A Jimi Hendrix Song” is both heartfelt and anguished with it’s moaned vocals and hypnotic guitar (I will leave you to work out what the song is).

There is also a “hidden track” where Red sums up his musical philosophy about how the blues gives him the opportunity to express himself, be creative and “praise god” before launching into a wild blues that sums up this set.

Eccentric, wild, uncomplicated, compelling downhome blues guaranteed to bring a smile to your face … I love it!
(www.backspacerecords.com)
Rating 9
Mick Rainsford

- Blues in Britain Magazine

Willie Dixon said, “As long as you got lyin’ and cheatin’, pain and sufferin’, you’ll always have The Blues. It can’t go ‘out of style’ because it’s part of human nature…”. So, keeping those profound words of wisdom in mind we shouldn’t really be too surprised when an artist such as Guitar Red emerges. While it’s true most younger Blacks will vent via Rap in the post-Democracy World we live in, older Blacks remember The Blues as the only way to convey pain and anguish. While a trip through any of the Southern cities (populaces over 250,000) would usually turn up at least a couple of guitar or harmonica playin’ street performers who had a repertoire with at least some Blues in it, as recently as the 1990s. No one can say with certainty as to why it has now become an absolute rarity amongst professions, but, crack cocaine is certainly to blame for an environment that features brutal and violent robberies for the sake of 2 or 3 dollars (or less!) and many cities have adopted extreme anti-music, anti-street performance ordinance/laws. Having to sing and play whilst worrying about robbery and/or a Police beating certainly would inhibit growth in that profession! While the World and especially, the Blues World, owes the Music Maker label endless support and praise for seeking out and recording many of the remaining Southern Blues purveyors (and let us not forget Broke & Hungry Records, who focus on Mississippi…) the discovery and recording of Guitar Red’s debut CD proves once again that there’s always ‘someone’ right around the next corner with something to say or sing and the afore-mentioned labels certainly don’t have a monopoly when it comes to discovering bona-fide Blues talent. Brutal honesty is what Billy Christian Walls a.k.a. Guitar Red openly conveys and it is the fuel that propels the Greatest of Blues performers. Walls doesn’t hide the facts, instead he incorporates them into his Art and identity. He acknowledges being homeless for much of the last decade thanks to a long-standing addiction problem that has waylaid his chances at a serious career in Blues (till now) but everyone who has seen him playing in the streets of Decatur, Georgia has been impressed if not mesmerized. Backspace Records, a local Georgia label formed by Big Sky guitarist Ben Rowell, quickly and enthusiastically decided Guitar Red was the only choice as debut release and Rowell’s belief in Red has paid off with this wonderful album and overwhelming critical acclaim from the Music Media.
The first thing that hits you is Red’s guitar mastery and his sense of rhythm which is relentless, as he launches into “Box Car No. 9” a tune that is guaranteed to have listeners smiling and saying “Wow!” “Lips Poked Out” is another gem in a more traditional Blues sense and despite Red’s unusual upbringing (childhood in New Jersey before heading South) he sounds 100% Pure Southern Blues authenticity-wise, more so than 90% of the under-40 artists who call themselves ‘Blues’ these days. One disturbing element that raises its ugly head when perusing Red’s biography is the frequent exploitation of Red’s stunning guitar work by ‘Superstar’ bands who finagled contributions to their recordings (and video footage?) by taking advantage of Red’s dire circumstances. Red complains of being given 50 bucks and a bottle of Jack in exchange for his brilliant talents. Who says the ‘Old Days’ of exploitation are long gone? Perhaps this CD will give Red a Bigger Platform to address his victimization and shine some light on an ego-fuelled ‘Rock Star’ who is one of the biggest Buffoons in Rock History notwithstanding his treatment of struggling addicts. Anyhow, we should all Thank God that Blues (for the most part) is still free of such disgusting people and that Talent still rules over image-making machinery. “Ain’t Got Nobody But Myself” is a stark sketch of Guitar Red’s Journey of Trouble and Pain and I defy anyone to show me a comparable artist on the current scene. The man strums/picks acoustic guitar like no one else and his ability to turn daily experiences into eloquent songs is a gift from God. “Three Legged Dog Blues” (“my old lady treats me like a three-legged dog…”) is as good as it gets for Pure Country Blues. “Chain Gang Blues” is a more sombre song about his family’s travels and petty crime fuelled by poverty. Red sings to get the pain out of his system after finding-out his Mother had died while he was imprisoned. Prison ain’t the place to grieve properly. “Out Of My Mind” is a perfect finger picked Blues and it is easy to picture Red wowing Festival audiences all over Europe (and elsewhere). “Decatur Boy Blues” is an up-tempo Stomp Blues that brings back memories of Fred McDowell and even early John Lee Hooker. “I Believe” is a Pop-style tune that shows that Red still clings to Hope despite all the bad cards he’s been dealt. “Song About A Jimi Hendrix Song” is a magnificent foray into a topic that seems to have touched Red - Andy Grigg, Real Blues Magazine

