Clarence Spady Band

rowing up, the sound of Scranton, PA. was overwhelmingly pop and top 40. But young Spady, who first picked up the guitar at the age of 4, got a healthy diet of the blues at home. Mom listened to gospel and often took her son to visit her native New Jersey, where he was exposed to the area’s rich radio diversity.

But it was dad – who taught Spady how to play guitar and who, until a spate of recent health problems, attended all his son’s shows – who was Spady’s greatest influence.



“He used to listen to Bobby Bland and B.B. King at home. And at night he’d sit on the porch playing guitar. I’d climb in his lap, and start fingering the notes while he did the picking,” Spady remembers. “And we used to have blues jams every weekend. [Dad] would get off work on Friday at 5 p.m., 5:30 p.m., and we’d head out Highway 80 east toward Patterson to my uncle’s place. The jam would start Friday night and end Sunday morning. Sometimes we’d be on our way home and just make it back in time for church. And we did that for 14 years, every weekend. That was the biggest exposure to the blues that I had when was young.”

On his own, Spady developed a taste for soul and funk, influences readily apparent in his music, which marries traditional blues sound with a funkier, modern sensibility. He says his next album, due out next year, will lean more in the R&B direction, with plenty of horns and vocal harmonies.

“I guess that comes from listening to James Brown and growing up in the era of Motown,” he says. “It seems like my rhythm would go with the R&B, but my solos would stay mostly bluesy.”

Mind you, Clarence Spady had his work cut out for him the last time he was at The Green Parrot. The night was to be his alone, but we'd hastily organized an all-day benefit for local drummer Mick Kilgos, and it turned out that Clarence was headlining a 14-hour wild and musical extravaganza. A huge crowd stayed throughout the day and way into the next morning to keep on partying with Clarence Spady and his Power Trio. That's the kind of hold he can get on you!

As one of this new generation of post-Muddy bluesmen, Clarence Spady is creating his own modern hybrid of R& B-tinged vocals, adventurous guitar work, and contemporary lyrics. His blues credentials have been forged in the fire of his own experiences as a hard-living man and a hard-working musician. As writer Art Tipaldi explains in the liner notes of Spady's CD Nature of the Beast, " Blues players of yesterday commented on their world; Spady reflects on the personal flaws he has worked to change."

Spady's distinctively raspy, soulful vocals reflect not just his formative lessons from family members, but his years of 'testifying' in church choirs. His wailing, funky guitar style has been evolving ever since he got his first axe at age four. In the '80s he spent most of his time as lead guitarist and musical arranger for a band that toured the country opening for the Temptations, the Four Tops, and The Spinners.

The late '90s finds Clarence with personal demons conquered, the national release of his Evidence CD Nature of the Beast, and touring extensively - a long trip that brings him back to The Green Parrot for a night that is sure to be all his own.

-Extracted from an article by Mark Jordan