NEWEST RELEASE FROM
POPA CHUBBY!
reviews
Chicago Sun Times
Fans of Popa Chubby's take-no-prisoners approach to the blues, rock and even hip-hop as played by "The King of New York City Blues" and his bone-crunching power trio might be taken aback by the more sophisticated arrangements and instrumentation for "Stealing the Devil's Guitar." Why, he even plays some mandolin and acoustic guitar on his sixth release for Blind Pig Records, and there are hints of Eastern rhythms.
Fear not, though: Popa Chubby is not going soft. The Bronx, N.Y., native known in some circles as Ted Horowitz still does his share of guitar raveups that hark back to '70s blues-rock outfits such as Foghat and Savoy Brown. Chubby's writing is particularly strong here, as with "Smugglers Game," "Slide, Devil Man, Slide" and "Preacher Man." Among the best of the 11 tracks is the lone cover: Mississippi Hill Country blues icon Jessie Mae Hemphill's "In This World."
Jeff Johnson
Bob Silvestri's reviews of stealing the devil's guitar
and galea's diary of a bad housewife
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Fretplay
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Popa Chubby
Stealing the Devil's Guitar (Blind Pig)
Steve Knopper
circuit since the early '90s with remarkable staying power. He plays a
mean electric solo and styles himself as a guitar hero, but Chubby's
best qualities are his adventurousness and his melodies. He put out a
striking, out-of-nowhere, anti-Bush album in 2004 and while
"Stealing the Devil's Guitar" is more traditional, he unexpectedly
quotes Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" in "Right On," covers
obscure Mississippi singer-songwriter Jessie Mae Hemphill's
"In This World" and imagines summoning the Stones' Keith Richards
from Hell in the fiery honky-tonk epic "Young Guns."
As a bluesman, Chubby errs on the side of AC/DC rather than
getting repetitive or boring.
Country/Roots
Nick Cristiano
Popa Chubby
Stealing the Devil's Guitar
(Blind Pig ***)
He comes out of the Bronx, which is not exactly a hotbed of the blues, but that hasn't held Popa Chubby back, at least artistically. Maybe it's even one of the reasons the bear of a guitar-slinger (a.k.a. Ted Horowitz) continues to be one of the most vibrant and engaging presences in contemporary blues.
The numerous devil references may nod to tradition, but Chubby remains far from a purist, which is all to the good. He breathes new life into the blues by doing things his way, and that means some heavy blues-rock, melodic soul, hymnlike gospel, dashes of rap, and even a countryish acoustic workout featuring a foray on mandolin. Along the way, Chubby slips into various roles - from street tough to sweet lover and empathetic citizen of the world - with a nimbleness that belies his heft.
- N.C.Run Devil Run, (05/31/06)
Popa Chubby may be an invention of Ted Horowitz, but he's no mere cartoon. You only need Horowitz/Chubby's blogs on MySpace to understand that his music is far more to him than fame or food on the table; it's a commitment. And while his own account of making Stealing The Devil's Guitar might play into the Chubby brand, you suspect, reading between the lines, that there's more to the man than plugging in his 1966 Strat and cranking the amp to 11.Check this, "I spent the last 14 months recording this one at my own studio, Serpentine Sound, tucked away within the hills of Orange County, New York, with a thousand guitars and some of Jimi Hendrix's whiskers to smoke in my pipe! Talk about inspiration! I finally figured out how to play 1,000 guitars."
Firstly you don't spend 14 months on a project for the results simply to sit on the merchandise stand at gigs, you do it 'cause you want the album to make a mark in the bigger world. Secondly, whilst invoking Jimi might be tempting critical fate, it certainly raises the bar. And as for playing all those guitars - well, maybe not, but the album is a varied offering.
The other thing central to Chubby's music is the notion of it being New York City Blues. A reflection of that great melting pot, a musical cauldron that not only blends boyhood sounds of Pickett, Gaye, Redding, and Aretha, but Chuck Berry, Foghat, Stones, Johnny Winter, Led Zeppelin, and Freddie King. Beyond the individuals are the flavorings offered by NYC's mixed population.
