Review: Sugar Ray And The Bluetones – Blues From Sibculo
Sugar Ray And The Bluetones – Blues From Sibculo
Format: CD – Digital / Label: Natural Records
Release: 2025
Text: Pascal Wilhelm
Now this is something special. With over fifty years of musical experience and Charlie Musselwhite and Kim Wilson being your fans, seventy-one year-old Sugar Ray Norcia can be regarded a real dinosaur of the blues. And I mean this as an honest and sincere f *****g compliment. He and his band The Bluetones starring Rusty Zinn (guitar), Michael “Mudcat” Ward (bass) and Neil Gouvin (drums) came to Sibculo, a small village in the Netherlands and set up their stuff in Bo Brocken’s Natural Records – Recording Facilities studio. It must have been blues heaven for a while in Sibculo.
Sugar Ray and the Bluetones started In 1979 with “guitar giant” Ronnie Earl on guitar and has been a musical force ever since. But it hasn’t been the Bluetones all the time, Ray also spent seven years playing in Roomful of Blues and has appeared on over 50 albums with the Bluetones, Ronnie Earl, Roomful of Blues, Otis Grand, Ann Peebles, Michelle Willson, J. Geils, Duke Robillard, Pinetop Perkins, Jimmy “T-99” Nelson and many others, receiving several award (Grammy, Blues Music) nominations. Although the power and versatility of his voice allowed him to expand his musical territory (singing was in his genes; his father was a voice teacher and his mother a jazz singer), he stayed true to the blues. “My first love is always going to be die-hard, real-deal blues.”
The accomplishments of the other gentlemen in this band are at least as impressive as Ray’s. Noteworthy is that Neil has been playing with Sugar Ray since high school, how cool is that?
Songs by Sugar Ray (No More Chances, Blind Date), Rusty Zinn (Dream Girl, Rusty Nail) and some cover songs on this album. According to Bo, everything was captured live “in the spirit of the early Chess Records sessions – pure, unfiltered and unmistakably real.” And it sure sounds that way. The record shows that a good studio is one thing, but it is the musicians that create the music. No studio trick can compensate for that, this is how it is done!
Ray: “We approach recordings like Hank Williams made records. I go in with my lyrics, just rough sketches of the songs, and the great musicians in the Bluetones, who always play something exciting.” This is exactly how this record sounds: it’s powerful, exciting, but also loose and relaxed, with musicians for whom blues playing is second nature. If you want to inspire young budding blues players, make sure this record is under their Christmas trees.
What an honour it must have been for Bo, his wife Vera van Faassen (who provided moral support, cuisine, photography and the CD artwork) and studio assist Harm van Essen to attend this session. I wonder what happened when they connected with Ray and his men.
The liner notes Bo wrote give away how special it must have been: “Somewhere in the laughter, the late-night talks, and the music itself, a true friendship had taken root-our lives woven together not only by the sounds we created, but by the quiet affinities that revealed themselves between us.”
Magic ….
Tracks:
01. No More Chances
02. High and Lonesome
03. Mean Old World
04. Blind Date
05. Bloodstains on the Wall
06. Dream Girl
07. Rusty Nail
08. I’m Holding On
09. You Got Me Wrong
10. Wait and Watch