You see them on the street corners of almost every major city in the world. Some of them have elaborate set-ups including battery powered amplifiers, others are one man bands playing a kick-drum, strumming a guitar, and blowing on a harmonica. Some of them can barely play their instrument, while others are virtuosos. Yet, no matter how good or bad they may be, for one reason or another, no matter what the weather, these musicians have made the sidewalk their stage and what, or whoever passes by, their audience.

In another life time I was part of a children's theatre company that use to perform outdoors in parks and even on the occasional sidewalk. So I speak from experience when I say there is nothing more difficult for any performer to do than attract the attention of someone just passing by, unless it's holding their attention in spite of all the distractions around them. Amplifying your sound doesn't do much more than add to the overall white noise of a city street and actually increases the likelihood of people blocking you out like they attempt to block car horns and everything else around them.

The experienced street performer knows that it's force of personality that attracts people's attention. If you just stand there strumming your guitar and singing, the average person walking down the street with their mind on the day ahead or the one that just passed won't pay you any attention. When you play the streets you learn how to "sell" yourself and your music so someone catching sight of you out of the corner of their eye, or hearing just a snatch of sound coming from your direction, will be attracted and turn their attention to you. If you think it sounds difficult to do, well believe me it's even harder to accomplish in practice.

After listening to Lightin' In A Bottle, street musician Guitar Red's new release on Backspace Records, I'd lay odds that when he plays street corners not only do people stop, but traffic does too. Right from the opening notes of the discs first song, "Box Car No. 9" he reaches out and grabs your attention, and doesn't let go until the last note of track ten, "Song About A Jimi Hendrix Song" fades away. Accompanying himself with only guitar and clavinet, and helped out on bass by Chris Francisco, Guitar Red's music has more energy and vitality than most bands, and hundreds of times more personality than ninety percent of any musicians I've ever heard.

There's nothing sophisticated or polished about Guitar Red (real name Billy Christian Walls) or his music. What it does have is pure and unadulterated heart and soul, with each song sounding like he's drawing upon personal experience for inspiration. It doesn't matter whether he's singing about the woman who done him wrong or serving on a chain gang for stealing potatoes, you can't help but believe he sweated out his days under the Georgia sun breaking rocks or had his heart broken time after time. When he sings about telling the boss man not to ride him so hard because his momma just died on "Chain Gang Blues", you don't have to be prescient to know that the next line will be "now I'm serving twenty to life" because you can feel the depth of his grief and know just how close to the edge he is.

It doesn't matter whether he's playing slow or playing fast, singing sad or singing glad, because he doesn't differentiate between them when it comes to passion or intensity. He's like the best storyteller you've ever heard, in that he draws you into what he's telling you without seemingly trying. One second you're listening to the opening notes of a song, and the next you're sitting looking at the world he's created through his eyes and experiencing everything he's talking about.

