Lazy J & The Dirty Shuffle

The blues is at the heart and soul of Texas music as well as the best rock’n’roll. And now from the heart of Texas now comes the supercharged blues of Lazy J & The Dirty Shuffle. The three-piece led by guitarist, singer and songwriter J Grover reaches down into the deep roots of the blues and brings the music into the 21st Century, firing it up with sizzling guitar work, propulsive rhythms and impassioned vocals to create blues music that honors the traditions while taking the music to new and exciting places. “It’s greasy lowdown funky Texas blues music,” says Grover of what he and bassist Marcus Berrios and drummer James Gettys have created on the group’s debut album, Bone To Pick. Produced by David Zychek, a fellow guitarist known for his musical tenure in such groups as Airborne, Night Ranger, The Ken Hensley Band and more in addition to his own Texas-based band, the disc roams across many modes of the blues with a thrust and potency that doesn’t let go. On the album, one can hear echoes of such influences as Johnny Winter and Jimi Hendrix (check out “I’ve Had Enough”), Buddy Guy (“Little Angel,” written as an homage to the blues master), T Bone Walker (on the title track) and The Allman Brothers Band (“You Don’t Love Me”) and many others. Yet the music’s final imprint is the high-energy blues of Lazy J & The Dirty Shuffle. While the sounds created by Lazy J & The Dirty Shuffle are as Texan as barbecued brisket, Grover in fact hails from the small town of South Paris, Maine, where from an early age he was drawn to music. “I’ve always been into music since I was a baby boy, and even made up songs when I was a little kid,” he says. “It just seemed like I always knew I was going to do it.” He first wanted to play drums, “but my parents weren’t very into that,” he notes with a chuckle over the racket they would have had to suffer through. “So I decided if I couldn’t be a drummer I was going to be a guitar player.” Grover got his first guitar at 14, learned a few chords from a neighbor, and was off and running towards what is today an impressive self-taught virtuosity. With deep and diverse tastes that included such classic acts as The Beatles, Humble Pie, Traffic, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and more, Grover had his blues epiphany on hearing Stevie Ray Vaughan. And that led him to such blues heroes as Muddy Waters, T Bone Walker, Johnny Winter, Freddie King, Albert King and others. “Once I started getting into that stuff it was all over,” he recalls. “The more I heard and listened to it the more I got into it. But musically I’m very diverse. We call our group a blues band, but the Allman Brothers is also a big influence.” From his teen years into his twenties, Grover cut his teeth playing the blues on the Maine club circuit. “I’ve never been in a Top 40 band,” he says proudly. “I’ve always been able to just play the stuff I love.” He also began to visit Texas, where his sister and brother-in-law were living in the Killeen area. “I would I come down for the winters, and was drawn to it, especially because Austin is such a blues mecca. Finally I just came down and stayed here,” he recalls. Settling in Harker Heights, he started hanging out at Cutter’s Texas Music Hall and Wild West Cantina, run by Cutter Brandenburg, who had been Vaughan’s road manager and close friend. “It was one of the coolest places you could ever hear live music,” says Grover, who was introduced there to the talents of such Lone Star blues heroes as Alan Haynes, Bugs Henderson and Omar Dykes. Every Thursday, he’d show up for the weekly blues jam. But even though he’d made a name for himself with his playing back home, the level of guitar talent at the jam left him duly impressed and a little reluctant to show his stuff. “There would be tons of great guitar players there,” he explains. “I just sat in the corner. Nobody even knew I played guitar. “I was nervous and shy about doing it, a little reluctant to jump in,” he adds, which may come as a surprise to anyone who has seen him cut loose on his axe onstage. Finally a friend talked him into getting up and playing, and Grover quickly became a regular player in the jam. He was also befriended by Brandenburg, and found the ideal rhythm section in Berrios and Gettys at Cutter’s as well. “James, Marcus and I were the three people that were there for the Thursday jam no matter what, and eventually we just started the band and played our first gigs there. “I can’t overstate how much Cutter meant to this band,” notes Grover, who wrote “Mr. Cee’s Boogie” on Bone To Pick in honor of his mentor and friend. “Nobody loves music more and loves musicians and supports music more than Cutter.” From their home base at Cutter’s, Lazy J & The Dirty Shuffle began building an audience and became a hot musical attraction in Central Texas. They’ve since continued to expand their reach to Austin’s Sixth Street, Waco, Dallas and West Texas, delivering scintillating and sweaty sets that mix the group’s ever-expanding list of originals with blues and rock classics played in a way that “always puts our own stamp on everything,” Grover explains. When it came time to make an album, “we wanted a CD that sounded like us live,” he explains. “And 95 percent of it is live, first take. We’re not a straight blues band and we’re not a rock’n’roll band. We do some funk in there and some soul. There are a lot of influences we pack into what we do. Sometimes I want to be Muddy Waters, sometimes I want to be Jimi Hendrix. “We wanted to make a blues album that doesn’t always play like a blues album,” he says. “It sounds like it was live and real raw and that’s everything I wanted. But in the end it’s just blues music.” Well, maybe not just blues music. More like the next evolution of the blues, played with passion, virtuosity, power and heart, road-tested and slathered with the hot sauce of real life experience found in Grover’s songs. And with a burgeoning reputation as an act to watch in a state known for its preeminence in the blues, Lazy J & The Dirty Shuffle remain focused on making music that moves people, just as they did in their earliest shows in the small bars and clubs where they started out in Central Texas. “There’s something about a dive bar or an old roadhouse,” Grover concludes. “People are just there to drink beer. You walk in as a band and usually they could care less. But if you start playing good music it means everything to them.” Low Down, Dirty, Greasy, Funky Texas Blues Rock N Roll