Kelly Hogan

FITZGERALDS SIDEBAR PRESENTS:The Rick Holmstrom Band Guitarist & Bandleader for MAVIS STAPLES!! Rick Holmstrom has stories. 32 years of hurtling around the globe in metal tubes will do that. From his early days with blues and soul artists like William Clarke, Johnny Dyer and Booker T. to his 16-year run as gospel/soul/civil rights legend Mavis Staples guitarist/bandleader, a conversation with Holmstrom quickly turns to road stories. My first tour, winter of 89, was LA to Vancouver, 24 hours straight in a rattrap 70s Dodge van. No heat. Brutal draft blowing through, might as well have been a ragtop. We played strip clubs. A week in each joint. After Vancouver we went up to Calgary and Edmonton, just a bunch of blues nuts wearing every piece of clothing wed brought. Im from Alaska, man, I know cold. Those were some of the coldest nights ever, in that van. Three years later, on another Canadian run, different van, this time no rear seats. We brought bean bags and folding lawn chairs to sit in. At the Vancouver gig, top of the second set, the leader started berating the band onstage. Band members started quitting and walking off the stage. Packed house. Saturday night. The sound man got on the PA and said: Well, thats it for tonights entertainment, ladies and gentlemen! Thats entertainment. So whats the story with this record? These songs were written looking out of airplane and bus windows, or in hotel rooms at 2 am. When we returned from Australia in March, 2020, like most musicians, I sat at home stunned. Gigs, tours and sessions were postponed, then cancelled. We had a banner year booked--bus tours with Patty Griffin and Norah Jones, Wrigley Field with Chris Stapletonpoof, gone. So after a couple weeks of family time and de-compression, my livelihood dried up. I got depressed. Unusually depressed. Im normally a pretty upbeat person. At some point I finally grabbed a guitar. Always the best medicine. Playing really helped me regain purpose. I started digging into those late night rough sketches, a verse here and a chorus there. Found a bunch of 3 a.m. phone demos of melodies and chord progressions Id forgotten about. That led to more songs, which led to a masked-up session with my Mavis bandmates Steve Mugalian and Gregory Boaz. It was a tough decision to spend money recording while my savings were dwindling. Made absolutely no sense financially, but I went for it. Turned out working and creating just felt so right, musically and emotionally, that we cut 16 songs seemingly overnight. I think we mostly did it for our sanity.