A lot of people who play acoustic blues, or traditional blues music, seem to get hung up on playing the same rhythmic pattern over and over again until you're stupefied with boredom. Guitar Red on the other hand keeps things moving, so that the music fits the mood expressed by the lyrics of his song. The blues isn't about what note or chords you play on your guitar, the blues is what comes from your heart. Guitar Red knows that and his music reflects it, and listening to it you sure can feel it.

One of the things that really struck me about this recording was how he used his voice. He doesn't have what you'd call an attractive singing voice, but he has a fine ear for understanding how to make the best use of the gifts he's been given, which is a highly expressive voice. Many people who play the streets end up only knowing how to be loud and louder when they sing from years of having to compete against traffic noise. Red, on the other hand, modulates his voice according to the needs of the song and the mood he's trying to establish. Compare how he sounds on the up tempo "Lips Poked Out" where he creating a fun, teasing atmosphere, to "I Believe", a quiet and sincere declaration of his faith that has a hundred times more conviction to it than - Richard Marcus, Blogcritics Magazine

http://bluesunderground.blogspot.com/2009/01/blues-underground-networks-year-end.html

Best Traditional Style Blues Album:
Guitar Red - "Lightnin' In A Bottle"

Reaching Out To The Blues Award:
Backspace Records

REAL BLUES Magazine has announced their ANNUAL REAL BLUES AWARDS - Guitar Red's CD had won in two categories; BEST DEBUT BLUES CD and BEST NEW BLUES ARTIST!

Since their inception in 1994 REAL BLUES ANNUAL AWARDS have the highest credibility amongst Musicians and Music Industry people as we've been very diligent in establishing 'Payola-Free' Awards devoid of hype and/or Advertiser Influence.
- Underground Blues and Real Blues Magazine

http://www.examiner.com/x-1621-Orange-County-Music-Examiner~y2008m12d24-My-favorite-albums-of-2008

A lot of good albums were released this year and I had the pleasure of listening to a good number of them. Of course, I couldn't possibly include all the great albums I heard over the course of 2008. So, I have pared my list down to a manageable number. Without further ado, here are my five favorite albums of 2008.

3. Guitar Red Lightnin' in a Bottle - Guitar Red is known as a street musician in his hometown of Decatur, Georgia. His debut album is classic blues. It sounds like the sort of stuff that you would hear coming from someone's front porch. The man picks a mean guitar and can sing the blues because he's lived the blues.

Gary Schwind, Orange County Music Examiner - Orange County Examiner

Lightnin' In A Bottle is an apt title for a disc that represents the debut of both a label and an artist. Backspace is the Atlanta-based venture of Ben Rowell, who set out to launch an alt-rock label but was so taken with the music of 44-year-old Decatur street singer Billy Christian Walls, a.k.a. Guitar Red, that he couldn't resist the chance to record him first.
Standing the stereotyped migration pattern on its head, Red moved to Georgia from New Jersey with his family back in 1975. He's worked with funk and hip-hop groups, but has battled hard times personal demons while ending up a familiar sight busking in downtown Decatur. Red's musical approach, as one might expect of a man who plays for tips on street corners, is rough, rowdy, and extroverted-his guitar work, for the most part, consists of propulsive rhythmic strumming, and his vocals sound like a rougher, raspier Jimmy Reed punctuated by whoops, hollers, and scatting. A more contemplative side, with hints of greater sophistication in his chording and single-note bursts, shows through on Chain Gang Blues and Out Of My Mind, while I Believe has more of a pop or soul influence, recalling a more elemental Ted Hawkins, and Song About A Jimi Hendrix Song closes the set on a downbeat note. Red really pulls out all the stops on the opening Box Car No. 9 and the clavinet-backed title track, though, and Lips Poked Out, Ain't Got Nobody But Myself, Three Legged Dog Blues, and Decatur Boy Blues are also uptempo attention grabbers.
While this set may not be for some of the musical sophisticates out there, listeners who prefer their blues at the grassroots level will think that indeed they have caught lightning in a bottle when they hear Guitar Red.

