Ronnie Earle live

[tjcurtin1]

Saw Ronnie Earle live for the first time last night at our local arts center, playing with his band the Broadcasters. It was pretty amazing - they played for three straight hours, no break! This from a guy who has health issues such that he only plays locally anymore! A terrific range of great blues playing from t-Bone walker to muddy Waters, Otis rush, jump blues, jazz blues and even a Coltrane tune! Most of that time Ronnie was off the stage and in the audience, playing directly for folks; Sometimes he would sit in an empty seat next to folks and wail away an entire tune. At the opening he said they were recording for a live album but that they had no idea what they were going to play - and indeed, out there in the audience, he would just end one tune and segue without a break into the next thing that came to him, with only an occasionala nod to the band to signal the keyboard to take a solo, or to get ready to end a tune. The band just went with him and followed is lead - they've played together a long time.... He got back on stage at one point and mentioned that it was kind of hard to see what he was doing out there in the dark! IT was not a showy kind of thing at all - he clearly liked making contact with the people in the seats. On top of this his playing was alternately searing, soulful, melodic, meditative.

You can hear his last year's show - and a lot more interesting live music besides, here, at a local station that streams a lot of the shows and keeps an archive: apparently, they didn't stream last night, probably because of the recording for an eventual cd.

http://www.mvyradio.com/archives/index.php

I had only run into Ronnie's music recently - great playing and a soulful and down to earth guy.... worth a listen if you don't know him.

[Robert****]

Hey that sounds like great fun! Ronnie is awesome. Consider yourself lucky!

[msteeln]

Ronnie may well be my current favorite guitarist of that or any genre, mostly for the human reasons you mentioned, tj. He's a real person and plays from the heart'n soul, it rarely get's any better than what he does, and the live setting is his true home. Really sorry to hear he's ailing, at least he's still out there. I'll probably not live my latest dream of catching him perform but will be checking your link in hopes of finding some Earl gems, thanx, great post!