Let's see how all of this is reflected in the album. We kick in with "Slide Devil Man Slide" with Popa's lacerating guitar slicing through a track that's a potent cocktail of a little Santana in the percussion and Charlie Daniels in the storytelling. The spirit of Carlos also hovers in the lead guitar of "Smugglers Game," a rapped tale of dark imports that's flecked with a Middle-Eastern riff on electric sitar.
"Back In My Bay's Arms" would, in an ideal world, be the hit single from the album. Sounding like Bob Seger having a good time over a bar band playing Reggae, it's infectious good time stuff that's gonna sound perfect floating out of rag tops as summer hits.
"Ride On" has the Jimi Hendrix Experience's influence in the wah-wahed Funk whilst Chubby breaks out the acoustic for Jesse Mae Hemphill's "In This World" (all other material is from his own pen), which rhythmically turns to the Caribbean once more. That melting pot in action, y'see!
"Kinda Dicey" resurrects the ZZ Top we all miss. "Young Guns" tips the hat at Charlie Daniels again; the devil visiting NYC for a guitar showdown perhaps, Popa?
"Virgil And Smokey" recalls Tony Joe White. "The Preacher Man" inhabits the swamps and "The Devil's Guitar" brings the set to a close with a Chubby tour de force that must ignite on stage.
Oh, I nearly forgot the short, minute and a half, "Buffalo Chips," a mandolin and Dobro showcase instrumental that struck me as ideal as intro music for a rootsy radio show. Fortunately I have one of those so that cut can fulfill that promise!
So what we have is a solid, immaculately played Blues Rock with piquant flavorings that keep Popa Chubby's promise to make New York City Blues. There's a chance of course that in adding all of these inflections to a style of music that purists would like petrified and rockers would like unadorned that you end up with both something and nothing. Not here. There's also the gamble that over an album such variety kills the focus, renders the collection little more than a sampler. Again that has not happened, Chubby has personality enough to stamp the album and provide a thread whilst offering enough light and shade to not only keep us listening for nigh on an hour, but to tempt us to press repeat and let it run.
Steve Morris is a contributing writer at BluesWax
Popa Chubby – Stealing The Devil’s Guitar
Dixiefrog DFGCD 8600
Sound of splintering wood, screeching metal. A demented face appears in the doorway – “Heeeeeere’s Chubby”.
A crowd of earnest looking men cower fearfully against the opposite wall of the room. The only light comes from a neatly trimmed and ever burning lamp labelled “property of Fred McDowell”. Just visible are row upon row of 78s and life-size photos of Peetie Wheatstraw and Robert Johnson (the ‘cigarette’ photo). The men are cowering behind a small imitation stone structure surrounding a broken one-bar electric heater – this has a small brass plaque “St. Elmore’s fire-place”. Laid reverently on top is an open copy of ‘Blues & Gospel Records 1890 – 1943’.
One of the blues police (for it is indeed they) screams, “Patton help us, it’s the mad axe murderer of the blues”. Chubby grins: “Pleased to meet you - I see you know my name …or one of my many titles anyway.” He reaches into an 11foot cotton sack, pulls out a portable CD player (shout off, “Sacrilege!) and begins to play his new album.
Within a few minutes the purists are no more. Some are deaf - having rejected the amplification of Muddy Waters back in 1958 they simply cannot cope with the power and volume of Chubby’s masterful blues-rock; others have gone insane, unable to contemplate a music that successfully incorporates rap, funk, Joan Jett, Jimi Hendrix and even an electric sitar onto a blues base; a couple are set upon by their colleagues, one for saying the slide playing was actually reminiscent of aforementioned Elmore in places, the other for quite liking Chubby’s bluegrass flavoured instrumental.
“H-how did you find us?” gasps the final survivor. “Inside knowledge” answers Popa, winking at the photographs, which now bear big grins on their faces. Robert Johnson steps out of the frame. “Debt repaid?” he asks Chubby, who nods.
