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It isn’t
easy being Carl Weathersby. You can hear a lifetime of frustration, anger
and pain in the intensity of this multi-talented blues guitarist / vocalist
/ songwriter’s live shows and on his
recordings.
The inner turmoil motivating Weathersby’s
creativity undeniably results in great music. Besides the critical and popular
acclaim for his previous Evidence CDs, Carl has expanded his touring circuit
to include not only top-notch clubs like Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago
and Manny’s Car Wash in New York, but also to tumultuously received
appearances at various big-stage venues, earning best-of-show reviews at
the Chicago, King Biscuit, Pocono, Kalamazoo, Fleet, Mississippi Valley,
and a host of other blues festivals in the last 2 years. |
In January 1999, Weathersby received three nominations for the prestigious W.C. Handy Awards in the following categories: Contemporary Blues Male Artist of the Year, Best Instrumentalist—Guitar, and Blues Artist Most Deserving Wider Recognition.
In performance, Weathersby’s mixture of Southern charm, honesty, husky and soulful vocals, and fierce guitar-playing is brought literally face-to-face with the audience, as his cordless guitar lets him roam freely off the stage and into the crowd.
A look at Carl’s past may explain some of the restless feelings boiling within his music. A genuinely friendly and soft-spoken man offstage, Weathersby has seen the dark side of life as an infantryman in the waning days of the Vietnam War, a policeman, a prison guard and a steelworker; he lost a beloved nephew, an innocent bystander, to gang violence several years ago. With those experiences behind him, he is a man who intuitively understands what the blues is all about while bringing something fresh and original—his life—to the music. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1955, Carl spent his earliest years in tiny Meadville before his family moved to East Chicago, Indiana, when he was eight.
Carl’s extended family boasts plenty of musical ties. Not only is he related to the late Leonard "Baby Doo" Caston. Willie Dixon’s pianist in the Big Three Trio during the ‘40s and early ‘50s, but his cousins include singer G.C. Cameron (who fronted the Spinners on their 1970 hit it’s A Shame before scoring his own hits for Motown) and Leonard Caston, Jr. (a member of the Radiants. the Chicago soul group that had a 1965 hit for Chess, Voice Your Choice).
His biggest "familial" influence was actually a friend of Carl's father, a guy named Albert who Carl knew only as a diesel mechanic. "One day I was sitting there practicing with the record Crosscut Saw, playing it over and over," Carl recalls. "I said,'Daddy, I got it,' and Albert was standing right over there. He told me,'Boy, that's me on that record, and that ain't the way I played it,"' and showed him the right way to play it. Carl learned that the mechanic was better known as musician, Albert King.
A few years after returning from his tour of hell in Vietnam, Carl was hired as Albert King's rhythm guitarist for road tours in 1979,'80 and '81. "I never did tour as long as six months, because it was kinda rough" working for the notoriously hard-to please King, Carl recalls. "I was lucky -- I never got fired, but I did quit three times."
Isolated just across the state line in Indiana, with no tangible reputation on the Chicago blues circuit, Carl managed to hook up with the Sons Of Blues, fronted by harmonica player Billy Branch, with whom Carl's brother had jammed. During the next 14 years, Carl matured into a contemporary bluesman of exceptionally high standards, anchoring the band and providing original songs, even as he chafed under the group's rather traditional approach.
Carl's own approach to the blues includes plenty of funk and R&B influences. "Blues purists want you to play Muddy Waters, Carl explains. "If Muddy was living, he wouldn't be playing that shit the same way, not 45 years later. [Blues] has got to change or die."
The honesty and depth of Carl's personal and musical quest for sense and satisfaction in a chaotic world has become his trademark. Not content with the past or even the present, Carl's Restless Feeling keeps him moving forward, looking for more.