Jim DeKoster, Living Blues Magazine - Living Blues Magazine

Guitar Red - Lightnin' in a Bottle Review

The thing that strikes me immediately about this album is that it's hard to believe just one guy is producing the sound. In that regard, he is a lot like Mississippi John Hurt. "Box Car No. 9" is a tune that features some excellent guitar picking and it is bound to get your feet stompin'.
Something about Guitar Red reminds me of another Georgia blues man: Blind Willie McTell. I think more than anything it's the way Red picks his guitar. He gets an incredibly clean sound.
"Three Legged Dog Blues" is a lowdown blues tune that wouldn't sound out of place on a back porch anywhere. "My old lady treats me like a three-legged dog." Now, that is the blues. 

What is even more astounding about Guitar Red is that he has long been a street musician in Decatur, Georgia. He is an incredibly talented musician. He also plays the clavinet on the title track. You don't need to listen to much of the album to know that the blues comes from deep inside Guitar Red.
"Lightnin' in a Bottle" is a classic blues album, with songs about trains, drinking, ("Ain't Got Nobody but Myself"), prison ("Chain Gang Blues"), and having the blues. For a debut album, this is really strong. It's hard for me to believe that no one noticed Red's obvious talent before now. If you are in the area of Decatur, Georgia, I advise you to seek out Guitar Red and take in some of his tunes. If you are an old-time blues fan, this is an album you really should add to your collection.

Gary Schwind, Route 66 - Antimusic.com

He’s been a fixture for years on the Decatur Square and a few other corners around town, a homeless street musician recognized for his bluesy warbles, his wide grin with the missing teeth, his insistent personality, his messy arrests for public drunkenness.

He’s the guy folks smile at, say hey to, jaw with, barely tolerate, avoid.

Yet when Ben Rowell, a 36-year-old rock musician who founded a record label out of his Suwanee house, stood on a Decatur sidewalk about a year ago to watch Guitar Red play, he saw something he thought no longer existed: a real-deal bluesman.

To Rowell, Guitar Red and his blues-worthy story was the sort of find that musicologists once searched the South’s backwoods for: a locally grown product valued more for its flawed authenticity than polished mass appeal.

“I knew within 30 seconds,” Rowell says. “We shook hands, and I said, ‘Let’s do a record.’ I told him, ‘You’ve got this back-porch vibe I want to capture.’ And then we made a record.”

The result: “Lightnin’ in a Bottle,” a CD of 10 blues tunes written or co-written by Billy Christian Walls, aka Guitar Red, and recorded over two days in Backspace Records’ basement studio.

With songs like “Ain’t Got Nobody But Myself,” “Lips Poked Out” and “Decatur Boy Blues,” the CD has an unrehearsed, at times unhinged feel that hovers somewhere between an open mic night curiosity and found art.

Released three months ago, it has generated enthusiastic buzz on the blogosphere.

It’s been called “raw, but refreshing at the same time” (bluesblogger.com) and a throwback to when buskers were found “on nearly every street corner in these Southern towns” (bluenight.com).

Real Blues magazine gives it a rave review in its November issue, calling Walls “one of the best blues ‘discoveries’ of at least the last decade.”

“It’s a real interesting project,” says Warren Hudson, owner of Decatur CD, where “Lightnin’ ” is on the listening board and has become one of the store’s best-selling albums by a local artist.

“So many people in Decatur are curious because they’ve seen him play on the street. They’ll ask, ‘Is it any good?’ And I’ll say, ‘Just listen.’ They put the [sample CD] on and invariably they buy it.”

Seated one weekday morning at an empty sidewalk table on the square, Walls is greeted by a steady stream of passing locals — from courthouse lawyers to the meter maid — and he seems to know them all by name.

The CD hasn’t changed his circumstances. He slept on somebody’s couch the night before and doesn’t know where he’ll sleep next. Of the 1,000 CDs Backspace printed, Walls was given about 400 to sell on his own. There aren’t any left.

But he says the CD has made his circumstances more bearable.