Robert stretches, brushes himself down:
(rhythmically) “Yo, bro’, I got to go,
Gotta c’lect my royalties from the record co.
Get on down to the designer clothes sto’,
An’ buy some threads to impress my, er, girl”
Peetie Wheatstraw laughs, “Hey, popa-in-law, that’s RL, always on the ball, huh?”
Chubby looks thoughtful: “Hey, Bob, wanna be the rap king? Meet me midnight, intersection of 125th Street and Madison. Bring a mic. Terms and conditions as we agreed at the crossroads outside Clarksdale… plus a guest spot on my next album.”
Last blues policeman splutters and dies.
Rating: 666 (oh, OK – 8) – Norman Darwen
"Stealing the Devil's Guitar" - Popa Chubby - Blind Pig
The New York blues musician has dedicated the CD to bringing "positive healing energy" into a hard and confused world, and does have one great make-the-world better plea, "In This World" on the CD.
Still most of his best songs on the album are pretty hard-edged themselves. "Smuggler's Game," "Young Guns," "Long Deep Hard and Wide" and "The Devil's Guitar" are all standouts.
The songs aren't quite as strong as his wonderful album "How'd a White Boy Get the Blues?" but you won't find more than a handful of blues musicians who can match them. It's well worth a listen.
posted by Rick Harmon
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DIXIE FROG RECORDS
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 19TH JUNE 2006
Chubby’s new album, ‘Stealing The Devil’s Guitar’ features fourteen tracks, twelve of which were composed by the big man himself, with two inspired covers in the shape of Jessie Mae Hemphill’s ‘In This World’, and ‘Bold As Love’, from Jimi Hendrix, of course. The album sees the prodigiously talented PC pitting his matchless guitar and vocal artistry across a variety of Blue-tinged styles, which incorporate elements of straight ahead rock, rap and hip hop, a melting pot of styles that is as complex and multi-faceted as Chubby’s native New York City itself.
‘Stealing...’ is an album of much textural variety, with PC utilising all fourteen of his impressive collection of guitars, with acoustic and electric slide, mandolin, and a hard Blues bedrock underpinning it all. It’s contemporary, very urban Blues, crackling with stinging guitar work and alternately witty and thoughtful lyricism. ‘Smuggler’s Game’, for example, is complemented by an unusual, Middle Eastern ‘sitar guitar’ motif, forming an intriguing contrast to Chubby’s half-rapped vocals (the video of the song is also included as an extra. ‘Preacher Man’ is a mordant exploration of the corruption of religious ideals, and ‘Young Guns’ is a marvellous, Western-themed composition that takes a gunslinger tale and recasts it for the here and now, borne along by a neo-rockabilly rhythm.
Popa Chubby realised that The Blues would be his road most travelled at the age of nineteen, when a neighbourhood friend played him the Freddie King album, ‘Just Pickin' – as he says, “I was knocked out cold. I thought, Man, that’s what I wanna be when I grow up!”
A richly varied career has seen him perform with Screaming Mad George, a Japanese performance artist, a tour with Richard Hell as one of is Voidoids, and a lengthy association with New York based singer-songwriter Pierce Turner. He was given the ‘Popa Chubby’ sobriquet in 1990 by none other than Bernie Worrell, sometime member of Parliament and Funkadelic, and it’s a name that was particularly apt.
Since then, Chubby has taken his New York City Blues around the world, and is due to make a couple of very welcome Festival appearances in the UK in 2006 – Thursday 22nd June, Blues on The Farm, Chichester, Friday 23rd June, The Boom Boom Room, Sutton United Football Club, Sutton, Surrey, and Saturday 24th June, Southport Arts Centre. The shows will feature Chubby and his full American band – rare opportunities to witness the awesome PC in full effect. Popa Chubby will be available for interview and radio sessions – please contact Alan or Lesley at Indiscreet PR for more information.
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