A HOMECOMING FOR BLUESMAN JAMES MONTGOMERY

by Seth Rogovoy

WILLIAMSTOWN -- April 22

For veteran bluesman James Montgomery, his show on Friday night at the Night Shift Cafe in North Adams isn't just another gig. It's a homecoming in the truest sense of the word.

"I'm tremendously excited about it, I'm really psyched," said the singer and harmonica player about his upcoming performance warming up the crowd for Dr. John.

"I haven't played out there in eight years or so," said the former Williamstown resident in a phone interview from Newport, R.I. "I made so many great friends out there. I'm really looking forward to seeing a lot of the people I was really close to out there.

"Up until the Night Shift opened there really wasn't a place for me to return to," said Montgomery, who called North County home for most of the '80s, and who frequently turned up at local nightspots when he was off the road from one of his many national tours.

Those tours included opening spots for bands such as Aerosmith, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Miller and Capricorn-labelmates The Allman Brothers. They stretch back to the early 1970s, when still an English major at Boston University, the Detroit-area native founded the James Montgomery Band, which along with Aerosmith and the J.^Geils Band, dominated the Boston music scene for the better part of that decade.

"We did a lot of touring in those days," said Montgomery. "We pretty much were on the road sixty days at a time, three or four times a year. The rest of the time we'd come back to New England, which was our bread and butter, and make the bulk of our living here."

Playing the sort of classic, Chicago-style electric blues pioneered by Muddy Waters and James Cotton, Montgomery's sound has never gone out of fashion, as it serves as the basis for so much popular rock 'n' roll and rhythm 'n' blues.

"Everything I do is kind of based off of the Chicago blues," said Montgomery, who sings and plays harmonica. "Early on I was heavily influenced by Lightnin' Hopkins and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, but once I turned fourteen or fifteen that electric Chicago stuff really started to be my favorite type of stuff to hear.

"In terms of my writing, I was heavily influenced by Paul Butterfield and James Cotton. Cotton in those days was always mixing blues and soul together, for a more modern, urban style of blues. And growing up in Detroit, I was tremendously influenced by funk music, James Brown, Parliament/Funkadelic."

While the huge mega-tours of the '70s may have dried up in the '80s, Montgomery kept busy with other sorts of gigs. He collaborated with Alex Taylor, brother of James, and formed the East Coast Funkbusters. At one point, Dan Ackroyd and Paul Shaffer joined up with the band. Later on, Ackroyd pegged Montgomery to join a new version of the Blues Brothers, along with many of the original members.

In 1989, Montgomery appeared in a national TV commercial for Dodge automobiles with Levon Helm, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, and in the early-'90s, he joined the Allman Brothers onstage to play harmonica on some of their more blues-oriented numbers.

Last year, Montgomery put together a band to play for Gov. Weld's inaugural ball that included Steve Tyler of Aerosmith. He also backed up James Taylor at a private gig on Martha's Vineyard.

Along the way, numerous musicians passing through Montgomery's bands have gone on to achieve varying degrees of success on their own, including Billy Squier, Wayne Kramer from the MC5, Jeff Golub and Jeff Pevar. Golub, who went on to become Rod Stewart's musical director, will be producing Montgomery's next album, his seventh.

Asked to recall the highlights of his 27-year career, he rattles off a number of them. "Being called onstage by B.B. King to jam with him, and then having him leave the stage and me lead his band during a live broadcast, so there was actually no time to do anything other than call off a tune and direct his band," he said. "That was a great thing for me."

"Playing with Muddy Waters was great," he continued. "Being part of the Blues Brothers was a wonderful experience. It was fun playing with Mick Jagger, and getting to meet the Beatles.

"But in a lot of respects, since I do enjoy playing music so much, there's a lot of highlights which are just so subtle. A certain night, a certain song, a certain audience member, that kind of thing. There's even small highlights that are big."

This article first appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on April 24, 1996.

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