“It’s what’s kept me going the last few months,” says Walls, 45. “It’s helped people start realizing I’m a human being. When they look at me now, they look at me as a musician, not just somebody playing for money on the street.”

Still, Walls hasn’t played on the street in about two months. His guitar was cracked during a recent scuffle, he says, after he mouthed off to a cop who’d told him to move along. That came about a month after he was arrested for a drunken dustup with a waiter who asked him to leave a Decatur Square restaurant. The guitar is being repaired at a nearby music shop that has worked on his instruments for years.

“Right now,” observes Walls, grinning his jack-o’-lantern grin in the clear, late-morning light, “I’m on vacation.”

Bluesman ‘the real thing’

Walls’ personal history reads like an extended blues lyric.

His retelling can be inexact or contradictory, but much of it was verified or filled in by relatives and a man who once mentored him as a kid in the Big Brother program and later became his legal guardian.

Walls’ entire immediate family is dead: mother from cancer, brother from AIDS, sister shot in her bed by an ex-boyfriend. He never knew his father and was raised by aunts, uncles and friends in Georgia, the Carolinas, California and New Jersey, giving him a road-worn résumé by his teens.

He picked up a guitar as a kid and has hardly put it down since, sometimes surrendering it when headed to jail, usually for nuisance street crimes, then collecting it on his release.

“He’s the real thing in terms of the image of a blues player,” says Larry Nodine, an intellectual property lawyer in Atlanta who met Walls on the square years ago and sometimes advises him about legal concerns. “He’s Mr. Bojangles.”

Walls was born in Morristown, N.J., to a single mother from Georgia with two children from a previous marriage.

His mother moved there to work as a domestic — “She was a roamer herself,” says her brother, Louis Harris, a retired truck driver in East Point — but was sick for years with what turned out to be cancer.

Ron Sanders, a retired electrical engineer now living in Stone Mountain, met Walls in New Jersey through Big Brother. He says Walls was 8 years old. His mo - Drew Jubera, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

If you venture down south to Decatur, GA, you might chance upon a street musician that plays in and around the square. His name is Billy Christian Walls, but he goes by Guitar Red. Even though he’s lived a tough life (losing his family in the span of a decade, battling alcohol, drugs, and homelessness), he has used music as his means of expression and as a coping mechanism. He writes songs that mix humor and pathos in equal blends and is a fiery guitarist and passionate singer.

Backspace Records (www.backspacerecords.com) has released a collection of Red’s songs. Entitled Lightnin’ In A Bottle, the disc was recorded live with only a couple of overdubs and presents an artist playing his own idiosyncratic style of blues. While there are songs that are derivative of other blues styles (“Box Car No. 9,” “Chain Gang Blues,” “Three Legged Dog Blues,” and the hilarious “Lips Poked Out”), Red gives these a unique polish that only he could offer.

Other songs, such as “Ain’t Got Nobody But Myself” and “I Believe,” have more than an autobiographical edge to them. The manic title cut features Red on clavinet, and “Out My Mind” sounds like it has roots in the Mississippi Delta. At the end of the disc, there’s a three-minute snippet of Red rambling in the studio that captures his eccentric personality perfectly.

While street musicians aren’t nearly as widespread as they were in the ’20s and ’30s, Lightnin’ In A Bottle captures one of them in his element and gives you a glimpse into the uniqueness and originality of his style. Wonder what it was like in the days when there was one on nearly every street corner in these southern towns? However it was, I’ll imagine not many of them could have held a candle to Guitar Red.

--- Graham Clarke - Graham Clarke, Blues Bytes

Fans of blues music being played the way it was meant to be played, which is raw and real, have someone new on the scene, album wise, to look forward to listening to. Guitar Red delivers good old authentic blues in it's finest, simplest form; one guitar, one clavinet, one bass, and one great old time feel voice. From the opening track, Box Car No.9 to the closing track, Song About A Jimi Hendrix Song, "Lightnin' In A Bottle", thanks to Guitar Red's street wise savvy, delivers a true debut blues masterpiece. - John Vermilyea, Blues Underground Network)